Chapter 59: Casting Hollow Tubes
The walls would be thick banks of earth, faced with brick, sloped to swallow the heavy blows of iron shot.
Jutting out from the main walls would be pointed bastions, spaced perfectly so the cannons could cast a crossing fire upon any spot.
This shape left no safe ground for a foe, ensuring any host that charged the walls would be caught in a deadly storm of shot!
Lastly, the camps needed true roads. Konrad ordered the laying of packed stone paths, allowing the easy moving of his great guns from place to place.
Konrad gathered his parchment plans into a leather pouch and left the keep.
He walked through the sprawling camps surrounding the main forges.
Starving men, wearing rags, stopped their hauling to stare at Lord Konrad.
He passed the sprawling slums and entered the main house of the master smiths, a deafening, soot-stained timber hall beside the blast furnaces.
Master Klemens was checking a tally of fine steel.
"The dying has grown too great to suffer." Konrad commanded.. He unrolled his plans across Klemens’s desk, weighing them down with brass blocks.
"The sickness of the men threatens the casting of the guns... we begin a total rebuilding of the camps."
Master Klemens studied the drawn plans. His brow furrowed in deep confusion as he looked at the drawings of the hidden pipes.
"My Lord, I see the wisdom of the earth walls, but these..." Klemens traced a finger over the pipes. "You ask for the casting of hollow iron tubes to carry away slops? The weight of iron needed for this work is staggering..."
"The weight is great," Konrad stated, his voice a flat.
Klemens shook his head. "It is an impossible waste of iron, my Lord. We burn the furnaces day and night just to forge the wheellocks and cast the bronze guns. If I turn the furnaces to casting thousands of paces of iron pipes, our forging of arms will drop by more than half. The Fugger moneylenders will snap their purses shut when they see we bury our costly iron in the dirt!"
"As it stands, the sickness kills fourteen in every hundred men before the season turns. Every dead man is a loss of forty silver florins in training, meat, and lost work. Multiply that loss across a host of six thousand men... the plague steals more silver from my purse than the whole standing army of the Bishop of Augsburg." Konrad leaned heavily onto the table.
"...If the men die, the blast furnaces go cold. If the furnaces go cold, the Swabian League marches across our borders, and your head is stuck upon a pike by the Pope’s men." Konrad stated.
"..." Klemens swallowed hard.
"How quickly must this be done, Lord Konrad?" Klemens asked, all fight gone from his voice. "To cast this much iron and keep up the forging of arms will mean stretching the men’s toil to eighteen hours a day."
"Then let them toil for eighteen hours," Konrad commanded without a pause. "You shall give them a greater share of salted pork to keep their strength up for the long hours. But the tally of the pipes must be met."
Konrad stood, taking up his leather pouch. "If the first span of the hidden pipes is not laid within a month, I shall strip you of your silver and send you to dig in the brimstone pits. Do you hear my words?"
"I hear them, my Lord, and shall obey," Klemens whispered, bowing his head.
"See that you do." Konrad replied.
Konrad turned and left the deafening hall.
While Konrad was organizing and rebuilding the castle, Lady Isolde’s spies moved throughout the Holy Roman Empire.
The chief piece in this hidden game was Father Anselm.
Anselm was a sharp, lettered churchman who had spent the last half-year being quietly bought by von Frundsberg silver.
Today was the crowning of Isolde’s work... within the rich, incense-filled nave of the Augsburg Cathedral, Anselm knelt before the Bishop to be raised to a high seat in the Church.
The holy rites were a ruinous waste of coin.
Thousands of silver florins were spent on silk robes, gold cups, and rich wine, while the peasants beyond the cathedral doors starved for lack of grain!
Father Anselm saw this waste with growing disgust, his mind deeply shaped by the exact reason he had learned from Konrad’s translated books.
When the old Latin chants ended, the Bishop of Augsburg called Anselm into his private chambers.
"You have a heavy burden, Anselm," the Bishop stated, waving a hand as he sank into a velvet chair. "The von Frundsberg boy runs a godless forge, caring naught for the Emperor’s Diet or the rule of the Church."
"The von Frundsberg realm is indeed a disgrace to our ancient traditions, Your Grace," Anselm agreed, pouring the Bishop a cup of rich Burgundy wine. "Yet, Lord Konrad’s paid men hold a terrifying grip on the new, fast-loading great guns... the lesser Swabian lords lack the silver to mount a true siege against his walls."
The Bishop scoffed, drinking the wine with greedy haste. "You think the Holy Mother Church leans upon broken Swabian knights to see the Pope’s will done?"
The Bishop leaned forward, "The von Frundsberg heretic has broken the Fugger silver roads and slain the Pope’s own men," the Bishop slurred slightly, "Rome will not suffer such treason. We have already laid the snare. The Holy Father has sent sixty thousand florins straight to the Teutonic Order."
Gasp...
Anselm kept his head bowed. "The Teutonic knights fight a bloody, endless war with the King of Poland, they do not have the supply lines to march their heavy horse into southern Germany."
"They do not need to march, fool," the Bishop laughed, "The Pope’s silver buys their ships, not their horses. The Grand Master even now buys a truce with the Polish King."
"...once their border is safe, they will choke the Baltic Sea, they will hunt every Hanseatic smuggler and cut the powder lines to the Swabian valley... without saltpeter, the great guns will go silent. Then, our local lords will march in and strike off Konrad’s head."
"Does the Emperor’s Diet know of this?" Anselm asked, ensuring he mapped the whole snare.
