WeTried Translations

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 46: Gutenberg

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Scratch, scratch, scratch-

In the quiet of the night, only the sharp scrape of a quill across parchment echoed through the room.

"......"

It had been ten days since János Hunyadi infiltrated Germany.

Only a week since Abraham left for Poland.

With hollow eyes, I glared at the mountain of documents piled across my desk.

No matter how much I processed in a day, it never seemed to shrink. Step away to use the privy for a moment, and the damned papers seemed to breed and multiply.

"Your Majesty, please review these."

Without the slightest regard for my suffering, Chamberlain Konrad set another stack of papers on my desk.

"What is this one?"

"A petition from Prague's butchers' guild and leatherworkers' guild. They say Your Majesty's sanitation decree is making their lives impossible."

Konrad added with an awkward expression.

"You ordered them not to dump animal blood and entrails into the Vltava River. They say that collecting them separately, then burying or burning them, costs too much. They are asking for subsidies or for the regulations to be relaxed."

"Are they insane...?"

Resisting the urge to snap my quill, I pressed hard against my temples.

"Do they want a waterborne epidemic to sweep through all of Prague? There will be no easing of the regulations. Tell them we'll consider subsidies later, but for now, they will follow the rules."

"Yes, Your Majesty. And this is... a land ownership dispute from the south."

Konrad slid the document toward me even more carefully.

"After the fall of the House of Rosenberg, three minor lords began claiming the ownerless scraps of land nearby as their own. They have sent private troops and are now facing one another."

"Haah..."

I let out a long sigh and clutched my head.

"What are the local officials and judges doing? Tell them to mediate."

"That is... there is no one to send."

"......"

"As Your Majesty knows, all the priests who knew the law and could read fled during the last excommunication. There is not a single judge in the provinces capable of delivering rulings in Your Majesty's name. If the lords draw swords against each other, there is no one but Your Majesty who can stop them."

That was the problem.

I could leave the military to Jan Žižka.

He was the finest general, a man who perfectly carried out my orders whenever I told him, "Train them," or, "Break them."

I could leave the economy to Abraham.

Tell him, "Make money," or, "Stabilize prices," and his Jewish resourcefulness would somehow make the numbers work.

But.

"Administration... There's no one to handle administration!"

I screamed silently at the ceiling.

Law, personnel, diplomatic work, handling petitions, city planning...

The administrators needed to take charge of the vast internal affairs required to run a country had been practically wiped out.

The existing nobles?

They were steeped in feudal customs and did not even understand the concept of the rule of law or an administrative system. If I assigned them work, they would either embezzle funds for their family's benefit or ruin everything through incompetence.

Could I use the priests, the educated class?

No. After I stripped the Church of its property and got myself excommunicated, every Catholic priest who could read and write had fled Bohemia long ago.

The remaining Hussite priests and ink-stained scholars from Prague University were far too few.

If not for the Jewish accountants Abraham had brought in, it would not have been surprising if Bohemia's administration had collapsed already.

So what else could I do?

Every practical decision and responsibility had no choice but to fall entirely on me, the king.

'Damn it. I never thought I'd still be working overtime every day after coming to the Middle Ages.'

No, it was even worse than before.

When I was a researcher, pulling all-nighters was routine, but at least I only had to conduct experiments in my own field.

Now I had to act as a judge, a mayor, and a construction foreman.

Even ten of me would not have been enough.

Konrad replaced my cold tea and spoke with concern.

"Your Majesty, it is late. Please retire for the night."

"I want to sleep too. But if I sleep now, the documents will be piled to the ceiling by tomorrow morning."

Rubbing my dry eyes, I staggered to my feet and walked to the window.

Looking out over darkened Prague, I muttered.

"I need people, Konrad."

"Pardon?"

"I need intelligent officials who can understand my orders and carry them out on their own. Not worthless nobles, but administrators who understand real practical work."

There was no point in building schools without teachers. There was no use in writing law codes without judges.

But such people would not simply fall from the sky.

If they did not exist, I had to create them. In other words, I needed education.

At the current pace, where copyists took months to produce a single book by hand, I could not establish a bureaucracy even in a hundred years.

Mass production of knowledge.

I had to print and distribute thousands, tens of thousands of textbooks and manuals.

That was the only emergency exit from this hell of paperwork.

"That's why I need Gutenberg."

In truth, I could make a printing press myself.

The principle was obvious. I only had to combine the structure of a wine press with the right alloy ratio for type.

But I did not have time for that now.

I was already overwhelmed. How could I lock myself in a forge to melt lead and carve type?

Technical Officers (Meisters) like Tomáš and Jakub could carry out my orders well enough, but that was all. I had to supervise every step just to get even one result.

That was not enough. I needed more than a simple technician. I needed an expert who could become my hands and feet.

I needed a true genius who could not only build a printing press, but also look at a rough blueprint I tossed his way, immediately understand it, and bring me a perfect result.

'Please... at least have half the genius history says you had.'

I looked up at the moon in the night sky and prayed earnestly.

* * *

Historians of later ages would write that if one had to name the person who had the greatest impact on humanity in fifteenth-century Europe, Johannes Gutenberg's name would stand at the very forefront alongside Martin Luther's.

The movable metal type printing method he invented broke the monopoly on knowledge, kindled the Reformation, and laid the foundation for the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.

He was a pioneer ahead of his time, a great inventor, and a teacher of humanity who ended an age of barbarism.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gutenberg's printing technology led humanity into a new age called modernity.

Yet those brilliant accolades were honors that would only be bestowed upon him after 1450, or in a far more distant future.

Strasbourg, Holy Roman Empire, April 1421.

At present, Johannes Gensfleisch was nothing more than a young metalworker whose life had become hopelessly tangled and a notorious debtor.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The old wooden door shook as though it might break apart.

"Come out! We know you're in there, you bastard!"

"Johannes! Give us our money! You said you'd make a fortune with that mirror business! You said pilgrims in Aachen would line up to buy them!"

"There's no point hiding! If we catch you today, we'll melt your bones down with lead!"

Curled up in the darkness, Johannes nervously bit his nails behind the desk barricading the door.

His hollow eyes burned more with anger than fear.

"Damn it... Ignorant fools. They know nothing about art..."

Born to a powerful noble family in Mainz, he had been driven out after a dispute with the guilds and drifted into Strasbourg years ago.

Dreaming of getting back on his feet, he had tried every sort of business, from gem polishing to manufacturing mirrors for pilgrims.

His business ideas had been perfect. His luck had not.

Who could have known that a plague would break out and the pilgrimage to Aachen would be canceled?

The thousands of mirrors he had made were gathering dust in a warehouse, while all that remained were mountains of debt and legal papers.

Still, Johannes did not yield.

He had a greater plan.

"I told you to wait! Just a little, just a little longer, and the perfect machine will be ready! You're going to hold back a genius over a few gold coins?"

He felt wronged.

He was not a swindler.

The age simply could not keep up with his pace.

Yet these idiotic investors, blinded by the crumbs before their eyes, wanted to cut open the belly of the goose that laid golden eggs.

Crack!

One of the hinges tore loose. Through the gap in the door, the creditors' murderous eyes flashed.

The door had reached its limit.

"Damn it!"

Johannes hurriedly scanned his workbench.

He did not spare a glance for scraps of hard bread or filthy clothes.

Instead, he grabbed small metal pieces made by mixing lead and tin, along with a bundle of parchments covered in complicated designs.

'Not these! They can take my life, but I can't let them take this secret!'

He quickly stuffed the blueprints inside his clothes and ran to the small window in the corner of the workshop.

It was a narrow opening made for ventilation, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through.

"Just break it down!"

"One, two, three!"

Crash!

The moment the door shattered and men carrying clubs poured inside, Johannes threw himself through the window.

"Hey! He escaped through the window!"

"Get him! Catch that rat!"

Johannes's belly caught in the narrow frame. He struggled desperately to avoid the hands reaching for him from behind before tumbling to the ground.

"Urgh!"

He landed in the mud and sprang to his feet without even having time to feel the pain.

His knees were scraped and his clothes torn, but first he had to make sure the "parts" inside his clothes were safe.

"He's getting away!"

"Stop, Johannes!"

The shouts behind him drew closer.

Johannes began scrambling through the alleys like an animal fleeing for its life.

His heart felt ready to burst. Pain tore through his lungs.

But if he stopped, it was over. He would either go to prison or be beaten to death by those enraged creditors.

'I... I won't end like this!'

Gritting his teeth, he turned the corner.

If he got around this corner, he would reach the main road. If he blended into the crowd, he could survive.

With that hope, he ran at full speed.

Then.

Thud!

"Aagh!"

A shock as if he had slammed headfirst into a solid castle wall, no, a massive boulder, struck his entire body.

"Ghk!"

Johannes could not even scream properly before he was thrown backward.

The precious samples of movable metal type in his arms scattered across the muddy ground with a clatter.

"Ow, my back..."

Sitting flat on the ground, Johannes grimaced.

What idiot was standing in the middle of the road?

Was he blind? If someone was running toward him, he should have moved aside!

Johannes raised his head, ready to pour out a stream of curses.

"Hey! Where are your eyes-!"

But the words never left his mouth.

'He, he's huge.'

A massive figure at least a head taller than him.

A heavy longsword hanging at his waist.

And cold, indifferent eyes looking down at him like a wolf.

'He looks much younger than me...'

Looking at the fallen Johannes as though he were a stone kicked from the roadside, the tall man spoke in a flat voice.

"I'm looking for someone."

The man pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his clothes.

He spoke German, though his strange accent carried a hint of Hungarian.

"His name is... Johannes Gens... something Gutenberg, I hear. Do you happen to know him?"

The man's gaze moved between Johannes's face and the movable metal type scattered across the ground.

"Uh..."

Johannes stared blankly, his mouth hanging open.

From the alley behind him, the creditors' shouts were drawing ever closer.

Footnotes:

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