Chapter 20: New Relationships

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” ― Carl Gustav Jung.

Rome, Papal States. September 1072

Pope Alexander could finally relax. With his army firmly in control of Sicily and southern Italy, there were no enemies in the immediate vicinity. The worst part about having Sicily was the western third had been stripped of wealth by the British before the Papal troops could get there. However, the rest of the island was beginning to pay off for the papist with mineral and consumable wealth. Much of the island’s consumable wealth, i.e., fruits and vegetables, were shipped to Britain.

The fledging industries Alexander had been fighting to set up for years now had the raw materials they needed to operate, although it would take several years to bring those industries up to speed. The principal industry was manufacturing firearms and cannons for the Papal Army. With Sicily, Alexander wouldn’t have to buy firearms on the open market, lessening the pressure on his treasury.

What bothered him was the British raid into the Mediterranean. They had arrived without warning and took everything they could carry except slaves. The people who had been slaves had been freed and given the chance to move to Britain, where they would be free. Many former slaves moved to Britain, where they could start a new life. In the areas the British had raided, there was nothing but death and destruction as the former rulers couldn’t keep control without their money.

If the British could raid with impunity along North Africa, they could raid Italy. The only way for the Papal States to stop the British was to have a powerful navy, and the only way to have a fleet capable of defeating the British was to have a robust economy. Sicily was a start toward that powerful economy but by no means the end. Alexander failed to appreciate how badly the land had been stripped of easy-to-reach mineral wealth by thousands of years of mining. Without mineral wealth, it was left to commerce to create the wealth Pope Alexander needed to succeed.

Fortunately, Alexander had a reputation for protecting the people who were some of the best merchants around, Jews. Repeatedly, Alexander had worked to protect Jews, and that loyalty was repaid with coin in his treasury. With church restrictions on Christian merchants, Jews picked up the slack and provided needed goods and services, especially money-lending. It hadn’t escaped Alexander’s attention that when Marion came to power, she disposed of church restrictions on trade and quickly became one of the wealthiest monarchs in the Western world.

Alexander knew he couldn’t go as far as Marion because many factions in the church refused to accept anything associated with her. If they learned Marion influenced Alexander, they would do everything possible to eliminate him. Instead, he worked slowly and quietly to modernize the church and the Papal States. The army was the easiest because the firearms came from the Holy Roman Empire, Norway, and France. Since British technology was laundered through second kingdoms, it kept the traditionalists in the church quiet.

Although they were not facing any enemies, the Papal States kept their army intact since a new war could start anytime. The Byzantines could attack, trying to reclaim their Italian lands, or the Muslims could attack from North Africa. However, that possibility was a stretch since the British Navy had decimated the more powerful cities along the coast, and the Fatimid Caliphate was a shadow of its former self. Tunis was the only power left, and they were only powerful enough to cause problems.

Frankfort, Holy Roman Empire. September 1072

Henry’s war in Poland wasn’t going as planned. The German Army in Poland was bogged down and bled white by the stubborn Polish resistance. After the German Army had been resupplied in Danzig, they began moving south, using the rivers to support their advance. Once they advanced for almost a week, the Polish Army started to perform hit-and-run raids on the German supply lines and foraging parties.

With the resistance stiffening, the objective was changed to Posen. This would secure the Holy Roman Empire’s eastern border and give them a jumping-off point for later invasions. Even with the closer objective, General Roon couldn’t blast his way through. Every village had to be taken at the cost of blood. Blood, which General Roon couldn’t afford to spend but was forced to in order to advance.

While the frontline troops were battling the Poles for every town and village, the army engineers were battling the forest and swamps. Their job was to install the infrastructure to keep the army supplied and allow the artillery to move quickly. On many days, they could only lay 5 to 10 kilometers of track. If battling the land wasn’t bad enough, Polish cavalry kept the engineers on their toes. Several times a day, the cavalry would raid an engineering camp. While costing the Polish men and horses, these raids cost the Germans engineers, engineers that were not easy to replace.

In Frankfort, Brunhild continued to prove to Henry why marrying her was one of his best ideas ever. Brunhild repeatedly demonstrated that she possessed a mind and iron will few could equal. By this time, nobles dreaded any meeting she participated in because they couldn’t slip things past her as they did Henry.

Once Brunhild was fluent in reading, she picked up where Gretchen had left off teaching the commoners. There was no doubt educating the commoners didn’t pay off. The few commoners Gretchen had taught how to read were a minimum of twice as wealthy as regular commoners. A few were more prosperous than most nobles. This increase in wealth didn’t go unnoticed by Henry, especially when his treasury swelled from the rise in commerce.

Henry’s staff estimated that if just half the population learned to read and write, the empire would easily become wealthier than the old Roman Empire at its peak. To help avoid some of the worst problems of the Romans, Henry rotated troops through imperial guard duty. By rotating the troops, they wouldn’t have time to start conspiracies. Any conspiracy they managed to start would be crushed when the unit returned to the line.

To keep the rest of the army in line, Henry took a page from Marion’s book and used paymasters to pay the troops. This money came directly from Henry’s treasury and not from the officers. If the soldiers rebelled, they wouldn’t get any pay. Further increasing the soldiers’ loyalty to Henry, the state provided all their gear so the soldiers didn’t have to buy any of it. They could purchase extras out of their pockets if they wanted to, but all the essential gear was provided.

Keeping the soldiers supplied also gave Henry a lever to extort the locals in conquered areas into behaving. If they didn’t behave, their towns and villages would be looted. Many locals in the recently conquered Polish regions supported Henry since his troops behaved themselves while the Polish troops often looted the populace.

When Brunhild wasn’t teaching, she read, with her favorite books being the ones Gretchen had sent back from Britain before she was turned loose and entered Marion’s pay. Many things she read about would not be believable without the British proving the facts. Brunhild’s favorite book was on engineering and showed how a steam engine worked. After reading the book several times, Brunhild noticed several critical calculations were missing.

Every evening, Brunhild would sit in her study, working to solve the missing calculations. It helped that she had access to working steam engines. With them, she knew the endpoint, so all she had to do was to work backward. Brunhild had been working on the calculations for weeks, making only slow progress. Slowing her down, she had to learn the engineering language before progressing.

Once again, her iron will come into play. She wanted to understand steam engines so she could improve them and she would understand them. Henry didn’t know how steam engines worked, apart from the basic information that they heated water into steam and that steam was used to do work. He didn’t need much more since he wasn’t personally building or designing them. Brunhild wasn’t either, but she was curious and wanted to know.

Brunhild was what would be called, in Luke’s world, a polymath. She only needed the opportunity to shine, and Henry had given her that. For that reason alone, she was absolutely loyal to him, never mind she loved him. Whenever a noble tried to buy her off like they did Bertha, they quickly found themselves in one of Henry’s prisons with their possessions seized by the crown. Although this had happened a few times, a few nobles always disregarded what had occurred before them.

A noble without possessions was powerless, which was okay with Henry. Many remaining nobles hated Brunhild’s influence over Henry, and many more couldn’t understand it. They might have been able to understand if they saw how Brunhild and Henry interacted, but many didn’t bother looking. It was ironic then that Marion understood since Henry and Brunhild were basically her and Luke in reversed roles.

Unlike anyone else in Henry’s court, it didn’t take Brunhild long to discover the reach of Marion’s intelligence network when she found one of her servants was a part-time spy. After thinking about the problem, Brunhild decided not to alert anyone. Since she knew what to look for, she found roughly 10% of the servants were on Marion’s payroll in one way or another. It was enough that if Marion wanted Henry dead, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

Instead, Brunhild put together a program and submitted it to Henry to develop a top-notch intelligence program. Brunhild was careful and got herself appointed head of the empire’s intelligence corps. She had a relatively small budget, but she had to admit that was sensible since she ran a new department.

A month after the corps’ founding, Brunhild captured one of the lower-level British spies to learn how they worked. She didn’t want to catch too many spies, so she wouldn’t alert Gretchen that she knew about the British network.

The depth of information Brunhild learned about British intelligence surprised her. Although the spy knew there were other spies, he didn’t know who they were. When he reported to his handler, he made a dead drop so they would never meet after the spy had been recruited. Brunhild couldn’t figure out how Gretchen moved the information back to Britain, and the spy didn’t know. Until she could figure out how to get the data the spies generated back to headquarters without risking the spy, the Germans couldn’t use what Brunhild uncovered in operations.

They could use that information to disrupt foreign spy missions, quickly disrupting numerous spy rings throughout the empire. One of the most worrying rings Brunhild’s agents uncovered was operated by the church. The church spy ring was discovered in late November, and many of its activities were questionable, if not illegal. From counterfeiting coins to prostitution, it seemed the church’s spies were into anything to make money. That wasn’t surprising to Brunhild since she knew about the Papal money problems. Still, it was disconcerting that an organization that many people devoted a significant part of their lives to was so corrupt.

Paris, France. September 1072

As the weather started turning, Philip of France became more nervous. He had worked tirelessly all year to ensure the population would have enough food to survive the coming winter while paying Marion what he owed her. What made Philip nervous was many people still didn’t have enough food to see them through the winter. The situation was far better than the previous year but wasn’t stable yet.

Luke had been correct. The interest Marion charged the French wasn’t enough to break the French, but it made Philip’s life difficult. With the money Philip had to pay Marion, he couldn’t rebuild France, but if he didn’t, she would invade and take what was owed her. Philip believed Marion, and with her navy, she could hit almost any part of France she felt like. Even the Mediterranean coast wasn’t safe from her wrath, as their raid against North Africa proved.

As Philip watched more of his money sail for Britain, he swore one day he would get that money back; he would have his revenge for her breaking France even though Marion taught Philip and Bertha to love. But first, Philip had to rebuild. His army was only a shell of its previous glory, and his navy was non-existent. If he wanted any chance against the British, Philip would have to spend years rebuilding his military.

As bad as Philip wanted revenge on Marion, Bertha didn’t want anything to do with her. If anything, their time in Britain showed Bertha that messing with Marion was a fool’s errand and would end in death. While Philip tried to pay Marion, Bertha did her best to keep up with her child.

Bertha was often exhausted after dealing with Louis IV all day. He was only five months old but constantly rolled over and demanded to be fed. At least, that was how it felt to Bertha. When she wasn’t keeping Louis in line, she had to keep Philip in line. Of the two, she couldn’t figure out which was worse. Many days, the one who was worried Bertha worse changed by the minute. She didn’t know how Marion did it, with all her children and husband, while running a nation more powerful than France.

One event Philip was watching carefully was the German invasion of Poland. If the Germans got bogged down in Poland, it would present an opportunity for Philip. He could invade and take all empire land west of the Rhine. This would push the Germans back to their historical frontier with more civilized Latin cultures. It would also give Philip access to the vast mineral wealth west of the Rhine.

Another positive point about attacking the Holy Roman Empire was that Philip wouldn’t have to deal with crossing the English Channel. He didn’t need a powerful navy if he didn’t need to cross the channel.

By October, Philip’s attention was being pulled in two directions in the foreign theater: attack Britain to get his money back or attack the Holy Roman Empire to gain large tracts of land to his East. Either direction had significant risk and greater rewards, but the preparations would be radically different.

If Philip attacked West, he would need a powerful navy and army. If he attacked East, he wouldn’t need a navy but a much larger army with a powerful cavalry force to scout and screen. The problem with this was when the Frankish nobles were crushed, the cream of what would be a cavalry force was destroyed. While training someone to fight or ride a horse was easy, doing both simultaneously was immensely difficult.

Training a naval force would be easier because the Breton and Frankish fishing fleets produced large pools of trained sailors. The problem with a navy was the British Navy was the most technologically advanced force in the world and had guns that could hit their target at nearly three kilometers in seas with one-meter swells and moving at full speed. Fighting in British home waters would bring their heavy cruisers into battle, and nothing Philip had could hope to compete with them.

Niðaróss, Norway. September 1072

While Philip feared the oncoming winter, parts of the Norwegian Empire were already dealing with snow. This was why Norwegian troops were equipped with fur-lined uniforms to keep them warm and dry. Ingegerd introduced the new uniforms when she overhauled the army in response to the conditions she saw when her father was trapped in Oslo. The new uniforms saved many soldiers from frostbite, which kept the army marching. To help the soldiers hide, a snow-white outer cover covered their uniforms. When fighting from ambush, the new covers helped the soldiers tremendously and made Ingegerd very popular with her troops.

Like Henry to the south, Ingegerd took as many pages from Marion’s book as possible. Unlike Henry, Ingegerd promoted officers from the ranks instead of automatically making nobles officers. This created a remade Norwegian military that resembled the British military much more closely than the German Army of Henry IV. By the end of the summer campaign season, many of the nobles whom Ingegerd put in the army were dead, most killed by their incompetence. Officers from the ranks replaced the dead nobles.

During the summer campaigning season, her new officer corps proved, without a doubt, that they were much better than the old officer corps under Ingegerd’s father. At every turn, the new army smashed the natives and captured one village after another. With the tribal chiefs exiled or dead, the villages had no leadership, which made them easier to deal with. Ingegerd’s soldiers made a standard deal with each village; if they behaved and accepted Ingegerd as their ruler, the village wouldn’t be sacked, the females violated, and the males killed.