Chapter 416: Do You Still Hate Johann Fust?

"Thank you for summoning this lowly old man, my lord."

It had been a while since I’d last seen Gens, and his face had grown even gaunter. His real name, as shown on the Manager Scouter, was Johannes Gensfleisch. Why would he hide it behind an alias?

Given that he was from Mainz and had worked at the Gutenberg print shop, it occurred to me that he might be Johannes Gutenberg himself, the man who invented the printing press. Just a gut feeling.

So I tested the waters.

"Do you still hate Johann Fust?"

"...I don’t know what you mean."

His face betrayed nothing, but his mindset betrayed agitation. Fust was the man who had taken Gutenberg’s printing press and his business. A greedy capitalist who had sold his soul to Mammon.

The old man clearly had some connection to Fust.

It lent credibility to my guess.

"If you want, I could take revenge on your behalf."

"He died long ago. What grudge could remain at this point? I only wish to live out the rest of my days in peace under the name Gens."

"I see. I’ll respect the master craftsman’s wish."

"Thank you, my wise lord."

Wenzenberg looked utterly baffled by the exchange, but it left me certain that this man really was Gutenberg, the father of the printing press.

"I simply want to build a better printing press and test it. But building a press requires a great deal of money. If you have any interest, my lord..."

"I’ll cover all of the costs personally."

I knew nothing about the principles or the structure of early printing presses. The only printer I knew was an ordinary laser printer. I had come from a convenient world where you could print with a single click.

"Forgive me, but it may not be profitable at all."

"Profitable? No, what I want is your expertise."

"My expertise? But printing has already spread far and wide."

The Mainz revolt had carried printing across the continent, yet negative views of it still dominated. Printers had been churning out books indiscriminately, quantity over quality.

Humanists insisted that manuscripts were the only true books and condemned printing for the shoddy work it produced. That was why I thought the time had come to value quality over quantity.

"The current printing market is no better than a pigsty. I can’t let those people publish my dear little sister’s book. So I want you to develop a better press and turn her book into a perfect one."

"...A perfect book."

The wrinkled old man closed his eyes. His unkempt beard seemed to embody every hardship and every year he had weathered. Wenzenberg fidgeted, but this was the kind of thing you had to wait out patiently.

"I lost everything in Mainz. Then I received help from my nephew in Strasbourg. He went into debt to help this worthless uncle of his."

Without his nephew’s help, Gens, gripped by despair, would never have gotten back on his feet. Before that, he had been under Wenzenberg’s protection, but that was nothing more than a business arrangement.

"All I could do for my nephew was build a printing press. I had grown too old for fine metalwork, but the press held everything I had. Yet with Strasbourg in chaos, I could not find a patron."

Wenzenberg was quick to explain.

"Mercenaries have taken over the streets of Strasbourg."

"Don’t tell me they’re hiring mercenaries to fight a proxy war?"

"In defiance of the agreement with the Duchy of Roden, mercenaries hired by Essenbach and Offenburg have poured into Strasbourg. Two of the five families sided with Beren, and it turned into a free-for-all."

Hiring mercenary companies to wreak havoc in a rival city is a more common tactic than you would think. It’s jokingly called a mercenary proxy war, and everything hinges on who can pay more to hire more men.

This illegitimate war had been triggered by the tangled situation in the region. The Duchy of Roden under the Lothringen family and the Duchy of Beren under the Altringen family were nominally allies, two branches of a single house.

But Strasbourg, which had split off as a free imperial city in the Alsace region, had sparked sharp conflict between the two duchies, and with Württemberg butting in as well, the city had suddenly become a buffer zone.

That tense balance had held, but then civil war broke out between Burgundy and France, and now, with another civil war erupting between Württemberg and Franconia, Roden and Beren found themselves facing each other once more.

The border lords weren’t about to miss the opportunity, but they seemed to have found a localized war too risky and scaled it down to a mercenary proxy war instead. The problem was that this wouldn’t end as a simple clash.

There were now far too many mercenaries in the area.

"The mercenaries who don’t get hired will treat this mess as an opportunity."

"That’s my concern as well. And on top of that, it’s Carnival preparation season."

With Carnival approaching, most villages would be stockpiling meat and supplies, and would a pack of jackals pass that by? They’d use the chaos as cover to plunder all across the north.

And once they fled to another region, there would be nothing we could do about it, just like the poor knights who rob in one lord’s territory and escape into the next. Vintenheim, close to Essenbach, was in danger too.

"I was planning to sit back and watch the Palatinate Wittelsbachs (the count palatine’s lot) slug it out, but now a headache has cropped up somewhere I never expected. The problem is that we could get dragged in too."

In the end, the citizens would bear the full brunt of it. But the rulers cared far more about the struggle for influence and control of the city than about their people. I rang the small bell on my desk twice to call Daniel.

"You called, my lord?"

"Tell the gunner commander (Oscar) and the administrator to have one company ready to march for Vintenheim tomorrow. Move as fast as possible, but make sure to pack plenty of gunpowder."

"Yes, my lord!"

Daniel, dazed by the unexpected order, hurried out. Anton’s unit alone could easily crush a mercenary band out for plunder, but I might as well use this chance to give the gunners real combat experience.

Unemployed mercenaries and bandits were just the right opponents for the gunners’ first deployment. They couldn’t take on elite troops right out of the gate, so I was going to make use of this troublesome situation.

Even if there was no battle, the experience of a campaign would be a valuable asset for the gunners.

"So that’s why you were going to return to Mainz to find a patron, even at the cost of reliving the humiliation of being driven out?"

"Yes. With the general amnesty declared, I could return to Mainz. I thought there would still be people back home who remembered me. What wouldn’t I do for my nephew?"

"Fortunately, it seems Wenzenberg was one step ahead."

If I hadn’t asked Wenzenberg, this meeting would never have happened. The contact could not have come at a better time. But what had moved Gens was my reputation and standing.

"If it had been any other lord’s summons, I would never have answered. But the Baron of Rosenheim, though a war hero, is known above all as a lord who cares for his people."

"Word about me has spread to Strasbourg too?"

"The abolition of the marriage tax and the pregnancy support policy had a bigger ripple effect than you would think. Other nobles sneered that you were throwing your own money away, but most citizens admire your benevolence, my lord."

Since the marriage tax had been officially abolished in Rosenheim, the marriage rate had shot up dramatically. The Church still collected offerings for officiating and blessings, but the burden on commoners had undeniably eased.

I had abolished it without a second thought because I needed population growth, yet people praised me as a lord so generous that he gave up part of his own income for the sake of his people.

And with the announcement of the unprecedented pregnancy support policy, people in other regions came to see Rosenheim as a wonderful place to live, a place where the lord truly cherished his people.

Support for returnees and immigrants was generous too, so the urge to move to Rosenheim had apparently taken hold not just in Breisburg but in Strasbourg as well. That was why Gens had come to me.

If just these two policies had won me such goodwill, it seemed I could gradually eliminate unreasonable taxes and introduce more policies for my people. Of course, I ruled out anything radical or too drastic.

Truthfully, I could afford welfare policies because I had plenty of money. I was earning hundreds of gold coins through quests and trait acquisitions, so I no longer had to depend on territorial income.