As Alexander swam inside his own mind bubble, almost playing 3D chess with himself using the various math calculations, everyone else decided to it was to get their lord back to earth.
“Ahem,” Cambyses took it upon herself to break Alexander out of the trance-like state and then asked, “Does the pasha find anything wrong with my workings?”
Alexander almost could not keep a straight face when he looked at Cambyses’s almost cat-like smug expression, her eyes twinkling with delight.
‘How does it feel to get beaten by a girl?’ It seemed to say, which seemed to produce a wry, shy smile.
‘Ahhh, embarrassed Alex is so cute,’ She chuckled at the contorting face.
But Alexander moments later recovered and decided to turn the tables around.
He was no greenhorn to being corrected after all.
It might be a novelty for him in his life, but in his previous life there had been numerous times when he was corrected and he corrected other.
And along the way, he had picked on a myriad of ways on how to both admit being wrong without actually admitting being wrong and also not admitting being wrong while actually being wrong.
And now, he decided to use one of the techniques belonging to the latter category.
So he cleverly retorted, “Haha, excellent, excellent. It’s said that a lord’s ability can be judged by the ability of his retinue. Hahaha, good job. Immaculate calculations.”
Alexander tried to make it look like this was all his credit because it was he who bought Cambyses here.
Cambyses was unimpressed by this showing to say the least.
‘What a sore loser,’ She swore, feeling that she had learned a new level of level of shamelessness about her husband.
Alexander knew this was a low blow to use and so tried to quickly move the meeting forward.
“As my lords can see, Cambyses has perfectly pointed out why this campaign needs to happen. Though we are not in critical need of grain as we have some stock that we bought from Adhan and Pasha Farzah will be providing us with more, we still need to acquire the land if we want to be self-sufficient.”
Then he raised his fist into the air and gently slammed the table with a dull thud, he declared, “And now is the time optimum time to strike. Because as soon as spring comes, the total men at our disposal with vanish like the morning dew vanishes under the radiant rays of the sun.”
The men and one woman raised a look of inquiry at his incongruous statement, as Alexander was just saying that he did not have enough land to feed so much people and now he was saying he won’t have enough men?
What did it mean?
So Alexander elucidated, “As a farmer can take care of two to three hectares of land by himself, the two thousand square kilometers or two hundred thousand hectares of farmland will need to be plowed by seventy to eighty thousand (70,000 – 80,000) men.”
“And to support these farmers, to cook for them, to do their household chores, to sew clothes for them, and to do a hundred different miscellaneous things, there needs to be a woman, i.e- his wife.” He pointed out.
“That brings the people just producing food, from grain to vegetable to meat and fish to rearing various animals to around hundred and fifty thousand (150,000).” Alexander calculated.
“And then there are the infants and infirm, the lame and the physically disabled. Let’s say all combined is ten thousand (10,000).”
This number might seem too low because each farmer alone could have five-six, and even ten kids.
But one should look closely to see that Alexander used the word infant, not children.
This is because in this time period, children were seen as just small men and women and expected to perform their part of the duties.
Young boys, aged as small as five or six, would accompany their fathers to the field at the crack of dawn and perform back-breaking work alongside their parent, while young girls of similar age would help with household chores, cooking, cleaning, cleaning, and mending.
There were only three stages of life- babies, children, and adults, with no concept of the word teenager, which was a very modern concept.
In fact, some even thought that there were only two stages- babies and adults because children worked just as hard as the adults, ie- close to their physical limits.
Life was crude and hard, and every member of the family who could walk and talk was required to chip in just to survive.
“That leaves us with just forty thousand (40,000) people,” Alexander loudly said the number.
“From there ten to fifteen thousand (10,000 – 15,000) will have to work in the mines to feed our massive need for stone, iron, and limestone, all needed to make various products and fuel the infrastructure projects we are launching.”
“And then we are keeping a standing army of six thousand (6,000) infantrymen, five hundred (500) cavalrymen with five hundred (500) servants, another five hundred (500) cavalrymen which I have a secret use for, and one thousand (1,000) city guards, which gives us the number – eight thousand five hundred (8,500).
“Let’s say another five hundred (500) more are noblemen and women, city administrators, doctors, judges, teachers and priests, and priestesses.”
“That leaves only us with a mere sixteen thousand (16,000) people that are the real city dwellers. It would be only these sixteen thousand (16,000) people, that would form all the entire different kinds of occupations unique to a city.”
“Most will become artisans like blacksmiths, potters, bakers, tanners, tailors, carpenters, and the list could go on, some will become merchants and shopkeepers, and a few will even become mercenaries, thugs, and criminals, with a scant number even becoming prostitutes and beggars.”
After Alexander finished, the men could easily figure out why Alexander said now was the time to strike.
Because now, only a fraction of the men were engaged in farming, living off the food stocks that Alexander bought and so many hands that would not otherwise be available were open to them currently.
Meanwhile, Alexander was saying to himself, ‘God, I hate eating,’ as he could scarcely believe that the two hundred thousand people had magically transformed into just sixteen thousand (16,000) urban people, a more than ninety percent decrease.
All because people needed to eat.
And this also illustrated perfectly why no one kept a large standing army.
Not because they were stupid, but because they were smart.
Like in the case of Alexander, if he disbanded the army, the urban people’s population would go up by a third, to almost twenty-four thousand (24,000).
Of course, the total number of city dwellers would not be really as low as twenty-four thousand (24,000) as Alexander calculated.
Because though some farmers with farmlands too far away from the city will leave in villages and around small manors ruled by Shordars (Barons), everyone within a fifteen-kilometer radius usually tended to live in the city.
It was this particular number because it took a man around three hours to travel this distance.
And thus such a journey of walking for three hours, working the whole day till late noon, and then being back by dusk using the same three-hour-long trek was hellish but certainly doable.
But why did people go through so much trouble just to live in a city?
Because a city had a certain allure to the people.
For peasants, it provided the allure of nightlife like bars, gambling dens, and brothels, a better range of food, a more varied social life, and most of all, security.
The security of the city’s tall walls.
Alexander would calculate that since Zanzan was a port city, the land portion of the city formed a semicircle, and with the soil east and north of here being fully fertile, once taken over, around twenty thousand (20,000) peasants including their family members could live in the city.
Another ten thousand (10,000) fishermen would also call the city home, setting out to the Mad Sea to catch their living, thus bringing the expected inhabitants number to around sixty thousand (60,000).
This was not a shabby number, as the city had a pre-drought and pre-war population of one hundred thousand (100,000). .
And in Alexander’s previous life, London in the 1500s had a population of around fifty thousand (50,000).
But it was still a far cry from the original two hundred thousand (200,000) and it made Alexander bleed.
But Alexander knew he could not mope, everyone was in the same boat as him, some much worse, and so he mightily said, “As we have the numbers now, it is the perfect time to attack east. Though we can’t conquer the entire ten thousand square kilometers right away, we will aim to take over at least a third of it, around three thousand square kilometers.”