16 Journey Through the Medieval Era 016

“Looks quite good; the manor is better than I imagined,” Louisa said sincerely.

Perhaps it was because she held too many negative stereotypes about the Middle Ages—always thinking the nobility endured great hardship, and commoners even more so. Either they were like drifting weeds in chaotic times, much like during the Five Barbarians’ upheaval in ancient China, where no one was safe, or in somewhat more stable years, the serfs on the manor were worked to death.

These stereotypes are both true and false.

True, because the early Middle Ages were indeed like that. After the fall of Rome, there was the barbarian invasions—though this was not necessarily the darkest hour for the inhabitants of this land, as there was a second wave of barbarian invasions to come!

Compared to the earlier invasions, the second wave was far more chaotic and dark. Strictly speaking, those barbarians who rose from the ruins of Rome were not true barbarians in many cases. Many had already been heavily influenced by Rome or were border peoples under Roman rule, clearly Romanized...

Under such circumstances, the transfer of power was somewhat stable (though not much), and the original rural order was not entirely destroyed.

But the second wave consisted of so-called more ‘barbaric’ peoples who invaded a land that was already ‘under their control,’ attempting to establish order through unsustainable exploitation. This was true pillage—focused only on ‘exhausting the pond’ with no thought of building or sustainability.

False, because after this period, during the so-called ‘high Middle Ages’ around the tenth century, survival on this land became less difficult—the barbarians were either ‘pacified’ or pushed back within certain boundaries, and it was hard for them to continue raiding freely.

As for the exploitation of serfs, based on what Louisa saw, the serfs’ ‘slavery’ was not so severe; they seemed more like tenant farmers. The degree of personal bondage was low—quite different from the stubborn serfdom of Tsarist Russia.

Perhaps due to religious reasons, it was forbidden to enslave one’s own people, and cities centered around bishops competed with manors centered around lords for population.

Or maybe due to conflicting interests among lords and kings... In any case, the legal rights and obligations concerning serfs were not harsh. Moreover, the law stipulated that if serfs escaped the manor for three days, the lord lost the right to reclaim them. If they lived in the city for a year, they could become free citizens.

Or simply population factors—by this time, there was actually a surplus of people. The centuries-long land reclamation had exhausted the easily arable land, and per capita farmland had been decreasing in recent years. Some manors simply could not support so many mouths!

Thus, the power to bind serfs to the land naturally relaxed considerably.

“The lands of Brudot are always fertile, and the count treats the farmers who till for him well,” Lady Hugo remarked aptly.

What she said was true—Brudot was a bountiful plain, and the count was good to his tenants—not because he had any ‘people-oriented’ ideology. Generally, farmers on large noble estates fared better than those under lesser nobles, gentry, or monastic manors. After all, these manors were just a small part of a great noble’s vast holdings, and with a distant ruler, management could not be too strict.

Besides, Count Balzac was wealthy, with much income from commerce, so he had no need to ruthlessly exploit the peasants.

After chatting with Lady Hugo for a while, Louisa went with the manor steward to ‘inspect’ the beet sowing. Though the castle’s order meant the steward and others would treat it as a top priority, there was always some lip service. Since this matter was important, a personal visit could hardly be wrong.

In the Swan Manor’s reserved fields, beet sowing was complete. As for the tenant farmers who volunteered to plant beets, they were gradually sowing as well. Louisa consulted the steward’s work report against the actual sowing, while the steward explained beside her.

“…Yes, Miss, we prepared the fertilizer as instructed. But this fertilizer is unfamiliar, so I can’t say how effective it will be…”

The ‘fertilizer’ the steward mentioned was actually the one Louisa had sent people to guide on, though he was unaware of this. It was hard for him to imagine a noble lady like Louisa having knowledge of agriculture, particularly regarding fertilizers.

Contrary to popular belief circulating online in later centuries—that medieval Westerners did not use manure, causing filth and low crop yields—medieval farmers certainly used manure. Experienced farmers knew to plant certain crops to restore soil fertility; wood ash, lime, and old straw were good fertilizers; and manure was used as well.

It’s just that their composting techniques were crude compared to the finely cultivated contemporary China.

At this time, composting methods were rough, and common manor farmers had limited access to manure—transporting manure from cities was costly, and farmers were unwilling to pay the price, unless living near city edges, which was rare.

So, in the end, people on the manor mostly relied on what they produced and used themselves, and even that wasn’t always fully theirs.

Because manor lords held the so-called ‘paddock rights,’ requiring farmers to occasionally pen their livestock on the lord’s fallow demesne... This was obviously not a benefit allowing farmers to graze freely. The manor’s common lands were mostly grasslands for convenient pasturing, but pasturing and paddocking were not the same.

The purpose here was still to obtain livestock manure to fertilize the land.

Considering Swan Manor’s situation, Louisa sent people to instruct on making a compound fertilizer from river mud and peat through fermentation—the unfamiliar fertilizer the steward mentioned. Besides this, composting techniques were also improved—Louisa understood these things (albeit roughly and theoretically), thanks to her exposure to modern internet novels.

As an enthusiast of online novels, she was indeed ‘well-informed’… In time-travel stories, protagonists always managed to pull off various feats, revealing all sorts of obscure knowledge—though sometimes truth was mixed with fiction, some feasible, others not.

“…Beets are vegetables, more demanding of the soil than grains, so farmers are very concerned about fertilizer. As for manure…”

The steward did not shy away from mentioning human waste before a noble girl like Louisa, mainly because such things were ubiquitous at the time—limited latrines and lacking hygiene awareness gave people a casual attitude toward excrement.

Though human instinct finds such things dirty and disgusting, religion declared phlegm, urine, and feces as ‘the filth and baseness of human excretion.’ But this was akin to later peoples, such as those in India, who knew waste was unclean yet lived ‘harmoniously’ with it.

“Looks good; you’ve done well,” Louisa praised the steward, then pointed on the Swan Manor map to a patch of wasteland near the forest edge. “This place seems suitable—convenient for collecting fuel and close to the river. The new workshop can be built here.”

The reason for locating the sugar workshop in Swan Manor was mainly its proximity to the Brudot court, the political center, yet being far enough from Troyes city to better control the secret of sugar production.

For example, White Lake Manor was too close to the court and city—too many eyes and ears—so it was not considered (though White Lake Manor’s output also had to meet the court’s consumption needs; those agricultural products were mostly low in unit value and unsuitable for distant transport).

The steward was unaware the workshop was for sugar production; he merely sensed that the castle’s high-ups attached great importance to it. Without relevant knowledge, he couldn’t have guessed ‘sugar.’ Few in the Middle Ages knew how sugar was produced, and even fewer would think of sugar when seeing beets planted.

Knowing that beets could produce sugar was a development of the modern era.

Thus, under Louisa’s ‘appointment,’ the sugar workshop’s site was decided. But since it was currently the busy farming season, no labor was available to build it; construction would have to wait until the interval between spring sowing and summer harvest.

Summer was the time to harvest the crops planted the previous autumn, followed by the autumn busy season—an unending cycle—so only this small gap of relative downtime could be used for construction.