Chapter 175: Duchess of Piedmont

The spherical lead balls had slammed into the armored mannequins with devastating energy.

Several of the breastplates were entirely caved in, the blunt-force trauma enough to shatter a man’s ribs and rupture his internal organs.

However, as Konrad ran a gloved finger over one of the deep dents, a subtle smile touched his lips.

The breastplates were ruined, yes. But the spherical rounds had not penetrated the steel.

Lafayette, ignorant of the metallurgical nuance, was ecstatic. He danced in the mud. "Magnificent! Absolute devastation! With these weapons, the Royal Guard will smash the Habsburg lines in Italy! We will be unstoppable!"

Konrad turned away from the target, his smile vanishing.

If the French ever turned these guns on Alemannia, Konrad’s Jaegers would literally shrug off the bullets.

"I am pleased you are satisfied, Marquis," Konrad said. "The initial shipment of ten thousand units, along with fifty thousand pre-packaged paper cartridges, will be loaded onto freight wagons by Friday. However, we have not finalized the financial logistics."

Lafayette, drunk on the prospect of military supremacy, waved a dismissive hand. "We agreed on a hundred tons of silver, Your Majesty. King Francis is already arranging the secure transport from Paris."

"Silver is heavy, Marquis, and the roads through the Black Forest are notoriously plagued by bandits," Konrad countered. "I have a far more efficient proposal. One that guarantees a faster delivery of your weapons and eliminates the risk of a raided treasury train."

Lafayette blinked, pulling his cloak tighter against the rain. "An alternative payment? What do you propose?"

"I don’t want the silver shipped to Augsburg," Konrad dictated. "I want the silver deposited into a secure, Swabian-controlled vault established within the city of Paris itself. A central bank, if you will. King Francis deposits the silver there, my clerks issue a paper writ of credit, and those writs are used to purchase the muskets here in Swabia."

Lafayette stared at the King, thoroughly confused. "Paper writs? But... what is to stop someone from simply printing more paper?"

"The paper is backed by the silver sitting in the vault," Konrad explained. "It is a matter of convenience, Marquis. If France wishes to enjoy the benefits of Swabian industry, you will allow me to establish a royal bank within your borders."

Lafayette hesitated. Giving a foreign king banking rights in the French capital was a massive diplomatic concession.

But he looked back at the ruined steel breastplates.

"I... I believe King Francis would be amenable to such an arrangement," Lafayette agreed. "Provided the muskets arrive before the spring campaigning season."

"They will," Konrad promised. "Let us return to the palace and draft the charter."

...

That evening, the grand dining hall of the Augsburg palace was quiet.

The French Ambassador had retired to his quarters, leaving Konrad and Isolde to dine in relative peace.

The table felt empty with just the two of them.

Isolde cut a small piece of roasted pheasant. Konrad was staring at the wall, a glass of dark red wine untouched in his hand.

His mind was miles away...

"You look troubled, Konrad," Sophia observed. "The French bought your obsolete muskets. The Austrians are mining our coal. The Pope is likely having an aneurysm in Rome. By all accounts, you have won."

Konrad blinked, pulling his gaze back to the present. "They will realize that if they build enough blast furnaces, they can copy my steel. If they hire enough alchemists, they can reverse-engineer my powder."

Isolde frowned, setting her silver knife down. "But we are decades ahead of them..."

"..." Konrad sighed, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. "Emperor Charles is not a fool. The Pope is not a fool. They will stop throwing armored knights at our Gatling carts and start building their own foundries."

Konrad reached into his coat and withdrew a journal, placing it on the table between them.

"What is that?" Isolde asked, leaning closer.

"It is the charter for the Royal Swabian Polytechnic Institute," Konrad answered "I am going to build a university. I am going to mandate standardized education for every child in the kingdom. We are going to teach them calculus, thermodynamics, and metallurgy."

Isolde’s eyes widened. Educating the peasantry was entirely unheard of. It was considered dangerously destabilizing by every monarch in Europe!

...

A week had passed since King Konrad laid the foundation for the Royal Swabian Polytechnic Institute, and the capital was consumed by a frenzy of construction.

It was into this loud, filthy heart of the new world that Prince Lorenzo of Piedmont rode, expecting a fairy tale reception.

Lorenzo had brought five hundred Italian knights, clad in breathtakingly ornate, gilded plate armor that caught the pale autumn sun, marched in perfect formation down the wide macadam avenues.

Lorenzo himself rode at the vanguard.

He had watched Archduke Ferdinand’s humiliating defeat at Vienna from a safe distance and immediately calculated that the Habsburgs were a sinking ship.

Why marry an Austrian Archduchess when the true power of the continent now sat upon a throne of Swabian steel?

Lorenzo had come for the most valuable, untouched prize in Europe: Princess Elise von Frundsberg!

Inside the walls of the Royal Palace, King Konrad stood by a window overlooking the courtyard, watching the flamboyant Italian procession halt before his gates.

Konrad turned. Sitting at a table covered in architectural blueprints and production ledgers was his younger sister, Princess Elise.

Her fingers were stained with black ink, and she wore a tailored dress of dark-grey wool that mirrored the uniforms of the Ironstorm Jaegers.

ss. While other royal women were taught the lute, poetry, and French court etiquette, Konrad had personally tutored her in double-entry bookkeeping, metallurgy, and logistics.

She was currently auditing the first shipment of coal extorted from the Austrian mines.

"Prince Lorenzo of Piedmont," Konrad identified, taking a slow sip of his coffee. "He commands thirty thousand Italian mercenary pikemen and holds the keys to the alpine trade routes. I imagine he has realized Emperor Charles is bleeding out, and he is here to attach himself to a more profitable ledger."

Elise frowned, dipping her quill into an inkwell. "Should I have General Voss turn them away?"

"No," Konrad murmured. "Let him in."

Twenty minutes later, the doors of the Great Hall were thrown open.

Prince Lorenzo strode into the room, flanked by six heavily armed, gilded knights and a dozen servants carrying chests.

He looked around the stark, unadorned hall with a mixture of pity and arrogant disdain.

Konrad remained seated at the head of the table. He did not rise to greet his guest. Elise sat quietly to his right, her ledger still open, her quill poised.

"King Konrad!" Lorenzo announced. "I bring you the warmest regards of the Mediterranean, and the deep respect of the Duchy of Piedmont. I must confess, the air in your city is a bit... robust, but one cannot deny the raw energy of your blacksmiths."

"Prince Lorenzo," Konrad said. "State your business."

Lorenzo’s smile tightened slightly but he recovered quickly. He snapped his fingers. His servants stepped forward, unlatching the chests and throwing the lids open.

The dim light of the hall caught the blinding gleam of pure gold bullion.

Hundreds of thousands of meticulously minted Italian florins.

"I witnessed the fall of the Austrian vanguard. I know the Habsburgs are a dying breed. I have come to offer a merger of our two great houses. I offer this gold, my thirty thousand veteran pikemen, and a permanent defensive alliance against the Pope and the Emperor." Lorenzo declared.

Lorenzo turned his gaze toward Elise, flashing a charming smile.

"In exchange, I ask for the hand of your esteemed sister, Princess Elise, in marriage," Lorenzo concluded. "She shall be the Duchess of Piedmont, dripping in Venetian silk, and our bloodlines shall rule Europe for a thousand years."

"..."

The Italian knights stood tall, clearly expecting the Swabian King to be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the gold and the prestige of the Savoy bloodline.

Konrad slowly turned his head to look at his sister.

Elise had not stopped writing. She finished tallying a column of numbers, blotted the wet ink with a piece of sand-paper, and finally looked up at the Italian Prince.

"Thirty thousand pikemen," Elise repeated, her voice calm.

"The finest in the world, Your Highness." Lorenzo beamed, taking a step closer.

Elise looked down at her ledger. "a pike is a wooden stick tipped with an iron point. My brother’s Gatling carts have a maximum range of six hundred yards. Your thirty thousand men would have to cross a third of a mile of open ground while being subjected to a continuous rate of fire exceeding a thousand rounds a minute. Statistically, your entire army would be reduced to a paste before they could even see the whites of our Jaegers’ eyes."

The Italian knights shifted. Lorenzo’s face flushed a deep pink.

"Princess Elise," Lorenzo forced a laugh, trying to regain his footing. "You speak of war like a quartermaster. But marriage is a matter of nobility, of prestige! Look at the gold! Look at the wealth I bring to your family!"

Konrad finally leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. The faint amusement was gone from his face. "Look at you, Lorenzo. You have nothing of value to offer the Kingdom of Alemannia."

Lorenzo’s embarrassment instantly mutated into furious outrage. His hand dropped to the hilt of his rapier.

"You insult the House of Savoy!" Lorenzo snarled, his Italian knights stepping forward, their hands resting on their broadswords. "I came here in good faith, offering to elevate your peasant bloodline with the grace of the Renaissance! If you refuse my hand, Piedmont will march with the Emperor!"

From the upper balconies, the clack of two hundred grooved rifles being cocked echoed through the cavernous space.

Two hundred elite Ironstorm Jaegers stepped out of the gloom, their blued-steel barrels aimed directly downward, creating a three-dimensional kill-zone centered on the Italian delegation.

The swagger vanished from the Italian knights. They froze, looking up at the hundreds of black, bottomless muzzles pointed at their heads.

Elise calmly closed her ledger and stood up, smoothing the front of her dress. "You may take your chests of gold, Prince Lorenzo. Use them to buy better grain for your horses on the journey back to Italy."

Konrad remained seated. "You have five minutes to exit my city," Konrad whispered. "If I still hear the sound of your arrogant voice in six, I will test my new mortar shells on your knights. Dismissed."

Lorenzo looked at the guns, at the calm Princess, and finally at the demonic King. The Italian Prince swallowed his pride, turned on his heel, and sprinted for the doors, his knights scrambling behind him.

Konrad waved his hand, and the Jaegers on the balconies lowered their rifles.

Elise picked up her ledger and tucked it neatly under her arm. She looked at her brother, a faint smirk finally breaking through her expression.

"He was wearing perfume," Elise noted, wrinkling her nose slightly.