Chapter 104: A Portuguese Dowry
Konrad locked the door of his private study.
He walked over to his large wooden desk, ignoring the blueprints of the atmospheric steam engine scattered across the floor.
He sat down heavily in his chair. He smoothed out the crumpled parchment he had received from Katarina.
He leaned closer to the flickering light of the single beeswax candle on his desk, his eyes scanning Marshal Eckhard’s messy, rushed handwriting.
Konrad read the numbers.
Fourteen thousand, five hundred silver florins securely locked in the Savoyard vaults.
Two thousand, eight hundred civilians currently living under the Swabian occupation.
Six hundred and twelve surviving militiamen disarmed and imprisoned in the local church cellars.
Then came the butcher’s bill. One hundred and eighty-four Swabian soldiers dead. Sixty badly wounded.
Konrad let out a slow, heavy breath, leaning back in his chair.
"..."
He hated losing men. Every single farm boy he had trained was an investment of time, iron, and precious gunpowder.
But to shatter an ambush of seven thousand heavily armored Bohemians and secure an entire border fortress with less than two hundred casualties? In the year 1526, that wasn’t just a victory; it was a miraculous slaughter.
He continued reading the incredibly long list of seized assets. Eckhard had detailed everything.
Three hundred barrels of salted pork. Five hundred sacks of winter wheat. Forty-two crates of reasonably intact Savoyard crossbows. Seventy heavy warhorses captured from the routed mercenaries.
The names of the captured border lords, prominently featuring a cowardly noble named Count Philibert.
Though the sheer volume of wealth was staggering, the endless lists of grain tallies, rusted swords, and captured horses soon began to blur together.
Konrad rubbed his throbbing temples. The thrill of the victory was slowly fading.
He was bored.
He was a visionary, an engineer who wanted to build steam engines and reshape the geopolitical map of the world.
Reading a massive inventory list of smoked cheese and stolen saddles was agonizingly dull.
Even so, as his eyes finally glazed over and he set the heavy parchment down on the desk, a profound, wave of relief washed over his exhausted body.
Everything was fine... the plan had worked.
The immediate threat of Duke Charles and his mercenary army crushing the Swabian valley from the west was neutralized.
His revolution had survived its first true test of blood and iron.
"I can rest..." Konrad muttered to himself. "Just for a few hours. I can actually close my eyes."
He pushed himself up from the desk. The room was dark, silent, and incredibly inviting.
However, just as his fingers brushed the iron handle of the bedroom door, his mind snagged on a single troubling variable.
Savoy was a massive Duchy... Duke Charles was a notoriously wealthy and vindictive man.
Yes, Eckhard had crushed the Bohemian ambush, but the actual, primary Savoyard army was still out there.
What if they hadn’t marched to Burgundy at all?
What if there was another ten thousand heavily armored knights currently turning around and marching straight toward that captured border town?
If a massive army suddenly descended on the town and completely overwhelmed Eckhard’s exhausted men... Konrad wouldn’t just lose the captured border.
He would lose his entire war chest, all fourteen thousand silver florins, and the absolute core of his veteran army. He would be bankrupt and utterly defenseless.
He turned around, entirely abandoning the promise of the warm feather bed, and marched right back to his desk.
He grabbed a fresh sheet of vellum, dipping his iron quill into the black inkwell.
He needed to make absolutely sure nothing went wrong...
Marshal Eckhard,
Your victory is entirely noted and will be heavily rewarded. You have secured the southern front and proven the absolute superiority of our forges. The town is ours.
But we are not going to sit blindly on a mountain of silver while the rest of the Empire mobilizes against us.
You are hereby ordered to immediately empty the Savoyard vaults. Take exactly eighty percent of the captured silver florins. Load eighty percent of the seized winter grain, the salted pork, and the captured weapons onto the heavy supply wagons.
Furthermore, you are to divide the host. Keep a skeleton crew of your absolute best veteran halberdiers and gunners - no more than eight hundred men. You will use them to manage the city, guard the walls, and maintain complete martial law over the peasants.
Send the remaining eighty percent of the men, escorting the fully loaded supply wagons, directly back to the Swabian valley before dawn.
Konrad paused, tapping the quill against the desk.
If the Duke of Savoy’s main army suddenly appeared over the horizon to reclaim their border keep, Eckhard would have a small, highly mobile force.
They could hold the walls for a few days, bleed the enemy with the Gatling carts, and then quickly retreat into the mountains if they were completely overrun.
But more importantly, the vast majority of Konrad’s wealth, his precious industrial machinery, and the bulk of his newly trained soldiers would already be safely behind the impenetrable stone walls of his own fortress.
Who knows? Maybe a great army really would come and try to kill them all, but Konrad simply refused to let them take his money if they did.
I will not risk the entire treasury on a single captured town, Konrad wrote, finishing the dispatch.
Send the wealth home. Hold the gates. If you see banners you cannot break, you burn the remaining twenty percent of the grain and you fall back to the valley.
Konrad von Frundsberg.
He melted the black wax. The seal hardened instantly in the air of the study.
Konrad stood up, grabbing a small silver bell from the corner of his desk.
He rang it twice... the sharp chime easily pierced the door.
Less than a minute later, the door clicked open.
A shadow-walker stepped silently into the room, dressed entirely in dark leather, his face obscured by a simple black cloth hood.
"My Lord?" the spy whispered, bowing deeply.
"Take this directly to the postern gate," Konrad commanded, handing the sealed vellum to the spy.
"Find Klaus and his riders in the eastern pines. Tell them to ride back to Marshal Eckhard immediately... they are to hand this letter only to the Marshal himself."
"It will be done, Lord Konrad." the shadow-walker replied, slipping the dispatch into his tunic before vanishing back into the corridor.
Konrad let out a long sigh.
****
13th of March, 1526.
Two days had passed since he sent the heavily armed Reiters back into the night.
Two days of smiling at Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, pretending to care about the silk centerpieces for his upcoming wedding, and dodging the highly suspicious, watery gaze of Bishop Tomas.
The infant Albrecht was recovering beautifully in the nursery, his fever broken thanks to the crude willow bark extract.
That was the only piece of genuine good news keeping Konrad from losing his mind.
Even so, the silence from the western mountain passes was slowly driving him insane.
Marshal Eckhard was supposed to have packed eighty percent of the captured Savoyard silver, the looted grain, and the veteran soldiers, and marched them directly back to the Swabian valley.
A host of three thousand men dragging heavily loaded treasury wagons did not move quickly, especially in the spring mud, but they should have crossed the Swabian borders by now.
Konrad stood by the narrow glass window of his private study, staring out into the gray, overcast afternoon.
He gripped a cold cup of black coffee. Where was his army?
The door to his study clicked open without a knock.
Isolde slipped into the room.
"My Lord," Isolde whispered, stepping up to his desk and dropping the scrolls onto the messy blueprints.
"...the shadow-walkers have returned from the major trade hubs. The ravens from Vienna and Madrid also arrived less than an hour ago."
Konrad slowly turned away from the window, setting his coffee down.
He walked over to the desk, his dark eyes locking onto the small scrolls. "Tell me you have a dispatch from Marshal Eckhard. Tell me my silver is safely inside the valley."
"I have no news of the Marshal, Konrad," Isolde replied. "The western roads are quiet. No merchant caravans have passed through, and our border scouts haven’t seen a single Swabian black banner. The army seems to have simply vanished into the mountain fog."
"..."
Three thousand men didn’t just vanish. Either the mud had destroyed their wagon axles, or they had run into a massive, unexpected obstacle on the road.
"But we cannot focus on the western mud right now," Isolde continued, picking up the first rolled scroll and breaking the plain wax seal.
"The news hit the major cities this morning, and the Empire is in absolute chaos."
Konrad frowned, crossing his arms over his doublet. "What happened?"
"Everything happened." Isolde said, unrolling the first parchment.
"Three days ago, Emperor Charles V officially married Princess Isabella of Portugal in a ceremony in Seville. The dowry was staggering, Konrad. The Emperor just secured an unimaginable amount of gold to fund his ongoing campaigns."
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