Herald of Steel

Alexander's offer was so generous that Metztil had little choice but to accept any and all of his demands.

From his wording, it was clear that he meant to 'give' those areas to the men, not lease them like originally discussed.

And it went without saying 100 acres of land for a single family was absolutely huge in every sense of the word.

For context, a Roman soldier after 25 years of hard, life threatening military service only got 12 or 13 acres of land as his retirement bonus.

So when the pigeon holed Helvati heard the proposal, their minds were shattered into kingdom come.

If Alexander was truly being serious, nothing else mattered.

He would agree, and whatever he said following that was like water under the bridge.

Now of course, not the entirety of the 100 acres was going to be good arable farmland, that would have exceeded the realm of generosity and gone into sheer absurdity.

And it would have been too much for any single family to also farm anyway.

But Alexander did guarantee that among the barren lands, hills, forests, and rivers that may be included in those parts, about 20 acres or its equivalent would be good arable land.

The word equivalent was used because it meant that if the land was worked properly, the family would be able to comfortably produce grain equivalent to what 20 acres of good, standard land produced.

This was added in the last moment upon the delegation's request because they feared that Alexander might try to trick them into giving them a bunch of wasteland of absolutely no value.

It was not hard to foresee the nobles ruling those parts using every opportunity to lie and drum up the quality of their land so that they would have to give up less of their land to the natives.

And vice versa, the natives might falsely decry the low quality of their land to accuse Alexander of cheating them.

So Alexander took an average.

He did this by looking at the average yields of the various regions over the past decade or so.

Since every noble paid a percentage of their farmland produce as taxes, and the accounts perfectly recorded the amount paid as well as the area of land owned by those nobles, it was not hard for Alexander to figure out the rest.

Tedious and time consuming?

Sure.

But courtesy of the habit of a mercantile family, the books were kept very well- clear, easy to read, and very detailed.

Experience tales with mvl

It was to the point that while flipping through them, Alexander was so impressed that he felt that he should hire a few accountants to take with him to Zanzan- there was lots to learn from them.

But despite the grand efforts of the bookkeepers, even then Alexander could not go into full detail as land dealings by its nature were quite complex and very time consuming.

And Alexander was already working twelve to fourteen hours a day to deal with so many other things, in order to prepare the optimum deal for Metztil.

So when the chief raised this small pond of an issue, Alexander gave them the river.

With 100 acres of land, unless it was a complete desert, there would be no problem cultivating 20 acres worth of food.

And a family only needed 12 to 15 acres of land to feed itself even after taxes.

So Alexander believed 20 was far more than enough, these natives could live as the middle class with their income, equal to a skilled artisan.

Of course, this huge grant of 100 acres of land would not be given to all the natives moving into the land.

There was thought to be more than half a million of them, and even though Alexander might be open handed, he was not mad.

The amount of land that would be promised if such a thing were to happen would have been so large that it have undoubtedly caused Lady Miranda to directly visit him that very night with a knife in her hand and slit his throat in rage.

Thus. Alexander stipulated that only the first 2,000 families would be granted his privilege.

Why 2,000 you ask?

Well since Metztil had brought 10,000 men and most families conservatively held 5 people, it was a simple matter of division.

Of course, if you wanted to nitpick, you would find Alexander's calculations were a bit flawed here.

First of all, most common people tended to have children close to the double digits in this period, not 2 or 3 like in modern times.

So Alexander really should have divided by 10.

But as much as half of the infants tended to die before reaching the age of 5.

So Alexander really chose the 2,000 number because he thought it would be big enough to satisfy Metztil, but also small enough to not rile up the nobles who were told to expect this huge influx of troublesome immigrants.

Because although giving 100 acres of land might sound like a lot and for an individual it was indeed so, in the grand scheme of things, it was only about 800 sq km in total.

Remember that Metztil had originally wanted 40,000 sq km, which is 50 times larger.

So really, this was a bargain of the century.

And Metztil at one point had also pointed that out.

However, Alexander flatly declared that that 40,000 number was just the hallucinations of a madman and this was the best offer they were going to get.

"If you do not like it… we are sorry. Thank you for coming." The crisp voice had an almost uncaring, damning tone to it.

And Metztil quickly clamped up after that, not willing to burn his hand for reaching too long.

Now contrary to the take it or leave it facade Alexander put outward, internally he was far more sympathetic to the native wants.

He had wanted to increase the number of families to 4,000, thus matching this area to the amount to be directly given to the Helvati for their service- 1,500 sq km.

He wanted to do so because it was his thought that the presence of a large number of natives would prevent the common Sybarians from picking on them.

There is strength in numbers as they say and he hoped the equally strong two parts would be able to keep each other in check.

However, when Alexander previously discussed this with the various nobles and Lady Miranda, as a trump card for the then upcoming negotiations, it was there they drew the absolute red line.

10,000 men were the highest they were willing to accommodate at any one time and giving up 2,300 sq kilometer (1,500 plus 800) was already their maximum limit.

Plus there was another reason that they put forth that seemed quite compelling.

And it was regarding the familiar structure of the Helvati.

You see, the native families were not nuclear ones like our modern counterparts.

Rather they lived in huge joint families where uncles, aunts, and cousins all lived together.

In fact, this was really what the tribes of the natives were all about- a huge extended family living together.

For example, the Helvati was just the name of a collection of smaller 'familiar' tribes who lived together. Metztil had his own familiar 'tribe' as did Tapin.

This meant that each 'family' really had anywhere from fifty to even a hundred people, and going by Alexander's own calculation, each of them should receive anywhere from 1,000 acres to 2,000 acres of land.

This was a huge amount of land for any noble lord.

Most of the smaller ones even did not have so much vacant space, at least not those which were also good arable land.

So even if they wanted to give it up, many did not have the ability.

As for breaking up the families into smaller chunks, the Margraves lords cleverly argued such a thing might be viewed by the Helvati as the 'outsiders' trying to divide and conquer them.

Having been brought up together their whole life, the natives were really tight knit and naturally distrustful of their foreign invaders.

So a middle ground compromise was reached between the two bitterly hating parties.

The Margraves and the lords were assured that for the first three years, they would only need to take in 10,000 natives and provide them with the agreed land.

After these 10,000 natives were settled, all new families would only be leased 20 acres of farmland at a standard market price, and that, it would happen at 10,000 men per year for the next four years.

This was a limit set by the Margraves lords, once the tribal population reached 50,000, this leasing would stop.

While during all this, Metztil was assured that all of the families of his men would be placed in the same or at least nearby counties close to each other.

But in exchange, due to the huge area this would be required, the land would not be given in one lump sum chunk, but instead scattered all around.

The farmlands and the barren lands would be in different territories.

And after three days of hashing out the details, both sides finally signed the treaty.

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