“I have great need of florins, as many as could fill a cistern, and I only have these,” said the Prince, pointing to his money belt. “How can I even begin to accomplish the merest trifle with so very little?”
“Begin by buying wheat, barley, broad beans, rice and anything else you could sow,” answered Knowledge. “Have your soldiers cultivate the fields when they are not engaged in fighting. Hire workmen to lay down new roads and build you storehouses, where you will keep your crops, until you can share them out during the winter, when the forest will be covered with snow, and the wild greens will no longer be in season. Moreover—”
“Moreover the forest with its game, the plain with its wild greens, and the river with its fish shall keep us fed,” interrupted the Prince, his spirit stirred. “Oh, Knowledge! I shall never be able to repay you for all the good you have done me with the advice that you have given me each time I have met you.”
And he dashed off to the camp.
XVII. Work
THE SCOUTS were coming back just then, bringing the news that the enemy had been disbanded, dispersed and scattered, others here and others there, that the entire plain was bestrewn with the arms they had abandoned in their flight, and that the King the Royal Uncle, as a result of his spite and his rage, had fallen ill, and had summoned from his own country the most learned sage to cure him. He intended, he said, once he was well, to raise a new army and resume the warfare.
The Prince then had some of his people gather the discarded weapons of their enemies. He sent Polycarpus to the capital to buy wheat, barley and anything else that could be sown. He sent others to every corner of the kingdom to purchase oxen from the farmers and also their ploughs, which had stood rusting for countless years in the derelict stables.
And seeing the soldiers sitting with their arms crossed, chatting away the time, or lying basking in the sun, or strolling along the riverbank, he summoned them all together and he said to them:
“Come on, countrymen, let us go and plough the fields, so that when they bring us the wheat, we shall be ready to sow.”
And picking up a hoe, he was about to start digging the earth to set the example.
But the soldiers did not let him.
“Not today, my lord,” they told him. “You can’t, not with your wounded arm and bandaged head! Let us do this work. Just tell us where to begin.”
And so, after setting them to work, he took again the road to the capital, and from there he headed for the schoolmaster’s house.
As before, he found two or three famished children there, who were watering and raking the garden of the School of the State — while, lounging lazily astride two chairs, his arm resting on a third, was the schoolmaster, reading Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus.
“Ah, no, this cannot go on any longer!” the Prince said severely. “The time has come for all of us to work, and that includes you, schoolmaster.”
The schoolmaster set down his book, and with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, asked:
“What work can I do? As if I could bring the place into order on my own!”
“You and I and all of us, together we shall bring the place into good order, setting first ourselves to rights!” said the Prince angrily.
“And what could I do, for example?”
“Work, instead of sitting here idle and with your arms crossed!”
Very ashamed, the schoolmaster rose from his seat.
“You have work to give me?” he asked.
“As much as you want,” replied the Prince. “First of all, take these children here who work in your garden and come with me.”
The schoolmaster took the children with him and followed the Prince to Miserlix’s smithy, where a great crowd of young boys and girls came and went, carrying iron from the mines to the blacksmith’s workshop.
“Good greetings to you, my lord,” said Miserlix gaily. “See what good that first street urchin’s example has done to the land! The entire capital is sending me now its children, so they might at least earn their bread. And I have no idea how to feed all these people! My stock of grain has almost run out!”
As he spoke, he was still tirelessly striking away with his hammer at the iron on his anvil.
“That’s quite all right, Miserlix,” said the Prince. “The forest is right at you doorstep, and there are many deer, hares, rabbits and wildfowl, while the plain is filled with wild rocket.”
And turning to the children, who were staring at his bandaged head and wounded arm with eyes full of questions:
“Who amongst you knows how to shoot with a sling?”
They all knew. The sling was the only toy they had ever had.
The Prince turned then to the schoolmaster.
“So, then, master scholar, take this down…”
And he dictated the daily schedule, which the schoolmaster wrote down as follows.
Two hours in the morning and two more in the afternoon were to be spent working in the mineshafts; each child was to carry iron back to Miserlix’s house. One further hour in the morning and one in the afternoon were to be spent doing lessons; the schoolmaster was to hold the lesson in the woods when the weather was fair, and in the School of the State when the weather was foul. And any remaining hours were to be devoted to hunting.
“Each morning every boy will practise shooting with the bow,” ordered the Prince. “In the beginning they will be killing harts and deer, and when they are older they will destroy, should there be need, the enemies of their country.”
“Long live our Prince!” exclaimed the children with great excitement.
And all together they ran to kiss his hands, his robes, anything they could get hold of.
“And who is to quarry in the mines?” asked Miserlix. “The piles of leftover stones have been used up, and the children cannot both dig and transport.”
“The prisoners will be sent down to the pits,” replied the Prince. “Instead of rotting away in prison, let them work for the welfare of the state. Only through work can they become decent human beings again.”
Master Miserlix had finished making the rope ladder with the help of one or two carpenters, and the children were now able to go up and down the pits freely.
“And you,” said the Prince, smiling to Miserlix’s daughter, who had brought him coffee in an iron coffee cup as before, “you and the other young women will be cooking soup for all these people, while the Princess will be cooking it at the camp for the entire army.”
And so it began, from the littlest things to the very greatest, the restructuring and the rebirth of the kingdom of the Fatalists.
From the camp of the defeated enemy, the Prince collected the tents and the equipment of war, and distributed these to his soldiers. From the dead enemies he took clothes, and stored them in the palace cellars, so that he could distribute them again to the men in the winter when it turned cold.
Afterwards, he divided his soldiers into four units, in accordance with the trade or craft that they each had known before they became soldiers. The farmers ploughed and sowed the fields; the builders built warehouses and mills and laid out roads; the woodsmen and the carpenters felled trees and worked on the ships of the master builder; and the blacksmiths and the locksmiths worked in the smithy of Miserlix, who oversaw them all.
Every morning, before they applied themselves to any other task, everyone went out hunting, and with their arrows they killed deer, harts, rabbits or wild goats, and with the sling they killed wildfowl, while the elderly, who could no longer rush out to the woods and to the mountains, cast their nets or their lines into the river and caught fish.