When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#150 - Final preparations

"Sister Jeanne, you're back."

Having just dismounted, Horn was somewhat dumbfounded, looking at the little girl in an apron before him.

Jeanne stroked the little girl's head and explained, "This is Gils Lana, an orphan. I saw her being bullied by other children often, so I took her in as a maid."

The little girl named Gils was probably twelve or thirteen years old. Judging from the scars on her face and the bruises on the corners of her mouth, she must have suffered a lot before.

Horn stepped forward, touched Gils's head, and said to Jeanne with a smile, "Why did you suddenly think of getting yourself a maid?"

"After all, I need to focus on military affairs recently, and I don't have much time to clean the house."

This was not a lie. During this period, Jeanne and a group of Black Hat Army brigade commanders were undergoing retraining with Jeshka.

Horn brought them here because they would have to fight with the Duke in the future. They couldn't just run away completely on their own. He still had to help them prepare for the war.

Therefore, Horn required all officers above the brigade level and all marshals in the major legions to participate in Jeshka and Hakutō's military courses.

These military courses were actually just the two men's battlefield experience and the methods they had explored for deploying and changing formations.

Hakutō didn't want to participate at first, but unfortunately, Horn gave him too much.

He not only put him on the Church's wanted list but also helped him get expelled from the White Maple Mercenary Corps.

So, he could only go all the way with Horn.

Even Horn himself would come to listen in on these courses. It has to be said that Jeanne has a talent in this area.

She would struggle to calculate eleven times eleven, but she could accurately estimate the number of people and the length and width of troop formations at a glance, which was about the same as the formula Horn had summarized. It was really outrageous.

Coming out of the stable, Horn looked at the sky, which was still gloomy.

He stepped back to the Papal Palace, while Jeanne, guided by the knights of the Holy Grail Knights, quickly ran towards the area where the brawl had occurred.

Along the way, especially in the square, teams of young men could be seen performing step-by-step prayers under the command of ten-house and hundred-house leaders.

Every time someone stepped wrong, the Black Hat Army would make a note of it. After the prayer, they would directly step forward and whip them with rattan until they spun like tops.

But unfortunately, after three or four days of training, these people still couldn't distinguish between left and right, let alone walk in an orderly manner. It was difficult for them to even stand in a straight line.

In addition to these young adults participating in line training, there were also some young adults carrying shovels and pickaxes, digging drainage ditches under the leadership of ten-house and hundred-house leaders.

Not far away, they could be seen rebuilding fences and houses, demolishing rotten houses, removing garbage, and gathering people from the same ten-house and hundred-house together.

After this period of hundred-house reform, Horn had under his command two hundred-house leaders with over one thousand two hundred people in the old camp, and twenty hundred-house leaders with over eleven thousand five hundred people in the new camp.

A total of 22 hundred-house leaders, about twelve thousand eight hundred people.

Among the hundred-house leaders in the new camp, fifteen were recommended from the original new camp refugees, and five were appointed from Horn's old camp.

As for those who used to be bandits and robbers, they either honestly became good citizens or were exiled after violating the laws of the Papal State three times.

There were even more who were beaten to death for serious violations.

Horn had expelled and beaten to death about one hundred refugees before and after. Almost every day, someone was hung on a flagpole to be paraded or paraded in shackles.

The day before yesterday, he even fined two elders who had fought in the street and damaged public property half a ticket and asked them to read a review in public.

This led to the fact that when Horn walked on the roads of the camp, the refugees saw Horn not only with respect but also with fear.

Looking at the crowded people inside and around the camp, including the people in several nearby small camps, Horn shook his head helplessly.

Normally, most of the young adults would be repairing roads and dredging rivers nearby. There shouldn't be so many people in the camp during the day.

But since the war tax incident, both guilds and citizens have been raising funds to cope with the heavy tax burden.

After the funds on the books were exhausted, the work-for-food program was temporarily suspended, and a large number of young adults had to stay in the new camp.

Fortunately, due to Horn's influence, the Duke exempted these refugee laborers from taxes. The young adults still had some savings, and Horn also purchased a large amount of food before the price of food rose, so the new camp is still doing okay.

But it's not okay to just eat food and not work.

Since they were idle anyway, Horn simply had them participate in basic military training, such as step-by-step prayer, formation, marching, and so on.

In addition to this, he also asked the ten-house leaders to renovate the new camp, dividing it into roads, areas, and drainage ditches, otherwise, it would smell bad all day long.

In order to enable them to better adapt to possible wars in the future, Horn also specially organized patrol teams to crack down on law and order.

The establishment of the patrol team is not only to pre-train the soldiers' mentality but also to meet this demand.

Since the security near Jeanneburg deteriorated, many rogues, villains, and even bandits came to Horn under the guise of tax commissioners to collect taxes.

But they were all persuaded by Horn's three-inch rotten cannon and left honestly.

Sometimes they would come to sneak attacks at night, so these patrol teams would play a role.

The new camp area where Horn was located gradually became a restricted area for tax commissioners, and many refugee laborers from nearby camps moved here.

This led to the number of refugee laborers near Horn's camp reaching nearly fifteen thousand people. In such a small area, the number of people was almost more than the number of residents in Jeanneburg.

When Horn went to Jeanneburg this morning, he even saw these refugees holding a small market. When he came back, the patrol team said that there were several quarrels, thefts, and brawls in the market.

When there are more people, there are more things. Horn has to hold another meeting tonight to talk about the issue of law and order and the personal qualities of the elders.

Holding the alchemy product order catalog and the alchemy recipe book, Horn came to the front of the Papal Palace.

The Papal Palace is resplendent, not only with a chopping board hanging at the door with the words Papal Palace engraved on it, but also with foreign guards at the door - the Varangian Guard, beastmen from the Black Bone Swamp.

Very much in line with the standards of the Pope's residence.

Pushing open the door and walking into the Papal Palace hall on the first floor, Horn was immediately able to see Bonner and several child soldiers with bitter faces, copying account books.

During this period, Harkin did do things with money and diligently collected a large pile of messy account books, sweeping away the abandoned old account books from nearby grocery stores and markets.

Horn always felt that something was wrong with the previous account books. After thinking about it, he couldn't let it go, so he arranged for Bonner to sort out these account books.

Horn's order was to extract all abnormal flows and transactions and use two-dimensional tables for statistics.

Bonner's situation was similar to Hakutō's. After being tricked into the Papal State, he had been labeled as a short-haired spy and had to honestly serve as Horn's secretary.

As for what he really thought in his heart, no one knew.

"How is it going?" Horn knocked on the table, waking Bonner from the numbers.

"Harkin just sent another batch of account books, but there is still nothing to be gained." Bonner tapped his neck, "In this batch, only this one is a bit valuable, with two abnormal transactions."

"Keep up the good work." Horn nodded, took the alchemy order and recipe book, and wanted to walk inside, but was suddenly stopped by Bonner.

"Your Excellency, Harkin is waiting for you on the second floor. He also brought someone, saying it was the agreed-upon locksmith."