Earl Stark has been feeling very unhappy recently, even a little anxious.
It has been more than three months since he took over as Earl of Satsuma and became the Lord of Bonta City, but so far he has not been able to completely succeed in anything he wants to do.
Before coming to Bangta City, he thought that his family's decision to let him serve as the city lord was simply overqualified.
In his opinion, the problem of Bonta City is a piece of cake. Just send someone here, even if it is solved by Baron Bilier, who is already in Bonta City and he has always regarded him as a little kid, there will be no difficulty at all. .
The reason why he finally came was because Bangta City has now become the center of the battle between the two major factions in the Lampali Kingdom.
The Stark family paid a great price to finally win the position of city lord, so there was no room for failure.
Bonta City is just a small city. It is of course impossible to directly let the head of the family, Duke Stark, serve as the city lord. So, after many choices, he finally chose Count Manil Starr.
As the younger brother of Duke Stark, he has Duke Stark's absolute trust. At the same time, because he is older and relatively stable and mature, he is naturally easy to put people at ease.
Before that, Earl Stark was also very confident about himself, because he felt that he could accomplish the family's goals well and prove to everyone that making Bonta City an agricultural-based city would definitely be better than becoming an agricultural city. A city dominated by commerce is far more important.
But when he actually took charge of Bangta City, except for the initial attack on the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce, which was surprisingly smooth, everything else he wanted to do was very unsatisfactory.
The first thing he did after coming to Bangta City was to re-evaluate the land situation in Bangta City, and with this impeccable policy implementation, he drove the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce out of Sanqidun Manor, allowing Xu Yi to even Don't even dare to fart.
However, his implementation of this policy is not just to drive away the Xinfei Chamber of Commerce, but he is really planning to rely on this policy to re-calculate the land use situation around Bangta City, so that he can take advantage of all the land use in Bangta City before the autumn harvest. All arable land was measured and cultivated, thereby achieving a significant increase in yield during the autumn harvest.
However, when he got the measurement results, he almost spit out a mouthful of blood.
Because based on the results of measurement statistics. Now Bangta City has actually reclaimed all the arable land within Bangta City, and there is not even a hectare of idle land!
This means that he cannot make a fuss about the area of cultivated land at all, causing the food production in Bangta City to skyrocket. Thus losing the possibility of creating this greatest credit.
On the contrary, if the food he harvested in this autumn harvest does not meet the standards of Bangta City's autumn harvest last year, or even worse, it means that he has completely failed as the city lord this time.
Not to mention that he will live up to the expectations of the entire family, and may even cause the Stark family to be questioned by other great nobles within the same faction.
More importantly, if he can't achieve results and can't prove that Bonta City after he took charge can create better results than when Earl Satsuma was in charge, then His Majesty the King will have enough reasons to reject their offer. A group of nobles proposed to vigorously promote commercial development in the kingdom.
In this way, including the Stark family. The reputation within the kingdom will be greatly affected.
And this is what the nobles of their faction cannot accept the most.
So even though he wanted to vomit blood, Earl Stark still worked hard to find the possibility of improving his performance.
Farmland cannot be increased out of thin air, so the only space left for efforts is manpower.
However, when planning and thinking about manpower issues, Earl Stark made a big joke.
By measuring statistical results. Count Stark discovered that there was a Cantona Chamber of Commerce in Bonta City, and actually obtained the farmland they originally rented from a large number of farmers outside the city, and rented it all for farming.
According to statistics from the city lord's palace, the Cantona Chamber of Commerce actually now owns farmland subleased from as many as 746 farmers, with a total area of more than 20 hectares. Even the Bistack family has farmland in Bonta. The city's territory is much larger!
After seeing this question, Earl Stark's eyes suddenly lit up.
This Cantona Chamber of Commerce has no aristocratic background. How dare you hold so much arable farmland? This is not only extremely unreasonable, it can even be said to be treasonous!
So Earl Stark unceremoniously ordered the Cantona Chamber of Commerce through the city lord's palace to immediately return these lands to those farmers to ensure that those farmers had farmland to rent and plant.
Count Stark thought that what he did would be supported by everyone, because in his opinion, the Cantona Chamber of Commerce must have some improper relationship with the previous city owner, Count Satsuma. With the power of Count Satsuma, farmers were forced to hand over the farmland they rented to the Cantona Chamber of Commerce.
For all the ordinary farmers in the Lampali Kingdom, the farmland they rent is their only hope of supporting their families. If they don't have these farmlands, these ordinary farmers may only starve to death.
So Earl Stark felt that what he did was really upright. Be confident and ready to receive praise and support from all.
However, the reality was completely unexpected to him.
When he ordered the Cantona Chamber of Commerce to return the farmland to farmers, the Cantona Chamber of Commerce protested, claiming that the farmland it rented had been approved by the city government, without any procedural issues and was completely legal. If the city lord ordered him to return these farmlands, he must give a reasonable reason.
Of course, Earl Stark was prepared for the protest against the Cantona Chamber of Commerce. The agreement signed with the previous city lord had nothing to do with the current city lord. All agreements signed with the city lord's palace will be automatically invalidated, and all must be re-examined before deciding whether to approve the legal agreement. The reason was stuffed back.
However, this reason for replying to the Cantona Chamber of Commerce was directly spread by the Cantona Chamber of Commerce in anger, so not only the "Banta Daily" but also other newspapers in Bonta City and several surrounding cities followed. The incident was reported.
This trivial matter, which Earl Stark seemed to be not worth mentioning, caused an uproar in Bonta City and several surrounding cities in a short period of time. And the person who supported Earl Stark's reason was almost one person. nothing.
Even the nobles in Bonta City, who in Earl Stark's opinion should definitely stand on the same front as him, expressed silence on this matter, and some even expressed their implicit opposition.
The reaction of civilians other than the nobles to this incident was even more intense.
After the Bonta Daily reported this incident, countless chambers of commerce in Bonta City and even several surrounding cities rushed into the city lord's palace and asked Count Stark to re-audit the agreement previously signed by the two parties.
Many chambers of commerce even expressed their opinions to Earl Stark tactfully or simply because of Earl Stark's actions. They have lost their trust in the Bangta City City Lord's Palace. The agreement previously signed by the two parties is directly invalidated, and they require the City Lord's Palace to immediately settle all the interest distribution issues between the two parties.
Earl Stark was unexpected for this situation. When he asked the city lord's palace affairs officer to count all the chambers of commerce that had agreements with the city lord's palace, he was shocked to find that there were as many as seventy-three chambers of commerce that had signed various agreements with the Bangta City lord's palace led by Earl Satsuma. !
The products sold by these seventy-three chambers of commerce include everything from the ongoing riverbank reconstruction project of the Sandy River to a rag used in the kitchen of the city lord's mansion.
If the agreements signed by these chambers of commerce and the city lord's palace are invalidated and all transactions with the city lord's palace are stopped, Bangta City will be paralyzed almost instantly.
At this time, Earl Stark realized that he had done an extremely stupid thing, which caused him and all the affairs officers in the city lord's palace to fall into extreme confusion.
Actually, seriously. This cannot be considered stupid on his part.
Because according to the experience of other places in the Lampali Kingdom, no chamber of commerce dares to directly confront the city lord's palace, because to the lord of a city, a small chamber of commerce is nothing at all.
But Bangta City is completely different from other places in the Lampali Kingdom.
Almost every chamber of commerce in this city dared to grin and bear with the city lord for their own interests and argue vigorously.
Small chambers of commerce like the Cantona Chamber of Commerce. They would not be taken seriously by Earl Stark at all. However, faced with the reasons given by Earl Stark at will, the Cantona Chamber of Commerce did not choose to swallow their anger and obey. Instead, they risked irritating Earl Stark. The risk directly exposed this matter to the public.
More importantly, the newspaper industry in Bangta City and several surrounding cities is extremely developed. Any trivial matter will be published in the newspaper and known to everyone, let alone such a breaking news.
When everything was clearly exposed in front of everyone, Count Stark naturally did not dare to use violent force to directly suppress the Cantona Chamber of Commerce, and he also had to deal with the other seventy-three large and small chambers of commerce. Require.
However... if you really want to talk about it, in the whole incident, Earl Stark's reaction was the most unexpected. But they are ordinary farmers.
Earl Stark thought that he had helped these ordinary farmers regain their farmland from the Cantona Chamber of Commerce, and these ordinary farmers would definitely be grateful to him.
Unexpectedly, when the affairs officers he sent informed the farmers that they would regain their farmland, they were met with a cold face without exception, and some farmers even directly scolded them for meddling in their own business.
More exaggerated. Several farmers were deeply angry about this, and loudly cursed the city lord's palace for not caring about the lives of ordinary farmers like them. Earl Stark was not worthy of being the city lord at all.
When faced with other people's doubts and objections, Earl Stark could still comfort himself that those guys didn't understand him at all, but in the face of these scoldings from the most simple and unmodified ordinary farmers, he could no longer remain calm. Can't get up.
He didn't understand that even though he had helped these ordinary farmers regain the farmland that allowed them to live, how would they react like this
Could it be that... none of these farmers want farmland