The atmosphere in Leitou Township at dusk was depressing, and many villagers gathered in the square next to the well in the center of the village, they did not dare to speak, and the road leading to the outside was full of guards, and almost everyone looked at the people on horseback by the well.

On horseback was the baron, and Thunderhead was only one of his thirty or so domains, and the most important possessions in this area were not the unfreed people in these villages, but the great castle estates farther north, and the conscripted estates, self-camps, and farmsteads that allowed him to collect taxes.

Barons usually come to the village only when they are on patrol, three or four times a year.

The tax collector or steward of the village is either called the village chief, in short, the village chief of Leitou Township is a hereditary administrator, on the one hand, he has his own mill and farm as a free man, and on the other hand, he is also an intermediary between the lord and the lord, and when the lord is not there, he is given the responsibility of the lord to manage the land.

There is only one reason why the baron is here at this moment instead of the castle, the village chief is a clever ghost who sees the wind and rudder, when Ying Ming and his Beiyang cavalry armed to the teeth came here, he immediately cooperated with Ying Ming, and ordered the villagers to cooperate with the Ming army, grinding flour, sifting flour, in short, everything required by the Ming army was done, so as not to let them be angry and angry with the village.

And when Ying Ming left, he went door to door to register the things left here by the Ming army, and his explanation was for the good of the villagers, and the invaders from the Ming Dynasty in the province came back and found that there were fewer things and would kill people; It was speculated that the village chief wanted to give the record to the lord, but he did not take the initiative to report it to the lord of Plymouth.

It wasn't until the baron's cavalry appeared around the village with paperwork and told them to prepare supplies for the army, that the village chief handed the list to the cavalry and forwarded it to the baron.

No one knows what is going on in the head of the village chief, the feudal system has developed to this stage, and the vast majority of nobles value pleasure but also perceive the great urgency brought about by the changes of the times, they are more concerned with commercial prosperity than shields and swords, in fact, the feudal aristocracy and the business leaders are not in conflict, but also have a very high help.

In the process of the transformation of the aristocracy into the merchant magnates, part of the power of the territory will inevitably be decentralized, and the actual administrator of the village is slowly becoming the new actual ruler.

Especially for a hereditary village chief who has served the lord and managed the village for generations, if there is no big problem, the lord is not willing to bear the loss of removing the village chief, of course, they have such power, just like the emperor can change the tusi, and the magistrate can imprison the patriarch.

It's just a matter of whether you're willing to bear the price.

In any case, the baron had no intention of punishing the village chief, but only asked the people to take out all the food, weapons, baggage, and sundries left here by the Ming army, and pile them up in the center of the village according to the list, but there was a little accident in the process - there were three villagers, I don't know if they were too stupid to forget the things that the village chief had recorded the list, or if they were greedy, they did not hand over the materials in full.

What they buckled off was honey, horseshoe, sifted fine flour, and belts.

No one knows whether Ying Ming's spoils of war were too shocking for the baron, or whether the village chief's own actions angered the baron and led to the anger of the lords, and now the lord did not even bother to make a wooden frame, so he had already used the power of the territorial court to order the hanging of all three lords, immediately.

In fact, either of these two reasons was enough to make the baron angry, and the latter did not talk about it, and the subordinate village administrators privately made an agreement with the invading enemy army to make food for the enemy in their own territory and store the stolen goods plundered by the enemy, which would greatly affect the reputation of the lord if other nobles knew about it.

The former is irritating, with barrels and barrels of aged flour, new flour, refined flour, oil, grease, soap, mead, blackberry wine, mulled wine, and aged wine.

leather gloves, leather boots, hundreds of burqas with six family coats of arms, dozens of riveted and unriveted chain mail and helmets; Countless spearheads and long and short bows...... In short, except for the part that does not belong to the elite troops, it is an ordnance that can arm close to a thousand troops.

There were even herds of chickens, geese, tethered horses, and twelve pigs.

The villagers had repeatedly said that the supplies had been brought back by the invasion team several times, and that the team had only a few hundred men, and the Baron only felt that he urgently needed to kill a few people.

Only by killing a few people can his stupid lord tell the truth, how can a force of hundreds of people kill so many people? The burqa of the six families meant that all the troops that could rush to the west had been intercepted by this intruder squad, what were they? Everyone is holding Chen Mu's organ?

"My lord, what is ...... Chen Mu's organ? ”

"Chen Mu's organ, I don't know, that's what the French call it."

The baron did not want to say too much to the village chief at this time, he wanted to maintain his majesty in front of the people, and in fact he also wanted to know what 'Chen Mu's organ' was, and the information sent from the London Express Horse said that the Queen's intelligence adviser, Francis Walsingheim, had intercepted a letter from the Bishop of Paris, France, to the Pope, which mentioned the word in connection with a battle that took place in Angoulême.

In that battle, the Ming army used an artillery that could be fired from a long distance, and in a short period of time, a large number of shells were sent into the line, followed by an earth-shattering explosion, no one knew what happened, and the strongest Swiss phalanx was destroyed.

The French aristocracy tried to find it, but found nothing where the artillery fire was raised.

After that, people called a kind of cannon of the Ming Dynasty who did not know what kind of gun Chen Mu's organ, all parameters except for lethality were all speculation and unknown, and the bishop of Paris was about to write the news to the Pope, hoping that the Pope would spread it to the whole of Christendom - but unfortunately the letter was not sent out, and the bishop of Paris was kidnapped by the French pirates hired by England.

The three greedy villagers were hanged alive, and the relatives were holding back their weepings in great fear, and the Baron was about to give a lecture to the silent villagers, when suddenly everyone heard the distant sound of muskets outside the village.

Suddenly, everyone was in disarray, and the villagers ran around in terror, desperately trying to find a place to escape the impending war.

The trained guards didn't know what to do with themselves, and they all looked at their lord, waiting for the next order.

Before the order to send someone to investigate the situation was given, there was a heavy sound of horses' hooves at the entrance of the village, and the knight slowly paced his horse through the long village road with a long sword, and the guards he passed by looked at his figure and let out a suppressed exclamation, and when he walked to the well in the center of the village and wanted to turn over and dismount, the iron shoes had just left the stirrup, and the whole person slipped like a boulder tied to the horse's back, and fell heavily to the ground.

The lord finally saw that there were at least four dents behind the knight's plate armor that had been hit by muskets, some of which had lead bullets embedded in the plate armor, and some of which had left small holes in the plate armor, and the blood from those wounds flowed from the buttocks on the lower edge of the plate armor, soaking red the pants on the back of the thighs under the knight's leggings.

The knight hadn't been able to utter a word throughout, but his message had been delivered.

People heard the sound of horses' hooves rushing from all directions of the village, heard the stirring military music, heard the whistles from far and near, and everyone knew that the Ming army was coming.