Chapter 269.
Chapter 269 – Drumming
The revelry – or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it chaos – continued into the evening, and only after everyone was exhausted did the area around Faber Village quiet down.
Despite being physically tired, everyone’s emotions were still high, and everyone had found quite a few goodies.
The people gathered in the Baden family’s mansion and bragged to each other about their day’s harvest. The people planned to rest for a while before returning to their villages.
Kevin was the only one in the crowd who didn’t take anything, and he worriedly gathered a few people who usually had a higher reputation in the village together.
He complained about his worries: they had looted indiscriminately in Faber Village, the lord would definitely not let them go.
It was as if the crowd was poured a pot of cold water on their heads, and their hearts immediately cooled down.
When the resentment accumulated beyond a certain threshold, the impulses overpowered their reasoning, and they did things they would not have dared to do on a normal day. Yet they had forgotten that there was a higher being that maintained the order of Arda, even though that order was oppressing them.
Someone hemmed and hawed, “But …… but …… wasn’t it Baden who made the first mistake, and killed our men, and several of those who were struck by the catapults before never woke up again. ”
Kevin shook his head, “But obviously our [crime] is more serious. The Lords will surely punish us first when they find out.”
There was a wave of resentment in his heart, resenting the villagers for being so impulsive, why couldn’t they be more rational.
While the crowd was chaotically scavenging around, it wasn’t that Kevin hadn’t thought of walking away and running to Fulan Harbor to report to the town hall and request the mayor to send someone to maintain order, but after thinking about it he stayed behind and waited for everyone to regain their composure, and then thought of a solution together.
“Haha, Kevin old brother, what [crime] ah, that’s too serious to say.”
Just as the crowd frowned, a voice came from the side.
A thieving man approached, and Kevin’s frown tightened as he recognized this person, Bishop – the village’s rogue who loitered all day long.
“It was the landlord Baden who first set up a private heavy tax behind the back of the lord, forcing us all to live, so we did something so irrational. Besides, so many of us were involved, haven’t you heard of the saying ‘the law is not against the people’?”
Kevin pointed out seriously, “The current lord is a strong man, as evidenced by the fact that he overcame all odds to wipe out the pirates.”
Bishop wagged his finger, “Even if he were to pursue the matter, what would he do with us? Hang us all? Or take them all to hard labor? We have brought together the young and strong laborers of several villages, if we are all taken away, what about the old, weak, women and children in the villages? Will he take care of them for us?”
A circle of people looked at Bishop, the kid seemed to have a few points.
Bishop said triumphantly, “Would the Lord of Lords carry a [harsh] reputation for a landowner who is unkind to the rich? How would the bards spread the word about him – the villagers were forced by the landlord to rise up in revolt, and the Lord Earl indiscriminately hanged all the rebels.”
The crowd secretly nodded their heads, Bishop, this kid doesn’t work and wander around on weekdays, but he didn’t expect to accumulate a lot of insight instead.
Being told by him like this, the fear for their own lives was instantly alleviated quite a bit.
Just as everyone loosened their brows, Bishop became serious: “However, our harvest today will definitely be collected up through and returned to Baden, or …… received into Lord Lord’s own pocket.”
One sentence made the crowd cover their pockets vigorously. “No one will take the treasures of my bag!” Someone yelled out immediately.
They were really scared of being poor, and when they suddenly gained wealth, they would keep it even if they had to fight for their lives.
Kevin covered his forehead, he already had a premonition of something bad.
Sure enough, Bishop waved his fist and said, “Gentlemen, why don’t we ‘negotiate’ with the lord! Baden’s family’s ill-gotten wealth was amassed by raiding the people on a regular basis, and we have the right to take possession of it because it was originally taken from us by Baden, and now it’s just a matter of returning things to their rightful owners.”
“Enough!” Kevin exclaimed angrily, “What are we going to negotiate with the Lord? He is capable of gathering an army against us!”
“Kevin, you are such a coward!”
Bishop “righteously” refuted him, “We are outnumbered and have captured a large number of weapons from the Baden family, we are an army in our own right, so of course we have the capital to ‘negotiate’ with the lord. We certainly have the capital to ‘negotiate’ with the lord.”
“Have you forgotten how the pirates of the Northwest Bay were wiped out?”
“Then do you remember the former great pirate leader Edward? He was an existence that made all the lords in the Northwest fear him.”
Bishop no longer paid attention to Kevin, their quarrel had attracted many people to gather around.
He shouted to the people around him, “How did the pirates during Edward’s time make the lords fear him? There is only one secret, and that is [unity], they twisted into a rope and gained strength far beyond that of an individual. After Edward disappeared, the pirates were torn apart, that’s why they were broken individually.”
“Villagers! We have gathered people from several villages, as long as we can twist into a rope, the lord can’t do anything about us, and he will eventually accept our demands and allow us to keep these riches that should have been rightfully ours!”
“Gentlemen, the destruction of Baden has already witnessed our power, look at it, even a big landlord like him can’t stop the power of our unity!”
The crowd’s hearts were on fire again by Bishop’s words. Yes, Baden, the big landowner who usually seemed untouchable, had also turned into a wild dog running away with his tail between his legs under their combined strength.
A lord? Isn’t a lord just a bigger landlord?
These villagers, who usually stayed in the vicinity of the village and traveled to the farthest place but the port of Fulan, had no idea how big an earldom was, how many people were in the territory, and how many armies their own lords could muster.
They could only speculate based on the most powerful force they had ever seen, the Baden family.
The landlord Baden was easily defeated by them, so in case the lord didn’t agree to their request and thus sent an army, defeating the lord’s army might be a little more difficult, right, after all, it was a guy who was even more powerful than Baden.
So the crowd chanted, “Unite! Negotiate with the lord!”
Since Arda lacked grassroots feudal lords like [Knights] who used villages as their territories, the peasants living in the countryside didn’t have an intuitive sense of the power in the hands of the lords on a regular basis, and their obedience to the lord’s decrees was more out of habit accumulated over generations.
If it was in other territories, the probability of something like what happened in Faber Village would be very low, because the villagers would be suppressed by the knights residing in their own villages as soon as they started to congregate, and it would be even more unlikely that there would be a chance for multiple villages to conspire against each other.
(End of chapter)