Since the former earl's family, the housekeeper at that time was Eeloke's grandfather, and the position of steward was divided into two, one was called the chief butler, responsible for external affairs, and the other was called the second butler, responsible for internal affairs, the chief butler was naturally held by Ellock's grandfather, and the position of the second butler was handed over to Ellock's father, and it was since then that the steward of the Earl's Court was firmly controlled by Ellock's family. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

After two generations, although the family's industry has not developed, it has not shrunk, and it has maintained a relatively benign momentum of development, but after Erok came to power, because he was not proficient in these affairs, his control of industrial affairs was far inferior to that of his father.

After 5 years of operation, the development of various industries began to decline, although it was not so bad that it could not pay the imperial finances, but it was a great blow to Erook, at this time his father also became ill due to a stroke, and drove west.

Elok lost confidence in himself at once, and he didn't consult with Darwin and directly posted a job list, recruiting real business experts to help him manage the family, as long as he thought he was a talented person, he could be given the position of three butlers.

There are a lot of applicants, some of them do have some talents, these people have been retained by Elock, and they have all hung up the title of third butler, but there are not many that really satisfy Erook.

A few of these people can be regarded as business experts, and the plan given is to operate steadily and achieve long-term results, and slowly reverse the current decline through 5 to 10 years to achieve the expected goal of a smooth transition.

This is undoubtedly too long for Elok, who hopes to be able to see results immediately in two or three years, but there is no better way for others, Elok can only agree to develop slowly first, and at the same time, he has not relaxed and continues to look for people who can bring changes to the family in the short term, so that after five or six years, because the top management of Kacheng is not optimistic about this plan, and the performance of the people below can be imagined, but the decline that has finally stopped, but don't think about it if you want to develop big.

At this moment, Karn appeared, Karn was a commoner, and at first Elok did not expect Karn to come up with any good ideas, but as soon as Karn came up, he proposed to reduce all kinds of taxes, including the city gate tax and the merchant tax, to attract surrounding merchants to Karlsruhe, in order to increase the volume of trade, so that Karlsruhe would not only be the political center of the region, but also the center of regional trade.

For Erook, who has no more effective means, he just wanted to give it a try, but he didn't expect that although the tax amount was reduced, because of the increase in personnel exchanges, the tax was not reduced, but also greatly increased, and in only three months, the economy of Kacheng rose by nearly 20 percentage points.

Elok tasted the sweetness at once, and naturally wanted to give Karn a big boost, and he gave Karn the position of second butler directly, while Darwin could only be relegated to the third butler.

A year later, the merchants began to wage a price war, triggering a round of vicious competition.

This time, Kahn had to raise taxes to control the continued deterioration of competition, and as a result, a large number of itinerant vendors left Karlsruhe, leaving the consequences of the price war to the local merchants in Karlsruhe, and this round of tax increases did not hurt those foreign merchants who provoked the price war, but let the local merchants bear the burden after the tax increase.

As a result, Erook, who only looked at his grades, trusted Karn very much, and reversed the principle that the grand butler was in charge of external affairs and the second butler was in charge of internal affairs, Karn was in charge of all affairs, and Erok was relegated to the Earl's City and only took care of the affairs of the palace.

After that, the tax should have been reduced immediately to make up for the loss of the city's merchants, but Kahn took advantage of the heavy losses of the city's merchants to start a frenzy to buy various merchants in Karlsruhe, but this did not bring higher revenues, but caused them to decline every year.

But Ellock still believed in Karn as if he had gone mad, and Elok always believed that the decline in financial revenue was only temporary, and it would soon get better, and even Ellock's younger brother Darwin had repeatedly advised Elok to pay attention to Karn and not to be deceived by Karn, but Elok did not hear anyone's words, and still insisted on trusting Karn, even to the point of trampling on the law.

Although the past two years have finally caught Erock's attention due to years of continuous financial deficits, Karn uses the gangsters in the city and his own cronies in various departments to cover up the truth, leading Eelok to believe that these are the result of the unscrupulous merchants uniting against the castle lord's mansion.

It wasn't until the beginning of the year, when the latest financial report was on his desk, that if the family could not make a difference in this last year, he would be completely stripped of the title of nobility (the nobleman would be removed if he disappeared for more than fifty years, but the fief would not be moved) and the fief (the fief of the nobility without the title of nobility would be repossessed if the financial deficit of the fief was more than five years), that he was really anxious, and he immediately approached Fei Wude and asked him to investigate Karn secretly.

Happily, the Count had returned at this time, and Karn's stakes were not secure, and all but one of the treasurers, Baron John, had sold him as the chief steward, and that he had secretly withdrawn Karn's power.

Sitting in the confinement room, Elok carefully combed through the past ten years, and when he looked at this series of problems from the perspective of a bystander, the more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, and his whole clothes were soaked with cold sweat.

The direct consequence of Karn's actions is to destroy the economic foundation of Karlsruhe, so that the financial revenue is declining year by year, and the quality of life of the people in the city has seriously declined, in recent months, a large number of people have moved out of Karlsruhe, seeing that if this continues, the city will be closed in a few years, if it is not for the return of the city lord this time, and he secretly controls the whole city, he still doesn't know when he will be wrong, the ending is too terrible, Erock's heart twitched for a while, and he couldn't help but be afraid.

The small window of the confinement chamber was open and unglazed, and a night breeze blew in, sending a shiver through Eroch's wit, interrupting his memories of Karn, but reminding him of the Earl he had seen the night before.

The Earl was much smaller than he had imagined, and the night three days before, he had taken the West Gate with lightning speed, and of course he had the credit for ordering the city's garrisons not to act rashly.

He secretly sent someone to check it out, but the three groups of people were all detained by the Earl, and no one could approach Simon, who had never been so well guarded, which gave him a new understanding of this guy who climbed up by relying on the princess's skirt.

Think about it, a person who has just come out of the mountains immediately became a lieutenant colonel and senior adviser to the aristocratic management office, but it has only been more than two months, and he has fought two small battles of no more than three or five thousand people, and he has been promoted to the commander of the major general division, and he is not the chief of staff of a war zone, as long as he is a normal person, he can feel the princess's preference for him, as for whether he has real skills, does it matter?

It was such a person, with twenty people, he wanted to defend a gate of a big city, no one could figure it out, and at first Elok couldn't figure it out, so he sent three groups of people to try, but there was no effect, and the fourth time, he sent a reconnaissance squad of the garrison regiment, which touched from the city wall, and they had a brief exchange of fire, but it was not big, no one died on either side, only one reconnaissance squad soldier was shot and wounded in the arm.

The scouts came back and reported that they had built a large number of obstacles on the city walls, and the soldiers were defending behind the obstacles, and they had a large number of bows and crossbows, and for these garrisons, there were not many opportunities to be armoured in peacetime, and they did not have much hostility when they came to reconnoitre, so, again, without armor, in the face of the rain of arrows, they had only one way to go, to retreat.

It was nearly ten o'clock in the evening, and they had a chance to take back the gates with their heavy armor, but Elok did not want to anger the earl, who was the true master of the city.

After midnight, when the arrival of the wolf camp completely killed the hope of retaking the city gates, Elok relaxed, that night, he slept very soundly, for the first time in nearly ten years, he slept so steadily, the burden on his shoulders could be put down, someone came to carry the burden for him, this thing was really beautiful, so, he did not go out in the Earl's Court for the next two days, he was waiting for the Earl to go home, but he did not expect the Earl to be waiting for him to go to the audience.

If he knew the Earl's thoughts, he would definitely rush to the city to see the Earl before dawn the next day, but unfortunately, he would have mistaken the Earl's intentions and wasted two days in vain, which made Yu Wusheng's perception of him plummet, thinking that he was borrowing the entire card city to blackmail the Earl.

It wasn't until noon on the third day that Elok figured it out under Darwin's reminder, and hurriedly prepared all kinds of gifts to find the academy, and he had to make up for it anyway.

When Yu Wuming saw Erok in the conference room of the academy, he was thinking in his heart, how did this person sit in the position of the grand butler of the Earl's Court?

And Ellock saw Yu Wusheng but was shocked by Yu Wusheng's youth, in his opinion, to be able to command a local garrison to win two battalion and company battles alone, the age should be about thirty years old, and the royal family said that this is a young talent, uh, the royal family said, there is usually a lot of water.