The prefect of Yichang is vacant, and there is no chief officer.

Lu Heng, the former prefect of Yichang, was given the law on the spot by Lord Turge, the deputy capital of the Eight Banners, because of his collaboration with the enemy.

The relevant charges have already been handed in.

The power to appoint and dismiss officials in Fuzhou and counties, except for Yunnan (Western Election), is currently in the hands of the officials in Yanjing.

Therefore, the new prefect will not be able to take office for at least another month.

Local and provincial officials currently only have the power to make recommendations on the prefect's candidates.

For example, if Zhang Changgeng admires a certain official, he will write to the court to praise this person as an official and clear and has quite a lot of political achievements, and he will never say that this person is suitable for any position in the province.

Only when the imperial court came to ask the governor for his opinion, Zhang Changgeng would give a reference opinion.

This is, of course, to prevent the local officials from forming parties for personal gain and drawing each other together to form a small clique against the imperial court.

Usually there is a vacancy in chief, and the second officer will be in charge.

The prefect's second official is the same as the governor and the general judge, which is equivalent to the adjutant of the later office.

There are actual officials in these two official vacancies, but the one who really has the final say in Yichang City is Qian Wentao, Yunyang Grain Road.

Yunyang, like Huguang and Biyuan, was one of the three governors of Huguang Governor's moderation, stationed in Yunyang Prefecture, Yunxian County, in charge of the military and civilian affairs of the five provinces and eight prefectures in the adjacent areas of Hubei, Henan, Sichuan, and Shaanxi.

That is to say, Yunyang is actually a provincial-level administrative region.

It might be more appropriate to call him the Governor of the Three Gorges.

Yichang is not under the control of the governor of Yunyang, but under the supervision of the governor of Huguang, so the grain road of Yunyang came to Yichang to point fingers, which is equivalent to a provincial official in Henan running to a city in Hebei to be the master.

It is not institutionally permissible and cannot be possible.

However, Qian Daotai did it.

Because there was a group of Manchurian soldiers who supported him on the stage.

Leading the way were two cousins, Nu Dahai and Anergen.

The two of them couldn't go back to Yanjing like everyone else, because they had offended too many people.

They broke the legs of more than a dozen Manchurian generals, including Jingxi General Mulima.

In order to avoid harming their families, the two of them, together with a group of Manchurian Eight Banners who acted as the legs of the Ming army, closed their own accounts.

is that their names all appear in the list of the children of the Eight Banners who died in battle given by Zhang Changgeng to Yanjing.

There are 15 people in total.

They were all selected and brought out by Wang Wu to serve as the king of the gate.

It turns out that these men are fierce enough to the enemy, and they are even more ruthless to their own people.

The only drawback is that the combat effectiveness is too poor, and it cannot be fought at all, or even at all.

Wang Wu did not cross the river and demolish the bridge, and after learning that Turge had cut down Lu Heng, the prefect of Yichang, he deliberately assigned these 15 men Taijun to Qian Daotai, supplemented by 100 soldiers to Yichang to do receiving work.

When he returned to Yichang last time, because of Lu Heng, Wang Wu failed to enter the city, and only got the grain and grass he needed from the city and then made a detour to Jingzhou.

So after learning that Yichang is now in a power vacuum, he immediately asked Qian Daotai to hurry over to do it.

In addition to the Yichang treasury, it is to collect a large number of salt, iron and cloth, as well as all materials that can be used by the military.

Qian Daotai and the Taijun of the Gate did not fail in their mission, and basically looted the "public" materials in Yichang City for most of the month, and the silver deposits obtained from the Yichang Treasury alone amounted to more than 74,000 taels.

If all kinds of materials are equivalent to silver, there are forty or fifty thousand taels.

If it weren't for Wang Wu's repeated advice not to plunder the people, it is estimated that the gentlemen of the Gate would be able to make Yichang City restless.

The Tongzhi and Tongju in Yichang City and the garrison green battalion did not dare to stop the Manchurian soldiers' near-robbery, because the Lu Governor's Mansion had just been sent to reincarnate by the Manchurian soldiers.

No matter what happens, as long as they are hooked up with the Manchurian soldiers, the Han officials can run as far as they can, and those who really can't run will obediently become grandsons.

In the 20 years since the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, there has never been a Han official who dared to argue with Manchuria.

Wang Wu also belongs to a patchwork of things, all just to make money.

Now the treasury that is completely in the hands of Wang Wu is not only Yichang, but also Wuchang and Jingzhou.

The largest amount of silver deposited was the Wuchang Domain, with more than 600,000 taels.

The treasury of Jingzhou is smaller, only 130,000 taels.

In fact, if Wang Wuchi took Wuchang in three or five months, he might be able to get two or three million taels.

Because Huguang's annual summer tax will be deported to the Wuchang Domain Treasury in July, and then it will be uniformly released to Yanjing.

After that, the Yanjing household department will make unified accounts, and then allocate according to the actual needs of Huguang.

As soon as this silver came and went, it would cause fire consumption and transportation loss, and officials from top to bottom would make a lot of money from it.

Extremely inefficient.

Before the Ming Dynasty, after the local government would bring up the taxes, they would first deduct the local expenses and then send the rest of the silver taels to the capital.

Correspondingly, there is less loss.

The problem was that the local officials of the former Ming Dynasty could not collect much tax, forcing the Ming emperors to sometimes have to send eunuchs to various places to open mines to make money.

The result is a competition with the people.

Coupled with the previous fund-raising in Guizhou, as well as some seizures in the past few months, Wang Wu currently has more than 800,000 taels of cash at hand.

If it weren't for the heavy money spent on the construction of the water camp, this number should have exceeded one million taels.

If he doesn't want to rebel against the Qing, he won't be able to spend this money in his life.

But if you want to reverse the Qing, this money is not enough.

Based on the calculation of at least 30,000 soldiers in an army, the annual expenditure on salaries, food, grass, clothing, weapons, training, wear and tear, and other odds and bits and pieces will be at least 1.5 million taels.

That's it, it's only fifty taels on each soldier's head, and it may be less than forty taels if the soldier's salary is alone.

The level of wages was not much higher than that given to the Green Camp by the Qing court.

Therefore, Wang Wu had to keep making money, otherwise he wouldn't be able to raise too many soldiers at all.

After listening to Qian Daotai's work report, Wang Wu expressed great satisfaction, and then informed him that he might have to be demoted to Jingzhou as the prefect.

This is what he and Zhang Changgeng agreed on.

For a long time, Wang Wu has not had a competent civil official to help the director, and although Qian Daotai is timid and afraid of death, he is still an expert in handling government affairs.

Yunyang Grain Road is from the third grade, and the Jingzhou prefect is the fourth grade, and the grade must have been reduced.

However, Jingzhou is a vast prefecture in Hu, with six counties under its jurisdiction and a permanent population of 7.8 million, which is about the same as the total population of the five provinces and eight prefectures controlled by the governor of Yunyang.

The main hall of real power.

Therefore, this job allocation belongs to the actual promotion.

However, there is a question mark over whether the officials of the Qing court agree with the personnel reference opinions given by the governor of Huguang.

"It is a blessing for the subordinate to be able to follow the general, even if he is not an official, the subordinate is willing to saddle the horse for the general!"

Qian Wentao's attitude is still good.

In fact, as a "disjointed" captured official, he himself did not have many options.

The officials who can do it are all considered lucky, how dare they pick three or four.

In addition, the Jingzhou prefect is actually a fat poor.

Wang Wu also told Qian Wentao about his plan to enter the flag pilot project in Yichang, and asked him to stay in Yichang to handle this matter temporarily.

At the same time, he also said that he intended to develop large households into the flag, but Zhang Changgeng only wanted to develop medium households into the flag.

After hearing this, Qian Wentao put forward his own opinion, that is, the Governor's consideration was right, after all, developing so many people into the flag, even if it was just to act as a slave, would make Huguang's income drop significantly.

Even if the local government has all kinds of reasons to make false accounts, or even lie about disasters to make up for the fact that this income has fallen, it is certainly unrealistic to drop too much.

The people in the household department are not fools, how can they not see that there is a problem.

Therefore, Qian's opinion is to do it first according to the Governor's wishes, and then consider the matter of developing large households into the flag after the development year to see the effect.

Wang Wu pondered for a moment and knew the truth that he couldn't eat hot tofu in a hurry, so he agreed to develop flag customers in Zhonghu first.

"If it's just for money, the lower officials think that there are many places where they can make money, why do you have to do this flag?"

Qian Wentao raised his own question, if Lord Dutong wants to make money, the so-called relying on the mountain to eat the mountain, relying on the water to draft water.

If the Yangtze River is not used to control the upstream and downstream, it is just like the people on the beach do not smuggle, which is simply a tyrannical thing.

Yangtze River shipping has always been able to make a lot of money.

The simplest way is to use the sailor to sell goods from the downstream to the upstream, and keep the profit three or five times the price.

This is not to do a risk-free business with fast money, but to secretly develop Han people into the flag behind Yanjing's back, although it is a loophole in the system, but Qian Wentao feels that this matter is too risky.

There are no impermeable walls.

If you want Yanjing to know that you, the commander of the Han army, have actually developed Han people into the banner in the name of the imperial court in Huguang, I am afraid that you will have to transfer troops to fight you.

"I'm not afraid that Yanjing will know, as long as I can hide it for three years, because my goal is to create a new Eight Banners, well, our Eight Banners."

As he spoke, Wang Wu was turning the two walnuts in his hand.

It's Nu Dahai's thing that honors him.

It is said that the people of Jingli Banner are good for this thing.