Chapter 31

Paris, France. May 1069

King Guiscard was furious when he received news of how badly his army was defeated. The general he had given command of the army to had promised a nude Marion tied to a bed. Now his great army was either dead or imprisoned. The Welsh and Scots had warned this would be the most probable result if he went ahead with his invasion of Britain, but he refused to listen.

If Du Bellary were ever dumb enough to return to France, Guiscard would execute him in the worst way he could find. As it was, Guiscard immediately ordered all of Du Bellary’s property seized and took personal possession of his wife and daughters. They would pay the debt Du Bellay’s stupidity had caused, and if Guiscard couldn’t have Marion tied nude to a bed, he would have Du Bellay’s wife and daughters tied naked to a bed instead. On the other hand, having the mother and daughters made Guiscard’s favorite form of entertainment possible, forcing the mother to rape her daughters.

It only took the king’s henchmen a day to reach the estate of Estienne Du Bellay and take over. They were under strict orders not to physically harm any of the women on the estate, especially Estienne’s wife and daughters; Guiscard wanted the daughters to be unspoiled. Aside from the family, the henchmen also took over the estate, confiscating all the grain and livestock they could find. All the serfs were chained together so they couldn’t run off because none of the henchmen wanted to waste time tracking them down.

These actions enraged many of the other nobles. To punish the idiot was one thing, but to go after his property, wife, and daughters was something else entirely. Many nobles finally realized they had made a severe mistake in supporting Guiscard, but now they were stuck with him. While annoying and power-hungry, Philip wasn’t the type of monster to go after a person’s family for failure. Even when Philip had seized Normandy, he allowed William’s family to live in peace as long as they didn’t rebel against him.

The reaction of the nobles was so swift and decisive that Guiscard had to return the land, serfs, and goods to the Du Bellay family within three days of seizing it, calming the nobles down. Guiscard might have returned the land but kept the wife and daughters; they would be added to his concubines, where they would live until he was tired of them and either killed or sold them. The only option for their release was if Du Bellary returned to France to face punishment. If that happened, Guiscard would release the rest of his family and let them live peacefully.

If news of his defeat wasn’t bad enough, news that Du Bellary had given command of the French Army to a Welsh woman and that she had done a better job of commanding than he did sent Guiscard into a fury that frightened everyone near him. His first action was to have the messenger hung; then, he went on a rampage through his castle. Any woman he saw he brutally raped, and if she wasn’t a good enough fuck, he killed her. If she was, she was added to his concubines.

By the time Guiscard couldn’t keep an erection, most women in the castle had gone into hiding and planned to leave. Many of the men were disgusted with the king’s depravity, helped hide the women, or, if they survived the king, helped them escape. With his lust stated, Guiscard began to calm down and plan his next move.

The defeated army had many nobles or noble sons, and their defeat would cause unrest. With those troops no longer available, Guiscard had limited ways to control the nobles. Nobody cared about the peasant classes who had provided the soldiers, even though many families would struggle to harvest their crops without the husbands and oldest sons.

Guiscard’s main priority was keeping his power, and his primary worry was he would be the victim of a revolution, just like his predecessor. Fortunately, he still had his spies in the houses of many of the country’s nobles, who kept him informed on what the nobles were doing. While many nobles wanted to rebel, they had no central figure to rally around. Guiscard had been smart and sent all the leaders to England, where they were now permanently out of his hair.

While Guiscard had always been paranoid, his defeat at Marion’s hands forced him over the edge. Within a week of receiving the news, he demanded loyalty oaths from all nobility in France. Along with loyalty oaths, he introduced universal conscription for all men between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. They had to serve in the army for the duration of the conflict and to save money, Guiscard paid them very little. When the nobles complained, Guiscard added that anyone could buy out their military service for the sum of 50 Livres. This amount was well within reach of many nobles but far out of reach for most peasants, merchants, and artisans.

The conscription policy threatened to create another crisis, one Guiscard realized as soon as it was pointed out to him. With so many men going to war, who would harvest crops, produce goods, or trade the goods? Part of the answer was the women and children left behind for the farm and some production work, while the rest of the solution lay in allowing foreign merchants to work in French towns but taxing them at a high rate.

More problems lay with training and equipping such an army. Guiscard had finally been convinced that firearms were the way to go, but he had few smiths who knew how to make guns. Worse, he had no alchemist who knew how to make the powder. For solutions to both problems, he looked to the outside. Hawise was happy to sell him some firearms and powder, but she had to rebuild her forces. Henry IV steadfastly refused to sell either item to Guiscard, making it a crime punishable by death for anyone of the Holy Roman Empire to sell guns or powder to the French. The last thing he wanted was a firearm-equipped army under the command of someone as power-hungry as King Guiscard. King Hardrada, on the other hand, was happy to sell firearms and powder to the French, although at a highly inflated price. Hardrada knew the French king was doomed and saw no reason not to make as much money as possible from him.

Along with firearms, Guiscard also bought the services of some of Hardrada’s soldiers. Again, the price was vastly inflated, and in the contract, it was plainly stated that if any of them died, Guiscard would have to pay 600 Livres per soldier killed and 400 per wounded soldier. It took over a month to settle the contract, but in the end, Hardrada agreed to supply the French with 500 muskets and three cannons per month, with the price fixed at eight Livres per musket and 100 per cannon.

While equipping the army was fairly straightforward, training the military was entirely different. Almost all the experienced officers and NCOs had been lost in England. Guiscard was warned that rebuilding the military could take a year or more. Because not only did the army need to be rebuilt, but the navy did as well. The navy would be far more complicated to rebuild than the army because sailors needed to learn how to sail their ships before they could fight on them. Soldiers already knew how to walk when they went into the army.

When the invasion force had been destroyed, many skilled seamen were killed, and the rest were captured, eliminating the cream of the French Navy. The skills those men possessed would take many years to duplicate and could be mastered by only a handful.

However, funding was the biggest problem King Guiscard knew he would face in rebuilding. The French tax system was inefficient, and the economy was a wreck, but the tax system couldn’t be reformed without angering the nobles even more.

Rennes, Brittany. May 1069

In Brittany, Hawise was stunned by the news of the massive defeat, while Hoël expected the news. While he might have been a personal friend of King Guiscard, Hoël had witnessed British firepower firsthand and was under no illusion the French would win. Once Hawise could process everything, she had to admit the news was no surprise; it would have been far more surprising if the invasion force had been able to accomplish anything.

Now, they were sure Marion would be after them since they had broken their treaty with her. Hawise hoped that none of the Breton soldiers survived to inform Marion of Hawise’s actions but was smart enough to realize Marion probably already knew. There were two reasons Hawise and Hoël decided to stay in the duchy. The first was the duchy belonged to Hawise and Hoël, and they were damned if they’d let Marion take it from them without a fight. While the other reason was they had gotten a message from Guiscard informing them, he was in the market for firearms since he was remaking his army as a firearm-only army.

With their ally rebuilding, Hawise knew they would need to start rebuilding as well, but the problems encountered before reared their ugly heads again. Iron was in short supply, while currency was in an even shorter supply. After being beaten twice by Marion, moneylenders were no longer willing to loan Hawise money at any interest rate. Hawise couldn’t raise taxes because no money was left in the duchy after years of constant warfare. To further compound the money problem, gun makers started demanding payment with delivery, and when Hawise complained, they threatened to leave the duchy. With the French needing massive numbers of firearms, they had Hawise over a barrel.