187 Political talk (2/2)
Rather than attempting to hide the answer, I openly admitted to the fact that I had no idea myself, before bursting out in a hearty laugh. After a moment that I had to take to calm myself down, I grabbed my chin and started thinking out loud.
”Five people squads for every ship travelling between border to Tarnow, at least a hundred people in Tarnow and the city we are building here, two hundred for the fortress and its outposts… If we ignore the ships' protectors, I think the total number would round up to five or six hundred.”
While for someone from the modern times that didn't sound as much, when taking the current era into consideration, the number I came up was devastating.
Obviously, there were many great nobles that housed even bigger forces, but the size of their estate was often as big as many german princedoms combined! And even with that, outside of war times or when they bolstered their numbers in order to flaunt their strength, not many people held more than two or three hundred men as a stationary force!
”Huh…”
Hearing the answer to his question, Jan was given to be flabbergasted. If I were to be completely honest, I doubted that he himself held such a huge force when all garrisons and personal bodyguards combined!
Yet this situation was given. Most of the armed forces that nobles kept consisted of extremely expensive hussars or another cavalry if they couldn't afford the most famed Commonwealthian unit. On the other hand, my men would be all from either commoner birth or the lowest nobles without any land.
Outside of the rifle and ammunition, both produced locally by my own investments, all they really required was a stable wage and food. When added up, even if I were to pay them in the exact same scheme as I paid my workers, with the wage doubling during any form of fighting, then the cost would still be reasonably small!
”Well, I don't really know what to say… Are you sure you can afford such a massive force?”
Hearing Jan's doubt, I could only thank myself internally for excluding the ship protection units from the calculation. With how I intended to push enough ships on the Dunaj river to turn them from mobile units into basically a floating bridge, threw at the length of the river rather than its width, the number of the protectors could easily grow greater than all of my stationary forces combined!
But while this would pose quite a huge challenge for my treasury to handle such expense, as long as I included the cost of maintaining those troops in the cost that all sorts of merchants would have to pay in order to transport their goods to the customs-free market near Tarnow…
”We have the Russian empire chugging down our throat to the east, always ready to steal the access point to the Baltic sea from us. With the Germans to the west and Ottomans to the south… And don't even get me started at the brewing internal struggle. Unless one is powerful enough to fend for themselves, he will only be eaten by others stronger than him! With how quickly my lands are developing, slowly putting me on par with other great nobles, I don't have any doubts that in due time, more than a single household will turn their eyes to my wealth!”
In fact, it was only a matter of time before some of the less wealthy nobles would attempt to coerce my gold from my pockets for their own use. Be it by blocking the routes that my ships would use, accusing me of breaking the law or outright raiding my lands, all those elements of friendly, neighbours life were common in Commonwealth. That's why, instead of making the common saying that ”Pole is smart after the harm” I preferred to prepare beforehand!