The Age of the Sword
Around the time George's crew, having secured the token of blessing (or so they claimed) bestowed by Goddess Vesta, was steadily swelling its ranks, and Asty—having recruited the Paleheart siblings—had returned to the city of Montpellier and begun hounding Pates for a new book...
Count Montpellier, goaded by Asty's prodding into becoming a heinous rebel ringleader, was diligently laying the groundwork to seize the throne.
"Thomas, purchase additional arms without drawing attention. Enough to equip at least three thousand more men."
Military expansion.
The reason tax rates in the County of Montpellier could remain far lower than those of neighboring territories was not solely the Count's competence, but even more the stability of the surrounding region.
Southern France was a land with virtually no security threats worth mentioning.
Miscellaneous monsters—goblins, orcs, and the like—had been thoroughly exterminated by the Order's relentless campaigns. Spain, which shared a border, was at least nominally a friendly nation, and the Pyrenees Mountains made mutual invasion nearly impossible.
To the east, the Boot Peninsula was a patchwork of city-states and petty kingdoms too fragmented to wage wars of conquest, while the elves of the Alps had not descended from their highlands in centuries.
In the past the king had still pressured local lords into forced military spending... but after the Holy Capital of Paris burned, the French royal house had become little more than a hollow puppet.
Southern lords therefore saw no reason to pour their precious coin into armies. Unlike the northern margraves, who practiced a grim military-first politics of survival, they maintained only a sensible level of armament.
Why shoulder ruinous expenditures when no mortal enemy stood before them demanding a fight to the death?
"And inform our reliable vassals that we are preparing for war. If necessary, I will grant additional fiefs. The future of our house hangs on this...!"
As a result, the Montpellier count family had few troops it could mobilize at once, and fewer places still from which to raise an army in haste.
Even if Count Montpellier rose to overlord of the Oxyca region, the shortage of men would remain unchanged.
The surrounding lords were, one and all, pacifists who adored military reduction.
Every last one of them had grown fat trusting only terrain and political calm. Becoming the leader of such men would bring precious little advantage.
It felt more realistic simply to hire mercenaries in bulk with the wealth they had carefully amassed.
The trouble was that the other side could hire mercenaries just as easily.
And if they tried to outspend Claude V and the Duke of Orléans, defeat was certain.
The Count's fortune, built around what was currently the largest city in France, was nothing to sneer at—yet the king still possessed the legacy left by the City of Light, Paris.
The French royal house, competent only in the strangest of ways, had completely swallowed the vast treasures that spilled out during the fall of Paris.
Officially those riches were said to have been plundered by the orcs who burned the city or lost in the chaos of war. Everyone who mattered knew that most of what vanished had ended up in Claude V's vaults.
If the king's secret stores were opened to hire mercenaries, a mere count's modest offer would never even reach the market; it would be ignored outright.
Even if they hired thousands from the petty states of the Boot Peninsula, the moment the king brought a mercenary corps down from Germany, everything would be finished.
"It won't be easy. Not easy at all. Had the Goddess not chosen me, I would never have dared even to dream of this."
Count Montpellier shook his head and spread a map of all France across his desk.
His goal, after Asty had poured future knowledge into him, was brutally simple.
Drag the incompetent King Claude V—who did nothing but warm the throne—down from that seat, snatch the crown from his head, and ascend as the new King of France.
Yet to achieve that simple aim, intricate maneuvering had to come first.
Claude V was a useless puppet, but the royal fortune and the Royal Knights who guarded it were genuine. The Duke of Orléans who shielded that royal house was the most powerful noble in France.
Frankly, he was not an opponent a single count could challenge alone.
Even with Asty's support the odds remained grim.
Had the Vesta Order possessed the strength to overturn the political order on its own, they would never have needed to urge him into rebellion.
The Saintess's aid had merely given the Count the right to step into the ring.
In the end, only one path offered Count Montpellier any hope of superiority.
"We must bring Bordeaux and Aquitaine into the fold."
A vertical alliance.
The Oxyca region alone could never stand against the Duke of Orléans.
They would dangle the rich central lands as bait to draw in the west, then forge a coalition of lords into an encirclement.
If possible they would pull the east in as well, and slowly strangle the center.
"The northern margraves cannot leave their posts in any case. Those Brandenburg warmongers care only for the frozen wastes; the chance they intervene is vanishingly small."
Spain could not cross the Pyrenees. The petty states of the Boot Peninsula lacked the strength to meddle in a French civil war.
The German duchies were still busy fighting orcs, and the elves along the Alpine frontier had no reason to interest themselves in humans slaughtering one another.
So if every lord inside France could be won over, that would be the end of it.
A surefire plan to erase Claude V and seize the throne would be complete.
Of course, coaxing those heavy-bottomed lords into action would be no simple task.
"Fortunately the neighbors are already in an uproar."
At that moment the Count reached his decision.
To usurp the throne he needed the neighboring lords to join the rebellion.
Yet southern lords had little taste for adventure; how many would truly stand with him when he declared he meant to topple the king was an open question.
Therefore the "cooperation" of the Count of Avignon was required.
To put it bluntly, the man needed to be torn apart—territory and all—and served up as prey for his neighbors.
Only then would the bribe-fattened pigs join Count Montpellier's revolt.
Without hesitation the Count began drawing lines across the map.
He carved the Avignon count family's direct domains into four pieces, sorted the vassals by usefulness, kept only those of value, and discarded the rest.
The largest share would go to the Count of Marseille; the second largest to the Count of Valence, of the Lyon Count's faction.
What remained of the granary lands would be left to the Avignon Count's heir, preserving a bare minimum of dignity. The Montpellier house itself would claim only the smallest fragment, feigning a spirit of mutual benefit while quietly multiplying its accomplices.
At the same time they would meddle with Montpellier city's autonomy to muddy their true intentions, borrow the Saintess's wisdom to swallow the city whole, and strike the king in the same breath.
It was a one-sided partition that paid no heed to the wishes of the party concerned. Yet the Avignon count family's domain was already a shambles from repeated peasant revolts.
If they restored order to a shattered territory and took only a modest slice of land in return, what more merciful settlement could there be?
The people who had suffered under the Avignon Count's blunders would also regain peaceful lives under new lords.
Caring for the people is the Goddess's will... is it?
Asty's words rose unbidden in his mind. Count Montpellier smiled bitterly as he gazed out at the village beyond the castle walls.
If Goddess Vesta truly desired the happiness of the common folk, then he had never been a particularly faithful servant.
He was not the sort of lord who thrived on sucking the lifeblood from his people, yet neither had he ever devoted himself to their happiness.
That was simply the limit of the age.
To feudal lords, land and people were property and nothing more.
A sense of duty to cultivate what one's ancestors had left and pass it on to one's children was understandable; feeling camaraderie or a genuine love for the people was, by any measure, strange.
"...From now on I must pay closer attention to the people's livelihood."
But even if it was strange, what choice did he have? The Goddess who had promised him the French throne had spoken through the Saintess's lips and ordered him to care for the lives of commoners.
Feed the people well. Win their hearts. Turn popular support into justification for usurpation.
Morally and practically, the command was flawless.
A humble servant of the divine had only to obey.
The Count resolved to treat the peasants of Avignon kindly—
once he had somehow cleaned up that chaos first.
A few weeks later, the peasant rebellion in Avignon came to an end.
The outcome, however, was not quite what the Count had envisioned.
The peasants of Avignon were indeed far happier—yet not a single neighboring lord had gained an inch of new land.
George's crew, uniting every rebel band in the region behind overwhelming arms and fervent faith, had finally driven a spear through the Avignon Count's belly and proclaimed the founding of the Peasant Republic.
Count Montpellier's grand design was collapsing before it had even begun.