Berserk, Total War: Second Son of Nobles

After seeing off Lusitan and others, John began to plan how to welcome the new bishop.

According to Lusitan's answer, the archbishop might come before this winter, and when he comes he will need a church and a vineyard, and John will also have to pay his tithes this year.

The bishop sent people to collect the tithe from door to door, and did not collect taxes together with the lords. The purpose was to allow the church to interfere in secular affairs and thus compete with the local lords. But would this really not cause the people to rebel? After all, two taxes had to be collected.

The first problem that came before John was where to build a church.

First of all, it is definitely impossible to build it in the forest territory, because it involves many of John’s secrets.

Secondly, if it is built in the Count of Franche-Comté, should it be built in the city or outside the city? If it is built in the city, it will be like a nail of the French King's Office in the city, which will be very inconvenient for John's management. If it is built outside the city, it will show that the French King's Office is not valued.

So John decided to build a church not far outside the city, surround it with walls, and put various living facilities inside.

So John recruited farmers from the system and began to transport various materials from the Forest Earldom to here, starting the large-scale development of the Earldom.

But before that, John needs to go back to the Forest Territory to arrange some related matters, because he will spend a long time in the Earldom.

A few days later, John returned to the Forest Territory with a part of his troops. After settling down, he held a meeting.

Almost everyone who could come to this meeting came, except Charlie who was out doing mercenary work, including the assassin Cyril and the spy Wesker who hadn't been seen for a long time.

"Then let's begin this meeting. Let's start with your reports." John said and began to listen to the reports from various departments.

First came Simon, who was in charge of all financial planning and material distribution. He placed a stack of documents in front of John and said:

"Sir, the territory's current revenue comes from farmers' land taxes, fisheries, weapons processing, commodity trade, and mercenary business. The majority of the territory's expenditure is military spending, which accounts for almost 50% of the total expenditure. The current income is just enough to cover the expenditure, but this is because many industries are in their infancy. After another year of development, when other industries mature, the territory will have more profits."

After Simon finished speaking it was Hank who was currently in charge of the military of the entire Forest Territory.

"Currently, the entire territory has 20,000 standing troops, and the militias in various places can mobilize about 40,000 soldiers. There are 2,000 standing troops stationed in West Baldon, 5,000 in the Countess of Franche-Comté, and the rest are in the Forest Territory. Among them, there are about 5,000 cavalry, about 5,000 ranged troops, about 9,000 infantry, and about 1,000 siege equipment troops."

Then there is Wesker. John has been in charge of Midland's intelligence work since he came back from the fight with Benson.

"At present, our intelligence agencies have infiltrated all major cities in Midland, as well as some cities on the border between the Southern Kingdom and Yoda. According to intelligence, the southern kingdoms are currently preparing to establish a business alliance to deal with the business war between Midland and Yoda. The Hall of the King of Law has not responded at present. Due to the special nature of Midland, the intelligence in each region is different. You may know more about Wendam than I do. Yoda is currently gathering troops in the northern port, and the target is unknown."

Finally, there is Cyriel, who has the least presence. He has been training as an assassin for the past year.

"Currently, the assassination department of the territory is cooperating with the intelligence department. I have trained a group of assassins, compiled some books on assassination, and produced some assassination weapons myself."

Cyril then gave John some books.

Conventional weapons of assassins from various countries

"Assassination Method"

Herbalism

It looks like Cyril has done a lot of work this year.

Next came the summary phase.

The first is that the territory's income is less than its expenditure. It can still sustain itself with the looting of the current year, but it will definitely not work if it is delayed any further. It is very necessary for a territory to be self-sufficient, but it is definitely not possible to increase the territory's regular income dramatically in a short period of time. So John decided to plan first and then the later livelihood construction, but the construction will still be mainly for military purposes, and the livelihood construction will be allocated from the remaining income for stable development.

At the same time, continue to develop various industries in the territory, including but not limited to looting the Yoda Empire to increase income for the territory. Anyway, it has already been robbed, so it’s no problem to rob more.

There is also the issue of food. The food handed over by local farmers is only enough to meet 30% of the army's needs. If the great plains of Franche-Comté can be developed well, this proportion will at least double. However, at present, the local area still needs to give priority to purchasing cheap crops from West Balden, and secondly to recover them from merchants in Midland. In terms of price, preferential mercenary services can be used to negotiate with him for conditions for reducing the price of food.

The third is that there are too few grassroots civil servants in the territory. Although there are many talented military personnel, there are not many people to deal with the people's livelihood in the territory. The only capable civil service team is concentrated in Johannesburg, and the remaining rural castles rely entirely on self-government. This is because these people are highly loyal, otherwise direct decrees cannot leave Johannesburg.

John doesn't have a particularly good solution for this. At present, he can only wait for the school to train some grassroots talents to help compile statistics or supervise agricultural taxes in various places.

Of course, there is another way to attract talents, which is to recruit with the help of the connections of the court faction. Although these two methods can obtain various types of talents in a short period of time, they will cause chaos in the originally unified faction.

"Sir, I think we can recruit some merchants. Instead of letting them be responsible for trading in various places, we can directly let them do statistics and collect data." Simon said at this time.

Yes, why didn’t I think of letting the businessmen do it? They are the best at doing this, so the problem of lack of manpower is almost solved.

With the agreement of all departments, the policies proposed at this conference will be implemented in every castle and village and will become the development direction for a long time to come.

In the next few days, John kept speculating on the movements of Yoda's army. The sudden drop in Yoda's military strength on the border with Midland could not be due to a contract. Then, according to intelligence, the large number of troops gathered at Yoda's northern port must mean that Yoda was preparing to attack a certain country by water. This gave him many options.

There are many island countries in the north, but there are no kingdoms.

After John thought about it for a long time, he suddenly thought of a Berserk novel.

Yes, that's definitely the case...