Chapter 87: But Is Everywhere Else Safe? (1)
Chapter 87: But Is Everywhere Else Safe? (1)
Five months earlier
February 1790
Holy Roman Empire, Vienna, Austria.
Hofburg Palace.
“Alright, thanks to your hard work, today’s performance has ended successfully. Good work, everyone. Starting tomorrow, I’ll give you a few days of leave for personal maintenance, so tonight don’t go out and do anything strange—go back to the quarters and get some proper rest.”
“““Yes, Maestro Salieri!”””
After the performance ended, the musicians began putting away and organizing their instruments.
“Ah, I’m dying. Seriously.”
“You’re saying that after barely playing the violin? I’m on cello—my arms feel like they’re going to fall off.”
“Then who told you to do cello? You should’ve just played viola like Ludwig.”
“But is it really okay to be doing this on the day His Majesty the Kaiser is entombed?”
“What can we do? We just do what we’re told. What good does it do for musicians like us to take an interest in the ways of the high-and-mighty? We’ll just end up like Icarus flying toward the sun.”
“True…”
They didn’t know why they were made to perform on the day Kaiser Joseph II was entombed, but in any case, since the performance before the high-and-mighty was over, it was only natural for the tension to loosen.
“Heh… hehehe… hihi… hehheh…”
“Hey, hey, Ludwig. What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”
After meeting a Frenchman named Guillaume, something in his head seemed to have broken. At the sight of their colleague Ludwig laughing and making strange noises, the other musicians, worried, grabbed Ludwig’s shoulders and shook him.
“…At last!”
“Huh?”
“At last, I, Ludwig van Beethoven, will see the light of the world!”
“Did he eat something wrong…? Ludwig, you’re already being sponsored by the Elector of Cologne. You’ve seen plenty of ‘light’ already.”
At Ludwig’s voice—speaking as if possessed, like a moth bewitched by an oil lamp—the others spoke in puzzled tones.
His patron wasn’t some ordinary noble, but an Elector—
A great noble with the right to elect the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
The musicians could only tilt their heads, wondering who Ludwig wanted to acknowledge him even more.
But regardless of what they said, Ludwig finished putting away his viola and left with a light step.
“Stop there. We’ll confirm your identity for a moment… Mm. You may pass.”
After even the perfunctory inspection by the guard at the main gate, Ludwig could finally look up at the wide-open sky.
In the black night sky of eighteenth-century Vienna, still unpolluted, the Milky Way—said to be the road formed when Heracles drank Hera’s milk—glowed faintly above his head.
To Ludwig, it felt like the path the masters like Mozart and Haydn had walked, and the path he would walk from now on.
Ludwig carefully took out the scrap of paper he’d kept in his pocket, making sure not to crease even a corner.
The faint light of the night sky illuminated that precious scrap in his hand, then reflected the words written there into Ludwig’s eyes.
Though it was French, Ludwig—having learned some French while studying music—could read it without difficulty.
[Ears of the Nation owner. Guillaume de Toulon. France, Paris City, Grenelle Street.]
—Your name is… Ludwig van Beethoven? No, what a huge catch—! Ahem. I’ll give you my card, so if you ever need support, come to the place written on my card anytime. I will support you completely!
He’d said a strange word in the middle—one Ludwig had never heard before—but what mattered was clear: the Finance Minister of France wanted to have Ludwig’s back.
Thanks to his drunkard father, Ludwig had suffered, but now it felt like the sun was rising over his life.
It was still chilly in Vienna in February, but as Ludwig walked the night road with only a single outer garment, he didn’t even feel particularly cold.
Early March 1790.
Holy Roman Empire, Vienna, Austria.
“Mm, not bad.”
Ludwig smiled in satisfaction as he checked himself here and there in the small mirror in his quarters.
Thanks to the fairly generous leave Maestro Salieri had given, the musicians could all leisurely wander the city of Vienna, the largest city in Central Europe, to pass the time.
Ludwig as well had spent the past few days unable to stop taking in this great city, Vienna, which he was visiting for only the second time in his life.
But today, something mattered more than sightseeing.
“It’s… 11 o’clock. If I walk fast, I’ll arrive exactly on time.”
After opening his pocket watch and checking the time, Ludwig left the quarters.
When he reached the main road in the center of Vienna, countless people—already in the thousands—stood in little groups, all looking toward the Hofburg Palace.
Enlightenment thinkers wearing black hats and black suits, following France’s National Assembly deputies.
Cavalry who had come out to maintain order, holding Habsburg double-headed eagle flags.
Poor-looking old men wearing patched sacks.
Children weaving through the crowd.
They had all come out because of the procession of Guillaume de Toulon, France’s Finance Minister, returning to Paris.
“Oh! He’s coming!”
Soon, starting with someone shouting from far away, the sound of horses clopping hard against the road rang out. Ludwig pushed through the crowd to the front row, stood on tiptoe, and stared into the distance.
Just like last time, the Holy Roman Empire cavalry led the way, behind them came the French cuirassiers, and behind them a carriage carrying the Finance Minister and key figures rattled along, following the escort soldiers.
At that moment—
“O-oh! Oh! Oh!”
All around, people’s mouths opened at once and made the same sound.
Vagrants in ragged sacks forced their way through the soldiers and blocked the carriage.
“Oh! Your Excellency the Finance Minister! Please bestow wisdom upon us pitiful people!”
The vagrants knelt before the carriage and began speaking as if making confession.
The French soldiers guarding closest to the carriage exchanged a few words with confused faces, then the officer who looked highest-ranking went to the carriage, opened the window, and began speaking with the Finance Minister.
If the French soldiers were flustered, the Austrian soldiers went beyond flustered into rage, pulling the riding whips hanging beside their scabbards and moving toward the vagrants.
“Y-you insane beggar bastards! Drag them away at once! What kind of disgrace is this in front of a foreign minister?!”
They were guarding a foreign VIP and suddenly vagrants jumped out and ruined the formation—considering the scolding they’d get from their superiors, the Austrian soldiers’ anger was only natural.
However, at the next sight unfolding before them, the Austrian soldiers could only hesitate and step back.
Finance Minister Guillaume de Toulon got down from the carriage and climbed up to where the coachman sat, as if an actor stepping onto a stage, and spoke.
“Oh! What pitiful thing has happened, that you block my path like this?”
Ludwig stood there with his mouth hanging open, slowly taking in the unbelievable scene of a nation’s minister speaking back and forth with vagrants.
Hofburg Palace.
“Maximilian, do you even realize what you’ve done?!”
“Well, ‘what I’ve done’? Leopold, my brother, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Do you take me for a fool?! Does it make any sense to put on that kind of show in the very heart of the imperial capital?! Are you trying to shatter our Empire into pieces with your show?!”
Archduke Leopold, the next Kaiser, spat the words at his younger brother, Maximilian Franz—Elector of Cologne—with eyes full of fury.
What was the Holy Roman Empire in the first place?
A federation state clumsily bound together from dozens of principalities.
A realm with dozens of different men—princes who loved absolutism, princes influenced by Enlightenment ideals, princes who aimed for oligarchy, and all sorts besides.
And yet in the capital of such a state, he brought up talk that subversive elements who loved liberalism and Enlightenment ideas would enjoy?
Was he raving because he wanted to split the Empire into dozens of pieces?
Yet despite Leopold’s furious face, Maximilian Franz furrowed his brow the same way and spoke.
“…A show? Did you just call it a show?”
Veins began to rise across Maximilian’s face.
“When the late Kaiser—no! When our eldest brother Joseph was desperately calling for you, Leopold—what were you doing? Holed up in Italy, putting on a show of kissing up to the Empire’s nobles and bishops, weren’t you?! Looking at it now, it seems the actor isn’t me, but you, brother.”
“You crazy bastard!”
Leopold grabbed Maximilian by the collar, not even noticing the blood vessels bursting in his eyes from anger.
“You crave power that much? If you’d used that strength to support our eldest brother, you wouldn’t have had to worry about watching nobles’ faces!”
Even so, Maximilian snorted and spoke to Leopold.
“What do you even know!”
“At least! I know who the parasites clinging to the Empire are! Aren’t they swarming even inside this palace right now?!”
“Y-you…!”
At Maximilian’s bold stance, Leopold finally sighed, released his collar, and spoke.
“Can you take responsibility for what you just said, Maximilian? What you’re doing is no different from opposing the massive current of the many princes within the Empire.”
“The massive current is not the foolish nobles who cling to the Empire like parasites—it is the people of the Empire. Look at France next door! Isn’t it obvious our Empire will soon follow that same path?”
France, an absolutist monarchy, drove out its king because they didn’t like him.
Then what about the looser Holy Roman Empire?
If revolution happened, abdication would be easier, not harder.
And if abdication happened, within the Habsburg imperial house, a bloody wind would blow as they fought to seize the now-empty imperial crown.
So what had to be done?
You led the change first. If you led the change and made it yours, there was no longer anything to fear.
“Either abdicate, like Louis XVI! Or change the Empire first, before the people rise up! Those are the two options.”
“…You overestimate the power of commoners far too much, Maximilian.”
“Isn’t Guillaume the greatest example showing that power of commoners?”
Maximilian spoke to his brother in an even tone.
“Well, in my view, before the people rise up, the Empire will split in two first. …It’s been a while—shall we make a bet, brother to brother? Because of you, war will break out soon. A war that will drag the entire Empire in.”
“Stagnant water that’s rotted needs to be drained and replaced once, doesn’t it, brother?”
In a room of Hofburg Palace, two brothers who had been born and raised together in this palace exchanged eyes sharp as blades.