A few days passed by, during the time, Charles would handle most of the issues in the country. Victor spent most of his time scouring the Internet about salt production and fertilizer use. He also researched about the current rulers in each of its rivals.
Outside the palace, a carriage stopped. Paul stepped down and hurriedly looked for the young king. He had good news regarding his mission.
"Your majesty, I have completed the task you gave me. I met with Count Gosse. I offered to move him south towards the more richer areas of France in exchange of the region and then I bought the titles from the barons with the livres(Old French Currency)."
"Did you bribe them to not tell anyone about our transaction?"
"Yes, your Majesty, They won't tell anyone about us buying the land from them."
"Good, to satiate the labor that salt production needs, we need to bring serfs."
During the middle ages, Europe was heavily stratified, and the one of the lowest classes were the serfs. They were tied to the lands of their lord and had to work for them. Most often than not, they were treated very poorly.
"How many would we need, your Majesty?"
"Get about 1000 and bring them to the Normandy. also set up a trading company so we can sell the salt without using the name of the royal family."
"Right away!"
Paul looked pleased as he walked away. The old man was very loyal to the royal family, scarily so. His family have been under servitude for generations serving the monarch, meaning Victor is able to trust him.
With the foundations set, Victor had to depart towards Manche to directly govern it. His first duty was to find reliable allies from civilians instead of the nobles. Victor did not trust the current nobles especially because of his age. Seriously, who would believe a ten year old is a good ruler.
"Guards!"
"Yes, your Majesty?"
"Prepare me a carriage without the royal sigils."
"But Yo-"
"No buts, I need a plain carriage to travel without people recognizing me"
'They always ask questions...'
After a short while, the carriage was prepared. Victor decided to only take a handful of guards along the way to stay as undercover as possible.
It took them an entire week to get to the region. Few days after their arrival, the serfs also arrived. He lined them up in front of his manor, west of Cherbourg, and greeted them.
Everyone looked at the small child looking at them.
"Greetings, I am Victor !, king of France."
The crowd erupted in shock.
"Is he really the king?"
"I don't know, he seems very young."
Victor looked at them with a wide smile.
"I know you may doubt it, but this is the seal of the royal family."
Victor pulled at a seal with the royal coat of arms and pointed it to the crowd. The crowd went silent immediately as they have just offed a royal.
"Don't worry I won't do anything to you. Instead, I need you to work for on a secret project away from the rest of France. What is it you may ask? Well it's making salt."
The crowd were confused as the region didn't have any known salt mines. But Victor kept smiling.
"You won't be mining for salt, but instead, making it out of sea water."
At the same time, in the northwest corner of Manche, craftsman and masons were making the ovens while the large cauldrons were being brought by horses. The oven looked like a large fireplace due to how it was built.
Victor taught them how to make the salt and told them to store them in barrels to be sold. Though it had decent expenses at first but, the next few months would bring in much money into Victor's pockets.
His next big problem is selling it. He did set up a trading company but, with it being unknown, he did not know how much he could sell it for. The normal price he understood was a a decent amount of copper coins while a bulk could sell for silvers. This excited him, he could raise a larger army if he exported the salt from the region. At this point, salt came from many different regions but every country had high taxes on them, even France. He planned to replace the tax later on since he could now easily replace that income which was always fluctuating.
Victor's next plan was to raise a modern standing army that exceeded the regular French army. The first thing in that plan was to increase food yield. The middle ages had a many famines and farms would produce 470 to 1000 kg per hectare unlike the modern period. One issue is Europe's lack of using Fertilizer. Even manure is not used. The Ming Dynasty in China, during the time was superior to Europe in agricultural technologies.
Thus he told the few people he brought to spread news that he wanted both human and animal waste to be stored and some serfs would come to take it away. In order for it not to spread to other parts of the country, he decided it would be best to take it to an area and make a fertilizer workshop which would dry it out so that the smell would disappear and it would become indistinguishable.
Since it was still the planting season, he had the current serfs spread out the manure since he had no time to dry it.
(I replaced the currency names since I had difficulty with all the names)