King of Mercenaries - Chapter 75: Frundsberg, Father of Mercenaries

After Marin became the superstar of the Empire, a lot of people joined the ranks of Maximillian the First, while there were also a lot of people who specifically rushed to Texel, in order to visit the young superstar Marin.

As such, a lot of young knight-errants had made their way towards Holland’s Den Helder from inland Deutsche Germany, and boarded boats towards Texel to visit Marin.

Marin just happened to want to recruit talented people, so he had been patiently accomodating these young men. In reality, each meeting was equivalent to a job interview for Marin’s visiters.

These guests were majority young people who had not obtained the title of a knight. They had travelled from far and wide, actually because they wanted to ‘obtain insider information’, so that they would be able to obtain the official knight title smoothly.

In order to recruit the talents, Marin acted courteously, and enthusiastically received these squires from everywhere, and invited them to visit his own 400 elite underlings.

However, what made Marin depressed was, each of these people were extremely hungry for knowledge. But when Marin offered them to join him, all of them basically politely refused.

It turns out, all of them were dissatisfied with Marin’s small territory, which means no room for improvement. All of these conceited young men believed they weren’t lacking in any way compared to Marin.

If Marin could become a Baron, why couldn’t they?

That’s why, all of the offers Marin has extended, basically none of those squires accepted, which made Marin extremely depressed. In reality, Marin also had his ways of keeping them here. Which was basically knighting them as official knights of his Barony.

However, Marin was reluctant to do that. Because, knighting someone wasn’t something that could be done willy-nilly. The reason why Schwartz could be knighted, aside from his abilities and loyalty, was that he had made contributions to the war effort in Italy, which was also the main reason.

One must know, Schwartz was Marin’s adjutant in Italy. Besides, the daily military training were all under the direct supervision of Schwartz. As for Marin himself, his only job was to guide Schwartz. If Schwartz was officially knighted, the 400 soldiers wouldn’t have any qualms with it.

However, if Marin suddenly knighted a bunch of outsiders, these 400 soldiers might not buy it.

That’s why, Marin could not easily promist and knight those young squires who came to visit him, all he could do was paint an amazing future for them. After all, defining rewards and punishment was the necessary quality for a qualified commander. However, all of these squires who came from knight Families, they had all received education and were not stupid. It was true that they idolized Marin, however, if they served under Marin, the most they could get was become knighted officially. Meanwhile, knights were not inherited titles. All of these ambitious young men longed to became like Marin, to became a Baron whose title could be inherited.

That’s why, they were not fooled by Marin, and after receiving knowledge on how to train the troops, they had all decided to leave.

These squires from noble families weren’t that easy to fool. While the young men from commonfolk were much easier to handle.

Among the young men who came to visit Marin, aside from those squires, there were a lot of commonfolk from wealthy families — as the poorer folk had no money to pay for a trip to Texel.

After Marin failed to recruit those squires, he turned his attention towards the commonfolk. Since these commonfolk were from wealthy families, most of them had received some form of education, and were quite cultured. And Marin deeply needed cultured people to help him in managing Texel.

As such, Marin started to butter up these cultured commonfolk…

After several rounds of convincing and swaying, a portion of the cultured commoners remained as expected.

Also because of that, Marin finally had a Mayor to manage Den Burg — a 28 year old commoner called Heiner Lehmann.

Heiner Lehmann’s ancestors were also from a family of knights, otherwise they wouldn’t have had a surname. However, his family was a branch of the main one, after several generations, they had given up on martial traditions, and turned towards business. That’s why, Heiner was actually considered a merchant-folk.

However, he had attended University in Cologne, and studied law. From the looks of it, he had just graduated from Law at the University of Cologne, he wasn’t in a hurry to find a job, instead, he came to travel in order to broaden his horizons.

How could Marin let go of a talent such as him? A university student in the Middle Ages, that was definitely an existence even rarer than pandas! Marin immediately made his decision and nmaed Heiner as the Mayor of Den Burg, as well as the Justice of Texel’s court. As such, Texel welcomed the first official civil servant after Marin’s reign.

Heiner himself was extremely delighted. Because, as a man from common roots, even though he had attended university. However, if he went to get a job, he definitely would only land one as a lawyer. As for judges of the court, only those with noble roots may take those positions. Although a lawyer was considered a well-off job, but that wasn’t something comparable to an official position.

As such, Heiner was immediately bought and swore under Marin, to assist Marin in processing the management duties of Texel.

Afterwarsd, Marin had continued recruiting several other cultured young men with common-roots, who were given the positions of Mayors to ‘t Horntje and Oudeschild, as well as Salttown.

Just as Marin was currently over the moon from recruiting several cultured young men into his faction, a sentry came reporting — yet another young squire was visiting him…

After several failures in recruiting, Marin was now completely uninterested in recruiting those shrewd squires. But, when Marin was told of the young man’s name, his eyes immediately widened… because, the sentry had told Marin — the name of the young man who was visiting him, was George Frundsberg.

…

Who was George Frundsberg? That’s a badass figure who was praised as the “Father of Germanic Mercenaries”! Marin had read about the related history books about Germanic mercenaries, he knew about Geoge Frundsberg, he was the most important general of the mercenaries under Maximillian the First’s army in the original timeline, who was also the greatest participant in the Italian war, as well as the terminator of the Legendary Swiss mercenaries.

However, it seems like Frundsberg only started appearing during the “Swabian war” in 1499. As such, he was still an unknown squire, and was still baesd in the Swabian region, being a soldier under who knows which lord.

As for this great person, Marin had decided to do his best to rope him in. Even if he couldn’t recruit him, he would have to establish friendly relations. Because, Frundsberg in the fuutre would become Maximillian the First’s first-in-command…

As such, Marin was immediately at full attention, and with the highest specifications of receiving a noble, he invited George Frundsberg inside…