Chapter Forty-Seven (Patreon)

The birth of Alexander’s latest nephew, Nicholas Maximilianovich, could not have happened at a better time. Born on 4 August 1843, he was well enough to be introduced to the public at the harvest festival in mid-September. Wheat, barley, and rye came in with the last gasps of summer. Teams of painters and lithographers were sent out to observe and record the harvest, so that posters and engravings could be made to convince western Russians and foreigners of the bounty to be found in Siberian lands.

Alexander was not among the men who left. Much to his relief, his travels, at least for the time being, were over. Instead he worked alongside his new Director of Agriculture, Carl Hehn. The young man’s beard, still growing in, was already showing signs of grey as the papers stacked up. There were reports of wheat harvests from Altai, rice harvests from Gyeongsang, rye harvest in Buryatia, tea harvests in Jeju, potato harvests in Amur, cotton harvests in Liaoning . . . countless crops were grown, harvested, cleaned, distributed, and either used or stored. At each step they were quantified, at each step a report was sent by the men in the barn, the warehouse, or the train station to their superiors. Their superiors, put those reports together and sent them, condensed into a single, new, report, to their own superiors. Then the process repeated, on and on until it reached the desk of Carl Hehn, Director of Agriculture for Eastern Siberia (and Western Siberia and Russian Asia).

Despite his age (Hehn was three years younger than Alexander) the new Director provided himself quite able. Papers flew off his desk, consolidated into reports that summarized the total yields of entire provinces, or the results of a single crop across the breadth of Siberia and Russian Asia. His ability would have been concerning, were it not for his constant nervous attitude. Alexander could rest easy knowing at least one of his advisors lacked the constitution to move against him.

Even better than the success of his newest advisor was the actual contents of the reports. Yield per acre was up on a variety of crops. Mechanization was being fully implemented wherever it could be (they still lacked machines capable of picking fruit or tea leaves). If anything they ran the risk of a labor shortage as they moved to fully settle both Siberia and Alaska.

Yields of meat were not up as much as those of grain, wool, or dairy. This was not so much due to a failure of herding or breeding as their successes. Priority was given to expanding the herds swiftly as possible, meaning far fewer animals were being slaughtered, especially when it came to donkeys and horses, which were far more useful as work animals than they were as meat.

Eventually, Alexander knew, the animals would be replaced by machines. With the advent of the internal combustion engine Russia’s near-limitless oil fields would at last be put to use. Tireless machines would replace the unreliable animals, pulling greater weight at a faster pace than an entire team of horses could manage. But those days were far off. For years only one of Alexander’s numerous scientists, Samuel Morey, had shown any interest in using flammable liquids to generate mechanical work. Even then the aging scientist had preferred turpentine to petroleum, and had died earlier in the year. With the crotchety old man gone there were a few younger researchers taking up his work–the recently recruited Étienne Lenoir, formerly Mortiz Jacobi’s assistant, had joined with Morey’s old assistants, the Italians Barsanti and Matteuci–it would likely be decades at the earliest before an engine capable of doing more than demonstrations was developed.

*

Winter reached Irkutsk as it always did: hard and fast. Over the course of September temperatures steadily dropped. One the 1st the weather had been crisp, almost balmy. By the 30th there was frost in the mornings and snow on the horizon.

Across Siberia people responded to the changing weather. Lumber camps were closed, animals herded into barns, and thousands began their seasonal move to the larger, warmer cities of Irkutsk, Chita, Mukden, and a dozen smaller cities besides. This year there would be plenty of work to accommodate these seasonal residents. Wool, previously sent west to be processed, remained stacked bale-on-bale in the giant brick warehouses of Irkutsk. Hides, already tanned, were waiting to be turned to boots, belts, and upholstery. The latest cotton and silk harvested in Liaoning and Korea still needed to be spun and woven. Excess ore, mostly iron, copper, lead, and zinc, had been gathered throughout the year. It would be worked by the great furnaces of Siberia even as the mines themselves shuttered under the heavy weight of snow.

Alas, Alexander would not be there to see it. Alexandrine was insistent that being inside all winter was bad for the children’s health and Maria was much desirous of seeing Konstantin again. None of the children (the two Alexandras, Maria, Pyotr, and baby Nicholas) had complained of the prospect of winter at Irkutsk, a fact that was not viewed in Alexander’s favor. Instead the most salient point was that Pyotr, only eighteen months old and already three feet tall, had asked about the, “wail-caws,” and whether he could see them. That was seen by Alexandrine and Maria (and, to Alexander’s infinite disappointment, Maximilian) as reason enough to depart for Busan and its warm climate for the winter.

Alexander groaned as a thought struck him. Neither Alexandrine nor Maria were particularly ostentatious women, but they were Grand Duchesses by birth. Neither would be happy with the current buildings set aside for Imperial use at Busan. Reluctantly, Alexander began composing a letter to Alberto Cavos. The man himself was certainly too busy for the task–he was overseeing the construction of not only Mukden Palace but Mukden Cathedral, and damn near the entire city as well–but surely he would know a few talented architects who would be willing to work for the Imperial family?