Re: Steel and Gunpowder

If Konrad fulfilled the Emperor’s demand, he would be shipping three thousand of those guns into the northern meat grinder, leaving his central industrial forges guarded by barely five hundred men.

"You cannot possibly be considering this, Konra!" Katarina argued, stepping right in front of him to halt his pacing. "If you send three thousand men to die in an Imperial civil war, you leave our own walls entirely exposed! The Fugger banks will panic!"

"I am not sending them to die, Katarina," Konrad corrected her. "I am sending them to close a lucrative contract."

"A contract?" Katarina repeated. "He wants you to bleed for free!"

"Nobody gets Swabian iron for free," Konrad growled, stepping around her and walking back to his desk.

He picked up a fresh piece of parchment and dipped his quill into the ink. "If Brandenburg and Austria crush his northern lines, he loses his throne. I am going to give him the three thousand men."

He finished writing the declaration and slammed his seal into a pool of hot red wax.

"I am sending the army under the three eagles of the Kingdom of Alemannia," Konrad declared. "I will explicitly state in this ledger that I am answering his call to arms as his loyal, fully sworn vassal. I am acknowledging his Imperial authority. By taking my guns, he officially recognizes the Kingdom of Alemannia. He legally sanctions my absolute absorption of Bavaria and Savoy, all under the convenient guise of me being an obedient vassal."

"But Marshal Eckhard is tied down holding Munich," Katarina pointed out. "Who is going to command three thousand men in a chaotic northern warzone?"

"Isolde," Konrad commanded. "Go to the lower barracks. Find Captain Lukas von Richter. Tell him to wash the remaining Vatican blood off his breastplate and report to my study immediately."

"You are giving von Richter an army, Konrad?" Katarina asked. "He only just made Captain two weeks ago."

"Hmm," Konrad said firmly. "He’s young, that’s true, and more importantly, he hates the nobility so much he’d kill them."

"...?" Isolde nodded in disagreement, then slipped through the doorsز

Konrad leaned against the edge of his desk, his eyes locking onto his new royal banner.

The Kingdom of Alemannia was born... but as he listened to the marching boots of his veterans drilling in the courtyard below, a single question echoed through his mind.

When the bleeding Emperor finally saw an army of Swabian killers marching into his royal camp under the banner of a brand new King... would he actually have the intelligence to accept the humiliating contract, or would the arrogant fool try to bite the only armored hand that could actually save him?

On paper, the Emperor’s territorial ledgers were staggering. He owned the wealthy, heavily fortified Low Countries to the north. He controlled the sun-baked Iberian Peninsula to the southwest, drawing obscene amounts of raw silver from the newly discovered western oceans.

He held the fractured, incredibly rich Italian states of Naples and Sicily...

Because of this massive territorial sprawl, the Emperor’s standing army was theoretically terrifying.

The imperial logs claimed he commanded over 100,000 men.

However, a single number on a piece of parchment meant nothing in the mud. His incredibly elite Spanish Tercios were currently bogged down in the freezing Italian mud, locked in an endless, unprofitable war of attrition against the French and the Pope.

Another 20,000 men were tied down garrisoning the Iberian borders, and 15,000 were trying to hold the restless Low Countries.

That left the Emperor with barely 15,000 loyal, scattered troops to defend the actual imperial heartland against the sudden, coordinated rebellion of Brandenburg and Austria.

And their weapons? The Imperial armories were vast, but technologically stagnant.

The Emperor’s infantry relied on heavy, unreliable matchlock muskets... they required exposed, slow-burning ropes to ignite the powder pan... meaning if it rained, or if the wind blew too hard, the entire imperial gun line was useless.

Their heavy bronze siege cannons were massive, but they lacked any standardized iron parts.

Every single cannon required a different size of solid iron shot, creating an expensive logistical nightmare for their quartermasters.

The Emperor had the raw numbers, but he lacked the centralized, incredibly streamlined industrial forge that Swabia possessed.

Even so, while the Emperor’s military ledgers were collapsing, the legal rules of the Holy Roman Empire were still enforced by the surviving noble houses.

In the complex, bureaucratic minds of the other Dukes and Prince-Electors, Konrad’s current status was a bitter, but legally binding reality.

There was no doubt regarding his current title... he was officially, legally the Imperial Duke of Swabia and Bavaria.

Duke Wilhelm had publicly surrendered. Konrad had legally married Lady Katarina, the sole Wittelsbach heir, before the altar. The Fugger banking network had verified the transfer of the incredibly lucrative Bavarian salt mines to the Swabian accounts.

To the rest of the continent, Konrad was a dangerous, ruthless upstart, but he was undeniably a legitimate Imperial Duke.

The strict rules of feudal inheritance had been satisfied.

But the "Kingdom of Alemannia"?

That was a different, volatile variable.

Though Konrad had weaponized the rules of nobility to absorb Bavaria, declaring a new, independent Kingdom inside the borders of the Empire violated the fundamental, ancient laws of the Golden Bull of 1356.

There were no self-declared Kings in the Empire...

You were either granted a royal crown by the absolute decree of the Pope, or by the absolute blessing of the Emperor himself.

To the hundreds of minor lords and powerful Prince-Electors across the continent, the Kingdom of Alemannia was an arrogant, insulting bluff.

And that was exactly why Konrad was forcing the bleeding Emperor to legally acknowledge it.

Konrad looked up from the sprawling map as Captain Lukas von Richter marched into the room.

The young veteran had scrubbed the blood of the Vatican assassins from his blackened steel breastplate.

Lukas stopped in front of the desk and offered a salute.

"You sent for me, Lord Konrad?" Lukas asked.

"I did, Captain," Konrad grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "I have a specific contract for you. You are going to march out of this valley before midnight."

Lukas didn’t flinch. "Where are we marching, My Lord? Are the Bavarians attempting to regroup in the east?"

"Bavaria is pacified," Konrad stated. "You are marching directly north. Brandenburg and Austria have declared open war on the Imperial throne. The Emperor is trapped near the Bohemian border, and his lines are buckling. He has officially demanded 3,000 Swabian veterans to save his miserable life."

"You want us to bleed for the Emperor, Lord Konrad?" Lukas asked. "The same Emperor who allowed the Vatican to march 5,000 mercenaries right up to our gates today?"

"I don’t want you to bleed for him, Lukas," Konrad corrected, pointing a finger at the map. "You will take 3,000 of our best halberdiers and the surviving Swiss Pikemen. You will take 30 of the new wheellock Gatling carts. You will march into the Imperial war camp, and you will shatter the Brandenburg lines."

Konrad leaned forward. "But you are not marching as an Imperial auxiliary force," Konrad reached across the desk and picked up the royal banner he had just finished sealing.

The three intertwined eagles of gold, black, and red shone in the dim light of the hearth fire. He shoved the banner into Lukas’s hands.

"You are marching as the vanguard of the Kingdom of Alemannia,

When you reach the Emperor’s camp, you will refuse to fire a single lead bullet until he publicly accepts this banner.

You will tell him that the King of Alemannia has answered his call to arms as a loyal vassal.

He either signs the ledger recognizing my sovereignty over the south, or you turn the Swabian guns around and let Brandenburg mount his royal head on a pike."

Lukas stared down at the brand-new, treasonous royal banner resting in his hands.

A smile slowly spread across Lukas’s face. "It will be a pleasure to deliver your terms, My King," Lukas bowed deeply.

"Get your men entirely ready, Captain," Konrad commanded. "Take the raw Fugger gold from the lower vaults to pay for your supply lines on the muddy roads. Do not stop marching until you can see the Imperial tents."

"We leave in one hour." Lukas promised, turning on his heel and marching out of the doors.

Konrad stood alone in the quiet room. He let out a long breath.

After hearing such words of absolute loyalty from his new Captain, Konrad should have felt a wave of relief. He had absorbed Bavaria without fighting a prolonged siege, and he had slaughtered the Pope’s elite assassins.

The staggering scale of his victories over the past two weeks was unprecedented in the known world... but Konrad’s mind refused to shut down.

He pushed the large map of the Holy Roman Empire to the side, ignoring the tactical lines of the northern rebellion.

He reached down into the deepest, fortified iron drawer of his desk and pulled out a stack of guarded parchment.

They were dense, mathematically perfect mechanical blueprints.

Konrad spread the large sheets of parchment across the surface, his eyes scanning the complex mechanical drawings.

They were the blueprints for a fully operational pressurized steam locomotive... and Konrad was finally putting the finishing touches on the world’s very first train.