WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 72: The Peasant King (2)

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The courtyard of Prague's royal palace was packed so tightly there was barely room to step.

A massive transport convoy had crossed the treacherous Alpine passes and passed through Bohemia's forests.

Dozens of carriages flying Venice's golden lion banner filled the palace courtyard, stretching out in an endless line.

"Hah..."

János Hunyadi stared in amazement at the seemingly endless procession.

"Ten, twenty, thirty... it just keeps going. My lord, what on earth did you buy so much of? Venetian glassware? Eastern silk? You didn't rob a sultan's treasury, did you?"

I folded my arms and chuckled.

"If you're curious, open one yourself."

"May I? Then I'll have the honor of seeing it first."

János eagerly ran to the nearest carriage.

The cargo bed was covered with thick, oiled tarpaulin to keep the rain out.

"Come forth, treasures bought by emptying Bohemia's treasury. Reveal yourselves..."

Flap!

The tarpaulin was pulled aside, revealing the carriage's contents in the sunlight.

János froze on the spot.

There were no gleaming gold coins, smooth silk, or clear glass goblets piled inside.

Instead, the carriage was filled with ugly root vegetables caked in dirt and mountains of dull hemp sacks.

"What... are these?"

"Can't you tell? Turnips."

I picked up a dirt-covered turnip and lightly brushed it off.

"And those sacks are filled with clover seeds."

"T-Turnips? And clover?"

János hurriedly untied one of the hemp sacks as though he couldn't believe it.

It was full of dark, unremarkable seeds.

"...My lord, did you mistake them for wheat and oats? I think those Venetian merchants swindled you. We should send the cavalry after those frauds at once and..."

"I bought exactly what I intended to buy."

"Pardon?"

János gaped in disbelief.

"Turnips? You paid money for those tasteless roots people feed to pigs? And clover? That's just a weed growing all over the roadside! You brought all this from distant Venice?"

János's reaction was perfectly normal.

By fifteenth-century standards, turnips were emergency food eaten reluctantly during famine, while clover was no more than a weed that ruined fields.

Yet I had bought enough of both to fill every farm in Bohemia and still have some left over.

Naturally, it had cost a fortune. They might be cheap seeds that nobody else would take even for free, but this was a different matter when bought in such quantities.

To János, it must have looked like madness, like throwing money into the dirt.

But it was different for me.

The crude lump in my hand was the driving force behind the agricultural revolution that would one day make England the strongest nation in the world.

Rubbing the dirt from the turnip with my thumb, I asked, "János. What do you think is the foundation of a nation?"

"Why are you suddenly giving me a philosophy lesson...?"

"Answer me."

"Well... a strong army or a full treasury. Maybe steel and Gunpowder, the things you like so much."

I firmly shook my head.

"Wrong."

"What? Then what is it?"

"The answer is agriculture."

Farming is the great foundation of all under heaven.

Agriculture is the foundation of all under heaven.

I gazed out at the endless fields of Bohemia beyond the royal palace.

"An army needs full bellies before it can lift a sword, and merchants need food before they can trade. We can't live by importing from Poland forever. Nine-tenths of Bohemia's population are farmers. If they are poor, the country is poor. Only when their granaries are full can taxes be collected and commerce thrive."

A nation was ultimately built by people. And bread was what sustained those people.

People had to eat well for the population to grow, and the population had to grow for national strength to increase. That was an eternal truth, regardless of nation or age.

János still scratched his head, looking unconvinced.

"You're right that people must eat well to live well, but what does that have to do with pig feed and weeds? Will planting these make wheat grow faster?"

"Of course. Not only will wheat grow faster, but we'll draw grain from the land until it reaches the very limit of what it can yield."

I tossed the turnip in my hand back into the carriage.

"János. Do you know how farmers in Bohemia, no, throughout all of Europe farm their land now?"

"Isn't it the Three-field system? Divide the fields into three, plant wheat in one, barley in another, and leave the last one fallow."

"That's right. But why leave valuable land unused?"

János answered as though the question were obvious.

"Because land needs rest just like people do. If you keep planting, the soil loses its strength and produces nothing but shriveled husks."

"Exactly. The land grows exhausted, so they force it to rest. In other words, every year we abandon one-third of our land as wasteland that produces nothing."

I thrust my hand into a hemp sack and grabbed a handful of clover seeds.

The tiny black grains flowed between my fingers like sand.

"But this clover has a very admirable talent."

"An admirable talent? From a mere weed?"

"Yes. Instead of draining the strength of the soil, it puts the strength of the sky back into it."

Explaining the action of root nodule bacteria that fixed nitrogen from the air and restored the soil's fertility would not be easy for someone from the fifteenth century.

So I borrowed the vaguely plausible phrase, strength of the sky.

"If we plant this grass on fallow land, the soil no longer needs to rest. No, it regains its strength even faster than if we left it alone. That means we won't need to leave land unused anymore."

The end of fallow land.

It would have the same effect as increasing the amount of cultivated land by more than thirty-three percent at once.

It was like expanding the territory without taking a single inch of new land.

János's eyes widened.

"We don't have to leave land fallow? You mean we can farm every field every year?"

"Yes. This alone will increase production by more than thirty percent. But the true revolution comes when it is combined with these turnips."

I tapped the cargo cart filled with turnips.

"János. What is the first thing farming households do when winter comes?"

"Slaughter their livestock. All the grass dies in winter, so there is no fodder for cattle and pigs. Isn't it common sense to keep only a few breeding animals and slaughter the rest?"

"That is the problem. When they slaughter all their livestock, there are too few oxen to plow in spring. More importantly..."

I smiled.

"There isn't enough dung."

"...Pardon? Dung?"

"Manure. Manure is the heart of farming. Yet they kill all their livestock in winter, which means their most important fertilizer factories stop working. But..."

I took a turnip from the cart and tossed it to János.

He caught it in midair.

"These turnips can be stored through winter without spoiling. They're full of moisture and nutrients, so cattle and pigs devour them eagerly. In other words, if we have turnips, there's no need to slaughter livestock during winter."

"Hah..."

János absentmindedly took a bite of the turnip.

Then he immediately spat it out.

Wait, he actually ate that? Without even washing it?

"Ugh, it certainly tastes like something pigs would eat. I don't want any more of it."

Germans five hundred years from now would have a fit if they heard that.

I snickered and continued.

"Anyway, what happens if we keep the livestock alive through winter? They'll eat turnips, grow plump, and keep producing dung. Then that enormous amount of manure goes straight back into the fields."

It was a rotation that divided the land into four sections and changed crops every year.

In the first year, plant wheat to make bread for people.

The following year, plant turnips in the same field to secure winter fodder for livestock.

In the third year, plant barley or oats. People could eat them, or they could be used as animal feed.

In the fourth and final year, plant clover to restore the soil's strength.

If livestock were allowed to graze on land where clover had grown, they would eat the grass and fertilize the ground as they relieved themselves, making the land twice as fertile.

This was the core of the Norfolk system, a four-course crop rotation that would one day make eighteenth-century England the world's strongest agricultural nation.

Historically, England used this single farming method to increase its population from 5.5 million in 1750 to 16 million in just one hundred years.

I intended to bring the spark that ignited that massive population explosion to medieval Bohemia three hundred years early.

"Well? Do you understand now why I spent gold coins like water to gather these ugly roots?"

"Hmm..."

János let out a strange sound. His expression was complicated, caught between doubt and admiration.

"To be honest, they still look like expensive pig feed and roadside weeds to me... but none of the mad things you've done have failed so far, my lord. You must have something in mind this time too."

He sighed and scratched the back of his head.

"But my lord, a perfect theory doesn't mean reality will follow. It won't be as easy as you say."

"Why not?"

"I believe you. Old Abraham will believe you too. Everyone in the royal palace will."

János's gaze sharpened.

"But will the farmers who plow the fields believe you? That is the problem."

"Hmm..."

I swallowed a troubled groan.

That was exactly what worried me too.

"For farmers, the farming methods passed down by their ancestors are not simply customs. They are their very survival. Their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers farmed that way and survived without starving to death."

János's voice grew grave.

"And now you suddenly tell them to plant a weed they have never seen before? Even a royal command won't get through to them. They may pretend to plant it while someone is watching, but once the watchers leave, they'll secretly throw away the seeds or boil and eat them. They'll think it ruins the land."

János shook his head.

"If you force them to plant it and there is a bad harvest, how will you bear all their resentment? You bought mountains of the stuff... but it may all rot away in warehouses."

It was an extremely accurate point.

To farmers, land was life itself. Forcing unproven farming methods on them was no different from putting a blade to their throats.

Whippings and punishments would not mean much. The fear of imminent starvation would be greater.

Could I establish demonstration farms, show them the results over several years, and persuade them? That would take too long.

What was the use of holding a lottery ticket guaranteed to win if the prize could only be claimed ten or twenty years later?

Every day was precious to me. I had made enemies of the Pope and the Emperor.

"You're right. I can't ignore the farmers' conservatism. To them, change means the fear of starvation."

I smiled, curling the corner of my mouth upward.

"That is why I plan to use another method."

"Another method?"

János asked in confusion.

"If you won't use the whip or persuasion... how do you plan to move those stubborn people? Are you going to scatter gold coins across their fields?"

"Gold coins? No. But I do plan to scatter bait."

"Bait?"

"Yes. Something far more certain than gold coins, bait that farmers will risk their lives to seize."

The blueprint was already clear in my mind.

A meticulous plan that would make sure every last seed took root in Bohemian soil.

Footnotes:

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