Lord Harland.

After the summer grain was put into storage, the grain reserve in the Harland territory increased to about tons.

This year, 8,000 tons of grain were obtained from the Baron of Harden. In recent months, only about 2,000 tons were consumed to feed the indentured slaves who migrated from the Baron of Harden.

In addition to last year's grain reserves and this year's summer grain, the huge warehouse built in the territory is not enough.

Judging from this year's situation, I am afraid that the autumn grain harvest will also be bumper.

In addition to the grain harvested by free people, 35,000 tons of grain could be harvested by relying on indentured servants.

The territory of Harland now has a population of more than , and it cannot consume tons of food at all.

Although the population of the territory has increased, Richard no longer needs to bear the burden of the free people's rations. Richard only plans to reserve 10,000 tons of grain. They also left 30,000 tons of rations for more than 80,000 indentured slaves to grow grain.

The remaining 30,000 tons of grain can be sold.

Thirty thousand tons of grain will seriously impact the price of grain in the Heihebao market.

Richard found Sanji Tara again to see if he could continue to exchange grain for slaves this year.

Direct transactions with the Duke of Edward can save a lot of time and procedures.The absence of grain merchants and slave merchants peeling off layers of skin is beneficial to both sides.

Although Duke Edward had a bumper harvest this year, the food reserves were still far from enough.

After Richard came to the door, Sanji Tara said directly: "The price of food this year is lower than last year, and the premium on food is gone. Thirty thousand tons of food are valued at 60,000 gold coins, which can be exchanged for about 4,000 households." Qing Strong men and women account for half of the population, and the total population is about 12,000.

After all, the elderly and children are not worth much, and they are all given away.The average price for young men and women is about ten gold coins. "

Purchase people from the slave market. The market price of a male slave in his twenties is about twenty gold coins.

An ordinary person's annual salary is between three and four gold coins. In addition to food, clothing, housing and transportation, the annual income of raising a slave is two gold coins and six silver coins.It takes eight years to recover the cost of buying a slave in the prime of life, and the longer the slave lives, the more profitable it is.

Therefore, normal slave owners do not treat slaves harshly and basically allow them to eat and drink well.

Because the elderly and children who lost money were purchased, and slaves were purchased as a family unit, the price of slaves in their prime was often about 30% cheaper.

When slave traders captured slaves, in order to prevent slaves from rebelling and fleeing, they usually captured their wives, children, and parents.

With family members as hostages, strong slaves will not resist.

Many lords, in order to make slaves settle down and prevent them from escaping easily, would often buy the entire family to enrich their household registration.

In fact, even American farmers in their previous lives used the same procedure to purchase slaves, often purchasing a complete family of black slaves.

Farmers in the South also went to the slave market to buy female black slaves and give the male black slaves wives so that the slaves could reproduce more people.

Richard completed the grain delivery at Black River Fort, waited for more than ten days, and took over households of serfs from Duke Edward.

In the past two years, Richard purchased 4,800 households of serfs from Edward's territory, with a total population of 16,500.

If the administrator of Edward's territory is not a fool, he will definitely plant spies among these people.

After all, the Haaland family is already the most powerful noble in Geda Province, second only to the great nobles in importance.

Moreover, the territory of Harland has also researched many new technologies and produced many high-value commodities.

The Duke of Edward's land must spend a lot of effort to obtain the steel production technology, the hemostatic ointment formula, the weaving technology, and the brown sugar production technology in the Harland territory.

Li Cha is well aware of this.

The slaves purchased from Duke Edward were not trusted in Richard's heart.

It is impossible to select from this group of people when recruiting workers or conscripting soldiers.

For this group of indentured slaves, Richard would only scatter them in the two baronies of Stopa and Dirham and let them engage in agricultural cultivation.

Because of the ban on migration in the territory, it is difficult for these spies hidden among the slaves to get access to the secrets of the territory, and the secrets of the territory will not be revealed in a short period of time.

Even the indentured slaves transferred from the Baron of Harden were more reliable in Richard's mind than the slaves exchanged from the Duke of Edward.

After settling the new indentured slaves, Richard immediately arranged manpower to count the population of the territory.

By August, Harland Territory had a population of 118,000.

Because the fertility rate in Harland Territory is very high, reaching about 5%, by the end of the year, the total population should be close to 120,000, catching up with the Cisse family.

Harvest has started in August.

The autumn harvest has been very busy these days. Even the students of He'an Elementary School were mobilized by Li Cha to count the harvest of autumn grain and take charge of the collection of public grain.

The Harland Territory stipulated that when free people paid land taxes, they could pay in coins or in kind.

Ordinary civilians have only a small amount of cash income. If they must pay coins, it will bring a heavy tax burden to the free people.

The middle and upper classes of society, such as businessmen, gentry, professionals, and bureaucrats, will use deflationary means to pass on taxation, and as long as they use very little cash, they can get higher-value physical goods.

In order to exchange money and pay taxes, ordinary people can only sell food, fruits, livestock, and even farmland cheaply.

The history that Richard knew in his previous life was that Zhang Juzheng in the Ming Dynasty carried out tax reforms, which required taxes to be paid in silver. As a result, it increased the burden on the people and accelerated the speed of land annexation. Although the money was obtained in a short time, it had the opposite effect. In fact, to a certain extent It accelerated the pace of the Ming Dynasty's subjugation.

The tax system of the Han and Tang dynasties collected both physical objects and coins, and there was no problem of fire consumption.Even at the end of the dynasty, the common people's burden was lighter than that of the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the treasury had more income.

In the Manchu Qing period, after the implementation of the government’s policy of distributing the land to the mu and returning the consumption to the public, the burden on the common people was also reduced, and the government had more tax revenues.

The Tang, Song, and Qing Dynasties were not due to tax issues.

Even in the republics of later generations, when collecting land taxes, public grain is still the main thing.

It was not until the 1990s that cash collection was the main method.

However, if the cadres who collect the tax go to the countryside, if they have no money, they can still use the grain to offset the tax.

Therefore, in the era of deflation, taxation must be collected in kind and in currency.

By this fall, there were more than 8,000 freedmen who had completed their five-year contract.

But this year they don't have to divide the land, so they don't need to pay taxes for the time being.

After gaining freedom, Li Cha took the family as a unit and gave them a house, arable land, farm tools, rations, seeds and clothes.These materials will be converted into coins, and they will be repaid slowly in the form of low-interest loans.

The interest on this loan is very low, around % per annum.

Now this money is included in the installment payment for the house, and after a year, it will earn about a few hundred gold coins.

After the spring of next year, the city hall will also rent them cattle.

From the perspective of land tax, the tax increase this year is relatively small, only about 4,200 gold coins.

By next year, the land tax will be increased to more than gold coins.

The land tax of gold coins a year ranks third in the fiscal revenue of the territory after steel and wool spinning, and it is considered an important income of the territory.

As the number of freedmen increased, more and more fields were divided.

If all the contract slaves in the territory became free citizens and shared the land, the land tax could reach an income of gold coins a year.

Although the tax revenue is low now, Richard has actually severely squeezed the labor of contract slaves, and can obtain more income from physical goods every year.

The grain sold this year alone exceeded 60,000 gold coins. It's just that Richard exchanged 60,000 gold coins for 12,000 people.

If the population of 120,000 in Harland territory were converted into money, it could be exchanged for 600,000 gold coins in cash.

Richard has been running the territory for eight years, and has accumulated a population of 120,000 from scratch, more than 500,000 acres of farmland, more than 20 mines, more than 10,000 acres of orchards, thousands of acres of brown sugar plantations, and hundreds of acres of medicinal plantations. Hundreds of thousands of sheep, thousands of cattle, thousands of skilled workers, and four thousand well-equipped troops.

The total of these assets can't even be defeated by two million gold coins.

He has managed the territory for eight years, and has already caught up with the accumulation of three generations of the Xisai family.

Such an achievement can be called astonishing.

Even the big shots in the royal capital began to pay attention to Li Cha, knowing that there was such a young hereditary nobleman in northern Xinjiang who was good at inventing and creating, managing territories, and being brave and good at fighting.

Before the autumn harvest was finished, Li Cha received information that more than a dozen people were missing in the Harland Valley.

More than a dozen people were missing, Li Cha did not dare to neglect, and immediately mobilized elite troops from the territory to set up an investigation team.

The investigation team totaled more than a hundred people. In addition to the experienced demon hunting team members, Richard also recruited 30 people from the Warcraft Cavalry.

In order to ensure nothing goes wrong, Richard and Sophia personally participated in the investigation mission.

The investigation team also includes people with special talents such as Powell, Ruiz, and Luciano.

Through Powell's extraordinary sense of smell, the investigation team searched carefully in the Harland Valley and soon discovered the abnormality.

It turned out that near the Harland Valley, a tribe of ogres had migrated over.

Ogres are the two overlords of the Eagle Mountains and are mainly active in the west of the Eagle Mountains.

There are some ogre tribes in the northern part of the Dukedom of Edward. They go down to the mountains every winter to capture some humans for food.

There are occasionally some ogres in Gascoigne Province, but they are not common.

An ogre appeared in Harland's territory. Li Cha did not dare to neglect, and immediately reported it to the Church of Dawn.

The ogre tribe has a strong backer behind it and cannot be killed easily.

Destroying the ogre tribe will invite the legendary ogre to retaliate.

Richard also didn't know whether the Grant Kingdom had signed a contract with the legendary ogre. If he killed the younger one and provoked the older one, the Star Necklace would have to be exposed in advance.

Exposing the bottle of starlight will definitely attract the prying eyes of the great nobles, and there will definitely be trouble in the Harland territory.

Richard would not let things develop to this point unless it was absolutely necessary.

After receiving the news, Sanders rushed to the Halland Valley with two priests.

Ruiz has extraordinary vision, and personally carried out the reconnaissance mission. He quickly figured out the scale of the ogre tribe, and found that the ogre tribe had male ogres, female ogres, and There are two ogre cubs and a two-headed ogre mage, who seems to be a high-level professional.

Although the number is small, the strength of this ogre tribe is quite impressive.