Re: Steel and Gunpowder

"Kneel, Wilhelm."

Duke Wilhelm looked up at his relatives, tears streaming down his cheek.

"I... I formally surrender the Duchy of Bavaria," Wilhelm choked out. "I surrender the salt routes, the timber, and the crown. I swear eternal, unyielding vassalage to Konrad von Frundsberg... King of Alemannia."

A collective shudder ran through the gathered Bavarian nobility...

The most powerful Duchy in the south had just folded.

Konrad turned his eyes toward the royal cousins standing on the palace steps.

"The Wittelsbach line survives through my wife, Queen Katarina,"

"Any lord who swears the oath today retains his lands and his trading rights. Any lord who resists will find a Swabian bronze cannon parked on his front lawn by midnight. Choose your ledger."

One by one, the wealthy barons and the royal uncles slowly descended the steps.

They dropped to their knees on the stone, bowing their heads.

Konrad exhaled a steady breath, a smirk touching his lips.

As he turned toward the entrance of the grand palace, ready to inspect the legendary Bavarian treasury to fund his new railway, an older, impeccably dressed man stepped out from the shadows of the grand archway.

The banker held a ledger in his hands, his expression devoid of any fear or respect for the newly crowned King.

"Congratulations on your new throne, King Konrad," the Fugger executive stated, holding the book forward. "But before you attempt to open the Munich vaults to fund your glorious new forges... don’t you want to know how many millions of silver florins Duke Wilhelm borrowed from our bank to pay the Vatican mercenaries, and who holds that crippling debt now that you own the city?"

"....."

Katarina narrowed her eyes at the banker. She was the sole heir to the Wittelsbach legacy, and this clerk was standing on her ancestral steps, threatening to chain her kingdom to a banker’s desk.

The executive stood protected by the invisible armor of the world’s most vast financial network.

A Swabian bullet could end his life in a heartbeat, but the Fugger banks would retaliate by freezing every trade route from Munich to the northern sea.

The forge would starve without raw capital...

"You have a ledger for me?" Konrad asked. He stepped up to the platform, towering over the man.

"I have the reality of your new crown, King Konrad," the executive replied smoothly, making no attempt to bow. "Duke Wilhelm was desperate. Desperation breeds terrible interest rates. He mortgaged the future of this city to buy Cardinal Morone’s mercenary army. You may have slaughtered the soldiers in the mud, but the paper they were bought with remains."

"If the debt is on Bavaria, then the debt is on me," Konrad stated. "I absorbed the salt mines, the timber, and the throne. I understand the basic math of a hostile takeover. You acquire the assets, you acquire the liabilities. Do not worry about your silver. You will be paid in full."

The banker raised an eyebrow, surprised.

Most medieval lords would have drawn a broadsword, screamed about divine right, and threatened to burn the bank to the ground.

"But I do not pay for phantom numbers," Konrad continued. "I need the exact contracts, the wax seals, and the specific terms of the loan. If you are trying to squeeze me for extra copper, you have chosen the wrong valley."

Konrad turned his back on the banker, facing the central plaza of Munich.

The Bavarian royal cousins were still kneeling on the stone, their silk robes soaking up the morning dew.

The citizens of Munich... bakers, blacksmiths, weavers, and city guards were watching the exchange in tense silence.

They were waiting to see if their new Swabian ruler was just another tyrant coming to pillage their homes, or a man who actually understood them.

Konrad raised his right arm. He thrust his fist into the air.

"Bavaria belongs to the forge!" Konrad roared. "The debts of the past will be paid in Swabian iron! The starvation ends today! The future is Alemannia!"

After hearing such words, the crowd froze. The kneeling nobles held their breath in shock.

They looked at the bleeding, blistered face of Duke Wilhelm, currently shivering in the dirt like a beaten dog.

They looked at the endless rows of Swabian artillery parked outside their gates, promising swift destruction to any traitor.

And then, they looked at the King who was openly demanding to take their vast financial burdens upon his own broad shoulders.

A single blacksmith cheered from the back of the plaza. Then a merchant joined him.

Within three seconds, the entire square erupted into a deafening roar of approval.

The Bavarian citizens were cheering for the conqueror...

The Fugger executive blinked.

Even so, the banker recovered his breath. He slowly flipped open the cover of his book, hesitating for a brief second, intimidated by the raw volume of noise echoing off the palace walls.

He reached into the binding and pulled out a stack of folded, dense parchment.

"The evidence is right here, My King," the executive said. "Three million silver florins. Borrowed against the next ten years of the Munich salt mine yields. He also leveraged the eastern timber routes. The royal wax seals of Duke Wilhelm and the Munich treasury masters are stamped on the bottom of every single page."

"Eckhard!" Konrad barked.

The Marshal spurred his warhorse forward, stopping at the base of the palace steps.

"Give the order, Lord Konrad!"

"Get Hans," Konrad commanded. "Bring the Quartermaster and every single accountant, scribe, and ledger-keeper we brought from the Swabian vaults. Set up a vast table right here in the center of the plaza. Do it in broad daylight, where every citizen can see."

Eckhard gave a grin. "We will tear their math apart, My King."

"I want them to comb through every single syllable of this man’s book," Konrad ordered. "I want to know if this bastard is lying. I want to know if Wilhelm truly bankrupted an entire duchy just to buy his own executioners. And if my scribes find a single misplaced copper coin in this contract... I will consider it an act of financial treason against the Kingdom of Alemannia."

Quartermaster Hans was already sprinting across the plaza, hauling a desk with the help of two halberdiers.

A dozen Swabian scribes trailed closely behind him, carrying their own brass scales, abacuses, and fresh ink pots to audit the world’s most powerful bank in the middle of a conquered city.

Katarina stepped closer to Konrad. "If my father truly signed away the salt mines for the next decade, we will not have the raw capital to fund your iron railways. Margarita de Austria will cancel the locomotive partnership if she realizes our primary assets are mortgaged to her rivals."

"The Fuggers will not stop the trains," Konrad promised, his jaw clenched tight. "We will restructure the debt, or we will produce enough refined goods to drown their interest rates in profit."

However, as the Swabian accountants set up their tools and began analyzing the intricate financial ledgers, Konrad’s mind caught a distinct flaw in the grand narrative.

Three million silver florins was a staggering, unfathomable fortune...

It was enough raw currency to hire a sprawling army, build an endless fleet, and pave a trade road in solid gold.

Duke Wilhelm had supposedly borrowed it all in a desperate bid to pay Cardinal Morone for the Vatican mercenaries.

But Konrad had slaughtered those mercenaries in the mud outside his keep before they could ever spend a single coin. They had died screaming at the gates, their pockets empty.

Konrad looked past the banker, staring into the entrance of the Bavarian palace. The shadows inside the grand archway seemed to hide a thousand secrets.

Though the Fugger bank held the legally binding paper debt, a question began to burn through Konrad’s logic, threatening to upend the acquisition.

If Wilhelm had actually received three million physical silver florins from the Fugger vaults to pay the Pope’s assassins, and those assassins had died before the payment could be transferred... then where the actual chests of silver hidden inside this city, and who was trying to smuggle them out of the capital?

Duke Wilhelm had signed a contract for three million silver florins. The Fugger executive had the wax seals to prove it. The intention was to fund Cardinal Morone’s Vatican mercenaries to slaughter the Swabian halberdiers.

However, the Vatican mercenaries had marched to the Swabian gates and died screaming in the mud.

Dead men do not cash their wages. Dead men do not require vast wagons of silver to fund their supply lines.

Mercenary commanders demanded a fraction of their pay upfront, but the bulk of a three million florin contract would have been held in reserve until the Warlord was dead and the forges were burned.

That meant the silver had never left Munich...

The staggering fortune the Fugger executive was attempting to use as a financial weapon against the Kingdom of Alemannia was actually sitting right here, trapped behind the very walls Konrad had just conquered.