Volume 3 Chapter 3 - Badly battered Count Stagg (1/2)

Count Stagg had been feeling dissatisfied lately, even feeling somewhat battered.

He had already taken over for Count Sean for three months now and not a single thing that he did had succeeded.

Before coming to Banta City, he thought that his family having him take this small role as a City Lord was a waste of his talents.

In his opinion, Banta City’s problems were a piece of cake. They could randomly send someone here, even Baron Belil, the one who had been in Banta City, who he considered a small child was not a problem.

But he still came in the end only because Banta City had become the center of the battle between the Lampuri Kingdom’s two major factions.

The Stagg Family had paid a very large price to take this position as the City Lord, so naturally there could be no mistakes.

Banta City was just a small city, so it was impossible for Duke Stagg as the head of the Stagg Family to take over. In the end, they chose Count Mannel Stagg.

As the blood related younger brother of Duke Stagg, he had the absolute trust of Duke Stagg. At the same time, because he was older and had quite a bit of experience, people were assured of leaving this matter to him.

Before this, Count Stagg was quite relaxed because he felt that he could easily accomplish his family’s goal. He could let everyone see that Banta City was a city with agriculture at its base, which was definitely more important than a city that focused on business.

But when he came to Banta City, other than the matter of dealing with the Frestech Chamber of Commerce being smooth in the beginning, nothing else had gone smoothly.

The first thing he did after coming to Banta City was evaluate the land usage of Banta City and he carried out his impeccable plan. He had driven the Frestech Chamber of Commerce out of Sandton Manor, not letting Xu Yi not even dare to fart.

But he implemented this policy not only to expel the Frestech Chamber of Commerce. His real plan was to survey all the land in Banta City, so that all the usable land in Banta City could be opened before the fall harvest, greatly increasing the harvest amount.

But his final result caused him to vomit out a mouthful of blood.

This was because in the survey data, all of Banta City’s land had already been reclaimed and there wasn’t a spare hectare of land at all!

Like this, it meant that he couldn’t reclaim any land at all and increase Banta City’s harvest yield. He had lost the possibility of creating great merit.

On the contrary, if he didn’t even meet Banta City’s harvest yield from last year’s fall harvest or even fell behind, it would mean that he would have completely failed in taking over as the City Lord.

Now mentioning him disappointing the family, he would even cause the Stagg Family to be blamed by the other nobles in their faction.

The more important thing was that if he couldn’t show any results, he couldn’t prove that Banta City was better managed by him than it was when Count Sean was in charge. This would allow the king to have enough reason to reject the suggestions of the nobles from their faction, allowing him to promote business development in the kingdom.

Like this, including the Stagg Family, their prestige in the kingdom would be greatly affected.

This was something their faction couldn’t accept.

So even if he wanted to vomit blood, Count Stagg worked hard to find a chance to increase productivity.

There was no way to reclaim more land, so the only way was to increase manpower.

However, when he was thinking of how to fix the problem of manpower, Count Stagg found a large joke.

Through the survey data, Count Stagg found that there was a Cantona Chamber of Commerce that had obtained a large patch of farmland from citizens and were farming on this land themselves.

According to the statistics of the City Lord’s Manor, this Cantona Chamber of Commerce was actually subletting land from seven hundred and forty six peasants. It was a land that exceeded twenty hectares, which was even more than what the Stagg Family had in Banta City!

After seeing this problem, Count Stagg’s eyes lit up.

This Cantona Chamber of Commerce didn’t have a noble behind them, but they actually grabbed so much farmland. Not only was this unreasonable, it could even be considered treason!

So Count Stagg through the City Lord’s Manor ordered the Cantona Chamber of Commerce to return the land to the peasants, guaranteeing that they would have land to farm.

Count Stagg thought that he would receive the approval of the people from this because to him, this Cantona Chamber of Commerce certainly had some shady connection with Count Sean. They used Count Sean’s influence to forcefully take the land from these farmers.

For all the normal peasants in the Lampuri Kingdom, their land was their only way of supporting their family. If they didn’t even have land, these normal peasants could only starve to death.