Herald of Steel

Chapter 1263: Signing The Deal

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.

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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