Re: Steel and Gunpowder

Elise von Frundsberg stood in the doorway, looking miserable.

She had hastily thrown a woolen shawl over her nightgown, her hair unbraided and falling messily over her shoulders.

In her arms, she struggled to balance a stack of canvas ledgers, an abacus, and a leather tube filled with blank vellum.

"Put them on the drafting table," Konrad ordered.

Thus, Elise dropped the books onto the wooden surface.

She let out a long breath, rubbing her strained arms. "...the sun won’t be up for another three hours."

"Sit down. We have a crisis, and your ledgers hold the answer." Konrad replied

Elise pulled up a stool, her sleepy eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to focus in the dim candlelight.

Over by the hearth, Isolde let out a soft chuckle, adjusting the blankets around little Albrecht’s cradle.

"Don’t laugh at me, Isolde," Elise grumbled, glaring at the spymaster. "You get to lie in a warm bed all day claiming you’re recovering. I spent fourteen hours yesterday balancing the silver exchange rates with the Württemberg merchants."

"And you have done an adequate job," Konrad stated, "Our treasuries are full. But silver cannot be eaten, Elise. And it certainly cannot be burned in a steam engine."

After hearing such words, Elise leaned forward, "What is the issue? We have the Fugger silver. We can just buy whatever we need."

"...we cannot," Konrad corrected her, pointing his charcoal at the map of their territory. "Our borders are static, but our population and our industry are exploding. We have 3,500 standing soldiers. We have thousands of new peasant laborers. Our new steam engines require uninterrupted shipments of coal and raw iron ore to keep the boring mills running."

He tapped the charcoal against the table. "We need land. We need grain fields, iron mines, and deep forests for charcoal."

Elise frowned, "You can’t just buy land in the Holy Roman Empire, it belongs to the old lords and the Church. The Swabian Diet oversees every single border dispute."

"There are strictly four ways to legally acquire new lands without the Emperor bringing down his hammer upon us." Konrad said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his younger sister.

He raised a single finger. "The first way is vassalage. We force a neighboring lord to bend the knee and swear fealty to our house, paying us taxes in raw resources."

He raised a second finger. "The second way is dynastic inheritance. A lord dies without a male heir, and through a complex web of legal claims, the land legally falls to our house."

"That takes decades..." Elise pointed out.

He raised a third finger, and the room suddenly grew very quiet.

Konrad slowly shifted his gaze onto Elise.

Elise froze... she saw the lack of emotion in her brother’s eyes, and her stomach dropped into her boots.

"The third way..." Konrad said slowly, "is a political marriage alliance. We bind our house to a neighboring territory through holy matrimony, merging our lands and resources into a single economic bloc."

After hearing such words, Elise stood up so fast her stool clattered backward onto the floor.

"No." Elise shouted, her face flushing with sudden anger. "...you cannot be serious!"

Konrad didn’t blink. "A marriage contract signed by the Fugger bank makes the union legally binding across the entire Empire. I already have Katarina of Bavaria. You are the only legitimate daughter of the von Frundsberg house."

"You want to sell me off?!" Elise gasped, stepping away from the table. "You want to trade me for a iron mine?!"

"I won’t do it!" Elise shot back, "I am not just a piece of meat to be bartered!

Konrad sat in silence, watching her outburst.

Even so, he wasn’t angry. In fact, he was quietly observing her.

The old Elise was entirely gone... standing before him was a competent administrator who fully understood her own undeniable value to the realm.

Konrad let out a slow breath. "Sit down."

Elise hesitated, her chest heaving, before she slowly righted the stool and sat back down, still glaring at him with venom.

"I was merely testing your resolve," Konrad said smoothly. "You are far too valuable to the treasury to be wasted on a marriage bed. I need you here to manage the tax collections when our borders expand."

"Then why bring it up?" Elise snapped, wiping a tear from her eye.

"We are eliminating variables," Konrad lectured calmly, tapping the map once more. "Vassalage is impossible. Inheritance is too slow. A marriage alliance deprives me of my chief financial officer. That leaves only the fourth, and final, way to acquire land."

He drew a black line across the eastern border of their territory.

"War." Konrad declared.

Elise swallowed hard, looking at the dark line on the map. "But you said it yourself... if we just march our armies out and attack a neighbor, the Swabian Diet will declare us outlaws."

"We cannot launch an unprovoked war," Konrad corrected her, "We need a casus belli. A legally recognized reason to declare war."

"A casus belli?" Isolde asked, leaning forward with genuine interest. "A border dispute? An insult to our house?"

"Both are too weak," Konrad said, shaking his head. "If a drunken border guard shoots an arrow across our river, the Diet will just demand we accept a fine in silver. We need an aggressive act so blatant, so economically damaging, that no lord in the Diet can deny our lawful right to retaliate with extreme prejudice."

"However," Isolde pointed out, "the surrounding lords are terrified of your new weapons. The Bishop of Augsburg have seen what your twelve-pounders did to the Bavarian vanguard. They are hiding in their castles. None of them are stupid enough to openly attack our trade routes and hand you a casus belli on a silver platter."

Konrad stared down at the map.

Isolde was right... the local wouldn’t strike unless they believed they had an overwhelming advantage.

Konrad slowly set the charcoal down.

He needed to bait a trap... he needed to make one of his neighbors believe that the Swabian forges were vulnerable, that a shipment of unimaginable wealth was completely unguarded.

After all even the most cautious wolves will only break cover if they believe the shepherd has fallen asleep.