WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 71: The Peasant King

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Venice, Doge's Palace.

In the Doge's reception room, the blue waves of the Adriatic Sea rolled beyond the windows.

Beneath a ceiling adorned with splendid frescoes, Tommaso Mocenigo, the Republic's supreme ruler, stared at a ledger with a deep frown between his brows.

The old Doge, well past seventy, had eyes as dry and sharp as a winter sea.

"Foscari."

The Doge turned his gaze toward the man seated across from him.

"Because of the gold coins you poured into Bohemia, Venice's treasury is empty. The old men in the council came after me frothing at the mouth this morning. They asked whether I planned to bankrupt the Republic."

Francesco Foscari.

The Procurator of Saint Mark and one of the Republic's most aggressive and ambitious young power brokers, he had his sights set on becoming the next Doge.

Despite the rebuke, he calmly swirled his wineglass.

"Bankrupt, Your Excellency? This is an investment."

"An investment?"

"Yes. And we've already recovered half the principal in a single month."

Foscari gave a small gesture.

A waiting attendant placed a box on the table.

Click.

The moment it opened, a fresh herbal fragrance swept the stale air from the room.

A white, smooth solid bar.

The finest soap from Sternberg.

"This white bar is selling for whatever price we name at the Rialto Market. Noblewomen are desperate to get it, and orders are flooding in from the royal courts of England and Burgundy."

"Luxury goods always sell well. But fashions are like the wind. They disappear quickly."

"Your Excellency, with all respect, this item's value goes far beyond luxury."

Foscari's eyes shone with confidence.

"The physicians at the University of Padua are obsessed with it. They say that when midwives wash their hands with this soap before delivering babies, deaths from puerperal fever have miraculously ceased."

"What?"

Mocenigo's brow twitched.

Dying in childbirth was like a divine punishment that neither noble nor commoner could escape. Yet a mere bar of soap had broken that chain of death?

"This is what the physicians claim. Bad vapors in the air kill mothers, but this soap's holy scent drives away those evil odors and protects both mother and child."

It showed Ulrich's cunning.

If he had gone on about future knowledge such as microbiology and germs, medieval people would have dismissed him as a madman.

But this was an age when the miasma theory, the belief that disease came from foul air, was common sense.

The plausible idea of protecting the body with fragrance was the perfect key to opening medieval purses.

"Thanks to that, Venice's hospitals are clamoring to secure this holy scented soap, even at a premium. We can't keep it in stock. And though it hasn't been confirmed, rumors are spreading that its scent can even ward off the Black Death."

"What? Even the Black Death?"

Mocenigo stared intently at the white bar of soap.

"Protecting the body with the scent of consecrated soap... It does sound convincing. If it truly works, it would be something no amount of money could buy."

"That isn't all."

Foscari added proudly.

"The steel swords and breastplates brought from Bohemia are selling like wildfire as well. Famous mercenary captains are scrambling to buy them. They say the swords' strength brings Damascus steel to mind, while the breastplates and helmets are tougher than Milanese plate armor. Yet they cost half as much, so we can't keep those in stock either."

Mocenigo slowly nodded.

Hygiene goods bordering on medicine, and top-quality weapons.

In an age of endless war and plague, there was no more certain gold mine. Even to the old Doge, this was clearly profitable business.

"Fine. Let's say the trade was successful. But that wasn't the real reason I sent you all the way to Prague, was it?"

The Doge's gaze sharpened.

"What about the cannons? Did you bring back Bohemia's cannons, the ones that unleash such devilish firepower?"

The Ottoman Empire, newly ruled by a new Sultan, was making troubling moves, while war with the Duchy of Milan loomed in the west.

What Venice desperately needed was not fragrant soap, but overwhelming firepower capable of smashing enemy walls.

Foscari shook his head.

"Unfortunately, I failed to purchase the cannons themselves."

"What? After pouring in such a fortune, you returned empty-handed?"

"Instead, I secured a promise that they would lend us an artillery unit. It will take the form of a mercenary force operated directly by the Bohemian army. They will also be responsible for cannon maintenance and Gunpowder supplies."

"Hah..."

Mocenigo let out a hollow laugh.

They would not sell weapons, but offer the firepower of their army.

"They're clever. Do they intend to maintain their army with our money while gaining battlefield experience?"

"Yes. But from our perspective, Your Excellency, it isn't entirely a loss. Our soldiers won't need training to handle unfamiliar cannons, nor will they die when Gunpowder explodes. All that matters to us is that the shells land accurately on our enemies' heads."

"...Well, that's not wrong."

The Doge smacked his lips bitterly.

It was a shame that they could not obtain the technology itself, but securing firepower they could use in war at once was still a blessing.

"Fine. Foscari, you were right. The trade with Bohemia was successful."

Mocenigo leaned back in his chair and relaxed.

"But what did that young king demand in return? What did he intend to buy from Venice with all the gold coins he took from us? Murano glass? Spices from the East? Or perhaps information?"

By all common sense, a ruler preparing for war and building industry should have demanded strategic materials.

Yet Foscari drew a thin sheet of paper from his robes and slid it across the table.

"This is what the King of Bohemia requested..."

Mocenigo picked up the paper.

It was densely filled with the items the King of Bohemia had asked Venetian merchants to purchase.

"......?"

Mocenigo doubted his own eyes.

Perhaps his failing sight had read the letters wrong. He held the paper close to the candlelight and checked again.

But the words on the page did not change.

"Is this... all? Truly?"

"Yes, Your Excellency. That is all."

The Doge looked up.

His expression was beyond disbelief.

"He took away mountains of gold coins... just to buy these things?"

"Yes. He told us to bring back as much as possible, piled high on carts."

"Hah."

The Doge looked over the list once more.

No matter how he ran the numbers with the instincts of an experienced merchant who had spent his life in the world of profit and loss, it remained a list as mysterious as a riddle.

After a moment of silence, Mocenigo gave a bitter laugh.

"It must be one of two things. Either the King of Bohemia is a mad wizard, as the rumors say, or..."

The Doge looked out the window.

Toward the distant north, where Bohemia lay.

"Or he has eyes that see something we cannot."

* * *

Time flew by, and it was March 1422.

Winter had finally withdrawn after clinging to its last days.

While everyone else sharpened their blades for war and rebellion, I spent the winter quietly holding a shovel.

That winter had been one long stretch of digging.

The success of Prague's sewer project spread across Bohemia in no time.

The firsthand accounts of citizens freed from streets overflowing with filth were more powerful than any advertisement. Before long, Kuttenberg's silver mine owners and Plzeň's master brewers came rushing to the royal palace with bags of money.

"Please build one in our city too!"

"We'll pay whatever taxes you demand!"

Why would I refuse when they were offering money?

Thanks to construction that continued all winter, Kuttenberg's miners could now relieve themselves in clean public toilets, while wastewater from Plzeň's breweries flowed through underground water channels into septic tanks, where it became rich fertilizer.

The Sternberg industrial complex also continued to expand.

The fourth and fifth Blast furnaces began to roar, while the cement factory and soap workshops produced goods day and night.

Still, there was another project I completed over the winter that pleased me more than any other.

Sewers? Of course they were important. Hygiene was the foundation of national strength.

The industrial complex? Naturally essential. Productivity was a measure of national strength.

But compared with opening the arteries of a nation, those were secondary matters.

Holding the terrace railing, I looked proudly at the gray line stretching endlessly into the southeast.

A total length of fifty kilometers.

The Prague-Sternberg Direct Expressway.

Medieval roads had never had much to do with romance.

When it rained, knee-deep mud swallowed carriage wheels. When the skies cleared, hardened clumps of earth and jagged stones caught at horses' ankles.

Avoiding mud pits was harder than avoiding bandits, so even traveling fifty kilometers often took two full days.

But that road was different.

Four lanes, two in each direction, and fourteen meters wide. It was broad enough for four carriages to race side by side without trouble.

The centerline was clear, and traffic in each direction was separated, so congestion did not exist.

The road's center was built slightly higher so rainwater would naturally flow into drainage ditches on either side. Its cant design could withstand even torrential summer rains.

Unless heavy snow physically blocked it, that road would remain a logistics artery open twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Its effects were immediate.

Freshly made soap and steel farm tools could leave the factory in the morning and fill Prague's markets by noon, while, as if by a miracle, the empty carts returned to Sternberg before sunset.

A twofold or threefold increase in transport speed did not simply mean goods arrived faster.

It meant capital circulated faster, and national strength expanded faster.

'This isn't the end.'

For now, it only connected Prague and Sternberg.

But what if these gray veins connected every major city, such as Kuttenberg, Plzeň, and Český Krumlov?

What if I bound every small town and great city across the land into a dense network of concrete roads?

'That will create a same-day travel sphere.'

A country farmer could load freshly harvested vegetables in the morning, sell them at a major city's market, then return home in the evening to share warm soup with family.

The moment all Bohemia became connected like a single organism, the economic impact would be beyond imagination.

Yet I saw farther than that.

What were the absolute conditions necessary to overthrow the old medieval feudal system and build a strong centralized state upon its ruins?

In my view, two things mattered more than anything else.

An army, and roads.

A kingdom where the king's army could stand before a lord's castle gates in a single day, before a rebellion had even begun.

Could any fool dare dream of treason in such a country?

"The days of nobles hiding in their domains and acting like kings will soon be over."

Within a few years, I would strip the old, cumbersome garment of feudalism completely from this land.

Then I would make it known throughout Bohemia that I alone was its king, and that every power in this land flowed through me.

For that purpose as well, raising the people's income was essential.

A nation had no future while capital stagnated and rotted in the pockets of a handful of nobles. Water had to flow, and money had to circulate.

And the first thing I needed to address to break that stagnant current was...

Clatter, clatter.

Just then, a huge procession appeared beyond the horizon, kicking up dust as it approached Prague.

It came from the south, from the direction of Venice.

At the head of the procession, the golden lion banner of Venice fluttered majestically in the spring breeze.

Looking down at the sight, I smiled broadly.

"They've finally arrived."

The true seeds of abundance that would turn Bohemia's barren fields golden.

Footnotes:

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