King of Mercenaries - Chapter 74: Recruiting Frisian Fishermen

Because he was coveting the huge profits of the Great Voyage, Marin absolutely did not wish to miss the recently emerged Age of Discovery.

However, he had also witnessed that within in domain, there were only 200 fishermen, and only 30 of them were young adults. To join in the Great Voyage, he couldn’t manage to gather a boat of sailors. One must know, a small ship like Columbus’ flagship “The Santa Maria”, even it had 39 sailors on board.

Besides, it was also improbably for Marin to draft all of the young adult fishermen as sailors. Otherwise, the old and weak fishermen would have to go hungry.

Because the main fishing force were these young adults.

Marin had thought about it long and hard, he finally decided — he had to recruit the Frisian fishermen, to solidify his territory, and increase the sailor reserves…

Marin went to look for information, and discovered that over the years, the nobles were exploiting the fishermen really heavily. Normally, the coastal lords would demand the fishermen to surrender more than 40% of their total fishing harvest. Amongst that, a portion would be live fish. While the rest would be salted fish.

But that’s where the problem was, in this day and age, salted fish requires a lot of salt for preservation. The fishermen were already quite poor, and now they had to use their own money to purchase expensive salt in order to fulfill the salted fish quota to their lords. Calculating everything, the cost of what they had to surrender to their lords, reached up to 60% of what they had fished. Including the 10% fishing harvest they had to submit to the church. That’s why, only about 30% remained for the fishermen’s harvest, that’s why they were leading very difficult lives.

If Marin wanted to recruit the fishermen, he definitely needs to loosen the regulations, otherwise it would not attract anybody. As such, Marin thought long and hard, and decided to only receive 30% of what the fishermen harvested.

Furthermore, they could claim reimbursement for the salt required to procure salted fish from the 30% fishing harvest…

This way, the fishermen would only need to submit  40% of their harvests, even after including the church’s tithe, which was half of what they used to submit. Naturally, the lives of the fishermen would improve a lot. Besides, as a tycoon himself, Marin had decided to establish his own bank, which would exclusively target the fishermen, providing them with low interest loans, encouraging the fishermen to gather their funds in order to purchase larger fishing ships. For example, a ship like Columbus’ flagship ‘Santa Maria’ which had a hundred and some tonnage, that was absolutely more than enough to fish in the Northern sea.

…

In reality, the coast of the Northern sea had plenty of fishermen he could recruit. For example, there were plenty of Dutch fishermen available for hire in the Netherland region.

However, there was also a major problem. Those Dutch fishermen, were in service to the Netherland region under the Emperor’s reign. Recruiting those Dutch fishermen was equivalent to poaching from the Emperor. Marin needed the support of the Emperor, so he must not worsen relations with the Emperor.

Meanwhile, the Frisian fishermen were different, the Frisians were mainly located in the Lordship of Frisia (including modern Friesland and Groningen of Holland), as well as East Frisia where Madam Mary was born.

Those two factions were not powerful ones. Besides, although the Frisians were considered Western Germanic people, they were excluded from mainstream Germanic society.

Which also means, both Germans and Hollanders were actually really discriminating towards Frisians. In modern Germany,

there were still many jokes passed down which mocked the idiocy of Frisians.

Besides, no matter if it was the Lordship of Frisia or East Frisia, neither were acknowledged by the Empire. These two countries were both treated as ‘insubordinate’ barbaric factions by the Empire

In Marin’s previous life, he had read the History of Europe, and knew that around year 1500, Maximillian the First would gift away the Lordship of Frisia to Albert III, Duke of Saxony, for the Duke of Saxony’s help in 1492 in suppressing the Netherland-Flanders rebellion.

As for East Frisia, around the year 1515, the Emperor had sent a coalition of 24 lords to conquer it, but was defeated (the army of East Frisia was quite strong)…

Which also means that, both Lordship of Frisia and East Frisia were small countries and were discriminated by everybody in Europe. So Marin recruiting Frisians would not pose too big of a problem.

The Lordship of Frisia which was directly across Texel, wasn’t a unified, centralized country, instead, it was an alliance formed by many noble territories.

A country like this, even if Marin had displeased them, it would be difficult for them to make the decision for military revenge.

Because, if they wished to start a war, they would first argue for a long time during their noble council meetings. By the time they were done arguing, their enemies would have finished their preparations a long time ago…

Besides, the fighting strength of the Lordship of Frisia were incomparable to East Frisia. Although its area was about twice the size of East Frisia. But their military power were decentralized, belonging to several noble factions, without a unified chain of command. Once Duke of Saxony, Albert III received permission from the Emperor, it did not take much effort to conquer the Lordship of Frisia. However, the army sent to attack East Frisia suffered a defeat.

That’s why, Marin was not afraid of being enemies with the Lordship of Frisia. Besides, in no more than a few years, this Lordship would be decimated by the Duke of Saxony. What Marin needed to do, was to recruit a sufficient number of Friesland fishermen before the Duke of Saxony conquers the Lordship of Frisia, in order to prepare for his own Great Voyage… or, before the Duke of Saxony had finished his preparations, to act beforehand and take control of this small country… Marin believed that it would be best if clashes occurred. This way, Marin would have a casus belli to attack the Lordship of Frisia…

As such, Marin secretly dispatched some men to the coastal fishing villages of the Lordship of Frisia, to do some promotion, to mobilize the fishermen of Friesland to relocate to Texel.

As for the conditions, naturally it was a huge decrease in taxes paid, as well as loans for them to purchase larger ships…

…

However, no matter how great the conditions Marin had offered were, the German subordinates whom Marin had sent could never receive the trust of the Friesland fishermen.

Marin thought for a moment, and with promise of great treatment, he hired the 20 Frisian fishermen on the island, to convince the coastal fishermen of the Lordship of Frisia.

As expected, with these people doing the convincing, the results were much better. A great amount of Frisian fishermen believed them, and with their entire families in tow, they navigated their boats towards Texel.

Marin welcomed the Frisian fishermen warmly, and arranged for people to help them build cheap but pragmatic Adobe houses. Later, he helped reform the fishing ports of ‘t Horntje and Oudeschild, so that more fishing boats could dock.

Afterwards, Marin once again hired the newly-transferred Frisian fishermen who were more glib-tongued, and made them return in order to convince more people.

These people were native citizens of the Lordship of Frisia, so sending them back for convicing, would have a much better effect than sending the Frisian fishermen from Texel.

As such, a greater amomunt of Frisian fishermen were convinced, with their families in tow, navigated their ships over…