The Collapse of the Empire
Buda, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary.
The royal office, overlooking the Danube River, was as dark and gloomy as a tomb, despite the bright daylight outside.
Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor who had once commanded half of Europe, held not the golden Scepter that symbolized imperial authority, but a half-empty, stained wine glass.
The room, sealed off from the light by thick velvet curtains, reeked of sour, fermented wine and the musty scent of mold.
“Damn it… these ungrateful wretches…!”
Sigismund glared with bloodshot eyes at the letters scattered across the table. They were the replies to his requests for support, sent to the royal houses and influential families across Europe.
Nine months had passed since his crushing defeat at the Battle of Prague. His authority as Emperor, having lost a massive army of 100,000 in Bohemia and fled to Hungary like a thief in the night, had hit rock bottom. His treasury was empty, and his honor lay trampled in the mud.
There was only one way to escape this miserable quagmire: to raise an army once more, trample Bohemia, and behead the heretic King Ulrich to prove the majesty of the Emperor.
That was why the Emperor had swallowed his pride—which had once reached the heavens—and begged for help from other European nations.
But the answers that returned were, without exception, despairing.
Sigismund crumpled the letter and threw it to the floor.
“Lament? Don’t make me laugh!”
A twisted, bitter laugh escaped Sigismund’s lips.
“Obsessed with grabbing French land, so the Emperor’s crisis doesn’t even matter to you, eh? I flew all the way to London in 1416 to forge an alliance, and this is how that ungrateful island brat repays me…!”
The flames of the Hundred Years' War were still consuming Western Europe. Henry V was hell-bent on cutting the throat of France and had no intention of wasting troops on the heretic problem in the East.
Likewise, the Dauphin Charles of France, whose capital, Paris, was being ravaged by the English, had no luxury to spare for the wars of other nations.
The reply from Alfonso V of the Kingdom of Aragon, placed beside it, was not much different.
“A crusade? Ha! Wrapped in a plausible excuse, it just means you’re greedy for the land of Naples! The Emperor of Rome is bleeding to protect the Christian world, and in the midst of this, you only care about snatching up Italian territory? Hypocritical bastards!”
But there was another culprit who raised Sigismund’s blood pressure even more. It was Poland.
“Jagiello… that old bear of a bastard!”
Władysław II Jagiełło, King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. According to intelligence, far from sending crusaders, he had actually opened up large-scale grain trade with Bohemia.
The man who should have been the protector of Catholicism was filling his belly by selling wheat to the heretic Ulrich.
“Everyone… they’re all just drooling, waiting for me to fall.”
There was no one left. In this vast European continent, not a single person remained on his side.
Just as a suffocating sense of isolation tightened around his heart, a final spark of hope flashed in Sigismund’s mind.
“Yes… that’s it! The Teutonic Knights! Don’t I still have them?”
Paul von Rusdorf, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, would surely bring a positive reply. The knights of the Black Cross who ruled the Baltic coast. They were Germans to the bone, the most devout Catholics, and above all, they owed the Emperor a great debt.
In 1410, when they suffered a devastating blow from Poland at the Battle of Tannenberg, wasn’t it Sigismund himself who guaranteed the survival of the Order and watched their back?
“If it’s them… yes, those fanatical knights would go insane and come running just for the cause of eradicating heresy.”
If the Order moved, the tide of the war would turn in an instant. Their heavy cavalry was the strongest in Europe. No matter how powerful Ulrich’s cannons were, they could not stop the charge of the Black Cross knights, blessed by God.
Just then, the office door opened cautiously.
“Your Majesty.”
As the Hungarian Lord Chamberlain entered with a terrified expression, Sigismund jumped up in anticipation.
“Have you come? Is there a messenger from the Teutonic Knights? Did the Grand Master say he would send his army!”
The Chamberlain shook his head, his lips trembling.
“N-no, Your Majesty. It is not a messenger from the Order.”
“Then where! Are those debt collectors here again? I told you to chase them all away!”
“That is not it… there is urgent news from the imperial heartland, from Germany.”
Germany. Sigismund’s eyebrows twitched.
“Germany? Are the Electors bad-mouthing me again? Or did the Imperial Diet refuse the subsidy?”
“It is… a rebellion, Your Majesty.”
Thump.
Sigismund’s heart sank.
“…A rebellion?”
Sigismund let out a hollow laugh, as if he were dumbfounded. The princes had finally drawn their swords while the Emperor was away.
In truth, it was not entirely unexpected. There was shock, but no astonishment.
“Who is it? The Elector of Saxony? Or Brandenburg? Who is the fearless fool who dares to stab the Emperor in the back!”
However, the answer that came from the Chamberlain’s mouth far exceeded the Emperor’s imagination.
“No! It is not the Electors… it is the peasants!”
Sigismund doubted his own ears for a moment.
A peasant rebellion? Was he talking about those trivial disturbances where they whined for bread when a lord pressed for taxes, only to be trampled under the hooves of knights?
“You burst into my office because of peasants whining about a few taxes? Tell the local lords to suppress it themselves! That’s not even worth reporting…”
“It is not just a riot, Your Majesty!”
The Chamberlain squeezed his eyes shut and shouted as if screaming.
“Saxony, Thuringia, Franconia… all of Germany has been turned upside down! The serfs have taken up scythes and pitchforks and are besieging the lords’ castles! That is not all. Simultaneous uprisings have occurred in the Imperial Free Cities like Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Augsburg! Because of this, tax collection across the entire Empire has been completely paralyzed!”
“…What did you say?”
The Holy Roman Empire was merely a hollow name; in reality, it was a massive confederation where the Electors ruled their own territories. The Electors were busy stuffing the taxes collected from their lands into their own pockets; there was no such thing as paying tribute to the Emperor.
Therefore, the only funds the Emperor could get his hands on were the imperial taxes paid by the Emperor’s direct territories and the Free Cities. And that sole source of money had been completely cut off.
Sigismund, staggering, gripped the table and asked urgently.
“The mines? What about the silver mines of Harz and the Ore Mountains!”
If the taxes from the Free Cities were cut off, the silver mines—the heart of the Empire and the only veins that could fill the imperial treasury—must remain safe.
But the answer that returned was no different from a death sentence.
“T-the miners have occupied the shafts and gone on strike! Mining has been completely halted, and not even a copper coin, let alone silver, is making its way to Buda. The miners are united in refusing to pay taxes and tithes…”
Sigismund’s complexion turned deathly pale. The cities were engulfed in the flames of rebellion, and the mines, the Empire’s lifeline, had stopped.
Then there was only one thing left: the protection tax collected from the Jews…
‘Ah…’
Even that fleeting hope was miserably crushed. There was nothing. Even if he squeezed it like a dry towel, there was nowhere to get anything.
During the last Bohemian Crusade, it was Sigismund himself who had thoroughly looted the Jewish communities in Germany to raise war funds. There wasn’t a single coin left to be collected from German soil.
The miserable reality that the man who called himself the Holy Roman Emperor could not collect even a single silver coin from his own homeland, Germany. This clear and cruel declaration of bankruptcy struck Sigismund hard on the back of the neck.
But the disaster did not end there.
“T-that is not all, Your Majesty.”
“…Again? What else is there?”
Despite Sigismund’s rebuke, the Chamberlain could not bring himself to speak and trembled like an aspen tree.
“Speak! What more is left!”
“…T-they say the peasants are singing.”
“Singing?”
Sigismund’s brow furrowed. Peasants who were starving to death were singing? Had they all gone insane at once?
“Singing in this situation? Are you mocking me now! What kind of song could peasants possibly be singing!”
“It is a hymn. But… it is not in Latin.”
The Chamberlain’s voice crawled like a mosquito.
“It is in German, Your Majesty. The rioters are marching with scythes in one hand and a German Bible in the other, singing hymns in German.”
“…What?”
Sigismund’s pupils shook violently, as if hit by an earthquake. A German Bible and German hymns? That sight was like… like.
“Like… the heretics of Bohemia. No, they are even worse! The people of the Empire are calling the Pope the Antichrist, denouncing Your Majesty as a thief who squeezes the blood and sweat of the people, and burning down churches!”
Boom!
It was as if a thunderbolt had struck from a clear sky. While he was stuck in Hungary dreaming of a comeback, that cursed ideology that Ulrich had unleashed in Bohemia had finally crossed the border and landed in the heart of the Empire.
Germany was no longer the Emperor’s land. It was the land of heresy.
“These… these heretical bastards who deserve to be torn to pieces… dare to… my Empire… ugh…!”
Sigismund clutched his chest. His heart pounded as if it would burst, and his vision turned white in an instant.
“Your Majesty? Your Majesty!”
“Kuh-huck…!”
The face of his brother, Wenceslaus IV, who had died of shock three years ago upon hearing that German councilors had been thrown out of the windows of the Prague City Hall, flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.
Under the terrible pressure crushing his chest, Sigismund staggered and waved his hands in the air. Sensation faded from his fingertips, and his tongue curled inward.
In his fading consciousness, Sigismund mocked himself.
‘Brother… did you feel this way too?’
The old Emperor’s body lost its support and slumped to the floor. His hand, which should have been clutching the golden scepter, slipped pathetically, knocking the wine bottle off the table.
Crash! Clatter!
The red wine spilled on the floor spread out, dark and crimson, like the blood the Empire was shedding.
“Y-Your Majesty! Pull yourself together, Your Majesty! Is there no one outside! Call a physician immediately!”
The Chamberlain’s desperate scream echoed emptily through the dark corridors of the Buda Palace.