Bulgaria, Bergna Village.
The elder sat on the ground in desolation. The men around him were filled with righteous indignation, while the women and children were drowned in grief.
The Russians had first taken away their weapons, then declared the land nationalized. As compensation, however, the villagers were permitted to purchase land on credit.
The Tsar had granted them freedom, but not land. Now, from masters of the land, they had become tenants cultivating it under debt.
If that had been all, it would not have differed much from the Timar system once practiced by the Ottoman Empire, and they could have accepted it.
Yet this was only the beginning. Freemen also had the obligation to pay taxes: beyond the necessary monetary taxes, there was an endless variety of taxes in kind, as well as corvée labor and military service lasting twenty-five years.
Moreover, the town's school had been ordered to reform. All languages and writing except Russian were banned, and every teacher was required to teach in Russian.
Of course, this made little difference to these peasants. After all, the overwhelming majority of them were unlikely to ever come into contact with writing in their entire lives.
But the changes to the regional bishop genuinely affected their lives. Nicholas I had personally reappointed the local bishops, replacing every disobedient hardliner and heretic.
Through this war, Nicholas I had fully realized the importance of roads, and so he began assigning corvée labor.
Bergna Village was relatively fortunate, since Bulgaria was chiefly flat terrain.
But South Serbia and Bosnia were miserable. Mountain paths were rugged and treacherous; carving a road through the mountains was no easy task, especially in the mechanically underdeveloped nineteenth century.
Russia's policies remained overbearing, but compared to its old habit of massacring cities, exterminating peoples, and deporting