Sword of Dawnbreaker - Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Serfs and Freemen

Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Gawain stood on top of the rock, watching the withdrawn and indifferent faces below, and he took a deep breath.

The people were not stupid, but this did not mean that they were not ignorant.

One would call someone stupid out of prejudice and contempt, but to call someone ignorant would only be stating facts.

The civilians and the serf class in this era were ignorant. The social structure restricted them from having hardly any channels where they could gain knowledge and experience. The high cost of living also left them with no energy to focus on things other than survival. And having to survive through such circumstances resulted in them appearing as though they were not using their heads, thus creating the illusion of “stupidity”. But in fact, they could use their heads. It was only that their lack of knowledge made it hard for them to understand things that were too far and unrelated to their lives.

Thus, he could not give them a high-sounding speech, telling them about ideals, the future, or how development in production capabilities would affect the territory’s outlook. If he were to speak about these, they would immediately categorize these “lofty” ideas as “the Lord’s problems” and draw a clear boundary. Thus, the best method would be to tell them things that were related to their lives.

“People of Cecil territory,” Gawain said loudly, “You should all know who I am. So you should also know that I am the highest authority in this territory. My words are as good as the laws of Cecil territory. These laws will offer protection for you, and so you must also obey them.

“We are exploring new territories, so we need some new rules. Thus I’ll be making three announcements:

“Firstly, because the old territory has been destroyed along with all assets, as the ancestor of the Cecil Clan, I declare that all debts owed to the Lord will be written off. Regardless of whether you are a serf or a freeman, starting from today, you will no longer bear any debt to the Lord.

There was some commotion within the crowd below, but it was not too obvious. Though civilians and serfs might have debts to their Lord, now that the territory was going through rebuilding, everyone had lost their ability to repay their debts. Judging from Lord Rebecca’s kindness in the past, they had already expected that their debts would be written off.

Gawain went on to say, “Secondly, all serfs in the territory have the chance to become freemen. The Lord will issue a series of assignments, such as building houses, building roads, mining, and joining the army. All these assignments will come with their respective methods of accumulating points. As long as the work is completed in strict accordance with the requirements, you can accumulate contributions. After making the standard, a serf can then become a freeman. And if you are already a freeman, you can receive your respective monetary compensation upon completing these assignments. I will announce the detailed method for calculating rewards in the near future. I can assure you that any hard-working and reliable serf can become a freeman as long as he works hard for two or three years, and a freeman will be able to have his own house if he works hard for five or six years!”

This time, the commotion below broke out into discussions.

Having opportunities for a serf to become a freeman was already quite an unconventional policy in this era. Although Anzu’s law did not strictly prohibit serfs from becoming freemen, nor was it specified in territorial laws anywhere, there was in fact hardly any nobles who would allow their serfs to gain freedom so casually. To them, serfs were cheap labor. It meant that they would not be a cause of burden even if they drained every drop of blood from them. Those nobles who only knew of constantly increasing taxes and labor hours to get richer, simply would not be able to imagine the benefits that freeing serfs might bring.

Rebecca’s original proposal to allow serfs the chance to earn their freedom by joining the army had also caused some commotion, but this time Gawain obviously went a step further.

As for getting compensation and even a house for work… Many of the freemen could hardly believe it.

They could get money by working for the Lord? Who would believe that!

Gawain did not allow them time to continue their discussions, but he went on to make the third announcement.

“Thirdly, the tents and fences to be built today, as well as the gutters in the camp, are the first assignment that the Lord has given you under the new law. I have already gotten people to record the area that each of you are responsible for. Only those who complete the work strictly in accordance with my requirements will be considered as having completed the work. In addition, as an incentive for doing the work seriously, the first ten people who complete their work can have meat.”

With that said, Gawain jumped off the rock, ignoring the response from below, and went to the place where Herti and Rebecca were at.

The civilians and serfs, who were gathered, just stood blankly for a while. Then there were sudden shouts as they rushed back to the camp that looked as though it was complete. They were going to reinforce the loose ropes and nails and hammer the fences deep into the ground!

For them, things like the calculation of contributions and how points were being counted that were mentioned by Gawain were still too difficult to understand, and they also did not really believe that the soldiers and knights in charge of overseeing the work would really help them to record the amount of work they did. But there was something that they did understand. They could have meat for dinner!

Only those who finished the work early and seriously could have the meat!

Just as Gawain thought. Only when it came to their personal benefits would people be motivated to put in their greatest efforts.

Seeing those civilians and serfs swarming around, pushing and shouting as they ran off, Herti was a little dumbstruck. She only recovered when Gawain came and stood in front of her. With disbelief, she asked, “Ancestor… Did you really mean what you said?”

Gawain looked at her with a vague smile. “Which one are you referring to specifically?”

“… The part where a serf can become a freeman by doing work,” Herti frowned as she said. “Of course, I don’t object to this because Rebecca had enacted a law where serfs can gain freedom by joining the army. But you mentioned that even things like building houses and constructing roads can also be counted as contributions, and that it would only take them two or three years to become a freeman… Are these for real?”

“Of course it is.” Gawain looked at her. “Do you think there is anything wrong with it?”

“If they can become freemen so easily, then it won’t be long before all the serfs in the territory will become civilians,” Herti looked dumbfounded. “The children of freemen will also be freemen. Will Cecil territory become a place without serfs in the future then?”

Gawain continued to look at her, wearing the same smile. “What’s wrong with not having serfs?”

Having a world view and way of thinking based upon social hierarchies, Herti naturally thought that there was something wrong. But with her knowledge and ideas that were far beyond her noble peers, it seemed that it would not be wrong either even if they had no serfs. Suddenly, she was caught between two conflicting ideas.

On the other hand, Rebecca frowned and said, “Actually, I think that… serfdom is no longer necessary today. There’s really nothing bad about it even if we don’t have it anymore.”

Gawain looked at the iron-headed descendant in surprise and nodded. “Go on.”

“Serfs are the sources of our labor, and the purpose of a labor force is to provide manpower, but if we allow them to become freemen, we would instead have even more manpower. So why should we hold on to the concept of “serfs”?” Rebecca scratched her head. “Father told me back then that the main reason for not letting serfs become free is that once they are free, we would not be able to drive them with whips, and they will immediately become lazy and not work. But I think using whips is not necessarily the best thing to do…”

Gawain looked at her approvingly, and Rebecca, who had for the first time received encouragement from her ancestor, suddenly became bold and said fluently, “And I also noticed that if a serf is allowed to work, they will always try to goof off, but if you let two serfs do the same job and tell them that the first one who finishes can get an extra piece of bread, they can then quickly complete the workload of three or four people. Their value far outweighs that of a piece of bread… Then I thought, we don’t need to use a whip to stop them from goofing off, other methods might work even better.”

“This is already not a bad new insight.” Gawain could not help but laugh. It was quite an easy concept to understand, but in this era, few people would pay attention to this aspect. In fact, nobles would not even care to observe how their serfs or even civilians went about their work. They also had never thought of measuring their work efficiency. Whipping and sending soldiers to supervise these serfs were their best form of governance. As for Rebecca…

He could only say that this poor country Viscount must really have lots of time on her hands.

But it was thanks to this that she could have thought of these things.

It was just that she could only think about these superficial problems based on her observations. However, Gawain knew the abolition of slavery was not only a problem of “whips and breads”. The deeper reason was a problem of production capacity, whether their production could reach a high enough level, the step that they had to take in order to become a society.

Through this period of observation, he believed that at least within the scope of what he could see, the system of serfs was no longer compatible with the productivity of this world. Large numbers of people were used in repetitive, inefficient, and low-end jobs. This world was dependent on the large number of people and the most inefficient methods to produce all kinds of goods for the upper class, and these people did not even have a way for upward mobility. The upper class, who could control magic, had clearly reached a stage where they could watch fireworks, listen to music in their castles, use magic crystals for lighting, but the civilians in the lower rungs were living in circumstances not much better than primitive people. The whole society was almost out of shape.

A revolution would have already occurred if this happened on Earth, but over here, the existence of supernatural forces had prevented this process from happening.

Because a hundred civilians with pitch forks would not even be a match against a novice mage or knight. Even if they had no fear of death and doubled in numbers, it would still be impossible.

Perhaps there would be a day where this deadlock would be broken, but Gawain had no plans to wait. He had to bring forward such a change and start his own big developmental plan.

Because he had a feeling that the Dark Wave might might really be coming.

Back then, the Gondor Empire during its heyday could not even take on the Dark Wave. Now that all the nations had regressed to medieval, uncivilized states, how were they supposed to take on the Dark Wave? With their faces?

And even by putting aside the issue of the Dark Wave, Gawain had something else he was concerned about.

Those mysterious “eyes” in the sky.

It would be hard for a backward medieval world to overcome gravity. With gravity keeping one at a stranglehold, one would not even be able to look up at the sky, let alone talk about investigating the secrets among the stars.