Chapter 150 Final preparations
"Sister Jeanne, you're back."

Horn was a little dazed when he got off the horse and looked at the little girl in an apron in front of him.

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

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

Horn walked forward and touched Giles' head, then smiled and said to Jeanna, "Why did you suddenly think of finding yourself a maid?"

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

This is not an empty statement. During this period, Jeanne and a group of Black Hat Brigade commanders have been undergoing intensive training with Jeshka.

Horn brought them here, and they will follow the Duke to fight in the future. It is impossible for them to just throw up their hands and run away. He still has to help them prepare for war.

Therefore, Horn required all officers above the brigade level in the several major legions and all company commanders with the rank of marshal to participate in the military courses of Jeshka and Hakuto.

It is called a military course, but in fact it is the battlefield experience of two people and the means of deploying and changing formations that they have figured out.

Hakuto didn't want to participate at first, but Horn offered too much.

Not only was he put on the church's wanted list, he was also expelled from the White Maple Mercenary Group.

We can only go down the same path with Horn until the end.

Even Horn himself would go and sit in on these classes. It must be said that Jeanne was quite talented in this area.

It was difficult for her to even calculate eleven times eleven, but she could accurately calculate the number of troops and the length and width of the formation at a glance, and her calculation was almost the same as the formula summarized by Horn, which was really off the mark.

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

He walked back to the Papal Palace, while Jeanne, guided by the heroes of the Holy Grail Knights, quickly ran towards the area where the fight took place.

Along the way, especially in the square, you can see teams of young men marching in prayer under the command of the ten-household and hundred-household leaders.

Every time someone took a wrong step, the Black Hats would make a note of it, and after the prayer, they would go straight up and beat the person with a cane until he spun like a top.

Unfortunately, after three or four days of training, this group of people still can't tell left from right, let alone walk in an orderly manner. It's even difficult to stand in an orderly manner.

In addition to these young and strong people who participated in the formation training, there were some other young and strong people who carried shovels and mattocks and dug drainage ditches under the leadership of the heads of ten households and the heads of a hundred households.

Not far away, you can see them rebuilding fences and houses, tearing down rotten houses, clearing out garbage, and gathering people from the same ten or hundred households together.

After this period of centurion reform, Horn had two centurions in the old camp with more than 1,200 people, and twenty centurions in the new camp with more than 11,500 people.

There are a total of 22 centurions and about people.

Among the centurions of the new camp, fifteen were elected from the original refugees of the new camp, and five were appointed from Horn's old camp.

As for some of them who were bandits in their former lives, they either became honest citizens or were exiled for violating the laws of the Papal States three times.

There are also many people who were beaten to death for committing serious violations.

Horn expelled and killed about a hundred refugees, and almost every day someone was hung on a flagpole for public display or paraded in shackles.

The day before yesterday, he even confiscated half of his votes from two veterans who had fought in the street and damaged public property, and asked them to read out their apologies in public.

This resulted in the refugees not only showing respect but also fear when they saw Horn walking on the road in the camp.

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

Normally, most of the young and strong people would be repairing roads and dredging rivers nearby, so there shouldn't be so many people in the camp during the day. But since the war tax incident, both the guilds and the citizens have been mobilizing funds to cope with the heavy tax burden.

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

Fortunately, due to Horn's influence, the Duke exempted these migrant laborers from taxes, and the young and strong still had some savings. In addition, Horn also purchased a large amount of food on the eve of the increase in food prices, resulting in that life in the new camp is still acceptable.

But it's not enough to just eat food without working.

Since they had nothing to do anyway, Horn simply asked them to participate in basic military training, such as marching, formations, marching, etc.

In addition to this, he also asked the ten households to renovate the new camp, dividing it into roads, areas and drainage ditches, otherwise there would be a foul smell all day long.

In order to enable them to better adapt to possible future wars, Horn also specially organized patrols to strictly enforce public security.

The establishment of patrol teams is not only for pre-training soldiers' mentality, but also out of necessity.

Since the security situation near Fort Jeanne de Arc has deteriorated, many rogues and even bandits have come to Horn to collect taxes under the guise of tax commissioners.

But they were all persuaded by Horn's Three-Inch Rotten Gun and left obediently.

Sometimes they would come to attack at night, and then these patrols would be useful.

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

This resulted in the number of migrant laborers near Horn Camp reaching nearly 15,000. In such a small area, the number of people was almost greater than the population of Jeanne d'Arc.

This morning, when Horn went out to Fort Jeanne, he even saw these refugees holding a small market. When he came back, the patrol said that several quarrels, thefts and fights broke out at the market.

With more people around, there will be more things to do. Horn will have to hold another meeting tonight to talk about the issue of public security and the personal qualities of the elders.

Holding the alchemical product inventory and alchemical formula book, Horn came to the Pope's Palace.

The Pope's Palace is magnificent with wooden furniture. Not only is there a chopping board with the word "Pope's Palace" engraved on it hanging at the door, but there are also foreign guards at the door - the Varangian Guard, the beastmen from the Black Bone Swamp.

It fully meets the standards of a papal residence.

Pushing open the door and walking into the hall of the Pope's Palace on the first floor, Horn first saw Bonard and several child soldiers copying down the account books with sad faces.

During this period, Halkin did what he was paid to do, and he conscientiously collected a large number of messy account books and cleared out all the discarded old account books in the nearby grocery store market.

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

The order Horn gave was to extract all abnormal flows and transactions and compile statistics using a two-dimensional table.

Bonard's situation was similar to that of Hacuto. After being lured to the Papal States, he was labeled a short-haired spy and had to work obediently as Horn's secretary.

As for what he really thinks in his heart, I don't know.

"What's going on?" Horn knocked on the table, waking Bonard up from the numbers.

"Halkin just sent another batch of account books, but there's still nothing to be gained." Bonard tapped his neck, "Among this batch, only this one has some value. There are two unusual transactions."

"Keep working hard." Horn nodded, and was about to go in with the alchemical list and recipe book, but was suddenly stopped by Bonard.

"Your Majesty, Halkin is waiting for you on the second floor. He brought someone with him. He said it was a locksmith as agreed."

(End of this chapter)