WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈
Chapter 78: The Paper Revolution (2)
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When the carriage reached the gates of Sternberg Castle, Technical Officer (Meister) Tomáš hurried out in his stocking feet to greet me.
"Your Majesty! No, what brings you here without even sending word?"
Tomáš wore a leather apron soaked with grease. His face held a mixture of delight, confusion, and the uneasy thought, What is he planning to do this time?
As I stepped down from the carriage, I patted him on the shoulder.
"Have you been well, Tomáš? This is sudden, but there's something I need you to make right away."
"Just give the order. Is it a new cannon? Or an even bigger Blast furnace?"
"It's not quite that grand."
I handed him the blueprint I had prepared.
Tomáš's eyebrows twitched as he took it. His head gradually tilted to one side.
"Your Majesty, what in the world is this? What is such a device meant to be used for?"
"It has its uses. Can you make it?"
"Hmm..."
Tomáš was no longer an ordinary blacksmith from a country forge. After spending the last two years under me and enduring every bizarre experiment imaginable, he had become a seasoned Technical Officer (Meister).
He carefully studied the measurements and thicknesses on the blueprint, then nodded without another word.
"I don't know what strange... ingenious device Your Majesty intends to make this time, but if it is Your Majesty's will, there must be deep wisdom behind it. I will put the foundry into operation at once."
"Good. Have it ready by noon tomorrow. It must be finished before the guests from Prague arrive."
"Of course. Leave it to me, Your Majesty."
After patting Tomáš on the shoulder a few more times in encouragement, I headed into the smoke-filled factory.
Then I spent some time as lord of the castle for the first time in a while, inspecting the vast industrial complex I had built with my own hands.
* * *
The next day.
When I headed to an open area beside the factory to welcome the papermakers, I found some unexpected faces waiting there.
"Why are you two here?"
Hanuš, director of the Royal Steelworks.
Josef, director of the royal soap workshop.
The two men, once masters of the Prague blacksmiths' guild and Soap Guild, stood with their hands behind their backs as though they had come to enjoy a fine spectacle.
"Ha ha, greetings, Your Majesty."
Hanuš greeted me with a genial smile.
"I heard new sacrifices... no, newcomers were arriving."
"It brought back old memories. We were curious to see what entertaining sight would unfold."
Their eyes held the mischievous pleasure of men who had already taken their beating and were now waiting to see who would be next.
"...Fine. Watch if you want. Just don't get in the way."
"Of course, Your Majesty. We will merely hold our breath and observe."
Just then.
Creak-
A carriage stopped in front of the industrial complex with a sharp screech.
The papermakers from Prague had finally arrived in Sternberg.
The moment they climbed down from the carriage, they were overwhelmed by the sight before them and looked around in every direction.
"Good heavens... so this is the Sternberg everyone talks about?"
"Look at those enormous chimneys. The smoke is rising like clouds."
"Listen to that sound. It feels as though the earth itself is rumbling."
These were people who had spent their lives handling rags in Prague's narrow alleys and moldy basement workshops.
Blast furnaces spewing red-hot iron and dozens of Waterwheels turning as they cut through the river water. The heat pouring from the massive industrial complex must have felt like a different world to them.
Only two years earlier, when I had gathered Prague's blacksmiths here, they had mocked it as a backward country village. I felt quietly proud that its standing had changed so completely.
Standing in the factory yard, I approached the craftsmen as they fidgeted nervously.
"Welcome, craftsmen of Prague."
"G-Greetings to His Majesty the King!"
Dozens of craftsmen bowed at once.
Their tense shoulders made it plain how nervous they were to stand before a king.
"Raise your heads."
I had no intention of putting on airs, so I came straight to the point.
"Do you know why I summoned you here?"
One of the craftsmen cautiously spoke up.
"M-May we presume it is because there was a problem with the quality of the paper supplied to the royal court? But, Your Majesty, we swear we did our best. Even with the war making it difficult to obtain rags, we searched day and night for old clothes..."
I shook my head.
"Wrong."
"...Pardon?"
"There is only one reason I brought you all the way here today. To tear apart and remake the outdated method of papermaking you have clung to."
A murmur spread among the craftsmen at my blunt declaration.
The oldest among them, Bartoš, master of the Prague papermakers' guild, carefully spoke up.
"Your Majesty, forgive me, but may I say something?"
"Go ahead."
Bartoš bowed respectfully before protesting.
"Outdated methods? Not at all. We have made the finest paper through traditional methods passed down for centuries. Gathering old cloth, pounding it to pulp, rinsing it in clean water, every step of the process..."
"Yes. That very method is the problem."
I cut him off firmly.
"Rags are expensive and hard to obtain. How long will you beg for the old clothes others have worn and rummage through piles of rubbish for materials?"
"That... Your Majesty is right, but paper requires fibers. And there is nothing better than rags for obtaining them. If there were another material besides rags, do you think we wouldn't have used it?"
I nodded.
"Exactly. That is why I intend to change the material used to make paper."
"The material? To what?"
I swiftly pulled away the tarp covering a mountain of objects piled beside us.
Flap-
"Th-This is...?"
The craftsmen's eyes widened.
What lay there was neither scraps of cloth nor well-dried hemp fabric.
They were pieces of wood, broken into thumb-sized fragments and giving off the fresh scent of sawdust.
Wood chips.
"Isn't this... just wood?"
"No matter how you look at it, it's just firewood fit for the hearth..."
Bartoš stepped forward with an incredulous cough.
"Your Majesty, forgive my insolence, but paper cannot be made from wood."
"Oh? Why not? Have you tried it before making such a claim?"
At my question, Bartoš straightened his back.
The pride of a craftsman who had devoted his entire life to paper had clearly been provoked.
"Of course we have! It is not as if we never tried. We ground sawdust and soaked it in water, and we shaved wood into thin pieces. But wood fibers do not bind together. They only crumble apart. Left in water, it rots and gives off a foul smell, but it never joins together like paper."
He added in a confident voice.
"Wood cannot be used as a material for paper. It is only firewood or building material. That is the order set by God."
The other craftsmen nodded in agreement.
"The order set by God..."
It was not entirely wrong, at least by the standards of medieval technology.
Wood consisted of cellulose fibers and lignin, a natural adhesive that held those fibers tightly together.
If one simply ground it down without removing the lignin, which was as firmly embedded as reinforcing bars in concrete, the fibers would not separate. They would simply snap apart.
But with the power of chemistry, it was an entirely different story.
"The reason you failed was not God's order."
I picked up a handful of wood chips. Their rough, hard texture filled my palm.
"It was because your recipe was wrong."
"A recipe...?"
Instead of answering, I turned to Tomáš.
"Tomáš, bring what you prepared."
"Yes, Your Majesty! Heave-ho!"
Tomáš and four burly laborers groaned as they hauled over a massive lump of iron loaded onto a cart.
Thud!
What they set down with a heavy crash was a black cast-iron pot.
It was not an ordinary cooking pot like the ones women used in their kitchens. Its walls were over two knuckles thick, and enormous steel bolts were packed tightly across its lid.
It was a high-pressure digester cast from cast iron freshly drawn from the Blast furnace.
Bartoš spoke with a flustered look.
"Your Majesty, isn't this a pot for making soup? It looks awfully crude for a pot..."
"Yes. From now on, we will use it to boil wood."
"B-Boil wood?"
Seeing it directly was quicker than a hundred explanations.
I picked up a shovel and shoveled the wood chips into the pot.
Even as they watched the wood pieces tumble inside, the craftsmen's faces were full of mockery and doubt, as though that could somehow turn wood into paper.
I did not particularly care. The results would prove it.
"János Hunyadi!"
"Yes, sir!"
János Hunyadi came over holding his nose and carrying two jars. I tipped the first one into the pot.
Pour-
A thick, transparent liquid cascaded over the wood chips.
High-concentration lye brought from the soap factory.
A potassium carbonate solution.
Bartoš narrowed his eyes.
"Is that lye? The kind used for laundry..."
"Yes. And the next part is the important one."
I opened the second jar. It was full of white powder.
It was quicklime, lumps of calcium oxide made by firing limestone in a kiln.
Even János Hunyadi, who was watching from the side, tilted his head.
"My lord, I thought you were making paper. Why are the ingredients the same as for soap?"
"The principle is similar. But this will be far more caustic and handled at a much higher temperature than soap."
After motioning for the craftsmen to move back, I securely put on leather gloves and a mask.
"Stand back. If it splashes, it might melt your skin."
"Gasp..."
The craftsmen stumbled backward in alarm.
Without hesitation, I poured the quicklime into the pot of lye.
Sizzle!
Bubble, bubble!
White steam burst forth in an instant along with the sound of water boiling.
"W-What is that?"
"The water is boiling without even lighting a fire?"
"Ugh! The smell is terrible!"
Causticizing.
Quicklime reacted with water to become calcium hydroxide, which then reacted with the potassium carbonate in the lye to produce a powerful alkaline solution.
The liquid inside the pot was no longer ordinary lye.
It had transformed into a potent caustic soda solution, sodium hydroxide, NaOH, harsh enough to dissolve not only protein but even the tough lignin within wood.
Holding my breath to avoid the rising steam, I covered the cast-iron pot with its lid. Then I used a wrench to tighten each bolt one by one.
Screech, squeak-
The sound of metal locking together rang out ominously.
Finally, I spread clay over the gaps to seal it completely.
"Light the fire."
Whoosh!
At my command, a laborer threw a torch into the furnace.
Fierce flames rose over the coal that had been stacked there in advance.
In an ordinary pot, water would boil at one hundred degrees, but it was different inside a sealed pressure vessel. As the pressure rose, so did the boiling point.
One hundred and twenty degrees, one hundred and forty degrees, one hundred and sixty degrees...
High heat and pressure that resembled the fires of hell.
Inside, the strong alkaline solution would tear apart the wood's cell walls and dissolve the lignin without a trace.
This was the essence of modern papermaking.
Soda pulping.
"Now comes the time to wait. It needs to simmer for half a day, so let us rest for a while."
I removed my protective gear and stepped back a few paces to watch the changes inside the pot.
Hissss!
Fine steam escaped through the gaps in the pot, making an unpleasant sound without end.
The craftsmen stared anxiously at the rattling cast-iron pot as though it were a bomb that could explode at any moment.
Bartoš still wore an expression full of disbelief as he muttered.
"That will really become paper? Mere wood? No, that cannot be..."
The common sense he had believed in all his life, the conviction that only rags could become paper, seemed to be boiling away inside that black pot.
That was when someone placed a heavy hand on Bartoš's shoulder.
"My friend."
When he turned around, two men were looking at him with the expressions of sages who had seen all there was to see in life.
They were Hanuš and Josef.
"It is all right. We were the same at first."
"Pardon? What do you mean?"
"Let me give you some advice. Don't cling to your pride right now. Watch first. Then, when you see the result, accept it without complaint."
Josef added with distant eyes.
"No matter how impossible it may seem, if His Majesty says it can be done, it can be done. That is the kind of place this is."
Their words carried the weight of deep experience.
Footnotes:
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