Chapter 16

Rome, Papal States. October 1067

Pope Alexander II sat on his throne, not believing the news he was hearing. The news Norway had conquered Denmark was stunning, and now two countries in northern Europe had conquered a neighbor. The reports from his representatives in the area stated that King Hardrada was ignoring the church and had severely limited the church’s power in his kingdom. The king hadn’t even led the attack; his son Magnus had used firearms with great effect.

To make matters worse for the pope, Brittany and Wales were begging for more money, saying they either got more money or they would have to attack before they were ready. They were in a rush because Marion’s forces had defeated the Scots, and she now had a division to spare. The Holy Roman Emperor ignored the pope, while the French only made friendly noises but nothing more.

Every attempt to contain Queen Marion failed, and her technology was spreading. Intelligence from the Holy Roman Empire strongly suggested the emperor was completely reequipping his army with firearms. If that happened, Henry IV could dictate the tune the pope would have to dance to. Alexander couldn’t even attempt a change course concerning Marion because of the Norman bishops that Alexander was forced to take on earlier in the year.

“Everything is coming to an end, Sextus, everything is coming to an end.”

“Why is that, your eminence?”

“The English queen is too strong to dislodge without extreme measures, and I don’t have the power to take those measures. Henry IV seems to like the queen, while Philip I only pays lip service, and King Hardrada is very friendly with the English queen. Hardrada and Henry are investing in weapons like the English, so they’re not interested in war with the English.”

“You wouldn’t be able to declare a holy war on her?”

“Many English people are still Catholic, and that cagey queen isn’t doing anything against the church other than forcing more accountability on the English branch, which Ealdred also supports. According to his latest letter, these measures have actually made the church more popular.”

“It sounds like Queen Marion might turn out to be a good thing for the church.”

“God help us, Sextus. A mire woman is more successful at guiding the church than I am! I’M THE POPE!! GOD’S REPRESENTATIVE ON EARTH!!”

Alexander stopped yelling and put his head down, tears running down his face. Everything he and his predecessors had worked for was threatened, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. All he wanted was to get a couple of bottles of wine, get drunk, and forget everything that had happened.

Paris, France. October 1067

While the Pope was getting drunk, King Philip I was panicking in Paris. His bid to crush his noble’s resistance wasn’t panning out as he wanted. Instead of armed resistance, the nobles resisted in other ways. They lawyered and quarreled with the king. Every choice the king made was sure to end up in court, where friendly noble judges ruled against the king. This was a time before the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV; Philip had to worry about his nobles, and some nobles had as much or more power as Philip. What Philip and almost every other noble in Europe missed was Marion based her power on the British middle class, not her nobles or the military. She could stay in power as long as the middle class could make a comfortable living.

The French middle class was much smaller than the rapidly growing British middle class, and French nobles wanted to keep it that way. To them, the middle classes, craftsmen, and merchants had to be kept under control because they competed with nobles for power and prestige. French nobles also wouldn’t hear of Philip releasing their serfs. Serfs belonged working the land, and as far as nobles were concerned, that was all they were suitable for. Marion had been able to break her nobles where Philip had no chance.

So, Philip sat in his castle in Paris and worried about the rumblings of the nobles. They sounded much more organized than he had hoped, but they kept everything legal for the time being. If Philip went after one, the rest would rebel simultaneously. One of the most dangerous was none other than Viscount Guiscard, the same noble who Benedict Martin had outmaneuvered.

When Viscount Guiscard first set foot on Benedict’s former land, he was excited because he knew Benedict had a large number of serfs, many of them being young women. It didn’t take long for Guiscard to figure out Benedict had screwed him. All the serfs and much of the farming and smithing equipment was gone. Even the livestock, which was supposed to be there, was gone. Guiscard went into a rage but had nothing to take his anger out on.

On the way back to his dwelling, Guiscard came upon a young family. They had not been Benedict’s serfs, and Guiscard didn’t know who they were, but he didn’t care. While the guards tied the husband to a tree, the wife was stripped of her clothing, revealing she was about five months pregnant. Again, Guiscard didn’t care as he pushed the wife’s head against her husband and tried to rape her from behind. Her tunnel was very dry, and her screaming hurt Guiscard’s ears, so to take care of both problems, he shoved his cock into her mouth and down her throat. By fucking her throat violently, he bruised it, making it hard for her to talk while her saliva lubed his cock.

With a lubed cock, Guiscard spun the wife around and, holding her head against her husband’s crotch again, forced his way into her vagina. After the first few strokes, the wife’s body betrayed her by releasing its lubricant. This was humiliating enough for the woman, but Guiscard piled on by telling the husband precisely what was happening in excruciating detail. The entire time Guiscard was humiliating the wife; she whimpered and prayed that this was nothing more than a bad dream. It was worse than a bad dream, it was a nightmare, and it was about to get worse for the young couple as Guiscard shoved up into the woman with all his might and released his seed.

With his seed dripping out of the young woman, Guiscard’s anger was tempered for the time being. He thought about bringing the woman back with him, but he had enough women around the castle and didn’t want to have another child that wasn’t his to care for. If she hadn’t been such a good fuck, he would have killed her, the husband, and the baby and continued on his way. But she had been a very good fuck; looking at her, an evil smile crossed Guiscard’s face. He pulled her to her feet and held her head against her husband before ordering one of his guards to keep her in position. Swiftly, he thrust his still hard cock into her cunt. After a few strokes, he pulled out and, in one swift motion, drove his cock deep into her arse. This made her scream at the top of her lungs as blood seeped around Guiscard’s cock. The louder she screamed, the harder he fucked her, and the harder he fucked her, the louder she screamed.

After almost twenty minutes of fucking her bloody arse, Guiscard had one of the most powerful orgasms of his life; it felt like his balls were being forced out of his cock. Once done, he stepped back and panted as he tried to catch his breath. While bent over, he saw his cock was covered with blood, shit, and cum. ‘Well, that needs to get cleaned before I fix my pants,’ thought Guiscard. He looked at the wife, but his eyes were pulled to the husband. ‘Perfect,’ he thought. Guiscard ordered the man untied and forced to his knees, holding his filthy cock to the young man’s lips, but the young man kept his mouth shut. Seeing this, Guiscard shrugged and bent over:

“If you don’t suck my cock clean, I will order your wife taken to my guard quarters and raped until she dies.”

With tears streaming down his face, the man opened his mouth and cleaned Guiscard’s cock. Guiscard was hard again, so he held the back of the man’s head and forced him to keep sucking his cock until Guiscard filled the man’s mouth with the remaining cum in his body. To keep the man from spitting the noble seed out, Guiscard held the man’s mouth shut and pinched his nose to make him swallow.

Guiscard tucked his now clean cock away and glanced into the man’s eyes. They were filled with hate, and Guiscard knew if this man was allowed to live, there might be problems in the future.

“GUARDS, tie this man to his tree. Once done, you can do what you want with the wife; just make sure she doesn’t survive the ordeal. Once she is done, kill him and feed their worthless corpses to the wolves.” Seeing the flames in the man’s eyes, Guiscard continued. “I said she wouldn’t be raped and killed in the guard’s quarters; I didn’t say anything about being raped to death here.”

Guiscard turned his back and walked to a fallen tree, where he settled to watch. It took the guards over an hour to kill the woman by rape, and when she died, there were three cocks buried deep in her body. With the wife dead, the guards turned their attention to the husband and raped him repeatedly. Once they all had a turn with him, they cut him open from his groin to his throat and tossed him into the woods, still alive.

As Guiscard was riding away, his mind turned back to Benedict Martin. He couldn’t understand how Benedict had gotten away with screwing him so severely. Everything of value had been stripped from the land Benedict sold. What Guiscard couldn’t even begin to grasp was Benedict’s wife had been the driving force behind moving everything and everyone.

A month after Guiscard discovered he had bought empty land, a messenger arrived and interrupted his thoughts. If Guiscard was angered, he didn’t show it; the messenger had finished tracking Benedict and found Benedict, his family, and serfs had boarded a ship and traveled to England. That explained everything to Guiscard; whatever disease affected the damn “queen” was spreading. It also explained why Philip I was driving to gain more power illegally.

If Philip wouldn’t stop the “British disease” from wrecking things in France, then Guiscard would gather the support of the other nobles and put a stop to the silliness himself. Some merchants visiting Guiscard told him the Holy Roman Emperor had also fallen to the disease.

Frankfort, Holy Roman Empire. September 1067

Henry IV also panicked for a much different reason than Philip I. The Kaiser had a Norse problem to his North; they had conquered Denmark using firearms to expedite the conquest. The Norse problem also came with a Saxon problem named Ordulf Billung, Duke of Saxony. He had married Wulfhild, the half-sister of King Magnus of Denmark and Norway, in 1042.

Now King Hardrada ruled Denmark and Ordulf and quickly signed a treaty of alliance with him, extending Norse power into the heart of the Holy Roman Empire since Saxony was part of the Empire. With Norse backing, Ordulf threatened to move his duchy to the new Norwegian Empire.

Henry couldn’t allow that to happen, and to his surprise, Gretchen agreed. For the first time, Henry was glad he had invested so much into firearm manufacturing because he had an army of 10,000 armed with muzzleloading rifles and 30 artillery pieces. The Empire’s army had stolen as many pages from Marion’s playbook as possible, going as far as to have dragoons instead of heavily armed horsemen.

At the beginning of September, Henry ordered the Imperial Army under the command of General Fredrick Roon to move from their base near Frankfort to Fritzlar. The trip only took the army two days, thanks to the improving roads. From there, the goal was Paderborn, then all Saxon territory west of the Weser River.

The war started on 8 September 1067 with an Imperial invasion of the Duchy of Saxony, catching Ordulf by surprise. He hadn’t expected the emperor to react to his threat. It wasn’t even a serious threat; he wanted additional leverage to negotiate for more rights.

By 10 September, Paderborn fell without a fight, and the Imperial Army didn’t pause in their drive toward Munster, which fell three days later. Now the army had to pause for a refit. Many of the wagons needed to be repaired, and most men had blisters on their feet that needed to heel before they could march further. This was a problem nobody in the Imperil officer corps had anticipated but would be remembered in the future.

By 20 September, the army was ready to march again but got reports that Saxon troops were crossing the River Weser at Minden with the Duke of Saxony in personal command. Roon didn’t like the terrain near Munster and moved toward Osnabruck, where he found what he was looking for; a wooded hill with a clear field to the east. To get the Saxons to engage him there, he sent his dragoons to harass the advancing Saxon forces and lure them to the battlefield of Roon’s choosing.

The Imperial Dragoons didn’t cause much damage but infuriated the Duke of Saxony. Against the advice of his officers, he pursued the retreating horsemen with vigor and stumbled on the main Imperial Army on 30 September.

When the duke realized he faced the entire Imperial Army, he paused his advance. The armies met about midday on the 30th, and Ordulf didn’t want to commit to a fight in which his men would have to face the afternoon sun, so he ordered his army to set up camp and hold till the morning. By attacking in the morning, the sun would be at their back, and they would have more time to round up defeated imperial soldiers.

1 October dawned bright and cold with a heavy frost on the grass. As the sun crested the horizon, the Saxon soldiers moved from their starting positions; they had been up for two hours, having eaten and into position. The duke rode his white stallion back and forth, encouraging his men to advance without fear:

“FORWARD, MEN! FORWARD AND A GLORIOUS VICTORY WILL BE OURS!”

From the Saxon ranks, great cheers went up as the men eagerly advanced. Across the field, the imperial troops waited behind their artillery. The imperial guns were direct-fire weapons since they were muzzleloading smoothbores.

At 1,500 meters, the guns opened fire with a thunderous blast as 30 solid iron balls flew toward the enemy. The first volley missed, with all the rounds overshooting the enemy; the imperial gunners hadn’t taken the terrain into effect when they aimed. The second volley was better but fell short when the gunners overcompensated. Now the gunners had the range, and the next volley was devastating. Of those 30 balls, a full third missed completely, doing nothing but plowing up a bit of earth. The other 20, though, hit the advancing Saxons. Some of the rounds just took out a couple of men and buried themselves in the dirt, while the rest gave bloody lessons in the technology of death as the balls bounced through the ranks of Saxon soldiers. As the balls bounced off the ground, they went through the ranks of Saxon soldiers about waist high. The duke watched as many of his men were cut in half while others had arms or legs shot off. Soon a grizzly fog was rising from the pools of freshly spilled blood, but still, the Saxons advanced, although they marched faster.

About every two minutes, more cannonballs rained down from the hill on which the Imperial Army had positioned itself. Every volley of cannonballs took out more Saxon soldiers, their bloody fog rising to combine with the fog of their comrades. Once the Saxons were within 400 meters, the killing increased when General Roon ordered canister loaded in all cannons. When fired, 36 iron balls about the size of a newborn child’s fist came screaming out of the muzzles of the imperial guns.

Duke Ordulf realized he had lost when the first volley of canister hit his army. He watched as some soldiers disintegrated in a red mist while others had their heads shot off, their blood still pumping from their necks. Still, he couldn’t retreat; his honor demanded he come to grips with his opponent. Roon had no problem crushing his opponent without hand-to-hand combat; he had strict orders from the emperor to avoid unnecessary casualties.

After two volleys of canister fire, the imperial infantry moved up and took positions in front of the guns, using the smoke from the cannons to conceal their movement. It took a few minutes for the smoke to clear, and when it did, the Saxon infantry almost stopped in their tracks at the sight. Only the encouragement of Duke Ordulf kept the men moving forward.

If Duke Ordulf had bothered to look around before committing to a frontal attack, he would have noticed the imperial cavalry moving up on the flanks with their rifles ready. At 200 meters, it was time for this symphony of death to reach a crescendo. At the command of fire, the almost 8,000 imperial soldiers with rifles fired, causing smoke to obscure their positions, and within seconds, the angel of death spread its wings over the Saxon forces. Duke Ordulf had his horse shot out from under him, the creature being killed so fast that the duke didn’t have time to jump clear, resulting in his legs being trapped under the beast.

In a way, this was good because the duke missed the destruction that ravished his army. The armies had started the day off roughly, even in numbers. Once the smoke cleared from the first volley of musket fire, half of the duke’s army was dead or wounded. Thirty seconds after the first volley, another volley hit the Saxon ranks. This volley broke their will to fight, and the advance halted 150 meters from the imperial lines. The next volley caused the Saxon troops to rout. Seeing the routing enemy and not wanting them to escape, General Roon ordered his dragoons to charge and prevent as many enemy soldiers as possible from leaving the battlefield.

The 2,000 dragoons poured onto the battlefield, a thousand from each side. Many Saxon soldiers threw down their arms and surrendered when the dragoons came near, unwilling to die for their duke any longer. None of them knew the duke was still alive; they had seen him go down and not get up, so they assumed he was dead.

The captured soldiers were ordered to move to the middle of the battlefield and sit in front of the imperial infantry, whose duty was to guard prisoners. Later, the prisoners would be used to dig the mass graves for the Saxon dead. First, they had to be disarmed, and the deceased had to be gathered. During this process, it was discovered the duke was still alive; imperial soldiers used captured standards to pry the duke’s dead horse up enough to get the duke out from under the horse.

After the dead were gathered, the captured Saxons were put to work digging mass graves and stacking the dead in them. Once a layer of dead bodies was placed, a layer of dirt was thrown in; then, the process was repeated until the grave was full. While this happened, the captured duke was stripped of his expensive clothes and given cheap clothes. A traitor didn’t deserve to wear nice clothing.

Duke Ordulf was furious with his treatment at the imperial hands. He was nobility, and everyone knows you don’t treat nobility like this. When he complained to General Roon, Roon ignored the protest and ordered Ordulf gagged before transport. Ordulf was tied to the seat of a wagon for transport and ordered to be quiet by his guard.

Before the duke was hauled away, the final butcher’s bill was figured. Of the 11,000 Saxon soldiers that started the battle, 4,000 died, 5,700 were wounded, and the rest were captured. Of those 5,700 wounded, almost three-quarters would die in the following days and weeks, either from poor medical treatment or, more likely, infections resulting from the wounds or treatment. The Imperial losses were minimum. They lost nobody killed, but several soldiers were injured. A couple of soldiers’ guns exploded on them, and several others got sprains and strains from tripping on roots or other brush.