Flash Point
"Well... I understand the Saintess's vision, but how exactly do you intend to support Count Montpellier?"
The moment I unveiled Plan B—my greatest masterpiece and the scheme I had never wanted to use—Arturo Paleheart, that faithless unbeliever, dared to voice his doubts about my perfect plan.
A fallen noble, of all people, had the audacity to be so irreverent.
I briefly wondered whether the man had forgotten who held the upper hand in our relationship, then realized my explanation had simply been incomplete and offered a bitter smile.
He was right.
Everything I had said so far was merely the reason Count Montpellier needed to become king. I had not yet explained how we would put him on the throne.
The most critical of the five W's and one H—the how—was missing.
And objectively speaking, our little Asty faction was nowhere near the weight class required to take the initiative on anything of this scale. How was an organization of five people, counting the elderly and the weak, supposed to play kingmaker in a civil war?
On top of that, our combat specialists, Rebecca and Arturo, were both minors who, by twenty-first-century Korean standards, should still be wearing school uniforms and sitting quietly in class. From a modern perspective, we were nothing more than a disaster of an organization composed entirely of the elderly and the underage.
Even without the modern lens, we were far too short-handed to start talking about building a theocratic state.
Rebecca and Elder Pates, buoyed by years of trust and faith, seemed content to believe I already had a plan. But for Arturo—whose faith was still thin and who had only recently joined us—raising questions was only natural.
"Ah, about that..."
The problem was that I didn't have much of an answer ready for him either.
It wasn't that I hadn't already devised a method for playing kingmaker in the coming chaos. But explaining the entire thing here would take an entire day, and I had no confidence I could distill a plan forged from every scrap of my previous life's knowledge into something simple and clear enough for the people of this era to grasp.
So I decided to give them only the core of it.
"We're going to hit them with money."
Hmm. Maybe that was a little too core.
For some reason, not only the wicked unbeliever Arturo but even Rebecca's expression twisted.
Apparently I needed to soften the wording a bit.
"I plan to show those territorial nobles—who think sucking the lifeblood out of their serfs is the height of sophistication—exactly what a pile of glittering gold coins can do."
No, why are their faces rotting even further?
I was only telling the truth.
Before I explain how I intend to replace the King of France with money, there are a few things that need to be made clear.
First of all, my plan is absolutely not some American-style "show me the money" or mindless cash-flinging spree.
The only funds I can actually put to use right now are the tens of thousands of florins I squeezed out of Loan King Billy. That may be an absurd fortune for a private individual, but on a national scale it is nowhere near a decisive sum.
Do you really think the great lords who protect—and exploit—thousands upon thousands of subjects are going to be gasping for breath over a mere few tens of thousands of florins?
Moreover, the final boss we have to topple in order to win this civil war is none other than the reigning King of France. No matter how revolutionary Claude V's laziness and incompetence may be, there is zero chance that the ruler of this country will lose a contest of financial power to some back-alley loan shark.
The idea that I could simply throw money around and beat Claude V and the Duke of Orléans is impossible from the start.
On top of that, this is not a highly systematized modern society. There are clear limits to what money alone can accomplish.
The Middle Ages are not an era in which financial power functions as a core pillar of society. Most production still happens in the fields, commerce and industry be damned. Landlords are gods and real estate is invincible. It will take several more centuries before that axiom finally breaks.
So what on earth was I thinking when I declared I would wield financial power as a weapon?
"Civilization here is lagging behind the world I came from."
That difference between my previous Earth's history and this world is precisely the point that needs explaining.
Inside the carriage rolling past Avignon toward the Italian peninsula, I spread out the map I had received from Elder Pates and began my history lecture.
"In the world I lived in, the entire planet was humanity's domain. More precisely, there were no other races capable of competing with mankind."
My otherworldly companions might find this hard to believe, but on the Earth I came from, non-human races simply did not exist. Plenty of creatures wore human faces and behaved worse than beasts, of course, but the dominant species of the planet was, without question, humanity.
That was why, even while they hated one another enough to kill, economic exchange continued without interruption. Technology, plants, and animals crossed entire continents and accelerated development.
This world is different.
The planet's geography and resource distribution seem roughly similar to the Earth I knew, yet the territory actually under human control is absurdly limited. Eastern Europe teems with orcs and demonkin; the Alps are occupied by elves. Naturally, none of the resources produced on those lands are used for the prosperity of mankind.
The Silk Road that once served as a corridor between civilizations has been severed as well. With every investment poured into the ground war against other races, ocean-going navigation technology has barely advanced at all.
If things continue like this, these people won't even discover tobacco by the time the sixteenth century rolls around, let alone open an Age of Exploration. I won't be alive that long anyway, but the thought of those cursed other races still makes me want to lose my mind.
"The scholars of the old Order worked themselves to the bone and managed to keep us roughly level with my world... but when you look closely, there are still plenty of frustrating gaps."
During the Vesta Order's glory days they ground down every ink-stained intellectual they could find and narrowed the gap to some degree, yet the overall scale of the economy remains severely reduced. If they don't like it, they can start by slaughtering every last orc and turning them into fertilizer.
"All right. Here's a question."
This was the exact point that inspired me.
The presence of other races and the weakness of maritime trade have drastically shrunk the economic scale, yet the daily life of fantasy France is not so different from the medieval Europe I know. So where are those resources being produced?
I'm not talking about everyday bread or vegetables—those can obviously be grown on French soil. I'm not talking about liquor or fruit for entertainment either; France's climate is more than capable of supporting commercial crops. And I'm certainly not talking about weapons for war or tools for production. Metal prices are ridiculously high because of the technological limits of the age, but the technical skill itself is perfectly adequate.
"Where is most of the cotton production in this Europe—no, this Europa—concentrated?"
What I want to talk about is textiles. Cotton, specifically.
Clothes woven from linen have terrible heat retention. They aren't particularly thick to begin with, and the material itself lets warmth escape easily; wear nothing but linen in the depths of winter and you will freeze to death. Wool, on the other hand, is far too expensive. You have to keep stuffing feed into an animal's mouth just to harvest its fleece, and cleaning and processing that fleece into cloth is labor-intensive as well. On top of that, the English—who once dominated the wool industry—have had their presence on the continent erased by the decline of maritime trade, so the share of woolen clothing in the French apparel market has inevitably shrunk.
That leaves only cotton, the eternal nemesis of Black Americans.
And the region of Europa best suited to cotton cultivation is the relatively warm Mediterranean basin—especially Italy.
"Hmm...?"
"Uh, the countryside?"
"Haha, of course it's the Italian peninsula. The Saintess's boundless knowledge never ceases to amaze me."
Unfortunately, Rebecca and Arturo both failed to answer correctly. The only one who came close was Elder Pates. The wisdom that comes with age truly cannot be ignored.
"Exactly. And I handed Count Montpellier the blueprints for a spinning machine and a loom that dramatically reduce the labor required to process that cotton."
Even he had not guessed that far. As my explanation continued, his expression shifted to that of a man who had just been struck on the back of the head.
The Italian region is Europa's primary cotton producer, but cotton also grows in Spain, and a little can even be cultivated in southern France. When demand rises, prices naturally climb; when prices climb, production naturally expands.
"If we scrape together a large number of knights and mercenaries from the Boot Peninsula and attach them to the Count, wouldn't that count as a decisive contribution toward making him king?"
I had given Count Montpellier the blueprints for the spinning machine and the loom. Being a competent noble, he had immediately smelled the money on those designs and thrown manpower at them. By now at least one or two machines should already be finished and installed in water-powered mills.
From this moment on, Count Montpellier can devastate Italy's economy whenever he feels like it. He doesn't even need to go to any great trouble. All he has to do is purchase every scrap of cotton his factories will process from domestic sources and Spain.
Farmers and landlords who catch the scent of profit will increase cotton production on their own, and Italy's cotton industry—stripped of its critical trade routes—will collapse.
If I dangle the blueprints for those two machines as bait, they will never be able to refuse my demands.
And one more thing.
Northern Italy is the front line that shares a border with the demonkin of the Balkans. Our Order has never gotten along particularly well with the demonkin.
I might be able to put that fact to very good use.