The Danube River is a crucial waterway connecting the various nations under Laszlo's rule.
It is no exaggeration to call it the mother river of Austria, Hungary, and their Balkan dependencies.
Bards often praise the emperor's achievements in their poems, comparing this beautiful river to a gift from God to the emperor.
They often say that with this "blue ribbon," the emperor holds most of the land east of Vienna firmly in his hands.
This statement actually has some truth to it.
The Danube River connects many countries under Laszlo's rule and carries the overland Eastern trade routes, which are vital to Austria's economy.
Although ships laden with goods from the Black Sea to Vienna have to pay varying percentages of customs duties to Bulgaria, Wallachia, Serbia, Hungary, and Austria, high-value commodities like spices and silk, as well as saltpeter, which Laszlo values, can all be sold from Vienna throughout the Empire, yielding substantial profits.
After repelling the Ottomanss, the blocked Eastern trade route reopened, and Laszlo immediately began deep cooperation with the newly liberated Republic of Genoa, granting it extensive commercial privileges in the Black Sea ports of Bulgaria to support the Genoese in competing with Venice and the Ottomanss on the Black Sea.
Commercial competition in this era was not as peaceful as in later times; small-scale naval battles, as they had for centuries, frequently occurred.
Although the Genoese had been in decline since their defeat by the Venetians in the Battle of Chioggia, the Venetians, having lost Venetia, also suffered significant losses and were far from their former strength.
Thus, Venice, supported by the Ottomanss, and the Genoese, supported by Laszlo, once again engaged in fierce clashes in the central Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.
Laszlo, relying on the Genoese's Eastern trade route, finally broke free from Venice's trade monopoly.
And those goods transported from the distant East, once they arrived in Bulgaria, would quickly be transshipped along the Danube River all the way to Vienna.
Consequently, local trade in Vienna flourished over time, and the countries along the Danube River also gained more customs revenue from it.
The commercial value of the Danube River is just one of its many functions; what truly determines its status is its agricultural value.
From the fertile Vienna Basin to the vast Hungarian Great Plain, and then to the ill-fated plains of the lower Danube River, this vast land in Southeast Europe has become vibrant due to the flow of the Danube River.
Especially for Austria, the Danube River is crucial for the country's survival and its path to prosperity.
In the core Austrian region, located in the Vienna Basin of the Danube River basin, statistics show that its cultivated land area accounts for nearly 50% of Austria's total cultivated land, which is not a small number.
It is important to note that the core Austrian region accounts for less than 30% of Austria's total territory, yet it provides more than half of the nation's cultivated land.
The fundamental reason for this imbalance is that over half of Austria's territory is located in the Alps and its extended hilly areas.
Whether it's the extensive hills of Styria, Outer Austria, and Carniola, or the continuous hills of Tyrol, none of them are suitable for cultivation.
However, the rich mineral resources in the mountainous areas and the soil conditions suitable for grape cultivation compensate for these shortcomings, leading these regions to pursue different development paths.
Only the newly annexed province of Venetia has a complete Friuli Plain, and its grain output has greatly alleviated the pressure on the Austrian homeland.
Even so, developing agriculture in the Vienna Basin remains a crucial policy for Laszlo to strengthen his power.
As the essence and core area of Austria, the royal demesne here accounts for the largest proportion and is the most concentrated, serving as a major source of Austrian fiscal revenue.
If this fertile land can be developed, Laszlo's power and financial resources will continue to grow.
Moreover, developing agriculture in Austria is a significant experiment for Laszlo.
He still owns large tracts of land on the Hungarian Great Plain, including much uncultivated wasteland, and although he has been attracting German immigrants, the effect has not been ideal.
Currently, the Empire's population is just recovering from the aftermath of the Black Death, and labor shortages are still common.
Laszlo's "Expedition to the East" plan was highly successful in Bohemia, attracting many displaced people who had again lost sufficient land due to population growth and partible inheritance.
But in Hungary and further afield in Bulgaria, the expected population surge did not occur.
Compared to the distant East, Bohemia, a famously wealthy country within the Empire, was clearly more attractive to immigrants.
Of course, Laszlo also clearly understood that population growth could not rely entirely on immigration.
If living conditions improved in his territories and the people lived in peace and prosperity, the population would naturally accelerate its growth.
And to achieve all this, agricultural development is the most fundamental measure.
Previously, Laszlo had already investigated the agricultural development in the core Austrian region.
Overall, some of his decrees for agricultural development have been implemented to a certain extent, but the current level is far from enough. The royal manors and villages widely distributed throughout the Danube River basin are countless. Laszlo will select officials from among the lower nobility and local clergy to serve as stewards of the royal demesne, responsible for dispatching labor, maintaining order, and implementing decrees within their jurisdictions.
These land stewards are the group known as royal bailiffs; they exist not only in Lower Austria but also widely in Tyrol.
In other states, although such officials also exist, the land area they manage is not extensive, and Austrian noble lords occupy much larger tracts of land.
Besides these royal estate managers, there is another type of person also referred to as a royal bailiff: the royal tax collector.
They belong to different institutions; the former falls under the jurisdiction of the Court Chancellery, and the latter under the Court Financial Committee.
Specifically, the land stewards in the core Austrian region are all supervised by the Austrian Court Chamberlain, responsible for executing the decrees planned and promulgated by the emperor and his advisory council.
The current hereditary Court Chamberlain of Austria is Lord Witt von Ebersdorf; he recently inherited this position from his deceased father, Hans, to serve Laszlo.
This family's fief is located on the outskirts of Vienna, and they have held this important position of Court Chamberlain since the 13th century.
Before inheriting this position, Witt had served as Laszlo's attendant for a long time and could truly be considered a close confidant of the emperor.
Therefore, Laszlo decided to entrust him with the important task of agricultural development in the core Austrian region.
After all, as a monarch of multiple nations, Laszlo could not personally play the role of a medieval manor lord, teaching peasants how to farm hand in hand.
All he could do was issue relevant decrees, then supervise their implementation, and observe their effects.
Inside the royal manor on the outskirts of Vienna, Laszlo was inspecting the manor's conditions with several attendants, including Witt.
The sun climbed over the church spire, and the mist accumulated in the manor gradually dispersed, revealing three neatly arranged plots of cultivated land to everyone's eyes.
The cultivated lands were separated by roads, and each field was divided into many regular strip fields, with branches marking their boundaries.
Even someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder would probably feel comfortable seeing this orderly land.
The southernmost spring valley land had just passed the weeding season, and the new seedlings were ankle-high; dozens of narrow, long furrows stretched straight from the foot of the hill to the river, as if measured by a carpenter.
On the fallow land that had not been sown, a man was plowing with a draft horse; the wooden wheel of the "Saxony wheel plow" from Graz rolled over the earth ridges, making a dull sound.
The iron plowshare easily cut through the moist soil, turning up fresh dark brown soil from underneath, mixed with some legume roots and sheep manure fertilizer buried last year—this was a method taught by the emperor, using this simple fertilizer to nourish the land, which was much more cost-effective than simple fallowing.
Farmers now clearly understood that fallow land plowed three times produced more than land plowed twice.
No one understood the reasoning behind it, but that did not prevent them from following the instructions of their lord, the emperor.
The plowed fields spread out like ripples, following the direction of the strip fields, cutting the entire cultivated land into uniform long strips.
Each such long strip field was the area of land that a tenant farmer could care for and cultivate daily, meaning it was the responsibility land allocated to the tenant farmers.
Seeing this orderly scene, Laszlo's mood brightened. "This is the model manor I built. All attempts at reform will be tested here, and in several other model manors, before being promoted to all villages and manors within the royal demesne.
This will be your workflow for presiding over agricultural development in the future. You must strictly adhere to it, do you understand?"
Laszlo and his entourage rode slowly along the main road of the manor on their steeds, and the tenant farmers working in the fields bowed to the emperor.
These tenant farmers, who bore the risks of Laszlo's reforms, enjoyed more favorable treatment.
Although Laszlo's original intention was to prevent these farmers, who had extremely poor risk tolerance, from going bankrupt due to his erroneous decisions, this did not prevent him from gaining gratitude and respect among these poor people.
"Your Majesty, although I have studied some knowledge of industrial management, regarding agricultural knowledge, I…"
Witt, who had received a standard knight's education since childhood, looked at the eloquent emperor with a troubled expression.
Although he had learned more knowledge because he was destined to inherit the position of Court Chamberlain, he truly knew nothing about farming.
Laszlo chuckled, shaking his head and saying, "I know you are not good at these things, so I will assign you a few professional consultants; they will arrive from Milan in a few days.
All you need to do is coordinate and plan, leading them to explore and promote new agricultural techniques simultaneously.
This will be a long process; you must maintain enough patience and not disappoint me."
Witt felt the emperor's earnest expectations for him, immediately straightened his expression, and replied seriously, "Please rest assured, Your Majesty."
"Don't be so nervous; those consultants have served Milan for many years and have extensive experience; you just need to refer to their suggestions."
After Laszlo finished speaking, he still felt a bit uneasy and continued to admonish, "My idea is to continue promoting the three-field system of cultivation you see before you, rotating grain and fodder crops, and adopting the widely popular integrated farming and animal husbandry production method.
The key to promoting the three-field system is the use of the wheeled iron plow.
Many blacksmiths in Graz can produce this tool, but the price is not affordable for individual villagers or tenant farmers.
Therefore, you should organize the farmers to collectively purchase them as villages or manors.
If they truly cannot afford it, or are unwilling to purchase, you can also try allowing them to test it, or permit them to pay in installments.
Regarding the absorption and resettlement of immigrants, as well as the reclamation of wasteland, these all require your close attention.
Another relatively critical issue is canal irrigation and damming for flood control; the Milanese are experts in this area.
They have managed the Po River floods for many years, accumulating a lot of experience; the first permanent irrigation facility built after the fall of the Roman Empire was constructed by the Milanese.
The Danube River frequently floods in spring and autumn, often causing considerable property damage.
Although I currently do not have enough financial budget to support a massive water conservancy project to alleviate flood disasters, it is still feasible to mobilize the populace to build small-scale irrigation and flood control facilities in the form of corvée labor.
It is important to note that the scheduling of corvée labor must be reasonable and not violate laws or exploit the people for the sake of rushing deadlines; supervision in this regard must be strict." "I understand, Your Majesty."
Although Witt was still somewhat confused by Laszlo's lengthy discourse, he knew that experts would assist him in his work, which put his mind at ease.
Rather than being a technical bureaucrat leading agricultural reform, he was more like an "overseer" dispatched as a close confidant of the emperor.
Thinking this, he immediately regained confidence and decided to perform well to demonstrate his abilities to the emperor.
Laszlo, however, felt a bit uneasy; his attempts could only be tested over a long period of time.
In his previous life, as a child who grew up in the countryside, his only remaining impression of farmland was the cotton that covered the entire land.
He remembered that at that time, the county encouraged the cultivation of economic crops like cotton, drastically reducing the cultivated land for grain.
After many years of development, his hometown once became the county with the highest cotton production in the country.
However, the quality of cotton grown on the land of a land of fish and rice was far inferior to the high-quality cotton produced in the northwestern provinces, and with overcapacity, sales became a huge problem.
Consequently, in those two years, farmers suffered huge losses, and many chose to leave their homes and work in the cities.
When he returned to his hometown many years later, he could no longer see a single cotton plant; wheat and corn once again occupied that land.
Sometimes, a country's policy might only make a seemingly minor adjustment, yet its effect on the grassroots farmers can be quite terrifying.
Therefore, his reforms were so cautious.
The technologies he intended to introduce now were mostly those proven effective in other regions and were consistent with the natural conditions of the Vienna Basin.
As for the intensive farming he had encountered before, it was essentially unusable in Austria; the climatic differences were simply astronomical.
Therefore, he could only first improve the fertilization techniques that these old European farmers had not understood for hundreds of years, making full use of manure and straw to create organic fertilizers.
Initially, farmers might find it hard to accept, but Laszlo believed that once they truly realized the advantages of these new technologies, they would spontaneously adopt them widely.
After assigning tasks to Lord Witt, Laszlo and his attendants returned to Vienna along the main road by the Danube River.
The surging river water made a loud sound beside them, bringing Laszlo's thoughts back to a statistical data he had coincidentally seen a few days ago.
The Danube River seemed to have been changing its course over the past century, and this process would continue.
The unstable riverbed led to more frequent increases in water levels and flooding during the river's high water seasons, often threatening farmlands and villages along its banks.
Laszlo vaguely remembered that in 1501, the Danube River experienced an exceptionally large flood that directly submerged more than half of Vienna.
He hoped he could avoid this, but with his current financial resources, large-scale water management was not realistic, and Europeans currently lacked the technology.
Perhaps he could only rely on the wisdom of future generations; although Laszlo was quite worried about this, he was also helpless.
Pushing aside the slight anxiety of worrying about nothing, Laszlo spurred his mount to gallop towards Vienna.