The atmosphere in Leitou Township was depressing at dusk. Many villagers gathered in the square next to the well in the village center. They dared not speak. The road leading to the outside was full of guards, and almost everyone looked at the people riding on horseback beside the well.

The baron riding on the horse was only one of his more than thirty territories. The most important property in this range was not the non-free people in these villages, but the large castle manors further north and the corvee manors, self-employed and farmlands that allowed him to collect taxes.

Barons usually only come to the village during inspections, with a frequency of three or four times a year.

The tax officer or steward of the village either calls him the village chief. In short, the village chief of Leitou Township is a hereditary manager. On the one hand, he has his own mills and farms as a free citizen, and on the other hand, he is also an intermediary between the lord and the lord. When the lord is not present, he is given the lord's responsibility to manage the land.

There is only one reason why the baron appeared here instead of the castle. The village chief was a clever ghost who was trying to change his mind. When Ying Ming and the Beiyang cavalry who had been armed to the teeth came here, he immediately cooperated with Ying Ming and ordered the villagers to cooperate with the Ming army, grinding the flour and sifting the flour. In short, everything the Ming army asked was done well and not let them get angry with the village.

When Ying Ming left, he registered the things left by the Ming army from door to door. His explanation was for the benefit of the villagers, so that the invaders from the Ming Dynasty would kill people if they found that there were fewer things. People speculated that the village chief wanted to hand over the record to the lord, but he did not take the initiative to report to the lord who was stationed in Plymouth.

Until their Baron's cavalry appeared around the village with documents and told them to prepare supplies for the army, the village chief handed over the list to the cavalry and forwarded it to the baron.

No one knows what the village chief is thinking. At this time of the development of feudal system, most nobles value pleasure while also perceiving the huge urgency brought by the changes in the times. They pay attention to business prosperity more than shields and long swords. In fact, feudal nobles and business leaders are not only not in conflict, but also have extremely high help.

In the process of the transformation of nobles into commercial giants, part of the power of the territory must be decentralized, and the actual managers of the village are slowly becoming new actual rulers. The village chief has unprecedented power in the village, and one side will inevitably make up for the gap in the matter of interests and power.

Especially for hereditary village chiefs who served the lord for generations and managed the village, if there was no big problem, the lord would not be willing to bear the loss of replacing the village chief. Of course, they have such power, just as the emperor can replace the chieftain and the county magistrate can detain the clan leader.

It just depends on whether you are willing to bear the price.

In any case, the baron had no intention of punishing the village chief. He just asked the leaders to take out all the food, weapons, supplies, and debris left by the Ming army here and piled them in the center of the village according to the list. However, there was a little accident in the process - there were three villagers, I wonder if they were too stupid and forgot about the matter that the village chief had recorded the list, or they were greedy, and they did not hand over the supplies as much.

What they buckled was honey, horseshoes, sifted fine flour and belts.

No one knew whether Ying Ming's spoil was too shocking for the baron, or whether the village chief's own affairs angered the baron and led to his anger at the captain's people. Now the lord was even unwilling to make a wooden frame, so he had already used the power of the territory court to order all the three captains to be hanged, immediately.

In fact, no matter which of these two reasons is enough to make the baron angry, so I won’t talk about the latter. The manager of the subordinate village privately reached an agreement with the invading enemy troops to make food for the enemy in his own territory and store the stolen goods plundered by the enemy. If other nobles know about this, it will greatly affect the reputation of the lord.

The former will make people angry, bucket after bucket of aged flour, fresh flour, refined flour, oil, oil, soap, honey wine, blackberry wine, spice wine, aged wine.

Leather gloves, leather boots, hundreds of burqas printed with six family heralds, dozens of sets of stubborn and unrived stubborn mail clothes and helmets; countless spearheads and long bows... In short, except for the part that does not belong to the elite troops, they can arm the armed forces that are close to thousands of troops.

There were even flocks of chickens, geese, tied horses and twelve pigs.

The villagers repeatedly said that these supplies were transported back and forth by the invading team many times. To be honest, the team only had hundreds of people, and the Baron only felt that he urgently needed to kill a few people.

Only by killing a few people can he be foolishly led his silly leader to tell the truth, a army of hundreds of people can kill so many people? The burqa of the six families means that all the troops that could be rushed to the west were intercepted by this invader team. What are they? Everyone is holding Chen Mu's organ?

"Sir, what is... Chen Mu's organ?"

"I don't know Chen Mu's organ, the French guy called that."

The Baron was unwilling to say too much to the village chief at this time. He wanted to maintain his majesty in front of the people. In fact, he also wanted to know what "Chen Mu's organ" was. The intelligence sent from the London Quick Horse said that the Queen's intelligence adviser Francis Walsinheim intercepted the letter sent to the Pope by the Bishop of Paris in France to the Pope. The word was mentioned in the letter to the Pope in which he had taken place in Angoulem.

In that battle, the Ming army used a cannon that could fire from a long distance and sent a large number of shells into the front in a short time. Then, an earth-shaking explosion occurred. No one knew what happened, and the strongest Swiss phalanx was destroyed.

The French nobles tried to find it, but found nothing in the place where the fire rose.

After that, people called the Ming Dynasty an unknown artillery like Chen Mu's organ. All parameters were speculation and unknown except lethality. The Bishop of Paris was about to send this news to the Pope, hoping that the Pope would tell the entire Christian world. Unfortunately, the letter was written and not sent out, and the Bishop of Paris was kidnapped by the French pirates hired by England to kidnap.

Three greedy villagers were hanged alive, and their relatives were suppressing their crying under strong fear. The Baron was about to speak to the silent villagers when suddenly everyone heard the sound of muskets coming from outside the village.

Suddenly everyone was in chaos, and the villagers ran around in horror, trying hard to find a place to hide from the upcoming war.

The trained guards didn't know how to deal with themselves, so they all looked at their lords and waited for the next order.

Before the order to send people to investigate the situation was issued, there was a heavy sound of horse hooves coming from the entrance of the village. The knight slowly walked across the long village road with his long sword. The guards he passed by looked at his figure and exclaimed in depression. When he reached the well in the center of the village, he wanted to turn over and get off the horse. The iron shoes had just left the stirrups, and the whole person slid down like a huge rock tied to the horse's back, falling heavily to the ground.

The lord finally saw that behind the knight's plate armor, there were at least four dents hit by muskets. Some lead bullets were embedded in the plate armor, and some were penetrated and left small holes. The blood from the wound flowed out from the buttocks on the lower edge of the plate armor, soaking the pants on the back of the knight's thighs under the leg guards.

From beginning to end, the Knight was unable to say a word, but the message he conveyed had been sent.
Chapter completed!