Chapter 42: A Break With Tradition

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.” – W. Somerset Maugham

Rome, Italy (Papal States). April 1076

Pope Gregory didn’t know if he was elated or terrified; maybe equal measures of both. He and Matilda of Tuscany had finally come to an agreement. In it, Pope Gregory would marry Matilda, bringing Florance into the Papal States. Their children would rule over Italy as kings, while the pope would continue to be elected by the church.

Their children would serve as the heart and brain of the nation, while the popes served as its soul. One other change was naming. Matilda didn’t want to be the queen of the Papal States. Instead, with the wedding, the new nation would be Italy; this would reduce the barriers for the remaining northern Italian city-states. To give the deal a better chance of coming to fruition, it was to be kept secret until the wedding. Everyone who knew about the deal knew that if Henry IV caught wind of it, he would do everything he could to stop it.

Such a deal would have been unimaginable before Queen Marion came to power, but the rise of Great Britain and the spread of their new ideas changed the calculus of European geopolitics. From now on, the feudal system was obsolete; Marion drove the nails into the system’s coffin when she decimated the British aristocracy. In France, the system had been one of the casualties of the devastating war between Britain and France, although Philip worked to rebuild it.

The feudal system still lived in the Holy Roman Empire, although its significance decreased rapidly as Henry IV concentrated power. Two other places where it survived were Poland and the Iberian peninsula. Britain did not influence these areas as much as France or the Holy Roman Empire.

In the Papal States, the feudal system was alive but not well. Thanks to trade with Britain, many ordinary people were exposed to ideas of freedom and working for themselves. As these ideas permeated through the population, they led to the serfs and slaves becoming restless. While the serfs and slaves still worked their jobs, it wouldn’t take much to ignite a rebellion.

Pope Gregory had been making minor changes to defuse some tension. Some of the new laws he placed into effect protected slaves from summary execution by their owners by mandating a trial with legal representation. Slaves were also allowed to marry a slave of their choice, and their children would be born free.

Owners were still allowed to breed their slaves, and those children would be born slaves. If Gregory hadn’t allowed the breeding of slaves, he would have faced a revolt by the influential slave owners, which he couldn’t afford. It was a delicate balancing act for Pope Gregory, where one misstep would reverse all the gains made in the previous ten years.

When the pope was busy changing slave laws, Matilda was focused on preparing for her wedding. Even though the pope wasn’t someone she thought of as a true man, marrying him would give her much more power than she currently wielded and would secure her family for generations. Beatrice wasn’t sure about the wedding, but she didn’t carry much weight with Matilda regarding such matters. Where her opinions did carry weight was in issues of governance. Beatrice was more experienced, and Matilda often yielded to the older woman’s experience.

On Easter Sunday, April 1076, Pope Gregory stood in his finest clothes at the front of St. Peter’s Basilica while waiting for his new bride. When Matilda appeared, Gregory had to catch his breath as she was beautiful. She wore a white dress highlighting her impressive bust and hips, while a fiery diamond necklace cut in Great Britain was around her neck. The pair chose Easter for their wedding to signify the rebirth of Italy as a unified power.

The British had become known as the world’s best gem workers after they learned the art from Luke; he also recreated the tools needed to bring out the most in the cut gems. These gems quickly became coveted everywhere they were introduced. So coveted were the cut gemstones that they made up a quarter of the value of British exports.

As Matilda walked down the aisle, the crowd gasped as they witnessed the bride’s beauty. Finally, she stood beside Gregory, and they began the wedding services. Services lasted several hours before they could move on to the reception. For the reception, the ordinary people of Rome were invited to eat, drink, and be merry.

The purpose of inviting the ordinary people was to cement Matilda’s position as their new queen. While she wouldn’t have much direct power, she would have vast amounts of influence. However, she planned to gain control slowly. Inviting the people of Rome had been done at Gregory’s insistence. He had learned from Alexander’s missteps and often went out of his way to keep the Roman mob content.

Part of that was to keep it employed, which provided the labor force to rebuild Rome. Using plumbing technology imported from Britain, sewers were under construction throughout the city. While it would be years before they were finished, diseases had started decreasing in areas serviced by the sewers.

One person who was especially happy with the wedding was Sextus. He had been Alexander’s personal servant and confidant, a role he continued under Pope Gregory. Sextus knew more of what was happening than anyone else and often had to use that expertise to turn his master’s orders into reality. Many times, if he had done exactly as ordered, they would have had a disaster on their hands. Instead, Sextus turned potential ruin into opportunity, and the stress of doing so almost continuously weighed heavily on him. Matilda was an experienced ruler who had already noticed Sextus’s work and promised to help take the load.

Once the newlywed couple entered their new bedroom, Matilda went into a separate room to remove her dress and put on her night clothes. Since she had been married already, there was no question about her virginity. Twenty minutes after entering their dressing rooms, the couple slipped between the covers, and while Gregory might be pope, he was experienced with women.

Knowing her body, Matilda knew she would likely become pregnant as long as Gregory could do his job. Matilda laid on her back, lifted her dressing gown, and spread her legs so Gregory could enter her. Gregory rubbed Matilda’s furry crotch to ensure she was wet enough for him to enter. Noticing that she wasn’t, Gregory rubbed her crotch and made sure to hit her clit. This got Matilda fired up, so Gregory got into position and thrust into his new wife.

After five minutes of thrusting, Gregory finished inside Matilda, and to her surprise, Gregory managed to give her a small orgasm. Before, only Matilda’s confidential servant had been able to provide her with an orgasm. Her servant used both her fingers and tongue to get Matilda off. Once Gregory rolled off, they went to their washbasins, where servants helped them wash up; Gregory hadn’t been able to install showers yet.

When they woke up the following day, Matilda began her new role as Queen of Italy. The problems before Italy were immense, with most coming from the north. Henry hadn’t received the news of part of his empire being ripped off, but Matilda knew there would be repercussions when he did.

Other problems came from the sea. British ships were traveling back and forth from Egypt, and their warships didn’t like other ships coming close to the supply ships they were guarding. Italian trade with North Africa had dropped, with many goods no longer available in Roman markets. Worse, the harvest in 1075 had been low, and grain supplies were already running low. Their only saving grace was that, with a larger country, there were more resources. It was also possible that before the end of the year, they would have to buy grain from Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, or the Balkans.

Frankfort, Holy Roman Empire. April 1076

Henry had problems, and he didn’t know about Florance. For Henry, the Eastern Front had heated up with the warming weather. During the winter, General Roon deployed and reinforced his army. When the snow melted, General Roon had 30,000 troops ready to go, while the Polish had 32,000. Thanks to General Roon’s victory in December, there were almost no Kyivan troops in the Polish Army.

As soon as most of the snow melted, General Roon waited until a cold morning refroze the ground before attacking. As the Polish had done in December, the Germans caught the Polish by surprise and shattered the front-line Polish forces.

The Polish troops were camped in and around the frontier fort they had captured only a few months before. Since the German Army had spent the last few years building the forts, it wasn’t surprising that they had very accurate maps of the area. This was how General Roon knew about a hidden sheep path that allowed him to move his troops to within striking distance without the Poles knowing about it. Unfortunately, while the path was wide enough for his men to march three abreast, it wasn’t wide enough for German artillery to join the attack.

German troops moved ten kilometers under cover of a frigid night with a partly overcast sky. It was a testament to German training that no soldiers got lost in the dark, and by daybreak, they were ready to attack.

Just as the Polish were crawling out of their tents to start cooking, the Germans struck. The attack was fast and furious as the Germans were among the Polish tents before the Poles could react. From there, the attack descended into vicious hand-to-hand combat. Once in a while, someone could get their musket reloaded and a shot off; usually, it was a German soldier who managed to get a shot off.

The Poles were far from defenseless as their infantry grabbed their muskets, pikes, and swords to fight back. As close as the two sides were fighting, having a sword wasn’t a handicap; it was an advantage. Still, the Germans drove deeper into the camp as the Poles hadn’t the time to organize.

After an hour of combat, the Germans reached the fortress only to find the doors were barred. Without artillery, they couldn’t break the walls down, and Polish troops on top of the walls kept the Germans from scaling them. Then, one of General Roon’s officers had an idea. The officer had served with the mercenary army in England, which fought for Cecilia, and remembered how Luke had breached the castle’s defenses. He gathered powder from his troops and poured it into a large container. Before putting the lid on, they punched a hole through it for the fuse and threaded it through the hole. With the fuse in place, the lid was placed on the container, and the whole thing was wrapped with a strong rope.

The officer took the primitive satchel charge and lit a slow match before ordering the troops to fire at the top of the wall as rapidly as possible. With the suppressing fire in place, the officer ran to the door, placed the charge against it, and lit the fuse. Unfortunately for him, as he went to turn, a Polish soldier shot him in the leg from a murder hole in the wall.

The officer was knocked to the ground, where he looked back at the fuse. It had just disappeared into the charge and, moments later, detonated. The door and the officer were obliterated, much to his soldier’s dread. Still, they had a job to do, and they charged.

Before the stunned defenders could react, German troops poured through the broken gate. As the Germans pushed through the fort, they pushed the Poles ahead. The Poles didn’t break until they had been driven out of half the fortress. Finally, the Poles broke and routed, but unfortunately for the Germans, they couldn’t seal off the other exits to the fort, and the Poles withdrew.

The death toll from the battle wasn’t determined for several days, but the Germans ended up with 3,567 dead and 5,823 wounded, while the Poles suffered 4,698 dead, 7,745 wounded, and 2,020 taken prisoner. General Roon would have loved to pursue the retreating Poles, but his army needed to rest and reorganize.

Back in Frankfort, Henry was dealing with trouble brewing in Italy; he knew something was up, but not what. From what his spies told him, he knew his cousin was in the middle of it, and he feared she was planning to move Florence’s alliance from the Holy Roman Empire to the Papal States. If his cousin’s treachery wasn’t enough, Henry’s nobles were beginning to stir up trouble again.

The nobility of the Holy Roman Empire had been appalled when Henry married Brunhild. The emperor marrying a commoner was a major scandal, which worsened when Brunhild’s attitude toward the nobility was realized. She didn’t care about them or their sensitive feelings. They had many long, tender toes, and Brunhild managed to stomp her heavy boot down on most of them. Henry’s tax reforms also angered the nobles; they had enjoyed their tax-free status under Henry’s father, but Henry had been chipping away at it, and now all nobility had to pay taxes.

Taxes collected from the nobility paid for state schools that educated all children in the empire and for business tax breaks. All a business owner had to do was expand their operations by investing in new equipment or people, and they would earn the business tax break. This tax break encouraged many business owners to expand their operations. The expanded operations often competed directly with businesses run by or for the nobility.

A few nobles figured out the new system, but most were going broke. Suddenly, they couldn’t spend most of their money on gambling, partying, or other “noble” pursuits like before. Many minor nobles were beginning to whisper of rebellion. Henry heard the whispers from his intelligence network, but he had a serious problem: the army was tied up on the Eastern Front.

Henry stopped investing in railroads and began expanding the army to battle the possible rebellion. There were enough rails already purchased to build another 200 kilometers of track. It would take several months for the army expansion to take effect, but it would take months to organize a rebellion.