117 Fourth to Bridge

The party ended a few hours later, before I left it, I asked my uncle to come to Jazłowiec in a few weeks in the company of Jaremi Wiśniowiecki and inform about this meeting Hetman Potocki, Aleksander Gosiewski, Graf Ferber and Kazimierz Leon Sapieha, the youngest son of Hetman Sapieha, unfortunately his older son, Jan, began to show symptoms of a mental illness, and in my plans I did not want to have an unknown element in the form of a madman... Two days later I left Warsaw in the company of Sveta and the children, before leaving I hired a theologian to teach Piotr the religious rite.

The journey took us two weeks and in the middle of July I was finally in my Podolia... in my Jazłowiec... At the gate of the castle, Secretary Kowalski was waiting for me, accompanied by a man... he was a nobleman, although the clothes showed that he was rather poor, no more than thirty years old, dark hair, less than 170 cm tall... unremarkable man. I dismounted and went to them... they both bowed slightly.

"Welcome home, Lord. I would like to introduce you to Mr. Samuel Wroński, the coat of arms of Kościesza, whom I am preparing to take my place in the future." (Secretary Kowalski)

I offered the man my hand in greeting.

"Since Kowalski has chosen you, he must have a good opinion of you. I also do not know to what extent he communicated to you the rules in my house... but I can summarize them briefly. See nothing, hear nothing and, most importantly, say nothing. I value loyalty above all else, I can forgive mistakes, I do not forgive betrayal... One more question. Wroński of the Kościesza coat of arm, are you related to Imisław Wroński?" (MC)

"No, Lord. My family is from White Ruthenia, I am the last of my line." (Samuel Wrónski)

So I was right, Wrónski was nobody important, even his family was insignificant.

"Well, call the servants, let them take our things inside, and prepare additional rooms for teachers. Has Saddat returned to Jazłowiec?" (MC)

"Yes, Lord, the list and Tsarist insignia are in the office. We had big problems with locating 18,000 women and children..." (Secretary Kowalski)

18 thousand? Saddat was leading 20,000 prisoners... maybe 2,000 die, physically failed or escaped... I'll have to read the reports. Tsarist insignia, scepter, apple, cross, chain and Manomacha cap... I will be able to put a cap on the tsar's skull, it will look lovely in it.

I went to my office to review my outstanding papers... on the desk were tons of paperwork, taxes, trade, production, investments, financial reports, an inventory of Moscow spoils and a list of refugees. Most of these things were handled by my accountants, but I was forced to read the contents of the documents anyway.

But before I go to work, I must first be a good host... I wiped dust from Temir and Axl's skulls with my sleeve and I took the Tsar's skull out of the bag and placed it on a shelf next to my other trophies.

"Temir, Axel meet Tsar Michael I, you will love each other for sure... and as there are already four of us, maybe one evening we will play contract bridge... Temir, it doesn't matter that you can't play it, we'll teach you... but work first... Now don't disturb me, I need to focus, we'll talk later." (MC)

I looked again at the pile of papers... maybe if I burned them it wouldn't be a problem? No... Germans, too, once tried to get rid of the problem in this way... without success.

I sat down in a chair and started going through the documents. A few hours later, I had the full picture... in total, my income from taxes and trade amounted to 450,000 ducats. My expenses were 390,000 ducats, I had only 60,000 pure profit... fuck... at least I earn something... but it was a downward trend. Building granaries, maintaining roads and bridges, maintaining the army, creating a hussar company, purchasing gunpowder, metals, producing muskets, Greek fire, maintaining two fictional stores in Vienna and Moscow, which did not always bring income... this and a lot of other smaller and larger expenses, with falling agricultural prices... it took a heavy toll on my pocket.

Since my land was always fertile, food prices low, and none of my subjects was starving... it was all fine, but at the expense of my income. If it weren't for my good heart, I could have been richer than the Pope and a few kings combined.

I tossed the accounts aside and started reading the spoils of war...

It is difficult to estimate the value of the icons and sacred art that we robbed from the Moscow church, but I had a different use for it all... As the value of gold, silver and copper coins varied from country to country, everything was weighed, including jewelery and ornaments. My profit in the spoil was 600 kilograms of gold, roughly equivalent to 173,000 ducats, 985 kilograms of silver, corresponding to roughly 35,000 thalers.

I decided to smelt the copper coins, and then use the raw material in another production, their value was too low to worry about it, and with the rising prices of metals it was wiser to use them differently... To be honest, I was expecting more loot, I robbed the Tsar and his country's capitals, not some village... but considering that the Cossacks received the equivalent of 800,000 ducats, some of the inhabitants were not robbed, and Tsar spent large sums on war and the army... my profit was not the worst.

Another document was the Moscow census of refugees... I was right over 2000 women and children did not endure such a long journey, a pity, but it was God's will.

Saddat brought 18,000 people to Jazłowiec, 11,000 women under 30 and 7,000 children of all ages. Most of them were people of low birth, peasants and townswomen, but there were also a few noble ladies. Although there was a shortage of men, I preferred not to bring them to Podolia, especially as they were of greater value to me in the Ottoman Empire.

"Interesting ..." (MC)