Chapter 1565 The End of Hugo 4th Life

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The hustle and bustle passed, and the count's mansion regained its deserted character.

Little Hugo announced his enthusiasm for inheritance. His brother-in-law Robert would immediately take over all the powers of the Earl of Tours after his death. The two parties had already made a deal, and neither party had objections to the result.

Little Hugo is not dead yet, he has already handed over his authority. Legally, he is still the Count of Tours, and the local knights have already celebrated Robert's becoming the new Count in advance. Even Baron Bodie of Blois went to his mansion in Tours to celebrate.

Robert's mansion has become the new count's palace. He himself planned to do this, and publicly announced when he was drunk that night: "After Hugo dies, the old mansion will be demolished. Let the curse and the building disappear. Tours will be extremely safe. I will take you to get it." victory."

All this made his wife Adelaide in a trance, as if this place was not Tours, but the Rhineland in the north. Everything was back to what it was a few years ago, and her husband was still the high-spirited warrior.

Many people came to celebrate, but Reglaf did not come.

In other words, Reglaf and the guys were celebrating on their own.

He drank some wine and soon his face turned red from the intoxication, and most of his men were guilty of drinking.

The stone house where a group of people gathered was filled with the smell of wine, sweat, and the burnt smell of burning oil lamps.

They shouted northern songs in Norse, hugged each other and danced. Some guys who were not good at drinking actually stood on the wooden table and jumped up and down.

Regrave acquiesced, and while he was having a drink, he finally felt relaxed and drank some more wine.

Bruno was slightly drunk, so he started shouting uncontrollably: "I don't know what Hugo was thinking. Why didn't he knight me when he knighted you? Doesn't that kid look down on him?" We Saxons should make me a baron too."

Regraf smiled stupidly in his intoxication and said, "We are brothers anyway. I will go back to Shannon soon, and you can come with me."

"That's fine. You are a good person, and my sister will be happy if she stays with you."

"Alice is my only woman, and your mother is also my mother. I will be very strong. When I get to Shannon, I will organize the local farmers. I will quickly train a strong army. With this war, I will I must make a fortune quickly." With the help of alcohol, Reglaf naturally expressed his ambition to his good brother.

Bruno also has his own glory. If it weren't for this war, all he could inherit would be the County of Westphalia, and it would be a County with limited strength.

After Charlemagne conquered Saxony, he divided Old Saxony into three parts. The Frankish army executed all the prisoners of war, and then all the opposing nobles. Even if the people were still resisting, everyone sized up the situation and suppressed their dissatisfaction and anger in their hearts.

The Saxons had been waiting for the opportunity, and the seemingly appeased Saxon nobles took advantage of the new war to stand up again.

Reglaf's words entered Bruno's heart: "I will take the soldiers I recruited to Shannon, and then go to Orleans next year... Let Robert go to hell! He fights his, and we fight ours. Anyway, you He is the son of King Rus, and I am the son of the Duke of Saxony. No outsider can control what our brothers want to do."

"Hey." Reglaf smiled convulsively: "Brother, you are becoming more and more like a Russian."

"Hey, that sounds like the best compliment."

Days of northerly winds finally brought bad and unexpected results.

The painful autumn rain has begun!

The air became cold and extremely humid. The cold and humid air made the firewood stored by the villagers become moist, and the pieces of bread that had become hard due to natural drying also regained some softness. It is not a good thing for the bread to become soft naturally. Because the temperature is not low enough to freeze, the bread begins to get moldy. However, even if the taste becomes strange, the majority of villagers still have to bite the bullet.

If you don't eat this, you have to make a fire to cook the wheat yourself, which is a bit expensive. Besides, the firewood stored in the reserve is for winter use. The people have to settle their own accounts and are not willing to use the winter firewood for cooking.

relative to its

In other areas, the County of Tours on the Loire River was already very wealthy, but it was not wealthy enough to have a large surplus of grain.

A farmer's family has one piece of clothing each year, and in winter they put on the fur coats they have prepared. As for the strange smell on the furs for many years, it will be fine as long as you get used to it.

A family of yeoman farmers can often only add one or two pieces of clothing in a year. They are free people in the country and have a higher social class. This kind of farmers basically live in lands directly under the jurisdiction of the count, and a few live in lands directly under the jurisdiction of the church. In principle, they must pay two tithes, as well as other strange things such as bridge tax, mill tax, hunting tax, fishing tax, wool tax, etc. Weird tax.

The tithe tax is the absolute largest tax, and there are many other miscellaneous taxes. The amount of a single tax is very small. The miscellaneous taxes are piled up to form a large tax item. When the two tibetan taxes are combined, even most of the remaining income of the owner-cultivator families will be taxed. The wealth was taken away by the earl family and the church.

As for the larger number of serfs, their population in the lands directly under the jurisdiction of the earls is equivalent to that of yeoman farmers. In various knight territories, the number of serfs is increasing with the development of the times. In some knight territories, the number of men and women in the fief villages is equivalent to that of yeoman farmers. Everyone, young and old, has become serfs.

They are like talking cattle and sheep in the hands of the knight.

Even the nobles don't know what the Matthew Effect is. They are the economic beneficiaries. Generations of nobles continue to accumulate wealth and complete the control of Tours as a large group.

The Franks were outsiders. They became the new rich in Tours. After joining the aristocratic group, they naturally continued to occupy this seat.

As for Reglaf, he is also an outsider and must join in.

The yeoman farmers in Shannon were still yeoman farmers, and the owners of the serfs suddenly changed from the Earl of Tours family to Baron Regrave of Shannon. From now on, the serfs will be taxed by Reglaf, and none of this is a choice that the locals can make.

As for escape, it is even more nonsense!

The fleeing peasants and serfs could only escape to the County of Nantes.

As "despicable strangers", regardless of their origins, anyone who could not prove that he was a merchant or a bard was arrested and either beaten to death in a dungeon or knelt down and volunteered to be the serf of the Count of Nantes.

This is true if you flee westward, and you will also end up with the same fate if you flee southward into Aquitaine.

As for escaping to the northwest... the situation would be more responsible.

No one knows the attitude of the small Celtic kingdom of Armorica (Brittany) towards escaped serfs. In recent years, they have been having friction on the border with the County of Nantes. If any serfs did escape, they would probably be treated as female servants first. He was beheaded at the border.

Just like every year, farmers stay at home to brave the cold and wet autumn rain. They prefer cold winter to autumn rain, so that the snow will not melt, the firewood will dry again, and the bread in the store will be as hard as stone.

The bread will be broken into small pieces and soaked in hot soup to drink. If there is no vegetable soup, just use hot water. Bread soaked in this way and then spread with butter is considered a delicacy by ordinary people.

During his stay in Tours, Reglaf had completely eliminated his filter on Frank.

In this place, only the city of Tours is considered a good place. Once you enter the countryside, it is much worse, and even the city is far inferior to the city of Ross.

He has not yet been to Shannon, southwest of the city of Tours. Based on the area near Tours and the villages of Le Mans and Orleans that he passed by, and summarizing the conditions of the villages in the three places, Regrave came to his own conclusion - this area The life of farmers is not good.

He boasted that he had learned a lot of dragon-slaying techniques from his father, but he had some wonderful knowledge but had nowhere to put it to use.

Shannon is the first stage.

The continued cold days gave Reglaf enough time to think about the future. What is a serf? They obeyed the lord, and their living materials were controlled by the lord. They could only advance and retreat with the lord. If the lord granted some property, would they be willing to mess up their lives?

Most definitely!

Regrave did not hesitate to think of the deer farmers under Ross's control. All deer herders are herdsmen loyal to the king, but his father is like this

How to treat them?

All deer herders are slaves of the king. This is property that no one else can touch. Anyone who harms these people is an insult to the king.

The king protected these people and they were directly loyal to the king.

In the war in the north, winter battles also accounted for a large proportion. Walking on the snow was very troublesome. Instead, riding a reindeer sleigh allowed the army to advance at the speed of a summer rowing boat. Deer herders are excellent charioteers, and the Russian army is extremely mobile in winter operations. It would not be possible without these herdsmen.

Regraf has not yet understood the meaning of personal dependence and economic binding. He only thinks through the actions of his father Rurik that if the people in the Shannon fiefdom are given more resources, they will be willing to do good things for him.

The so-called work here is fighting. Regraf knows very well how the Russian army encourages people to actively join the army. Because he was a participant in Ross's war across Scandinavia, his expedition to Denmark, and his arrival at the Elbe River. Before the war broke out, he also really knew how Ross mobilized the people to actively prepare for the war for this expedition.

Even women, old men, children, disabled soldiers are making arrows, tailoring clothes, etc. for the army. They were not rewarded at first, but were promised exemption from taxes and even the right to enjoy war dividends.

We are all human beings, even if they are in different worlds, the local residents of Shannon should be the same as Ross.

The coldness continues, and the stone roads in Tours are wet all day long. The rainfall was actually good. The horse manure on the road was washed to the side of the road. All kinds of filth and dust flowed along the drainage ditch that had been smelled in Roman times to the canal outside the city, and finally poured into the Cher River south of the city.

The gloomy and cold weather continued to wreak havoc on little Hugo's body.

The knighthood was regarded as the highlight of his short life, but his body, which was constantly ravaged by tuberculosis, finally reached the edge of collapse. He simply used his last energy to preside over the knighthood. After handing over the power, he really became a loner.

After that bustling event in the provincial capital, even the guards on guard realized that Robert was already the new earl.

Robert was not cruel enough to help little Hugo die early, because once he was suspected of murder, he would not be able to stay in Tours anymore - the nobles in Aquitaine and Toulouse could not have such publicity in their camp. A vicious person.

Robert did not dare to take action against the nobles, and he had no thoughts in this regard.

Little Hugo might have died naturally in more than ten days, but the guards decided to speed up the process.

The guard didn't personally hold a knife to understand Hugo on a cold rainy night. As long as the food supply was reduced, as long as the supply of fresh cloth was stopped, Hugo's body, which was already on the verge of collapse, would collapse quickly.

The guards and the waiters colluded, and the bread was still served, but the bread was soft and moldy, and the weight was also reduced.

Everyone is paying attention to Robert, and all the ministers hope to serve the new master as soon as possible. When the waiter also ignores little Hugo, the countdown to the boy's death begins.

I found that the amount of food was reduced, I found that there were no new cloths for wiping hemoptysis, and I realized that the limited food still had a strange smell.

Looking at the bad weather again, Hugo knew that the end was coming.

He was relieved, not angry but a little resentful.

On a cold night, after a violent cough, he died...

The next day, in the morning when the rain gradually stopped, the waiter saw Hugo.

The boy left the bed and lay down on the bottom of the bed. His whole body was as thin and twisted as a dead branch, with his eyes closed and a large pool of solidified blood flowing around his mouth.

The waiter didn't have any fear, but was relieved when he saw this scene. Then he turned and went downstairs, asked the guards to seal off the scene, and then hurried to Robert's mansion to tell the good news.

Little Hugo, Hugo IV, the last male of the Count of Tours family, died before Halloween.

In fact, he suffered severe stomach discomfort after eating moldy bread. The turbulence in his abdomen caused some gastric acid to enter the trachea, which in turn caused unprecedented strong stimulation, causing the already extremely fragile lungs to completely collapse. Violent coughing ruptured numerous blood vessels, causing severe and irreversible pulmonary hemorrhage.

.

Just like the priest didn't know anything about tuberculosis at the moment, he didn't even know the real cause of little Hugo's death.

Hugo had already arranged his future life in advance, and Archbishop Vivian only had to bury him according to the procedures.

After all, Hugo was a count. The autumn rain gradually stopped and the entire city of Tours was sealed off. Priests in black robes, led by Vivian, collected Hugo's withered body.

The body was brought into the cathedral. After his body was cleansed with holy oil, he was covered with a large number of dried rose petals and chrysanthemums, and then completely wrapped in a shroud, as if he was mummifying.

The holy oil made the linen shroud gradually sticky. In order to suppress the evil curse in Hugo's body, Vivian risked his life and used a lot of oil. The oil soaked in flowers made the entire cathedral sink. A certain mellow fragrance. Finally, Hugo was put into the wooden coffin that had been prepared. The viewers said: "He seemed to be soaked in an oil barrel."

It seems that only in this way can evil be suppressed. As for the mansion where he lived during his lifetime, it will also be demolished after his death. Robert wants to completely cleanse the evil curse once and for all, and the Benedictine priests also agree.

Everyone knew that this day was coming, but Reglaf never expected that Hugo would die before the rain stopped.

Maybe the young man spent his last energy on the knighting ceremony, and then his body collapsed completely, but the current situation fulfilled his wish.

The funeral went on as planned, but the long-lost sun returned on the day of the funeral!

Although the north wind has not receded, the land is quickly dried by this dry and cold north wind.

This is a very profound image. The cursed Hugo died on a cold and rainy night. After his death, the title was automatically inherited by Robert.

Robert was a great Frankish nobleman from the north. Even though he was once down and out, he was still extremely prosperous. The continuous north wind was his footnote, and the sunshine proved that everything would be fine when Robert became the new Count of Tours.

Little Hugo's funeral will be held just outside the city, and the wooden coffin will be buried in the monastic cemetery outside the city.

Surrounded by countless holy bones, the evil will be firmly locked in the coffin and buried deep underground, and there will be no more curse in the city of Tour.

The archbishop personally paid his funeral, and as relatives, Robert and Adelaide also came to pay their respects as a courtesy. Even though many lower-level nobles were afraid of this cursed child, at this point, in order to maintain the dignity of the entire Turbo Kingdom, all lower-level nobles who were able to participate in the funeral were here.

In the cemetery area outside the city, the young priest dug a large pit. Bishop Vivian held a scripture here and read a verse about dust to dust to dust before ordering the burial.

At this moment, a young man rushed forward with a dull face and grabbed the wooden shovel of the junior priest, attracting the attention of the onlookers.

"Regrave!" Vivian's eyes widened.

"I made a promise that I would bury him."

"I'll come too! On behalf of the Principality of Saxony, I would like to pay my last respects to His Highness Hugo IV." While speaking, Bruno also came over.

"Okay. You are kind." Vivian did not refuse, but he was a little regretful that Robert was just watching all this.

Finally, a boy ran to the tomb. He was Robert's eldest son, Robert Jr., and according to his seniority, he was the nephew of the owner of the tomb.

Because Adelaide really couldn't stand it anymore, she couldn't bury it herself due to her personal status, and her husband was not willing to go, so he would arrange for his son.

Little Robert had no idea what those curses meant, so he boldly participated in the work of burying the earth, even if it was just a symbolic shovel.

"At least, your son will be a good earl in the future. He is Hugo's nephew (the same word as nephew), and the earl family continues in a new form." The archbishop buried the words in his heart and silently made the sign of the cross , planning to personally record everything I saw and heard today when I go back. On the one hand, I will deliver it as a letter to Rome, Metz, Reims, Utrecht and Hamburg, informing the local church about the situation in Tours, especially the exiled Maitreya. The king of West Asia values ​​friendship. On the other hand, the events must be recorded as archives and preserved in the form of parchment scrolls for future generations.

Only

However, at this point in time, Archbishop Vivian did not know that the Russian regular army and a large number of friendly forces, more than 10,000 combat troops were already in Trier, and Archbishop Hatgar of Liège had managed to gather an army of more than 10,000 people. , are rushing towards the Ardennes Forest in a mighty way.

Whether the letter can be delivered to Metz or whether Bishop Drogo can know it is irrelevant...

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