I spent the first days in the capital at all kinds of meetings, negotiations... but with the support of three Hetmans, including the late Hetman Sapieha, Vice Chancellor Tomasz Zamoyski and a few other influential people, we managed to get what we wanted. Aleksander Gosiewski was nominated to the position of Hetman, and Jaremi Wiśniowiecki to the newly created position of the Moscow Voivode.
Other provinces were also created, but I had no influence on who would become the Voivode there... it was the Neva Voivodship, Novograd Voivodeship, Kursk Voivodeship, Pskov Voivodeship, Tver Voivodeship, Kaluskie Voivodeship... They encompassed all conquered territories, but it will take several years to restore order and introduce administration there. Lands are always easier to conquer than to keep them later... After completing all the formal and less formal meetings, I was able to focus on my new acquisition... a printing house.
"Lord, are you going to write books?" (Wroński)
"Maybe, but I'm going to publish a newspaper now." (MC)
"A newspaper? I don't know what it is, is it some kind of book?" (Wroński)
I was not surprised by the ignorance of Wroński, the first newspapers began to appear only from 1609 and to the Holy Roman Empire, in Gdańsk as late as 1619 and in Poland the first newspaper was the Polish Mercury Ordinary published in 1661... and I was going to borrow the idea of the future king of Poland and start doing it almost three decades earlier.
As at the moment I was acting alone and did not have a trusted person whom I could trust to run the newspaper. That is why I planned to publish a weekly, which in the future may become a daily newspaper... no more than 16 pages, with a circulation of 300 copies, for free.
"This is not a book, in the normal sense. The newspaper prints political, economic, scientific and social news. A newspaper can be published every day, weekly, monthly or quarterly... my newspaper will be published weekly." (MC)
"Lord, what will you publish?" (Wroński)
"What I want... Inform printers, engravers and liners to be ready, the first issue will be released in a few days." (MC)
Unfortunately, I am now facing a period of hard work. Writing sixteen pages would not be easy, but I knew how to work it out.
I was going to publish my novel "Teutonic Knights" on three pages and make it a weekly series... perhaps I will add a drawing there to take up some space.
The next section will be nature, in which I will put information about animals from other continents, having knowledge from the future, even without being an expert, I could easily describe elephants, zebras, tigers, ants and their habits.
Another section will be science, although I had no idea about technology, I knew about all the inventions from the future... sometimes it is enough to throw an idea and people will find a solution themselves.
Similarly to the nature section, I was going to create a travels section... once again, the knowledge from the future would help me ... in the end I was left with politics, economy and the social section... and the last one was a problem for me, so I decided to replace it in a private journal of my war adventures.
The next few days I spent writing articles and trying to create drawings... although I was not a master painter and I did not know art, I was able to draw something and I didn't have to be ashamed of it.
For the first edition in the nature section, I wrote a short description of the elephant, its habits and I added a drawing of the animal to it.
In the travels section I chose Japan, I did not focus so much on the place itself, but on something that I was more familiar with, namely the samurai. Here I did not decide to add a drawing of a Japanese warrior, although I have seen hundreds of photos, drawings and films in my life, I was sure that I would not be able to convey the complexity of their armor.
The science article was rather simple to write and illustrate. I focused my attention on man's dreams of flying, recalling the figure of Icarus and the works of Leonardo da Vinci. After this introduction, I presented the idea of a balloon and the use of warm air, emphasizing that it is just a theory. Of course, I added a drawing of the balloon to the article.
I began to describe my war adventures from my first fights with the Swedes in Livonia, I omitted inconvenient facts like murdering civilians...
"Then I shot a gunpowder barrel... I thought I would die, but is there anything more beautiful than dying for my homeland? Good God looked after me and I woke up a few days later in the tent of the present Hetman Gosiewski."
The next three pages were taken by my novel, "Teutonic Knights" with a drawing of one of the Teutonic Knights murdering the wife of Jurand from Spychów. I also added a short introduction in which he delicately pointed to Prussia as successors of the Teutonic Order.
Although there was almost no public opinion in those days and not many people could read and write... that didn't mean people were stupid. The information was provided orally and that was what I was counting on, sometimes the students read the scriptures, city announcements or poems for a small fee, and thanks to the newspaper I gave them an additional source of income.
There is also the section of economics and politics... in the first one I focused on the local problem, which was the lack of a permanent crossing over the Vistula River and that barge transport causes an increase in prices in the capital.
The political section was more difficult, but referring to my experiences from wars in the Empire, I wrote an article praising religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.