Chapter 292: Call to Arms
January 11, 870 AD – Paris, Francia
"Your Majesty!" Cried the messenger, falling forward and collapsing entirely before the chair of the king.
The messenger struggled to breathe. He looked up at Louis the Germanic and the large group of courtiers who stood in the room.
He told them that Calais had fallen to the King of Norway.
He explicitly detailed the numbers, stating that two thousand French infantry and five wealthy princes had been killed in a single afternoon.
He stated that they brought large iron tubes mounted on wooden wheels. The messenger explained that these iron tubes used a black powder that burned rapidly, creating a loud noise and pushing solid iron balls across the dirt fields at speeds faster than a flying bird.
Despite their long history of military service, the courtiers in the room felt confused.
They had never before witnessed or heard of death from such a long distance without the direct clash of iron swords.
They began to ask the messenger repetitive questions about the size of the iron tubes and the exact nature of the black powder, trying to find a rational explanation.
While the courtiers interrogated the exhausted messenger inside the palace, the information regarding the fall of Calais rapidly spread into the streets of Paris.
The common folk received the news through spoken words passed from merchants and traveling guards.
Furthermore, because the peasants could not understand the new weapons, they immediately applied their religious beliefs to the situation.
In the squares of Paris, large groups of people gathered near the market stalls. The local priests, who wore simple brown robes and directed the religious activities of the city, climbed onto empty boxes to address the crowds.
And so, the priests’ loud vocal complaints rose above the noise of the gathered citizens.
"They use dark magic to burn our soldiers from afar!"
Shouted one of the older priests, pointing his hand toward the sky. The priests demanded the immediate capture and burning of the northern sorcerers.
The priests told the farmers and the workers that the loud noise and the destructive fire of the black powder were clear indicators of the approaching end times, a period described in their religious texts when the world would be consumed by destruction.
After all, the common folk listened to these religious explanations and accepted them as absolute facts...
They abandoned their daily tasks of baking bread and cutting wood. They fell to their knees on the dirt paths, praying loudly for protection against the metal balls and the explosive fires that the priests described.
While the religious leaders managed the fear of the commoners in the public squares, a completely different reaction occurred inside the stone walls of the royal palace.
The wealthy nobles stood silently near the edges of the king’s room.
These men did not care about the end times or the devil; they cared entirely about preserving their land, their silver coins, and their personal power...
If Louis the Germanic could not defend the coastal cities from these new iron tubes, then their own estates and wooden forts would eventually be destroyed by the same explosive weapons.
Therefore, the nobles in the palace exchanged looks of betrayal.
The residents of Paris ran through the dirt alleys, moving their belongings and hiding their silver coins in the ground.
The guards stationed on the stone walls looked out toward the northern roads, gripping their lances, expecting the iron tubes and the black powder to arrive at any moment.
The city was teeming with a constant flow of misinformation and disorganized movement, resulting in chaos throughout the entire city.
Thus, inside the hall of the Paris palace, the noise of whispering nobles and grumbling military leaders reached a high level.
"Silence!" Louis the Germanic shouted, standing up from his chair and hitting the flat surface of the table with his closed hand.
He looked at the men who governed the farming lands and commanded the foot soldiers of the French territory.
"Because of our ignorance and our ignorant spies, the city has descended into chaos!" Louis stated loudly.
After all, the French spy network was a highly structured system that relied on merchants and travelers to report the movement of ships and the forging of iron swords.
The spies operated in the coastal ports and counted the number of spears the enemy produced. However, the spies did not understand the properties of the black powder or the casting of heavy iron tubes.
This lack of information allowed Erik of Norway to arrive at Calais without any proper military resistance waiting for him.
Despite the failure of the network, Louis the Germanic refused to accept that his empire was in true danger.
"Do you really think these northern barbarians can harm a hair on our heads!" Louis demanded, looking directly at the frightened faces of the nobles.
"It truly seems you’ve forgotten who we are!"
The doors opened, and the church’s priest entered the hall. He walked directly to the table and looked at Louis.
Louis remained quiet and allowed the religious leader to deliver his report.
The farmers refused to harvest the wheat, the millers refused to grind the flour in the mills, and the blacksmiths refused to repair the iron plows.
The commoners were completely paralyzed by the fear of the northern invaders, preventing them from doing their daily jobs and halting the entire food supply of the city.
He explicitly told Louis that ignoring the problem only made the commoners more fearful.
Louis nearly exploded with rage after the priest came to him. He hated being told that he was responsible for the chaos.
He realized that he had no option. He could not sit inside his walls and wait for the enemy to approach. He had to mobilize the entire feudal structure of his empire to crush the King of Norway and restore the functional labor of his subjects.
In truth, marshaling a great host of 20,000 mounted knights and 40,000 foot levies was a feat of staggering burden, for in these dark years, the feeding and movement of such a multitude defied the very limits of the king’s roads.
Louis ordered his scribes to bring blank pieces of animal parchment and small clay cups filled with black ink to the table.
"To every Count, Duke, Baron, and liege-man who holds bread and land under the Crown of Francia... HEARKEN TO THE KING’S VOICE!"
"The Northman’s shadow darkens our soil, and the thunder of pagan sorcery has defiled the stones of Calais! By the sacred oath of fealty you swore upon the Holy Relics, the time of peace is severed!
We command you: Empty your halls! Let no warhorse remain stabled and no blade rest in its sheath!"
"Gather every man-at-arms, every spear-bearer, and every vassal who eats at your table! You are to mount your great-steeds and march with the fury of the righteous toward the walls of Paris!
Let the roads groan under the weight of your iron, and let the dust of your coming blind the eyes of our enemies!"
"Fail not! For he who lingers while his King bleeds shall be branded a traitor before God and Man!
His lands shall be seized by the Crown, his titles stricken from the scrolls of honor, and his bloodline cast into shame!"
"With fire and iron, we shall repay them twofold! Our tryst is at Paris... and he who fails to appear, let him prepare his neck for the block!"
The scribes wrote the orders rapidly, applying hot red wax to the bottom of the parchment and pressing the king’s iron seal into the wax.
The king dispatched one hundred messengers on fast horses to deliver these parchments to the distant regions of Francia.
Despite the high cost of feeding such a massive army during a march, Louis authorized the opening of his central grain storage buildings.
He told his supply officers to load five thousand wooden wagons with sacks of flour, dried meat, and barrels of fresh water. He instructed the blacksmiths to begin sharpening the iron swords and replacing the broken links in the iron chainmail of the royal guard.
He deliberately overloaded his commanders with immediate tasks, ensuring that the preparation for the war consumed all the physical and mental energy of the city.
He ordered that each soldier would receive one loaf of hard bread and one piece of salted meat per day to maintain their physical strength during the long walk to the coast.
And so, equipping forty thousand foot soldiers required massive amounts of raw materials. The king commanded the armorers to distribute the extra wooden shields from the armory.
The quartermasters handed out thousands of iron spear tips that had to be attached to long wooden shafts by the soldiers themselves.
Louis organized the infantry into specific divisions based on their home territories, assigning a large banner made of colored cloth to each division so the commanders could direct their movements across the chaotic dirt fields.
And so, Louis was ordered to gather all his knights to rid himself of these barbarians...