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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 68: The German Bible (3)

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Buda, capital of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Though it was broad daylight, the royal study overlooking the Danube lay as dark as a tomb.

Sigismund, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, had once commanded half of Europe.

Yet instead of the golden scepter that symbolized Imperial authority, his hand held only a grimy, half-empty wineglass.

Thick velvet curtains blocked out all light, leaving the room steeped in the sour stench of spoiled wine and damp mold.

"Dammit... those ungrateful bastards...!"

Sigismund glared with bloodshot eyes at the letters scattered across his desk.

They were replies to requests for support he had sent to royal houses and powerful families across Europe.

Nine months had already passed since the crushing defeat at the Battle of the Prague Plain.

After losing an army of one hundred thousand in Bohemia and fleeing to Hungary in the dead of night, the Emperor's authority had sunk to rock bottom. His treasury was empty, and his honor had been dragged through the mud.

There was only one way to escape this miserable mire.

He had to raise an army again, crush Bohemia beneath his heel, and behead Ulrich, the Heretic King, to prove the Emperor's majesty.

So he had humbled his once sky-high pride and held out his hand to the other nations of Europe.

Yet every reply was equally hopeless.

[...I deeply sympathize with Your Imperial Majesty's difficulties, but I am currently tied to Paris as I secure my claim to the French throne. I can only regret that I cannot spare even a single knight while carrying out the Treaty of Troyes.]

It was a reply from Henry V, King of England.

Sigismund crumpled the letter and hurled it to the floor.

"Regret? Don't make me laugh!"

A twisted chuckle escaped his lips.

"He's so obsessed with grabbing French land that he doesn't care about the Emperor's crisis? I went all the way to London in 1416 to forge an alliance with him, and that ungrateful island brat..."

The flames of the Hundred Years' War still consumed Western Europe.

Henry V was fixated on cutting off France's last breath and had no intention of wasting troops on the heretic problem in the east.

Dauphin Charles of France, whose capital of Paris was being ravaged by England, likewise had no room to concern himself with another country's war.

The reply from Alfonso V, King of Aragon, lying beside it was not much different.

[...I wish to heed Your Majesty's will, but Aragon's fleet is currently fully committed to the war of succession for the throne of Naples across the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Moors in the south of the Iberian Peninsula are stirring once again, making the holy Reconquista war to drive out the heathens an urgent matter.]

"Holy war? Hah! Dress it up with a pretty excuse all you want, you just want Naples! The Emperor of Rome is shedding blood to defend Christendom, and you want to claim a patch of Italian land in the middle of this? Hypocrites!"

Still, there was another culprit who drove Sigismund's blood pressure higher than any of them.

Poland.

"Władysław II Jagiełło... that old bear of a bastard!"

Władysław II Jagiełło, King of the united Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.

According to his intelligence reports, instead of dispatching crusaders, he had opened up a large-scale grain trade with Bohemia.

A man who should have called himself a defender of Catholicism was lining his pockets by selling wheat to the heretic Ulrich.

"Every last one of them... they're all drooling as they wait for me to fall."

There was no one.

Not a single person on this vast continent of Europe remained on his side.

As suffocating isolation tightened around his heart, a final spark of hope flashed through Sigismund's mind.

"That's right... the Teutonic Knights! They're still there, aren't they?"

Paul von Rusdorf, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, would surely send a favorable reply.

The knights of the black cross who ruled the Baltic coast.

They were Germans to the bone, more devout Catholics than anyone, and above all, they owed the Emperor a great debt.

When the Order suffered a devastating blow against Poland at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410, had it not been Sigismund himself who guaranteed its survival and protected it from behind the scenes?

"If it's them... yes, that Order of fanatics will come running at the mere pretext of purging heretics."

If the Order moved, the tide of war would turn in an instant.

Their heavy cavalry was the strongest in Europe. No matter how powerful Ulrich's cannons were, they could not stop the charge of the black-cross knights blessed by God.

At that moment, the study door opened cautiously.

"Your Majesty."

As the Hungarian chamberlain entered with a terrified expression, Sigismund shot to his feet in anticipation.

"Has it come? Did a messenger arrive from the Teutonic Knights? Did the Grand Master say he would send troops?"

The chamberlain's lips trembled as they shook their head.

"N-No, Your Majesty. It is not a messenger from the Order."

"Then where is it from? Is it those creditors again? I told you to throw every one of them out!"

"It's not that... urgent news has come from Germany, the Imperial heartland."

Germany.

Sigismund's brow twitched.

"Germany? Are those Electors insulting me again? Or did the Imperial Diet refuse to provide aid?"

"Th-There is... a rebellion, Your Majesty."

Thump.

Sigismund's heart sank.

"...A rebellion?"

A hollow laugh escaped him.

The princes had finally drawn their swords while the Emperor was away.

It was not entirely unexpected.

He was shocked, but not astonished.

"Who is it? The Elector of Saxony? Or Brandenburg? Who is this reckless fool daring to stab the Emperor in the back?"

But the answer that came from the chamberlain's mouth went far beyond the Emperor's imagination.

"No! Not an Elector... peasants!"

For a moment, Sigismund doubted his own ears.

A peasant revolt?

Was the chamberlain talking about the petty disturbances where peasants whined for bread after their lords pressed them for taxes, only to be trampled beneath knights' hooves and put down?

"You burst into my study because of peasants whining after their lords collected a little tax? Tell the local lords to suppress them themselves! That isn't even worth reporting..."

"It is not merely a riot, Your Majesty!"

The chamberlain squeezed their eyes shut and screamed.

"Saxony, Thuringia, Franconia... all of Germany has been thrown into chaos! Peasants have taken up sickles and pitchforks to surround their lords' castles! That is not all. Simultaneous uprisings have broken out in Imperial Free Cities such as Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Augsburg! Tax collection throughout the Empire has been completely paralyzed!"

"...What did you say?"

The Holy Roman Empire was an impressive name, but in truth it was closer to a vast confederation where the Electors ruled their own lands.

And the Electors were busy stuffing the taxes collected from their territories into their own pockets. They had no intention of handing them over to the Emperor.

As a result, the only funds the Emperor could claim were Imperial taxes paid by his own domains and the free cities within the Empire.

Now that sole source of money had been cut off entirely.

Steadying himself against the desk, Sigismund asked urgently.

"What about the mines? What has become of the silver mines in the Harz and the Ore Mountains?"

If taxes from the free cities had been cut off, then at least the silver mines, the heart of the Empire and the only vein that could fill the Imperial treasury, had to be safe.

But the reply he received was no different from a death sentence.

"Th-The miners have occupied the shafts and gone on strike as well! Mining has been completely halted. Not even a single copper coin is making its way to Buda, let alone silver coins. The miners are all refusing to pay taxes and tithes..."

Sigismund's face drained of color.

The cities were engulfed in the flames of rebellion, and the mines that fed the Empire's coffers had stopped.

That left only the protection tax collected from the Jews...

'Ah...'

Even that fleeting hope was crushed miserably.

There was nothing.

Even if he squeezed it dry like a rag, there was nothing left to come out.

During the previous Bohemian crusade, it was Sigismund himself who had stripped the Jewish communities of Germany bare to raise military funds.

Not a single coin of tax revenue remained to come from German soil.

The wretched reality that the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire could not collect even one silver coin from Germany, his own heartland.

That clear, cruel declaration of bankruptcy struck Sigismund like a blow to the back of the head.

But the disaster did not end there.

"Th-That is not all, Your Majesty."

"...Again? What else is there?"

Even under Sigismund's rebuke, the chamberlain could not bring themself to speak. They trembled like a leaf.

"Speak! What else is left?"

"...Th-The peasants are singing."

"Singing?"

Sigismund's brow furrowed.

The peasants starving to death were singing?

Had they all gone mad?

"Singing at a time like this? Are you mocking me? What song could peasants possibly be singing?"

"Hymns. But... they are not in Latin."

The chamberlain's voice shrank to a mosquito's buzz.

"They are in German, Your Majesty. The rioters march with sickles in one hand and German Bibles in the other, singing hymns in German."

"...What?"

Sigismund's pupils shook violently as though struck by an earthquake.

German Bibles and German hymns?

It was like... like...

"They are like the heretics of Bohemia... no, they are worse! The people of the Empire call His Holiness the Pope the Antichrist, denounce Your Majesty as a thief who bleeds the people dry, and burn churches!"

Boom!

It was as if lightning had struck from a clear sky.

While he had been holed up in Hungary and dreaming of his return, the cursed ideas Ulrich had unleashed in Bohemia had finally crossed the border and reached the heart of the Empire.

Germany could no longer be called the Emperor's land.

It had become a nest of heretics.

"Y-You heretical bastards, I'll tear you apart... my Empire... urgh...!"

Sigismund clutched his chest. His heart pounded as though it would burst, and his vision turned white in an instant.

"Your Majesty? Your Majesty!"

"Cough...!"

The face of his brother, Wenceslaus IV, who had died suddenly from shock three years ago after hearing that German city councillors had been thrown from the window of Prague City Hall, passed through his mind like a flash.

Overwhelmed by the terrible pressure crushing his chest, Sigismund staggered and clawed at the air. Feeling vanished from his fingertips, and his tongue curled inward.

As his consciousness faded, Sigismund bitterly mocked himself.

'Brother... was this how you felt?'

The old Emperor's body lost its support and collapsed to the floor.

The hand that should have gripped the golden scepter slid away feebly, knocking the wine bottle from the desk.

Crash! Shatter!

The red wine spilled across the floor, spreading darkly like blood flowing from the Empire.

"Y-Your Majesty! Please come to your senses, Your Majesty! Is anyone out there? Fetch a physician at once!"

The chamberlain's desperate cry echoed hollowly through the dark corridors of Buda's royal palace.

Footnotes:

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