The Starting Point of 1489 AD, Desperate Straits, Columbus! An extra chapter for the Alliance Leader Window Cat's Wandering.

January 1489, the outskirts of Lisbon. The noisy sounds of celebration gradually faded from this commoners' quarter. In the cooking smoke of morning and evening, the aroma of roasted whale meat could no longer be smelled. In this era, whale meat was cheaper than mutton, but it still was not something ordinary commoners could afford to consume for long. The Christmas festivities receded along with the New Year, and the bustle of the suburban commoners began once more.

Thanks to the colonization of the southern continent, the Kingdom of Portugal grew richer by the day. Most of the wealth brought by the great voyages flowed into the hands of nobles and merchants, but even the little that leaked out made it easier for the commoners of the Royal Capital to find work, so they did not have to struggle on the poverty line of death.

Life in the Middle Ages was hard, especially for peasants whose every last thing was controlled by their lords. Poor small freeholders and tenant farmers not only had to pay land rent, but also poll tax, hearth tax, mill tax, and perform heavy corvée labor. Oh, and there was also the indispensable church tithe, tied to the salvation of their souls.

In the Catholic world, apart from the Swiss mountain folk, who had a strong tradition of autonomy and a fierce martial spirit, the vast majority of Western European peasants had struggled for centuries under the double oppression of lords and Church. Yet no matter how hard life was, every peasant rebellion vanished like smoke under the armed suppression of the knights. The bright Middle Ages belonged to priests, to nobles, to knights, and now had begun to belong to merchants as well—just not to the peasants who made up ninety percent of the population.