A year had passed since the Crown Prince entered the Academy. That year had drained him to the marrow—every hour divided between training, exercise, the development of weaponry, and the pursuit of business ventures.
Now that the enterprises have steadied, it is time at last to turn my mind to the conservatives, he thought.
For twelve months he had pondered how their power might be diminished. Resorting to force of arms was out of the question—neither could he decide it alone, nor persuade Emperor Agustín I that such extremity was wise. To estrange the conservatives while the republicans still drew breath would leave the throne without allies. No, their strength must be bled away indirectly.
The method he conceived was agricultural efficiency.
To some, it might sound absurd: why speak of farming when the matter was political power? But the reasoning was clear. For both the Crown Prince and Agustín, the conservatives remained—at least nominally—"allies." Yet it was precisely their contempt for modernization—secularization and industrialization—that made them dangerous.
The great landlords needed ideological justification for their exploitation. They abhorred the thought of their peasants receiving education and thus daring to question the order of estates. They despised the notion of rural folk abandoning the soil for factory work in the cities. And whenever someone sought to alter society's structure, the landowners armed their peasants, transforming them into soldiers, and in solidarity crushed the agents of change.
But if the number of peasants they could turn into soldiers were reduced, he reasoned, then the power of the landowning class would likewise dwindle.
Of course, the conservatives would never permit peasants to be "stolen" away. But if demand for agricultural labor itself were to decline? If one man could do the work of five? Then the landlords, heartless as ever, would cast out their surplus peasants without hesitation, leaving them to starve or seek new lives. Those peasants, once dismissed, could depart to settle new frontiers—or seek wages in the growing factories of the towns. And the landlords could not protest; it was they who had cast them off.
The machine to bring about this transformation was the mechanical harvester.
Who could fail to recall the vision of modern agriculture—the vast combine sweeping through fields, reaping in moments what once took armies of men? True, crops differed, but in this era harvesting was invariably the most labor-intensive of the three great labors of farming: sowing, cultivation, and reaping.
The modern combine is still far in the future, he thought, but already, in these decades, Europe has begun to devise animal-drawn mechanical harvesters.
Mexico had no want of oxen and horses; they had been introduced three centuries before, and indeed were so abundant that even bandits rode them in numbers. The conditions were in place.
Meanwhile, the rifling machine, on which he and Eduardo toiled, was entering its second year of frustrated failure.
Crash! Bang!
The seventh prototype collapsed under pressure, unable to withstand the force required to cut rifling grooves.
"This time the pressure was too great," Eduardo muttered, disheartened.
Perhaps I underestimated the steam engine, the prince reflected bitterly.
Yet even this was progress. "Better too strong than too weak," he encouraged. "At least now we know the engine itself is powerful enough."
But costs mounted relentlessly. He had not imagined such a drain upon his purse. The project had required special permission from both the headmaster and the instructors, so that engineers might be brought within the Academy itself.
Originally, he and Eduardo had thought to build it alone. But the labor of metalworking was far beyond what two men could manage. Eduardo's boyhood tinkering with arms had given him some skill, but never to the level of machining true steel.
"Highness," one engineer observed, "without British steel, it will never endure the pressure."
The prince nodded grimly. "Very well. The machine need not be mass-produced. We shall spare no expense on its materials."
Their calculations promised that one completed machine could fashion a hundred rifles a day. Even at two shifts of sixteen hours, it would yield sixty-seven per day—over two thousand in a month. With five machines, ten thousand rifles each month.
Painful as it is, Mexico's steel is still too crude. We cannot yet rival Britain's century of expertise.
Still, hope glimmered. "If we can resolve the pressure issue, the end is in sight."
Eduardo laughed uneasily. "Is that not a curse to speak so, Highness?"
"Ah—perhaps it is."
Even so, they had set themselves the goal of completion before graduation, and that mark at least seemed within grasp. When it came, rifles firing Eduardo's special bullet would reign supreme until the age of breech-loaders arrived years hence.
The thought lightened the prince's heart, even as they bent their backs to clean the wreckage of yet another failed trial.
One noon, over the mess table, Lorenzo leaned in.
"Have you heard the talk? They say the rumors of California were true."
"What rumors?"
"The gold. They say many have returned with it—great lumps, the size of a man's fist!"
The Academy stirred. A year before, none had believed such tales. Even Eduardo had scoffed.
"Not just one man," Lorenzo insisted. "More than ten have returned to Mexico City already, flaunting their treasure. They are gathering parties to go back. Everyone is aflame to follow."
The Crown Prince concealed his knowing smile. It had been his own hand that had first set the whispers of a gold rush into motion—sending his guards to spread tales of fortune. Yet he had erred: paying them in pesos, not gold, so the rumor had not caught fire. Even so, a hundred or so young men, mostly unmarried, had been tempted westward.
They had gone, they had found gold, and now they had returned.
Most of the true veins were on his own estates, but he had wisely allowed the adventurers to mine the fringes. No matter; the pickings were enough to dazzle them, and once a drunken tongue boasted in a tavern, all Mexico believed.
So—now it begins in earnest.
Already, thousands spoke of marching to California, though the journey without horses would take five months.
"More than a thousand are preparing to leave," Lorenzo said confidently. "My uncle has joined one of the parties—over a hundred men in that band alone. And there are many such."
The word "gold rush"—fiebre del oro—had taken root.
Two months later, a terse letter arrived from Alfonso Ríos:
Your Highness,
Demand for freight and passenger transport between Mexico City and California is rising at unprecedented speed. We have therefore diverted much of our capital to establish this new line. Though the distance is great, we expect swift returns.
The prince smiled. Still as concise as ever. He sent back a brief reply of encouragement.
Soon other letters followed—from Emilio, whose mining tools now sold in droves, and from Ramón, whose sturdy tents and work clothes were vanishing from the shelves. Soon, too, Hernando from Sacramento, and Isidro from San Francisco, would send their reports.
The harvest had come indeed.
As the rifling machine neared completion, the Crown Prince began to consider how best to secure its adoption into the Mexican army.
Simply asking his father would not suffice. The Emperor might humor a son's request with a token order, but the prince sought more. He wanted rifles issued across the entire army.
Such a step was not a father's indulgence; it was a decision of state.
He must see it with his own eyes, the prince resolved. He, the ministers, the generals, the officials—let them all witness with their own eyes the difference between this rifle and the flintlock musket.
He envisioned it: the Crown Prince himself, on the firing line, outstripping even the Academy instructors—shooting farther, striking truer, reloading with equal speed. What minister could deny the evidence of such a trial?
He would hold a grand demonstration. He would patent the design. He would wield his title not as ornament but as leverage.
And so, he took up his pen and wrote to his father, the Emperor.