Re: Blood and Iron - Chapter 573 573: The Crown on a Knife’s Edge

A storm hung heavy over Madrid, rain streaking the ornate windows of the royal council chamber and drumming on the slate roofs of the capital beyond.

Inside, beneath the high coffered ceiling, Spain’s king stood braced at the edge of a vast table cluttered with dispatches, intelligence folders, and a sprawling map of Iberia pinned with colored flags.

Alfonso XIII’s hand rested on the table’s edge, knuckles pale. His eyes dark, sharp, increasingly haunted these days, swept over the map again and again as if by sheer force of will he could rearrange the loyalties of provinces and regiments.

To his right hovered General Barrera, a thick mustache twitching whenever a fresh report arrived. To his left, the Minister of the Interior shuffled through communiqués that smelled of damp ink and sweat.

Across the map, the Chief of Intelligence cleared his throat, tapping a trembling finger on a cluster of pins south of Zaragoza.

“Your Majesty, the anarchist cells in Aragón have doubled in number since the collapse of the textile consortium last quarter. They’ve begun coordinating strikes with CNT syndicalists in Catalonia. And now…”

He slid a thin slip of paper across the table. “They’re openly calling for arms. For land seizures. For the execution of local nobility.”

Alfonso read the printed handbill, its lurid promises of bread and liberty, and dropped it with a faint curl of disgust.

His gaze shifted to the bright red pins scattered through Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla.

“And what of these Français exilés still clogging our southern ports? Has not a year of harbor charity softened their revolutionary spirit?”

The Minister of the Interior shifted uncomfortably. “Your Majesty, with respect, many of these men are not harmless laborers but petty officers and rabble-rousers driven from Marseille and Toulouse when de Gaulle’s purges began. They refuse to take Spanish oaths. They congregate in foreign clubs, trading seditious pamphlets. We even found caches of pistols marked with old French Republican seals.”

General Barrera slammed a thick palm on the table, rattling crystal decanters. “Then expel them! Drive them to Portugal or the sea. Spain is not their refuge if they spit on your crown.”

“Easy for you to say,” muttered the Minister. “The factories in Cádiz and Cartagena need cheap hands. Without those Frenchmen, we might not finish another drydock before year’s end.”

The king cut across them with a voice low but cold as Toledo steel. “We are not England to fatten on mercantile illusions. We are Spain; born of forged crowns and gunpowder. If these men threaten our peace, they will be dealt with, no matter who pays whose wages.”

A fresh aide burst through the chamber doors, boots squeaking. He offered a rigid salute and handed over a wire dispatch. The Chief of Intelligence scanned it, his breath catching.

“From the Guardia Civil in Salamanca, sire. Another train seized by peasant committees. They strung up the stationmaster; accused him of hoarding grain. Local police stood down rather than fire on the crowd.”

General Barrera’s face went purple. “Dios mio. Even our own police hesitate to uphold order.”

“Not police,” corrected the king quietly. “Our people. And that is the greater danger.”

He stepped back from the map then, as though it physically repulsed him. Rain lashed harder against the window, tiny rivulets racing one another down the glass.

“How long before this becomes more than isolated brushfires? How long before Barcelona openly hoists a red banner, before Valencia declares for a workers’ junta? And what then of our army; will they obey me, or will half march under socialist slogans as they did in Russia in 1905, and France in 1916?”

Silence. Barrera studied his boots. The Minister thumbed rosary beads half-hidden in his coat pocket. Only the Chief of Intelligence dared whisper the thought aloud:

“It may come to preemptive arrests, Your Majesty. Perhaps even martial law. Break the unions before they fully merge with these foreign radicals. Put down the worst provinces with force now, rather than let them grow a common cause.”

Alfonso let out a long, hollow breath. “You would have me shatter Spain to save her. Spill Castilian blood upon Castilian stones to keep this crown balanced on my brow.”

Barrera stiffened. “Better our own blood, Your Majesty, than to see French agents or godless anarchists dictate your decrees in this very palace.”

A fresh rumble of thunder rolled overhead. Somewhere deep in Madrid a church bell struck six. Alfonso closed his eyes, fingers tightening on the table’s edge.

At last he nodded once, curt and final.

“Draft the warrants. Issue discreet orders to the Guardia and the Carabineros. But mark this well, gentlemen; there will be no mass roundups, no orgies of revenge. Spain will not become Portugal in miniature. Our people must see discipline, not a vulture’s feast.”

Barrera inclined his head. “As you command, sire.”

The council began to disperse, papers gathered under arms, hushed orders passed down narrow palace corridors already echoing with the footsteps of history.

Alfonso lingered a moment longer, alone now with the rain. His gaze drifted again to the map; to the red pins in Barcelona, the new black ones sprouting across the Basque hills.

“Hold a little longer, mi España,” he murmured, voice barely above prayer. “Hold a little longer for me.”

And beyond the walls of the royal palace, Madrid waited with bated breath, straining under the weight of rival banners, while Europe, and perhaps the world, prepared to see which way Spain would finally break.

—

Soldiers clad in camouflage uniforms and wielding rifles more bakelite than steel stood outside Budapest. Instructing the local Hungarian Royal Army in counter-insurgency operations.

In the decade and a half since his war for Greater Hungary began, the King whose officers crowned him in the absence of Habsburg authority had achieved his goals with near completion.

Save for that stubborn wedge of Transylvania, half free state, half Romanian protectorate, Hungary had reclaimed its historic bounds.”

But in doing so, they had inherited much of the instability that had plagued the dual monarchy before their independence.

Of course, weapons could be bought, and expertise sourced from abroad.The Werwolf Group, Bruno’s private shadow army, still stalked the post-colonial world.

However, aside from some minor operations of the clandestine variety, they had stayed out of the German-Japanese war almost entirely.

Instead, a large part of their forces were centered in the Balkans, given shelter by the Crown of Hungary in exchange for sharing their expertise for silver, gold, and haven.

The Hungarian realm now encompassed much of the lands east and south of the German Reich, and because of this, they now had a dozen ethnicity, and half a dozen religions fighting over petty village rivalries, some of which went back centuries.

As a result, law and order were enforced by the barrel of a gun, and the King’s decree. Written on parchment with the ink of a fountain pen.

And Ernst Röhm could not help but sigh, the silver wolfsangels on his collar glistening under the sunlight as a plume of smoke escaped his lungs.

“My wolves grow fat….”

The stability of peace had made the Paramilitary Commander anxious, and eager. And with the situation in Iberia entering a state of crisis, he may soon have his wish.