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Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈
Chapter 35: The Second Crusade (2)
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The Holy Roman Empire.
As a later Enlightenment thinker mocked it, it was a strange state that was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire.
Then why was the Holy Roman Empire neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire?
The reason was clear.
It called itself “Holy” because its emperor received his coronation from the Pope, but in truth, it was a realm where emperor and pope had spent centuries grabbing each other by the collar and brawling in the mud.
It claimed to be “Roman” as the heir of Rome, but its bloodline was Germanic rather than Latin. Rome's glory lay buried among Italy's ruins, while its reality stood in Germany's forests.
Above all, it was not a centralized state ruled by a single powerful emperor, something worthy of being called an “Empire.”
Duchies, margraviates, counties, bishoprics, and hundreds of free cities each maintained armies and collected taxes, forever fighting one another whenever they had the chance. It was a loose feudal confederation.
That was the true nature of the Holy Roman Empire.
Even within that chaotic empire, the Kingdom of Bohemia stood out. No, it was a thorn in everyone's side.
While the many lords of the Empire had to content themselves with titles such as duke or count, only Bohemia's ruler was permitted the title of King.
Among the seven Prince-Electors who chose the Emperor, the King of Bohemia was the senior elector, the Empire's second most important figure, personally offering the Emperor his cup.
On top of that, the immense silver pouring out of the mines of Kuttenberg was the heart supporting the Empire's economy. It was no coincidence that Prague had been the Empire's capital during the reign of the late Emperor Charles IV.
This special treatment of Bohemia was an unbearable insult and a source of envy for the Germans who formed the Empire's mainstream.
Those Slavic backwoodsmen, who could barely even communicate with them, held the Empire's highest title and monopolized its greatest wealth.
That was why this crusade was the perfect pretext for the German princes.
North of Prague.
An army of one hundred thousand filled Letná Hill.
Saxony's black and yellow stripes, Bavaria's blue diamonds, Austria's red shield...
Before the countless banners gathered under the cry of exterminating heresy, it did not matter whether the Bohemian Hussites were truly heretics.
Faith was only a pretense. The Prince-Electors' real goal was to legally plunder the wealthy Slavic kingdom and crush Czech arrogance beneath their feet, proving German superiority.
‘Disgusting banners.’
The Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, Sigismund von Luxembourg, knew that all too well.
‘But it has to be done.’
From horseback, Sigismund looked down at the city spread below him.
Prague.
His homeland, and the city that had rejected him.
The golden city of a hundred spires burned red beneath the evening glow.
It was beautiful.
And all the more hateful for it.
“Your Majesty. Is it not magnificent?”
An admiring voice came from beside him.
The Elector of Saxony, Frederick of Saxony, was draped in black sable fur over his splendid plate armor. He looked as excited as a nobleman out on a hunt.
“That city of rebels is about to kneel beneath Your Majesty's feet. One hundred thousand soldiers of the Imperial army have surrounded them. Not even an ant could find a way out.”
Instead of answering, Sigismund snorted.
Across the plain behind the Emperor, a sea of steel rippled exactly as Frederick had said.
Saxony, Bavaria, Austria, Brandenburg...
The banners of princes gathered from across the Empire formed a forest, and the heat given off by their army of one hundred thousand was enough to drive back March's cold wind.
Tents filled the horizon, smoke rising from campfires.
The endless sound of hoofbeats and soldiers' cheers.
No matter who looked at it, it was an overwhelming force, an absolute disparity in numbers that made defeat unimaginable.
“Your Majesty! Give the order to attack at once!”
Frederick urged him, unable to hold himself back.
“Those walls are old. Our Saxon battering rams won't need even half a day to break down the gates. Entrust the vanguard to me, and I'll raise Your Majesty's banner over Prague Palace before tonight is over!”
The other princes nearby raised their voices as well.
“That is right! There is only a rabble of peasants and heretics inside!”
“We must punish them in God's name!”
“Our knights will trample those bastards beneath their horses' hooves!”
They were excited, like hunting dogs desperate to seize the enormous prey laid before them, Prague's vast wealth and glory, before anyone else could.
Sigismund's eyes, though, remained cold.
‘Idiots.’
To those German princes, war was nothing more than a tournament, knights lowering their lances and charging across a well-kept plain to compete for honor.
They did not know that the age had come when peasants wielding farm tools could slit a knight's throat.
They did not know how viciously mobs intoxicated by religious madness could turn into beasts.
If this had been Hungary, he would have cut down the fool wagging that arrogant tongue on the spot.
Unfortunately, they were not his subjects. They were the Empire's Prince-Electors.
Greedy allies who would only move their heavy backsides after being carefully coaxed, cajoled, and flattered.
“Elector Frederick.”
Sigismund spoke. His voice was low and dry, but the force behind it quieted the princes' noisy chatter.
“Have you heard the name Jan Žižka?”
“Žižka? You mean that one-eyed old man? I heard he's some country lout who leads a band of thieves.”
Frederick scoffed.
“A barbarian who knows nothing of chivalry. What sort of army could a man like that command? Peasants who have never received proper training could never stand against the Empire's elite knights...”
“Those peasants.”
Sigismund cut him off. His gray eyes settled heavily on Frederick.
“Crushed the last crusade.”
“...”
“That rabble formed a circle with their wagons and hid inside it. When our knights approached, they smashed their heads in with flails and punched through their armor with matchlock guns. That is Jan Žižka's Wagenburg.”
A memory from only a few months ago flashed through Sigismund's mind.
The Wagenburg. A hellish formation that nullified cavalry charges, dragged knights from their horses, and beat them to death like dogs.
His intelligence reports said those wagons had been reinforced this time. There were even rumors that they had been plated with steel melted by dragon fire.
There was surely some exaggeration in that, but with Jan Žižka commanding them and that mysterious young Heretic King called Ulrich providing the funds, they were a threat that could not be ignored.
Yet those idiotic princes were yelling that they would charge straight at the walls, trusting only in their numbers.
Sigismund pointed beyond Prague's walls.
“Every narrow street will be piled with wagons like barricades. When your precious knights are trapped in those tight passages with nowhere to go, hot oil and stones will rain down from the rooftops. That is how your glorious charge will end.”
The Emperor's chilling warning reddened Frederick's face.
He moved his lips, trying to argue, but the force in Sigismund's gaze overwhelmed him. He could only clear his throat awkwardly.
“Th-Then what do you suggest? Are we meant to sit here twiddling our thumbs while that prey is right before us? The world will mock us if the Empire's army of one hundred thousand cannot get past those old walls!”
“Mockery lasts only a moment. Defeat lasts forever.”
Sigismund pulled on the reins and turned his horse.
His gaze remained fixed on Prague's walls and the red roofs beyond them.
“We have no need to shed blood. Bohemia is isolated. Enemies surround it on every side, and there will be no reinforcements. How much food do you think those rats trapped inside possess?”
Sigismund gestured toward Prague's walls with his chin.
“That city is already overcrowded. It is overflowing with refugees from the countryside. There are too many mouths and too little food. We need not draw a sword. Time and hunger will fight for us.”
“You mean... we should lay siege to them?”
“We will starve them out. Set up the trebuchets and hurl stones and rotting corpses at them day and night. There is no need to break the walls. Poison their wells, deny them sleep, and fill them with fear.”
A cruel smile touched Sigismund's lips.
“One month will be enough. Exhausted by hunger, those mobs will cut off the Heretic King's head with their own hands and throw it outside the gates. Then we can stroll in at our leisure and raise a toast.”
The Emperor's proposal was entirely reasonable and, at the same time, ruthlessly practical.
Even the German princes, impatient to see bloodshed, had no grounds to object to a victory without losing soldiers.
Though they grumbled, they nodded one by one.
“If that is Your Majesty's will...”
“Hmm. Protecting the lives of knights is also a ruler's virtue.”
Once the princes had returned to their respective camps to establish the encirclement, Sigismund finally let out the long sigh he had been holding back.
‘Leisure? What nonsense.’
Sigismund pretended to adjust his cloak to hide his trembling hands.
In truth, he had no leisure at all.
He had only acted composed before those foolish princes. Inside, he was burning with anxiety.
An army of one hundred thousand.
The number sounded impressive, but the cost of sustaining that massive beast for even one day was astronomical.
Soldiers' wages, feed for the horses, food...
With every passing day, the imperial treasury drained away like the receding tide.
Where could all that money have come from?
For this campaign, he had broken a taboo. He had raided the ghetto, the Jewish district that supported the Empire's economy.
The Emperor's guards sealed off Vienna's Jewish district and dragged out everyone, young and old, male and female. They killed those who resisted and even cut off the wrists of those begging for their lives, stripping them of their hidden wealth.
The enormous fortune the Jews had built over centuries through moneylending and trade entered the Emperor's coffers in a single night.
But it was no different from cutting open the belly of the goose that laid golden eggs.
The Jews were an excellent source of taxes. Sigismund knew it was far more profitable to keep them alive and squeeze them regularly.
But he could not afford the luxury of counting on the future.
‘This is it.’
The rebellion in Bohemia had grown more violent with each passing year.
The Papacy berated the incompetent Emperor and demanded the destruction of heresy every day, while his imperial coronation had been postponed without end.
Then an upstart named Ulrich had suddenly appeared, proclaiming himself King of Bohemia and openly ignoring imperial authority.
Sigismund was called the Holy Roman Emperor and ruled as master of the Empire, yet ironically, he had not received the coronation that mattered most.
Even though the imperial election had already ended ten years ago, in 1410.
The reason was clear. When he was first elected King of the Romans, Europe had been in the chaos of the Western Schism.
Only the Pope of Rome could place the imperial crown upon his head, yet at the time, three rival popes had emerged. It was unclear before which of them he had to kneel for his legitimacy to be recognized.
That was why Sigismund had worked so eagerly to convene the Council of Constance and end the Church's division.
Only a single Pope could make him a true Emperor.
He had succeeded in removing the rival popes and installing Pope Martin V, but then trouble had erupted in Bohemia immediately afterward.
And it was not an ordinary rebellion, but a rebellion of heretics, the sort of revolt the Christian world hated most.
Would a man who could not even control his own domain of Bohemia, allowing it to become a nest of heresy, dare go to Rome and receive his coronation as defender of Catholicism and Emperor?
Europe's princes would laugh at him, and even Pope Martin V would never permit it.
The Pope had made his demand indirectly. No, openly and bluntly.
‘Cleanse Bohemia, then come. Only then will I grant you the crown.’
For Sigismund, this war was not only a war to claim Bohemia's crown and silver. It would also decide whether he would be recognized as the rightful Emperor.
If he failed again this time?
The Empire would fall apart.
The princes would laugh at him and turn their backs, and the glory of the House of Luxembourg would be finished.
‘I have to win. I have to wipe out every last one of them.’
He glared at Prague's walls. He could not afford to lose his army meaninglessly through carelessness as he had last time.
He had to starve everyone inside to death, tear them apart if necessary, and secure victory beyond any doubt.
“Your Majesty! The trebuchets have been set up!”
“Good. Begin the attack as soon as the sun sets...”
Sigismund was just about to issue the order.
Kreeeeek―!
A tremendous grinding roar pierced through the noise of the battlefield.
Sigismund's brow twitched. At the same time, the knights watching the front cried out urgently.
“Your Majesty! Look over there!”
“The gates... Prague's gates are opening!”
Sigismund hurriedly rose in his stirrups.
Prague's main gates were swinging wide open.
For a moment, a hopeful thought crossed his mind.
‘A surrender?’
Were the terrified people of Prague coming out to offer up their bound king?
Or were they sending envoys to beg for mercy?
But what emerged from the darkness beyond the gates was not an envoy bearing a white flag.
Rumble...
A heavy vibration shook the ground.
A procession of enormous wagons rolled out of the gates.
Yet...
‘Are those really wagons?’
Silver-gray monsters gleamed in the red light of the setting sun.
Steel fortresses clad in smooth armor instead of wooden planks, gun barrels jutting out from every side.
There was not just one.
Two, three, ten, twenty...
Like a giant snake crawling out of its den, steel Wagenburgs poured out through the gates one after another.
“W-What are those?”
“Wagons? No, are they weapons made of iron?”
The German princes murmured among themselves. The sight was beyond their understanding.
A normal Wagenburg was for defense. It was deployed on the plains in a circle to stop an enemy charge.
They should have been huddled inside the city to defend its walls, yet they were crawling out beyond the gates on their own?
Duke Frederick muttered in disbelief.
“Madmen... Are they trying to kill themselves?”
Sigismund was different. His gray eyes trembled slightly.
The steel wagons beyond the gates did not form a circular defense.
Instead, they spread wide in a line. Like cavalry preparing to charge, they aimed their gun barrels directly at the Imperial army.
At the center of that formation.
A blue banner fluttered atop the largest and most ornately decorated command Panzer.
A golden star with eight points.
And beneath it, a young man in a red cloak stood with his arms arrogantly crossed, looking down upon an army of one hundred thousand.
Ulrich von Sternberg.
He had never intended to hide behind the walls.
He intended to fight a massive pitched battle on the plains against this army of one hundred thousand.
One hundred thousand against twenty thousand.
An overwhelming disadvantage.
Yet the Heretic King had opened the gates, marched out, and aimed his blade at the Emperor's army.
As though he was the hunter.
“Hah...”
A dry laugh escaped Sigismund's lips.
Footnotes:
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