The generals of the first line of the North Court and the generals of the first line of Anxi are also familiar with each other, and most of the time the North Court Festival is concurrently served by the Anxi Festival Envoy. In terms of political and strategic gravity, the level of the Anxi Jiedu is also higher than that of the Beiting Jiedu, just as the Hexi Jiedu is higher than the Anxi Jiedu Envoy.

Although there is no clear and explicit provision in the middle, the conventions and conventions should not be taken lightly, although everyone is at the same level. But in the eyes of everyone, the transfer of Anxi Jiedu to Hexi is a promotion, and vice versa.

This is the reason why Li Siye can only be the envoy of the Beiting Festival, his combat exploits are not as good as Gao Xianzhi, who is responsible for commanding the battle, even with the help of the Yang family and the blessing of the shuffling dance, he can only achieve the level of the chief officer of the Beiting. Of course, the matter of dancing can't be spread yet, otherwise it will be criticized by others for relying on dancing to get on top.

Zhou Yi and Zang Xiyan did not know how he obtained the Beiting Jiedu Envoy, but only knew that a war against Xiao Bolu produced two Jiedu Envoys. They did not dare to doubt the difficulty and significance of this war.

But usually in a war, only the merit of the commander is enough to promote the envoy, who has ever heard of the deputy commander and his subordinates being promoted to the same level as the commander-in-chief? Unless he played a decisive role in the battle, or was on par with the general's merits, it would be unfair to the commander and other generals.

Neither of them dared to look down on this newcomer, and the person who rose up with Gao Xianzhi had two brushes anyway.

As soon as Li Siye took office, he inspected the army and city defenses, instead of going into the Jiedu to experience the mansion and enjoy the taste of being an official. During his inspection, he found many problems in the Beiting Army, first of all, the amount of military salaries, the salaries of the grassroots soldiers of the Han Navy were significantly lower than the grassroots level of the Anxi Army, so that the soldiers often deserted or did private work.

This situation is especially serious in the garrison of the city, the Beiting army has jurisdiction over ten garrison cities, the lack of military pay has given birth to a new profession, and the guard is the nickname for the soldiers who run out to pick up private work. They served as bodyguards and swordsmen for caravans, and crossed the Dzungar basin to steal sheep and horses from nomadic tribes and sell them, and those who dared to do such things were usually highly skilled and daring.

The guards went out to do business all year round, so that the troops in the garrison were usually only half of the full number. Li Siye believed that this situation must be cured, but he did not make a big deal about the strict investigation. If you want to stop the guards from going out without permission, you must solve their livelihood problems, and the Beiting Metropolitan Protectorate has to find the reason from itself, and only by increasing their salaries can the soldiers settle down and garrison.

Besides, not everyone can be a guard, and those who can run out to dart, rob, and steal sheep are all soldiers in the Beiting Army who can fight and run.

In order to solve this problem, it was necessary to know the source of the salaries of the three armies of the North Garden, and he consulted the account books of income and expenditure in the treasury of the Metropolitan Protectorate Cangcao Mansion. The problem is not too big, there must be misappropriation and deficit in the middle, but it has not yet reached the point of tearing the skin of the face in a big way.

The soldiers relied on the farmland of the military cantonment to solve the grain and grass, and half of the soldiers' salaries were replaced by the distribution of grain. If the soldiers wanted to exchange money, they had to sell the millet and wheat they had at home. The scale of the Han Navy's tuntian is far superior to that of the Qiuci army, but the economic level is half that of the Qiuci army. Most of the soldiers at the grassroots level of the Anxi Army have private horses, but the grassroots level of the Beiting Army cannot reach such a level, which also shows the poverty of the Beiting economy from the side.

The trade route of the Silk Road has a road through the territory of Beiting, along the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains through broken leaves to Dashi, and is weaker than Anxi on the trade route. However, Gaochang is rich in grapes in its territory, and melons are also abundant in Yizhou and Xizhou, which are not available in the four towns of Anxi. Even in the future, the former place of Luntai gradually developed into Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, which fully demonstrates the abundant resources and geographical advantages of this place.

Li Siye briefly analyzed that the reason why Beiting's economic conditions were not as good as Anxi was because of the unscientific way of taxation. The income of the four towns of Anxi mainly depends on the commercial tax and tuntian, which accounts for only a small part, and most of the income comes from the warehouse merchant tax of the four towns and the post stations along the way. The situation in Beiting is completely different from that of Anxi, but it copied Anxi's tax collection method, of course, it is not adaptable. The commercial tax revenue of Beiting mainly comes from the gate tax of Tingzhou City, Gaochang City, and Yiwu City, but these three cities are not far from each other, at most they are three or two post distances. In order to reduce expenses, the caravans also tried to pass through only one city, and even did not pass through the city or use the locals to escape paying taxes.

Of course, this can't be blamed on the successive Beiting Protectorates, only because there is no commercial tax in the tax provisions of the Tang Dynasty, and there is no monopoly of salt and iron in the Han Dynasty that was monopolized by the government. Even in the vast Central Plains, only the eastern and western cities in the big cities collected a certain amount of municipal taxes, and all other commercial activities were not taxed. Therefore, in the early Tang Dynasty, there were many merchants who were rich and rivaled the country, such as Wang Yuanbao and Dou Yi.

Therefore, the Xizhou and Yizhou of Tingzhou are vast and sparsely populated, and the rent is not enough to support the government and army of the Beiting Metropolitan Protectorate, and the commercial taxes collected at the city gate are small, resulting in the seemingly thriving Beiting Metropolitan Protectorate looking very poor.

Li Siye thinks that this situation needs to change, but he is not in a hurry for such a moment, he wants to go to Anxi first and arrange his team and family members to take over.

Ten days after he came to Tingzhou to take office, Guo Ziyi, the deputy protector of Beiting, who returned to his hometown and province to bury his father, also returned to Tingzhou, which made Li Siye full of vanity and surprise. Guo Ziyi is now his subordinate, and he originally thought that his promotion was too slow and lower than Gao Xianzhi, which was too embarrassing for the traverser, but now he feels not so aggrieved.

Guo Ziyi came to the main hall in the backyard of the Duhu Mansion, and reported to the new Jiedu envoy, Yan Xiaosi, a personal soldier, led people to be on duty outside the hall, and stepped forward to stop and ask when he saw the comer, Guo Ziyi hugged his fist generously: "Subordinate Guo Ziyi asks to see Zhongcheng." ”

Yan Xiaosi asked the other party to wait, and immediately returned to the study to report to Li Siye.

After Li Siye heard this, he hurriedly wrapped his head and tidied up his clothes, coughed heavily and said, "Please let him in." ”

Yan Xiaosi was very surprised, isn't Guo Ziyi a little deputy protector? What is unique about it that makes Zhongcheng treat it so carefully.

Yan Xiaosi went out and invited Guo Ziyi in. Li Siye knelt in front of the desk, and a faint smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.

Guo Ziyi bowed down and crossed his hand at him: "The lowly Gao Xianzhi meets Li Zhongcheng." ”

He smiled and stretched out his hand to invite him to take a seat: "Guo Duhu, please take a seat." ”

Guo Ziyi sat on the right side of the study, raised his hands and crossed his hands to speak: "I heard that Zhongcheng and Gao Xianzhi jointly planned the march and supply of the expedition to Xiaobolu, Zhongcheng must have unique experience in long-distance attack tactics, which is exactly what Beizhi wants to learn from you, and it is also applicable to the long-distance trek operations of our Han Navy." ”

In the end, it was Guo Ziyi, and the meeting was not a polite way to win over feelings, but a learning posture to improve the goodwill of the leader.

This also allowed Li Siye to quickly find his position, even if the person in front of him is bright and bullish in the future, he is just a deputy protector now, if he doesn't know this person's achievements in the future, will he still look at him differently like now? Of course not, so he still felt that he should have a correct attitude and treated him as an ordinary general.

"Guo Du has protected Qian, there must be my teacher in the threesome, you and I have our own strengths, just exchange and learn from each other. However, at the beginning of his tenure, he learned that the combat power of the Beiting Army was not weak, but whether the military salary was too low, and whether this would make the morale of the soldiers weaker than that of the Anxi Army. Therefore, I decided to solve the problem of open source of the financial revenue of the Beiting Metropolitan Protectorate at the beginning of my tenure, and asked Guo Duhu to take care of the affairs of the military for a while. ”

Guo Ziyi paused and asked, "Zhongcheng wants to increase the wealth of the Beiting Metropolitan Protectorate?" This is not easy, Tingzhou, Xizhou, and Yizhou are vast and sparsely populated, with many business trips and small settled populations, and even Yongye fields cannot be granted, and the income from rent and income is naturally not as good as that of the rich state in the Central Plains. ”

"Besides," he stopped smiling and said: "In my opinion, the salaries of the three armies of Hanhai, Yiwu, and Tianshan are not low, and although the salaries of the soldiers are not as good as those of the Anxi Army, they are basically on par with the Chishui and Dadou armies in Hexi, and they are slightly better than the salaries of the soldiers under the command of the Jiannan Jiedu Envoy." Moreover, as martial artists, their responsibility is to defend the border and defend the country, make contributions to the saints and the Tang Dynasty, and they can live with enough money, how can they forget their roots for the sake of wealth and profit. ”

Li Siye felt quite strange, didn't he say that the more difficult the conditions, the higher the salary, although Beiting retained a part of the government soldiers, but the recruitment of soldiers has accounted for a large part, and the essence of recruitment is military salary. Besides, not everyone is as high-minded and loyal as you Guo Ziyi.