Chapter 446: Planning for Fort Jeanne

Horn was sitting in an open carriage and was sandwiched between two saints as he got off the carriage in front of the Holy Visitation Hall.

Returning to the familiar study in the Holy Advent Hall, Jeanne went to the bedroom inside the study to wash her face and change clothes as if she were familiar with the place. On the contrary, Catherine sat down on a straw-matted chair somewhat awkwardly.

Horn hung his hat on the coat rack and smiled apologetically at Catherine: "I'm going to wash my face, wait for me... Jeanna, are you ready? I'm coming in."

"Put on your pants, right away."

Jeanne, who had changed into a refreshing men's suit, walked out of the inner room and looked out the window like Catherine: "What are you looking at?"

Catherine's eyes sparkled: "The houses around the square outside are intact, why do they need to be demolished?"

Finally, she got a chance to show off in front of Catherine. She put her hands on her waist and raised her chin high and said, "This is our Salvation Army's reconstruction plan for Fort Joan of Arc. Let me tell you, from now on, I will be the patron saint of Fort Joan of Arc."

"That's amazing." Catherine praised him in a coaxing tone, as if she were teasing a puppy. "Then can you tell me why?"

Jeanne did not notice anything strange: "Because Jeanne d'Arc wants to increase the city's population, carry out industrialization, and improve the level and efficiency of the labor force... Hey, you asked me, why don't you listen to others?"

"Sorry, I'm looking at the city." Catherine pointed at the hundreds of black smokes and asked, "Isn't this noon? Why did they open fire?"

"Because today is Sunday."

In the empire, people usually eat around nine in the morning and four or five in the afternoon. For lunch, those who do manual labor usually only have some black bread to get by.

However, after honeycomb coal became popular, grain prices returned to normal, and miscellaneous taxes were abolished, many citizens and artisan families, under Horn's advocacy, began to slowly implement the three-meal system.

Families in some towns gather together for lunch on Sundays and say prayers before the meals, which they regard as a religious ritual.

"Do you know how to rebuild it?" Catherine continued to ask.

Jeanne straightened her chest and said loudly, "I don't know."

Then why are you yelling so loudly? Catherine leaned back in her chair speechlessly.

"That's a very complicated plan." Horn just happened to hear this sentence when he came out from the inner room. He wiped the water stains on his hands with a handkerchief and also walked to the window. "Madeleine will send you the relevant plan later, but it will have to wait until after your first cardinals' meeting."

"The first cardinals' meeting? So soon?" Catherine had just got off the boat. Did she have to go to the meeting right away?
"Yes, we in the Salvation Army are all fast shooters. It's not our fault if we can't adapt." Coming to her own territory, Jeanna was obviously more confident.

"It was supposed to start on Friday, but we were busy going into the city and it was delayed until Sunday. It's just the right time to introduce you to the other cardinals." Horn looked at the clockwork clock in the room. "Let's go have lunch first, and then have a meeting after a break."

"Can I go wash up then?"

"Of course, Jeanne, you take her."

Leaning against the window alone, Horn looked at the beams lifted by the lever-pulley crane and the construction workers directing the work, and fell into deep thought.

He currently plans to establish two districts in Jeanne d'Arc, one on each side of the Jeanne-Rapids Canal.

The north bank will be the industrial area and port area, and the south bank will be the main urban area.

The main urban area is the residential and commercial area. Horn plans to demolish some houses and triple the area of ​​Victory Square.

Then, fountains and flower beds like those in Rapid City were installed in the middle to form a city roundabout, and the sides were used as the main square for gatherings.

Then the official buildings were concentrated near the square to form an official residence area, which allowed for centralized management and security, which was much better than the previous decentralized approach.

Residential neighborhoods will be widened and rebuilt on the original basis, but that will expand the city's area.

In order to solve the commuting problem, either buildings should be built or public horse-drawn carriages should be developed.

The Caishijie area on the east side of the main urban area near the river will expand into a commercial district for the exchange of goods with foreign merchants and villagers, as well as entertainment for ordinary civilians.

The industrial zone on the north bank corresponds to the main urban area on the south bank. All workshops must be relocated to the industrial zone on the north bank. Horn plans to dig a few more ditches to facilitate sewage discharge and treatment in the workshops.

Originally, Joan of Arc had four to five thousand people living in the city, and tens of thousands of people living in the suburbs outside the city. They more or less formed suburban markets and participated in the operation of the city.

In other words, the entire Joan of Arc and the surrounding suburbs had a population of about fourteen to five thousand people.

After several previous wars, the situation has changed. After the increase and decrease of population, the total population near Jeanne d'Arc is only about 9500. Among them, there are about 2000 people serving in the primary industry, including their families, who are mainly engaged in fruit and vegetable planting, fish farming and animal husbandry.

The secondary industry consists of various workshops, including weavers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, potters, carpenters, etc. It is estimated that 5000 people make a living from this.

As for the tertiary industry, which is commerce and service industry, there are about 2500 people, and the main occupations include small shop owners, accountants, agents (intermediaries), clerks, copyists and notaries.

This serves the business. After a thorough cleanup of the well-known merchants in the city, there are only 40 merchant families and 12 loan agents left.

The so-called loan agent was actually the original lender, but he was incorporated into the Saint Bank of Joan of Arc by Horn.

According to Horn's plan, the city and the outside world should be connected, and a large number of people living outside the city should be moved into the city to increase the population to at least 12000.

In this way, some of the villagers will be turned into citizens first, otherwise the subsequent industrial transformation of Jeanne d'Arc will lead to a considerable labor shortage.

As the capital of Langsander County, Joan of Arc lies in two industries for Horn's future. The first is tool manufacturing, including wood processing and metal smelting, and the second is papermaking and printing industry.

The former is naturally easy to understand. Langsand County is an agricultural county. There are no large mines or forests in the surrounding environment, so it is impossible to carry out large-scale wood processing or metallurgy.

It would be impossible to make a living by relying on this simple basic processing industry, so they would have to move into high value-added processing industries, but the technical level of local craftsmen was not up to par.

So Horn turned his attention to tool manufacturing, hoes, pitchforks, ox-horse plows, hammers, craft equipment...

Especially in the subsequent proto-industrialization, Horn will greatly promote the establishment of workshops. The demand for manufacturing tools themselves is not small, and the technical content is not high, which is just right for practicing slowly.

In other places, practicing like this might result in huge losses, but it is different in Langsand County.

Because Longsand County was an agricultural county, the farmers under his rule were actually rich!
What a miracle!

In such an agricultural county, farmers' desire for land improvement and efficient production cannot be concealed, and the demand for good agricultural tools is great.

Farmers sell grain for money to buy farm tools to improve production efficiency, and craftsmen sell farm tools for money to buy grain and improve their skills.

If the tool manufacturing market already existed in Joan of Arc and Horn simply expanded it, then the papermaking and printing industries were a complete market gap.

This was because as the government management of the Horn Salvation Army became more sophisticated, the demand for paper and ink increased, and all departments generally experienced a shortage of scribes and paper.

Especially for the notices sent to each hundred-household district, scribes often had to work overtime to copy them repeatedly, but the letterpress plates used for printing were often not used a second time after being used once.

So many times, copyists and printers would cut the letterpress and then reassemble the print, leaving blanks in the places that could not be repeated and copying them manually.

This kind of movable sentence printing has the rudiments of movable type printing.

As the Salvation Army grew in size, especially as Horn wanted to establish an archive system and newspapers, there was a greater demand for paper and scribes.

Horn thought it would be more cost-effective to build a movable type printing machine rather than hiring a scribe, because a scribe couldn't work 007 hours a day.

Besides, there were not so many scribes in Joan of Arc for Horn to waste.

Therefore, he has offered a reward of 100 gold pounds in the country, asking craftsmen to design a usable sticky ink before the end of the year.

Horn even provided the materials, including lamp black, cigarette ash, linseed oil, and turpentine. In history, Gutenberg relied on these things to develop ink that could be used for movable type printing.

However, Horn didn't know the specific proportions and production process, so the craftsmen had to try it themselves. Anyway, Horn gave them the control variables and experimental methods, which saved a lot of time.

The printing quality of movable type printing is not as good as that of woodblock printing, but they are just one-time notices and documents, so they don’t need to have very good quality.

In addition, Horn offered rewards to various guilds and artisan groups for the spiral hand-type printing press and the lead-tin-antimony movable type set, and promised to give 3% of the profits to the inventors.

Whether they can produce a decent product, Horn can only rely on luck.

"I'm done washing up. Shall we go for lunch now?" Catherine, who had recombed her hair and put on makeup, walked out radiantly.

Although Jeanne, who was not wearing any makeup, looked so fresh and tender that she didn't need any makeup at all, she still pouted in dissatisfaction.

"Let's go."

(End of this chapter)