It Is Time to Step Forward
Genoa, once one of Italy’s two great maritime trading city-states alongside Venice, lost its colonies on the Crimean Peninsula, and the Black Sea became entirely an Ottoman lake.
Unless a ship belonged to the Ottomans, entry into the Black Sea was strictly controlled, and the waters that had once seen countless Western vessels coming and going grew quiet.
Black Sea trade had become a glory of the distant past—so distant that most of those who used to reminisce, “Back in my day, the coast was covered with ships,” were old enough to be lying in their coffins.
However, that only meant fewer ships came and went from the ports than in the past; it did not mean ships had become hard to see.
The sight of ships entering port could be seen dozens of times a day, and yet when three vessels arrived, the sipahis guarded the harbor as tightly as an iron fortress.
Because someone that important was aboard.
“We’ve finally returned.”
Ayşe looked around Trabzon with longing in her eyes.
It had been less than a year, but far too much had happened in that time.
It was all well and good that she had bravely entered a region where plague had spread, but the sight there had been like hell.
With family and acquaintances dying one after another, people’s faces were filled with despair, and their gazes toward outsiders were filled with anger.
They had even been attacked in the end, but Ayşe stopped the soldiers who tried to kill the assailants.
“It is only natural for them to be angry. They are people abandoned by their own.”
Quarantine was a basic measure to prevent the plague from spreading, but from their perspective, it was no different from being cast aside.
They received no help at all, and if they tried to flee in order to survive, they were struck by arrows from the soldiers encamped outside.
For people who could do nothing but hope death would pass them by, it was only natural that anger would take root.
Ayşe declared with certainty.
“We need only do what we must. If we do that, everything will change.”
Many opposed the act of showing mercy, but the one leading the group was Ayşe.
According to her wishes, they quietly settled on the outskirts of the village and began medical work in earnest.
If she had talked about something like inoculation in ordinary times...
“What nonsense are you spouting? I’d rather plug my nose!”
That was likely how they would have answered.
It was an era when people understood from experience that epidemics spread in filthy, foul-smelling environments, so they considered stench one of the causes of illness.
To people who relied on folk medicine that used perfumes and spices to ward off odors, inoculation was an unfamiliar method indeed.
But these were not ordinary times, and people who came seeking even a straw to grasp gathered one by one until her doors were crowded.
Following Yusuf’s advice, she also improved sanitation, and the epidemic quickly subsided. This miraculous change soon became known to the outside as well.
“They say an envoy from the empire is stopping the plague?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Word has already spread everywhere that it’s a miracle!”
“Even though the chieftains tried to stop her, Lady Ayşe made the decision and went in herself, didn’t she? God must have been moved by her actions.”
The powerful, having grasped the situation belatedly, tried to suppress the rumors, but it was already far too late to stop a tale in which Ayşe was the main figure.
Ayşe was already being called a saintess in Circassia.
Though she held the noble status of being an Ottoman prince’s woman, she had personally come all the way to a plague-stricken region and shown them a miracle, so it was hardly strange that she was called a saintess.
Wherever one went in Circassia, one could hear voices praising Ayşe.
Sinan, who had boarded the carriage with Ayşe, asked carefully.
“Would it not have been better to remain in Circassia rather than return to Trabzon? His Highness would surely have understood.”
In Circassia, she was a saintess, but in Trabzon, she was merely the prince’s concubine.
There was no need to wonder which life would be better.
And yet Ayşe had chosen the latter as if it were only natural.
“If I had simply fulfilled the role of a bridge to Circassia, he would have understood.”
“His Highness does consider practical benefit first, after all.”
“Even so, more than any wealth or glory, I wish to stay by His Highness’s side.”
Even if it looked like a foolish choice in the eyes of others, that thought did not change.
“And if I had said I would remain in Circassia, there would be many people whose lives would be shortened because of me.”
At Ayşe’s playful words, Sinan burst into laughter.
He had thought of those who had spent blood-drying days dealing with agitation and fabrication using the title of saintess.
It was fortunate things had worked out well; there had been several moments even more dangerous than when they were in the plague-stricken region.
As they exchanged light chatter, the carriage arrived at the castle, and Ayşe, stepping down from it, widened her eyes.
“Ayşe, you have finally returned. I missed you greatly.”
Because Yusuf, who had grown even more mature, took her hand along with those sweet words.
Ayşe, her face flushing like a flower, answered softly as if embarrassed.
“I missed you as well.”
Yusuf pulled Ayşe into his arms in response, his eyes gleaming.
‘The basic stage is set.’
Just as Ismail had revealed himself to the world, the time had come for him to step forward in earnest as well.
∗ ∗ ∗
For princes born to the fate of having to kill their own brothers, not only brotherly love but even friendship was a luxurious emotion.
They might have subordinates they could trust, but they had no friends with whom they could laugh while exchanging trivial chatter.
To such a Yusuf, Ayşe was a special existence.
She was someone who could bring him joy with nothing more than a light conversation.
“There was a child who cried that it hurt so much when we inoculated him, but a few weeks later, he brought me flowers and thanked me. You have no idea how adorable he was.”
“Was it a boy?”
“Who knows? What do you think?”
At the green eyes brimming with mischief, Yusuf shrugged.
“It must have been a girl. If it had been a boy, you would not have boasted about it in front of me.”
“…Are you really going to be so boring?”
Yusuf roughly tousled the hair of the sulking Ayşe.
Considering the era, in which obedience was forced upon women, each and every one of Ayşe’s actions—joking around, complaining—was unconventional.
But Yusuf liked this side of her.
‘Because it feels like I am wholly myself, not a prince.’
He felt as though he could understand that old cliché of crying, “You are the first person to make me feel this way.”
They had already been talking for hours, and yet he felt no boredom at all.
“How about telling me something about yourself too, Your Highness?”
“Hmm… I do not really have any interesting stories.”
Farming, cement, and soldiers were not exactly entertaining topics.
After pondering for a moment, something occurred to Yusuf.
“Do you remember when I asked Mother to introduce me to any clever children she found?”
It was something he had asked of Fatima because he lacked the ability to discern talent himself.
“Of course. Lady Nene taught the children in one corner of the free kitchen, after all.”
“Among them, I found a child who could be called a genius.”
To be honest, it was not something he had expected much from.
There was nothing to lose, and unless the child was exceptionally clever, it would be better to bring in already-educated scholars and use them rather than raise one from the beginning.
He had forgotten about it even after asking Fatima, but unexpectedly, a big catch had taken the bait.
“How old is the child?”
“The same age as Süleyman, Brother Selim’s son. Seven.”
“He is young.”
That was the regrettable part.
No matter how much of a genius he was, he was too young to be put to use immediately.
“Still, when I tried teaching him this and that, he picked things up quickly. Once he is about ten years older, he should be worth looking forward to. But the real problem is not his age.”
There was one great obstacle to putting that child to use.
Just as Yusuf was about to give the curious Ayşe the answer, the voice of a guard reached his ears.
—Your Highness, Ömer Efendi, the qadi of Trabzon, requests an audience.
At Ömer’s appearance, who would not visit unless there was something special, Yusuf’s face turned sour.
There was only one reason he would come at this time.
“So I have been found out in the end.”
Yusuf let out a light sigh and permitted him to enter. The door opened, and the stern-faced Ömer came in.
Holding the hand of a small child.
Ömer, who looked at Yusuf with flashing eyes, paid his respects.
“I greet the Sanjak-bey.”
“Yes. What brings you here?”
Yusuf asked as if he knew nothing, and Ömer pushed forward the child whose hand he was holding.
“Yahya, is that the man?”
Yusuf wanted, if he could, to at least give the child some sort of signal, but with Ömer glaring so fiercely, even that was impossible.
The child called Yahya hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“…It is.”
“Sanjak-bey, you are acquainted with my son, are you not?”
He knew him well.
Yusuf likely knew more about Yahya Efendi than even his father, Ömer Efendi.
To begin with, Yahya was Süleyman’s milk brother.
When Süleyman’s mother’s breast milk stopped, she asked Yahya’s mother, Afife, to nurse him, and the two became milk brothers that way.
‘There is nothing particularly special about that much.’
After all, the familiar word “wet nurse” itself referred to a woman who breastfed and raised another person’s baby.
It was that common, and if that had been all, there would have been no reason for Yahya to remain in history.
Yahya was a renowned scholar in science, medicine, and geometry, and he was highly respected in the Islamic world as well, which allowed him to leave his name in history.
‘Among sailors, he was venerated as one of the saints of Istanbul.’
In any case, that meant he was a winning lottery ticket.
If only Yusuf could persuade that stern qadi.
“Of course you must know him. You personally taught my son, after all.”
“Mm, there is nothing wrong with my education.”
At the very least, it should be far better than the education one received in this era.
At Yusuf’s confident words, Ömer nodded.
A qadi was one of the representative intellectuals of this age, and there was much knowledge that even Ömer did not know.
However, there was a problem.
“Why in the world are you teaching him how to make gunpowder? And what are these strange gunpowder weapons? Do you intend to raise my son not as a scholar, but as an engineer?”
Under Ömer’s gaze, which looked as though it might devour him, Yusuf clicked his tongue inwardly.
Raising even one engineering nerd was this difficult.
∗ ∗ ∗
The naval war between the Ottomans and Venice proceeded as an Ottoman victory, led by the outstanding admiral Kemal Reis.
Venice, which had suffered a crushing defeat from the very first naval battle in 1499, had even lost Modon and Coron—called the two eyes of the Republic—by 1500.
Reports of victory kept ringing out, but Kostantiniyye, supporting them from the rear, was just as busy.
They had to send military supplies that could not be replenished through local plunder, as well as craftsmen to repair damaged ships, and they also had to monitor whether the Papacy and other Western nations would intervene.
Even amid all that busyness, they could not neglect their main duty of basic administration.
Even the Ottoman state, whose administration was so well organized that the country ran smoothly even when the sultan was absent, was in a situation that made it want to scream.
To make matters worse, ominous signs were appearing in the east, so there was no avoiding an uproar.
“They won with seven thousand against twenty-seven thousand?! What idiot was leading that army!”
“Ismail? Who is that supposed to be! Does no one know?!”
To the Ottomans, who had been devoting all their strength to the west, news of a monster appearing in the east was a bolt from the blue.
They hurriedly gathered information, and it was not difficult to uncover the identity of this group.
“Qizilbash? Aren’t these bastards Shiites?”
They were a Shiite group that wore turbans wrapped with twelve red bands symbolizing blood, in remembrance of the Twelve Imams and the martyrdom of Imam Husayn.
The moment Shiites were mentioned, they felt chills run all over their bodies.
Because there had been someone who had warned them about the Shiites just last year.
“Shehzade Yusuf was right?”
“No, it was only one war. That hardly means anything.”
They tried hard to deny it, but they could not shake the feeling that events were unfolding exactly as Yusuf had said.
Just as Yusuf was being engraved into everyone’s minds, a letter containing a solution to smallpox arrived in the capital.
Its contents were enough to shake the Ottoman Empire.
∗ ∗ ∗
Alongside war, epidemics were matters in which the state took profound interest.
For those in power, who could pay a ransom and be released even if captured in war, disease was one of the few things that threatened their lives.
Since they knew how precious their own lives were, they had no choice but to pay attention.
On top of that, epidemics inflicted enormous financial losses.
A city gripped by epidemic could not function properly, so far from collecting taxes, the state had to provide support, maintain quarantines, dispatch doctors, and calm the increasingly unsettled public sentiment.
Every single part of that process cost money.
‘If it’s just a plague spreading through a city, that’s still the better case.’
‘Ugh, but if a plague breaks out during a war…’
Any military commander would recoil at even the first syllable of the word plague.
In the middle of war, there was no way to pay attention to sanitation, and armies that wandered all over the world with filthy bodies were, quite literally, masses of germs.
All sorts of diseases always followed armies moving on a large scale, and there were many cases where important wars were lost helplessly because of epidemics.
Naturally, the letter from Trabzon went straight up to the Divan, the council of the Ottoman Empire.
“A method of preventing smallpox. Treasurer, have you heard anything of this?”
At the grand vizier’s question after checking the letter’s contents, the treasurer in charge of the Asian regions shook his head.
“As you can see from the method described, it is not something for which they would need to request financial support. It is something they can sufficiently attempt at the sanjak level.”
Though the position of treasurer looked impressive, in truth it was not a post with tremendous real authority.
As long as taxes were paid without fail, there was no way to interfere with a sanjakbey who possessed autonomy.
“Then none of us knew of this in advance.”
The grand vizier turned to someone who had been specially invited to the meeting.
He was an old man whose hair and beard had turned completely white, a renowned scholar and physician.
“Onur Effendi, how reliable are the contents of this letter?”
“It is difficult information to believe.”
Onur, who had already received the contents of the letter before attending the meeting, began negatively.
“Smallpox is a disease one does not contract again after suffering it once. Because of that, there has been some light discussion of artificially contracting smallpox in order to prevent it.”
“And?”
“It was dismissed as nonsense. To contract a disease in order not to contract it is absurd. It would also be a way to kill people who would otherwise be perfectly fine.”
Those gathered at the meeting nodded as if they agreed.
“Compared to that, cowpox is not a dangerous disease even if humans contract it. But the idea that it can prevent smallpox is hard to believe.”
“Then you mean it is false?”
They naturally expected the answer that it was false, but Onur shook his head.
“It has already undergone practical verification in Circassia, so we cannot simply dismiss it as false. The fact that they say the epidemic ended in only two months clearly means it has an effect. Of course, assuming the letter’s contents are true.”
“That is something we can confirm directly.”
He said that, but the possibility of it being false was low.
No matter how many things princes did to gain the sultan’s attention, telling a lie like this would only backfire.
Once their thoughts reached that point, everyone’s minds began to turn in complicated ways.
‘If this is true, people who support Shehzade Yusuf may begin to appear.’
‘Trabzon is very far away, but His Majesty the Sultan may summon him.’
Though it was all still nothing more than speculation, there was one thing that was certain.
With this incident as the catalyst, Yusuf would also be recognized as a proper heir.
That alone was beyond what could be handled at a Divan meeting.
“This is a matter that must be submitted to the Padishah.”
The grand vizier made the decision at once, and this fact quickly reached the sultan, who was out at war.
∗ ∗ ∗
The sultan, who had thought he had completely solidified victory by occupying Modon and Coron, was in an extremely foul mood.
Because Spain had suddenly intervened, occupied the island of Cephalonia, and blocked the route to Venice.
The bigger problem was that since Spain had intervened, there was no telling when other Western nations might intervene as well.
“What shall we do with the prisoners we captured?”
“Why ask about those who failed to fulfill their roles? Leave them be.”
The sultan, who had no intention whatsoever of paying ransom for the defeated, replied coldly and then examined the news that had come from the capital.
Most of it was nothing out of the ordinary.
It began with praise for the sultan and mainly consisted of the usual stories he had heard to the point of boredom even when he was in the palace. But there was one item that stopped the sultan’s hand as he listlessly turned the documents.
“The Shiites who follow a brat named Ismail won a war, did they.”
Judging by what was written in the documents, it was certain they had won a great victory, but it was difficult to think that they would go on to topple the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty.
If not for Yusuf’s prior warning, he would not have paid much attention to it.
The sultan toyed with the silver coin Yusuf had given him as a gift.
“I wonder whether your words will prove right this time as well.”
Though Spain had landed a blow on him, at least for now, the Ottomans still held the advantage.
On top of that, just as Yusuf had said, the Shiites were gaining power in the east, so he could not help but become interested.
Thinking so, the sultan turned the documents, and when another matter related to Yusuf appeared, he looked surprised.
“Smallpox can be prevented?”
It was an enormous achievement, but difficult to believe easily. Even for the sultan, who received all manner of reports, this was something he had never heard before.
Even if it were true, it was content that would shake the succession structure, so it might be better to cover it up.
After pondering for a moment, the sultan’s eyes fell on the silver coin with a hole in it, and he made up his mind.
“There is no need to deliberately stop a child struggling to survive.”
It was a small whim.
“Prove to me whether your words are right this time as well.”
The order to implement it starting from the outskirts of the empire arrived in the capital, and it was the moment a prince who had been outside everyone’s attention entered the center of the succession struggle.
∗ ∗ ∗
“What a stubborn man. What’s so wrong with being an engineer?”
Qadi Omer Effendi was a stubborn man.
He had gone so far as to say that if he had to watch his precious son become an engineer, he would rather make him a surgeon.
“How can he say he’ll make his own son a surgeon?”
If Sinan had been beside him, those words would have made him cough blood, but from Yusuf’s point of view, becoming an engineer was a hundred times better than becoming a surgeon.
The main work of surgeons in this era was amputation. In an age without anesthetics, no less.
They half-suffocated patients to reduce the pain, or even used alcohol and opium, but the effects were insufficient.
It was no wonder there were even patients who committed suicide upon being told they needed surgery.
Surgeons, who had to wrestle with patients thrashing in agony, had a job that was that difficult to do while remaining sane.
‘You can tell just by looking at Sinan, who isn’t normal.’
The fact that he treasured and carried around surgical tools that were no different from lethal weapons was already a disqualifier.
In any case, since he had firmly declared that he would send him to the capital to study, turning Yaya into an engineer had effectively failed.
Yusuf spread the gun blueprints he had drawn across the desk.
The blueprints he had shown Yaya were only a very small portion. They were merely for a matchlock gun.
“Matchlocks have already appeared anyway.”
The matchlock called the arquebus, the origin of the tanegashima used by Japan, had already been introduced from Hungary.
Honestly, even if they introduced only matchlocks, they could make use of them for a hundred years, but compared to the guns that would appear later, they had many inconveniences.
‘You have to go around swinging the match so the fire doesn’t go out, and when you’re loading, if the wind blows, the priming powder gets scattered.’
The “match” in matchlock referred to the slow match, and when going into battle, one had to carry it around by whirling it in circles so the flame on the match would not go out.
‘It would be funny if a whole group went around doing that.’
Because of this inconvenience, the guns that came afterward used flint.
Those guns were used for a long time, all the way until the American Civil War.
“The problem is that after firing a few dozen shots, you have to replace the flint, and flint is damned expensive.”
No wonder, other than Britain, the strongest nation in the world at the time, no one could even practice live firing properly.
Yusuf was not even keen on guns that used flint, but to move beyond flint, it would be necessary to create various chemical substances.
“I can’t do that. Whether it’s engineers or chemists, I’ll have to grind them down for it.”
The best he could do was toss them the basic source material and squeeze out the sweet results.
“If I had my way, I’d like to kidnap an alchemist or two from Europe.”
Alchemy had not been about trying to make gold solely for the sake of money.
Many believed that if they could create gold, the most perfect of metals, their own souls would become perfect as well, and they were branded heretics and persecuted by Christianity.
There were no people more practiced at mixing substances than alchemists, so it was no wonder the urge to kidnap one welled up in him.
Yusuf drummed his fingers on the table where the blueprints lay.
“We won’t be able to use them when we fight Ismail anyway.”
Even if he worked Trabzon’s technicians to the bone to make guns, obtaining gunpowder was not easy.
The West was surely making heavy use of gunpowder, so even if he managed to procure some, the most he could get would be enough for a few dozen men.
If only that many men were going to use guns, it would be better to shoot arrows instead.
Besides, if Ismail ended up realizing how useful gunpowder was, that could become troublesome.
“Guns aren’t something I’m going to use when I have it out with Ismail.”
He intended to use them when he deepened his brotherly bonds with his elder brothers and made them behave.
For an Ottoman prince, the only good brother was a dead brother.
Once he overcame Ismail, he would have a chance to put a lead ball through Selim’s skull as well.
After storing the blueprints carefully and returning to his work, Yusuf was visited by Shemsi.
“A message has arrived from the capital.”
Shemsi’s face was flushed as he handed over the paper, and Yusuf accepted the sheet that had managed to draw a change in expression from the very symbol of impassivity.
-By order of the Padishah, cowpox vaccination shall be carried out in the outer regions of the empire under the name of Shehzade Yusuf.
The contents of the letter were startling enough, but the opaque window that popped up before his eyes was no less so.
[Implementation of vaccination, points +30]
…Had the system finally gone insane?
That was far too many points to give merely for implementing it. Policies like this usually awarded separate points according to results.
With this many points, it would not have been strange even if he had been fated to die of smallpox.
Seeing Yusuf’s surprise, Shemsi spoke as if in agreement.
“It is an extraordinary measure. Since even Your Highness’s name has been attached to it, if it succeeds, you will gain great renown. Conversely, if it fails, you will have to give up the succession.”
“The method is certain, so there’s no problem.”
Smallpox was the first disease eradicated by human hands, so there was no need to worry.
Whatever he was thinking, the Sultan had given him a great opportunity, and that was a good thing.
More than that, what puzzled him was why the system had given him so many points. After pondering it over and over, Yusuf realized the reason.
‘Vaccination can change not only the population, but the climate as well.’
One might ask how smallpox could possibly extend as far as climate change, but history more unbelievable than fiction had done just that.
At present, sixty million people lived in the Americas, accounting for ten percent of the world’s population. But once Europe began colonization, the total population dropped to six million.
Nine percent of the world’s population had vanished.
As a result, land on the scale of France’s territory returned to forest or grassland, and as plant life increased, carbon dioxide decreased.
In the exact opposite of global warming, temperatures fell, opening the door to the Little Ice Age.
‘And what killed the most Americans was smallpox.’
Of course, the cause of the Little Ice Age was unknown, and the claim that it began because of smallpox was only one theory, but it was true that temperatures had been lowered.
‘This is absurd.’
He had merely spread a single vaccination method, yet the butterfly effect was impossible to predict.
Yusuf let out a hollow laugh.