Foster had taken a seat, although the Peacemaker still was cocked and still was pointed in Collier’s direction. “How in hell did that come about, anyway, Collier?”
“The Church chronicles attribute the invention to two English monks-alchemists,” replied the broken Earl. “Roger Bacon, here, and Berthold Black—also called ‘die Englandef —living in a monastery in the Empire, they were in correspondence and made their discoveries virtually simultaneously. The then Pope, Alexander IV, was a Highly intelligent, enlightened man, and when he was apprised of the unusual discoveries, he had Bacon and Black summoned to Rome and set them up under ideal conditions to pursue then- experiments. The upshot was that by the middle of the fourteenth century, the use of bombards or large cannon was widespread through all three papal dominions and the innovation of hand-held firearms was beginning.
“Throughout the ensuing centuries, the Church has kept a very tight rein on this, her most valuable asset, and through judicious use of her power has been able to keep wars small and prevent them being waged against the best interests of the Church as a whole, through the simple and effective means of placing a ban on the sale of sacred powder-
niter—to one or both sides. Whenever some renegade churchmen or inventive laymen start making their own, it is considered rebellion; they are excommunicated and a Crusade is preached against them.
There have been any number of smaller rebellions, but the first one of any note or enduring consequence took place in North Africa near the end of the fifteenth century; fifty or sixty years later, there was another in the Crimea. Then, thirty-odd years back, when a duke of Bavaria died without issue, an aggregation of commoners and petty nobles tried to set up a confederation along the lines of that of the Swiss.
“The Church might have let them alone, stayed out of the issue entirely, had the fools not started producing unhallowed -:ter. A Crusade was preached, of course. The Bavarians ught long and hard, but they had no chance of victory ainst the tens of thousands, and when they were at last crushed, the Church made a savage example of the ringleaders and made quite certain that a maximum number of Crusaders witnessed the example.”
“So why was a Crusade launched against England, hey?” asked Foster. “No powder was manufactured by the loyal forces until our arrival, and the invading troops were already j here then, most of them.”
“Arthur,” replied Collier, “defied the temporal authority of Rome in another way. The Treaty of Tordesillas, in 1494, divided all the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal, excepting those northerly portions long settled by the Norse and the Irish. Since then, the French have established far-trading stations at points too far north to be challenged by either Spain or Portugal and too far south to interest the Norse; the Irish are constantly carping on French trespassing but—though, of course, the chronicles record no such tiling—I would say that the French have been greasing choice cburchly palms and, since only small numbers of Frenchmen and a mere handful of tiny settlements are involved, Rome his cast a blind eye on the incursions, thus far. The deposed English King, on the other hand, has de-—J that while the Norse and the Irish claims are legal, the sh, Portuguese and French are all interlopers and that i rightful owners of all the northerly landmass are the En-fcfeh—or, more precisely, the Welsh—by right of first settle-I ment. This tenuous claim is based upon certain questionable J records reposing in the Abbey of Strata Florida in South 1 ‘Vales. They detail a certain Prince Madoc ap Owen who is said to have settled with ten shiploads of his adherents somewhere in the interior during the latter half of the twelfth century.
“When first he ascended the throne, Arthur put forward this bizarre claim, documented with copies of the Strata Florida manuscripts into which had been inserted a map— which map Vatican scholars quickly determined to be a clever forgery—and this discovery clouded the whole issue to the point that Rome refused even to consider an English claim. Arthur, naturally, disavowed any knowledge of the map or of how it might have become bound in with the authentic records, but the damage was done and the then Pope forbade any English encroachment in the West.”