WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 41: The Spiritual War (2)

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After the meeting ended, I headed straight for the private workshop tucked away in one corner of the palace.

The shocked expressions my retainers had worn in the meeting hall were still burned into my mind.

I said I would send thirty thousand prisoners to the Silesian coal mines, and they reacted as though I had proposed throwing all thirty thousand of them alive into lava.

'Buried alive? That's really too much.'

Still, I could understand their reaction.

In the Middle Ages, no, in any era before modern times, a mine was little different from a living hell where entering meant you were unlikely to come back out alive.

But I had already drawn up a blueprint in my mind to turn that hell into the cradle of industry.

Scrape, scrape, scrape.

The steady sound of a file grinding against metal filled the room.

I hammered a brass plate on the workbench and wove thin copper wire into a dense mesh. My fingertips were blackened with metal grime, but I couldn't stop.

Then I sensed someone behind me.

Creak.

"My lord, what are you making in here this time?"

It was János Hunyadi.

I had been absent from the meeting hall for quite some time, and apparently he could not contain his curiosity any longer and had come looking for me.

He sniffed at the metal parts and bundles of wire scattered across the workbench, along with a leather pouch giving off a strange stench.

"I thought you were making cannonballs, but this reeks. What is it? A birdcage? Or a rat trap?"

"Close. It's a trap that cages fire instead of rats."

After tightening the joints of the wire mesh one last time, I lifted the finished item.

It looked like a crude brass lamp.

The difference from an ordinary lamp was that the wick and flame were covered by an extremely fine metal mesh.

"What is this?"

"A Davy Lamp."

I shook the lamp and grinned.

"A gift for the miners heading to Silesia."

"A gift...?"

János Hunyadi's expression twisted strangely. He looked as though he suspected I had made some sort of torture device.

Clicking my tongue, I set the lamp down on the workbench.

"János, why do you think mines are dangerous?"

"Well, because tunnels collapse and crush people to death? Or because people work themselves to death?"

"Roof collapses are frightening, of course. But there's something miners fear even more. They call it Hell's fart."

Methane gas.

Methane gas, produced as ancient plants decayed, was trapped between seams of coal. When miners chipped away at the coal with their picks, the gas seeped into the tunnels.

The problem was that it could neither be seen nor smelled.

After the meeting, I looked into it a little, and the conditions in medieval mines were far worse than I had imagined.

Modern mines were dangerous too, but this era did not even possess a concept of safety.

Entering a gas-filled tunnel with a torch?

That wasn't suicide. It was turning the entire tunnel into a giant bomb.

So what did miners of this era do?

They sent in penitents called Büsser first.

They promised prisoners absolution, wrapped them in wet rags, tied a candle to the end of a long pole, and made them crawl forward.

If there was gas?

Boom!

Once that person burned to death and the gas had been burned away, the other miners would finally go in.

'They call them penitents, but they're just human mine sweepers.'

Even the mine canaries famous in modern times were not introduced until the nineteenth century. Before that, people literally fed human lives into the mines while risking their own to dig out coal.

If I sent thirty thousand people there under such barbaric conditions, they would all be dead within a month.

It was unacceptable on humanitarian grounds, but it would also be an enormous industrial loss.

A skilled miner was not a disposable tool to be used once and thrown away. They were a precious asset of the state.

"That's why I made this. With this lamp, you can keep a flame lit even in places filled with gas without worrying about an explosion."

János still looked unconvinced as he inspected the lamp from every angle.

"My lord, this joke has gone too far. You mean this thin piece of wire mesh can stop an explosion? What use is a net full of holes?"

"Seeing it once is faster than explaining it a hundred times. Let's conduct an experiment."

I picked up the swollen leather pouch I had left in the corner of the workbench.

It was made from stitched animal bladders, a tough pouch with an excellent seal.

The moment I picked it up, János frowned deeply and covered his nose.

"Ugh, my lord. What is that? It's been reeking of dung this whole time."

"Gas from a cow's stomach."

"Pardon? A cow's... stomach?"

"That's right. I went to the slaughterhouse and collected it by puncturing the stomach of a freshly slaughtered cow. It's very fresh."

Cows produced huge amounts of methane gas through microbial fermentation in their stomachs as they chewed cud.

The gas that came out when a cow belched was exactly the same as the methane gas found in mine shafts.

János recoiled in horror.

"My heavens, now that you're king, you're even collecting cow belches? You have very unusual tastes."

"Quiet. This is the surest way to recreate conditions inside a mine. Draw the curtains and put out the lights."

Swish.

Grumbling, János drew the heavy velvet curtains and snuffed out the candles. The room quickly became pitch-dark.

I struck flint and lit the lamp's wick.

Sizzle, crackle.

A small flame rose inside the wire mesh. The light was faint, but enough to illuminate the pitch-black room.

"Watch carefully. From this moment on, assume the area around this lamp is a mine tunnel filled with gas."

I brought the opening of the pouch full of cow stomach gas close to the lamp's wire mesh.

Then I carefully squeezed it.

Psssss.

A foul stench spread through the room along with the sound of escaping gas.

If it had been an ordinary lamp, the flammable gas would have caught fire the moment it touched the flame, and the pouch itself would have exploded.

János must have expected that too, because he flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.

But.

"...Huh?"

There was no explosion.

Instead, something strange happened.

The yellow flame burning inside the mesh shot upward the instant it met the gas, and the top of the flame turned a mysterious blue.

A blue flame flickering like a will-o'-the-wisp.

Yet it remained quietly trapped inside the wire mesh.

Gas continued pouring out, but the fire did not spread beyond the mesh.

"How... is this possible? The gas touched the flame, so why didn't it explode?"

"It's a simple principle of thermodynamics."

"Thermo... what?"

I moved the pouch away, lifted the lamp, and tapped its wire mesh.

"For a flame to burn, it needs oxygen, fuel, and high heat. This dense copper mesh has very high thermal conductivity. The instant the flame inside tries to pass through its openings, the cold metal mesh steals its heat."

That was the key principle behind the Davy Lamp, invented by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy in the nineteenth century.

Just as hot soup cools when you strain it through a sieve, a flame cools as it passes through this wire mesh and cannot ignite the gas outside.

"So even if gas burns inside the lamp, the fire won't spread outside. That means you can safely keep a flame lit even in a mine tunnel full of gas."

I held the lamp in front of János's face.

"And did you see what happened just now? It's normally yellow, but it turns blue when there's gas. It also acts as a kind of warning device. If the color of the flame changes, you run at once."

"Hah..."

János stared blankly at the lamp.

A tool that could take miners deep into tunnels without the danger of gas explosions.

With this alone, coal production could increase several times over.

But that was not the end of my inventions.

"And look at this too."

I took out a pouch containing cloth and charcoal powder from the corner of the workbench.

It was made by filling layers of cotton cloth with finely crushed activated carbon, with strings attached so it could cover the nose and mouth.

"What is this? Some kind of muzzle? Like a bit you put on a horse?"

"It's a mask. A dust mask."

I put it on myself.

"When you work in a mine, you breathe in coal dust. If it builds up in your lungs, you get a disease called pneumoconiosis. Your lungs harden like stone every time you breathe, and eventually you cough up blood and die in agony."

"Ah, I think I've heard of it. They say miners catch lung disease very easily."

"That's why we'll make them wear this. If the charcoal filter catches the fine dust, fewer people will die from disease."

I took off the mask and placed it on the table.

"And lastly, I'm designing a ventilation system."

I pointed at the blueprint drawn on the blackboard.

"Rather than digging just one tunnel, we'll dig a separate entrance and exit, then connect them in a U-shape. Then we'll light a fire at the bottom of the exit shaft."

"A fire in the mine? Isn't that dangerous?"

"No, not at the entrance. At the bottom of the vertical exit shaft. When we light a fire, the air heats up and rises. It's convection. As the hot air escapes, fresh air will be drawn in through the entrance to fill the empty space."

A natural air-circulation pump.

With this, people could breathe hundreds of meters underground as though they were on the surface. You could call it an eco-friendly ventilator.

Excited, I continued explaining.

"That'll clear out gas faster and lower the temperature. People can work in a comfortable environment, so efficiency will rise and fewer miners will get sick and die. What do you think? Perfect, isn't it?"

I looked at János proudly.

It would protect miners' lives and increase productivity.

They were humanitarian inventions that killed two birds with one stone.

Maybe not a Nobel Peace Prize, but surely enough to earn at least an International Labour Organization commendation?

Yet János's expression was strange.

Rather than admiration or respect, he had gone pale as though confronted by something too horrifying to describe.

"My lord..."

"What? Is there something you don't understand?"

"No. I don't know what thermodynamics or convection means, but I understand roughly what you're saying. That's why it's even more frightening."

János backed away, muttering.

"So... you mean to make them crawl into places where gas builds up and people explode to death, all so they can dig out coal no matter what..."

"Huh?"

"You mean you'll even give breathing room to men who should suffocate and die within a year, so you can work them until their lungs harden, no, until they grow old and die."

"No, wait. That's not what I meant..."

"That determination to keep them alive until they repay their ransom... it truly chills me."

János's eyes trembled. It was the gaze of someone looking upon something beyond human.

"You'll neither kill them nor let them rest, but turn them into machines that exist only to work... even the Devil would weep at such an idea. I cannot hope to follow the abyssal cruelty of my lord."

"..."

No, I just wanted them to work safely...

I didn't want to watch people die...

"What did you say this invention was called?"

"A Davy Lamp."

János nodded and softly recited the name.

"Yes, a Devil Lamp."

"Davy."

"A devil's lamp that lights the fires of Hell so miners can work without a moment's rest... what a remarkable name. I'll have the blacksmiths begin mass production of these lamps at once."

"...Fine. Do as you please."

I gave up trying to explain.

As János was about to leave the workshop with the lamp, I belatedly remembered an errand and stopped him.

"Oh, János. Bring someone to me on your way out."

"Whom do you mean?"

"Priest Jan Želivský."

The most radical Taborite agitator in Prague.

At the name, János paused in surprise.

"Why are you suddenly looking for that fiery man?"

I tapped the empty workbench with my fingers and answered casually.

"Those thirty thousand prisoners are Catholics loyal to the Pope to their very bones. Throwing them into the mine shafts isn't enough. Give them the slightest chance, and they'll clutch crosses and plot a revolt."

Silesia's mine tunnels would imprison their bodies, but imprisoning their minds was another matter.

I needed to dig the Roman Catholic Church out of their heads and install new software before I could put them to work without worry.

Whether they regained their freedom and returned home someday, or wanted to become subjects of Bohemia.

A cold smile formed on my lips.

"Go tell him. Thirty thousand lost lambs are waiting to be saved."

Footnotes:

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