Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  At least he wouldn’t have to learn a new opening for his letters as the result of his new status. Except for the most formal legal documents, where all the miscellaneous titles of the Wettins were required, he had for years taken care of them with “etc.” so he could get to the meaningful content without delay.

  The recipients of his letters always knew who he was. What was the point in emphasizing it?

  The signature, though...

  He looked down.

  He had always signed Bernhard H.z.S. Bernhard, Herzog zu Sachsen. Duke in Saxony. Saxony, not Saxe-Weimar. They were the Ernestine line. The senior line. By rights, the electoral title belonged to them––not to John George of the Albertine line. So the split went back two-hundred-fifty years? So what? If you have a right to something, you have a right to it.

  Now, for the first time, he signed Bernhard G.H.z.B. Bernhard, Gross-Herzog zu Burgund.

  Grand Duke in Burgundy. He liked the look of that. No reason to be picky about the French insistence on Grand Duke of the County of Burgundy.

  The uptime-encyclopedias told him that in another world, he had gained a duchy in Franconia and then lost it again to the vicissitudes of war. In this world, they had passed the date of the Battle of Nördlingen. He was not desperately trying to reconstitute an army for Axel Oxenstierna in a world in which Gustavus Adolphus had been killed more than two years earlier in yet another battle never fought, at Lützen.

  In this world, whatever it took, he would not lose the County of Burgundy he had gained–and significantly expanded with bits of Alsace and Baden that he had managed to nibble off, bit by bit, here and there, in a most satisfying campaign. As campaigns came and went, this one had come cheap. As for the old Habsburg appanage of Burgundy itself, given what getting it had cost him, not to mention having to endure the diplomatic squabbles with the French whose lawyers and bureaucrats nearly had apoplexy at the thought the name might result in a creeping claim to Bourgogne... Given the effort he had expended thus far, and would expend in the future, he had a right to it. He’d earned it.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Ah,” Friedrich Ludwig Kanoffski von Langendorff said after banquet, after reception, after, finally, the celebrations of the day had wound to an end and the newly installed grand duke had gone off to bed. “Ah.” He twirled his wine glass.

  The others of the inner circle of der Kloster, Bernhard’s closest advisers who had, the year before, adopted their totally inappropriate nickname of ‘the cloister’ from his temporary headquarters at the Benedictine monastery at Schwarzach, looked at him, then at one another.

  “You do still have the list, I hope,” Reinhold von Rosen said.

  “List?” Kanoffski asked, his face blank.

  “The impromptu list of things to be done that our new grand duke issued while we were getting lined up for the procession into the banquet room?”

  “Oh, that list. Yes, right here.” He pretended to feel around the inside of his doublet. “Somewhere.”

  “Pest, Kanoffski. You are a pest. It’s a good list. I am quite gratified by Bernhard’s willingness to propose a modus vivendi agreement to the USE in addition to his forthcoming marriage. It looks like things may be stabilizing, which can only be beneficial to our long-term prospects.”

  “This would have nothing to do with the long-term prospect named Anne Marguerite? The prospect of settling down, long-term, with estates in Alsace, would it?” Kanoffski, as usual for him, punctuated his speech and emphasized his points with a wide array of gestures. He claimed that the technique worked in any language.

  “You married, you formerly wild Bohemian. You married almost two years ago. You married a nice, respectable girl from a nice, respectable family in Freiburg. She’s Catholic, but what the hell! We are all sinners in the eyes of God and that must be hers, since otherwise she seems to be ideally virtuous. You are rapidly settling into being nice and respectable yourself.” Rosen spread his hands widely. “When a nice Alsatian girl is so very...there...and willing to risk her life and estates on a wandering soldier of fortune from Latvia... Why not? Why not sons and daughters? Why not hostages to fortune under better circumstances than I could have offered them in the past? Poyntz here is also already married. I am not the last bachelor among us, but almost.”

  Sydenham Poyntz nodded. “Under other circumstances, I might have wanted to go home some day, but England has become a disaster. In any case, Anna Eleanora prefers to stay in the Germanies.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Johann Ludwig von Erlach refilled his glass. “Being from Bern, I’m not so far from home. I’m ten years older than the rest of you except for Kanoffski here––he has a couple of years on me––and married to a cousin since before the Ring of Fire. I have spent my adult life as a soldier and done well from it. But, yes, if Bernhard’s overture to Gustavus succeeds, if there can be, may be, will be, even an uneasy kind of peace, I will be entirely content to wait at home until the war comes to find me again. ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.’ I am not so much a warrior that I would go in search of a different Kriegsherr who is recruiting.”

  Bolzen, Tyrol

  Dr. Wilhelm Bienner, chancellor of Tyrol, bowed to the regent. “You should be flattered, Your Grace. The grand duke wrote to you personally, in his own hand, rather than dictating the message to a secretary.”

  Claudia de Medici glanced once more at the letter she held, rose from the table, and walked to the window, in hopes of getting better light than the flickering candles were giving late in the afternoon on this gray day in late winter. “In the matter of correspondence from Grand Duke Bernhard...” She paused. “We conclude that ‘written in person’ can only be counted as a mixed blessing. We must say that he has one of the most difficult and illegible scripts it has ever been Our misfortune to attempt to read.” She laughed. “Still, We shall overcome these obstacles––by this time tomorrow, perhaps. But it appears that de Melon’s work with his agents in developing the details of Our very sketchy pre-nuptial agreement is proceeding smoothly. Now, if only word doesn’t leak out prematurely...”

  She gave the chancellor a firm look. “If it does...”

  “Everyone understands, Your Grace. This is in the same category as the proposed voluntary entry of Tyrol into the USE. Heads will roll.”

  “Make sure that Dr. Volmar is aware that his head is included in the possible count.”

  The lawyer who had headed Tyrol’s chancery in Alsace, now alas absorbed into the County of Burgundy, was not one of the regent’s favorite people. Vain, ambitious, and stubborn were not the most desirable characteristics in a bureaucrat, particularly when they were combined with a willingness to take bribes.”

  One of the main reasons that she was still paying out his salary in distant Ensisheim, even though there was no longer any work for him to do there, was that she didn’t want him in Innsbruck.

  Besançon

  “Your Grace.” Henri de Rohan bowed to a suitable depth.

  “Your Grace.” Bernhard bowed back.

  Both of them smiled.

  “You requested to visit me? Rather than requesting that I visit you? There must be a matter of some import at hand.”

  Bernhard cleared his throat. “At Schwarzach...” he began. “During the meeting that recently took place at Schwarzach with the regent of Tyrol...”

  This was awkward.

  Still, he had chosen to deliver the news in person.

  Rohan, twenty-five years the older and inured to intrigue not only through his status as a French nobleman but by his years of service to the Serenissima of Venice, waited.

  “The regent of Tyrol is...” Bernhard stopped and made another short bow.

  “Yes?”

  “I wished to do you the courtesy of providing this information in person, rather than by letter or through an intermediary. Claudia de Medici has done me the honor of agreeing to become my wife.”

  Rohan was not certain precis
ely what he had expected from this meeting. He was certain that he had not expected this. He turned away, stiffly. “In the face of the honor that I had already done you, by suggesting my daughter as your wife?”

  “Marguerite is, without doubt, eminently eligible.”

  “Not to mention, suitably Protestant.”

  “That, too.”

  “Of an ideal age.”

  Bernhard thought a moment. Rohan, in his own day, had been saddled by King Henri IV of France with a bride who was barely ten years old. The Huguenot duke, currently his guest and ally, almost surely did consider that delaying negotiations for his daughter’s marriage until the girl was seventeen––nearly eighteen––was the height of political liberality and paternal indulgence.

  He did not want Rohan to take his forthcoming marriage to Claudia de Medici as an offense to his honor.

  Leopold Cavriani was in town––had been for some time, for that matter, going back and forth, planning, undoubtedly, obscure Calvinist things. In a pinch, maybe Cavriani could help.

  He couldn’t afford for Rohan to break off the working alliance they had forged.

  Did he need to apologize? It was not as if he were breaking off a betrothal. Their discussions had been tentative.

  Could he afford to apologize? If the alternative were a break with Rohan, yes.

  Could he get through this without apologizing? He certainly hoped so.

  A politically necessary decision could look quite different when you were the maker of it and not the recipient of its impact.

  A sneaking understanding of some of Gustavus Adolphus’ possible motives in allying with the up-timers at considerable cost to the dukes of Saxe-Weimar came creeping into his mind.

  “Upon consideration,” Bernhard said. “Upon consideration, with all due respect, I am not the man you need as Marguerite’s husband. She is your only heir. She needs a husband who can become Rohan for her, and for you––a husband who can accept the Huguenot cause and its needs as his primary obligation.”

  Who will fight your battles, he thought, the battles you choose. And possibly even let you lead him around by the nose, though a man who would accept that will be of little use to her.

  “In my case, not only am I Lutheran rather than Calvinist, which would make me less than acceptable to many of the Huguenot theologians, but also the needs of the County of Burgundy would provide a constant distraction...”

  Rohan did not stalk out.

  It had been a near thing.

  Chapter 2 Dukes, Heirs, and Princesses

  Brussels, Low Countries

  The Coudenberg Palace was cold this February morning. Being cold all winter was one of the prices one paid for dwelling in high-ceilinged splendor.

  “Impertinent,” Isabella Clara Eugenia said from the comfortable chair in which her attendants had rolled her, and her third-order religious habit, up in heated blankets from head to toe. “Rude and impertinent. The gall of the man–Lutheran heretic as he is–to hold such a ceremony in Besançon. The Franche Comté was part of the appanage that my father the late, blessed, Philip II of Spain assigned to Albrecht and to Us. It is by right just as much Ours as the Spanish Netherlands proper or Luxemburg. Admittedly, We only visited it in person once, and that at the very beginning of Our reign, but We duly assigned local administrators...”

  “It’s a long way away,” the queen in the Low Countries said. Maria Anna wiggled a little in her chair. She had pulled her feet out of her shoes and tucked them up more warmly under her skirts. “After all the walking and riding I did last summer, I have gained considerable respect for the concept of ‘a long way away.’ That’s probably the real reason you have only visited it once during your long tenure here in the Low Countries. Honestly, darling Tante, do you see any genuine expectation of keeping it––other than as one of the many historical inherited titles the Habsburgs place in the introduction to their legal documents?”

  “Consider, also, Tante and Maria Anna...” The king in the Low Countries pulled a large sheaf of papers out from under his fur-lined cape. “This material from the encyclopedias indicates that in the other world, up-time, the Franche Comté was permanently annexed by France. Which is better? To have it as a part of this County of Burgundy, which is almost destined to remain a small power, or to have it annexed by the main rival of the Habsburgs?”

  “Also,” Maria Anna said, “thinking long term...the family might, eventually, get it back. Bernhard will have to marry. He has no option. Since my brother in Vienna has been kind enough to let us know that they are considering the possibility of offering my sister Cecelia Renata as his bride––if that could be worked out, it would cement his new principality close to the Habsburg interests again.”

  Isabella Clara Eugenia shook her head. “This, alas, is something over which We have no control. Moreover, there is no guarantee Bernhard would accept the offer.”

  “Better than Poland,” Fernando commented.

  Their elderly aunt nodded. “Such a marriage, of course, if Vienna can arrange it, would be the most practical solution, since young Ferdinand does seem to have made a definite decision not to marry her into Poland.”

  “And it would be nice to have her there. It’s a long way away, but it’s closer than Vienna. Maybe we could visit back and forth.” Maria Anna was happy in her new marriage, but she seriously missed her brothers, sister, sister-in-law, nephew, stepmother, and the whole unusually happy family in which she had grown up.

  “It will have to be a diplomatic solution,” the young king said. “To be practical, the Low Countries don’t have sufficient military resources to try to oust Bernhard from his new County of Burgundy in the immediate future. I intend to concentrate, as much as possible, on consolidating our holdings in and around the core. Intelligence has come in that the four Irish dragoon regiments have left the archdiocese of Cologne. That creates one of these wonderful––what is the up-time expression?––yes, ‘power vacuums’––in the archdiocese of Cologne. A predominantly Catholic region threatened by Hesse. Can we take advantage of it while Gustavus Adolphus is preoccupied on the eastern front? As you said, the Franche Comté is a long way away. The left-bank-of-the-Rhine territories of Ferdinand of Bavaria are next door.”

  Maria Anna nodded. “True enough. For the time being, Tante, I am afraid we will have to let the problem of Burgundy drop to the bottom of our list of concerns. But... Fernando, has anything arrived in the despatches from Claudia de Medici, in regard to how her meeting with Bernhard went? The last one I remember reported that she was going to fly to Schwarzach in person, in regard to protecting the Tyrolese interests in Swabia.”

  Isabella Clara Eugenia continued to contemplate the map, a dissatisfied expression on her face. “This map, the modern one, has Diedenhofen––Thionville, that is––in France rather than in the Low Countries. We cannot like the way that France nibbled away on Our southern borders in that other world.” She moved a wrinkled forefinger along the boundary line. “Better this upstart Lutheran Bernhard than Louis XIII.”

  She was, first and last, a daughter of Spain.

  There might be other enemies, but the Enemy was France.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Some portion of the Enemy was, unfortunately in the opinion of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, right here in the Low Countries. The political considerations involved in granting sanctuary to royal refugees were complex. Currently, Fernando’s benevolence had been extended to the heir to the throne of France and his family. Not, God be praised, to his mother, the dowager queen Marie de’ Medici. After her most recent estrangement from Louis XIII, she had inflicted herself upon the Savoyards. It was currently not known to the Brussels court whether this pleased Marie’s son-in-law, Duke Victor Amadeus, or not.

  The heir. Monsieur Gaston, younger brother and heir to Louis XIII, king of France. So Fernando’s benevolence was again involving the Low Countries with the problems in Lorraine. Gaston had only one daughter from his first marriage and she co
uld not inherit because the Salic Law still prevailed in France. The little Mlle. de Montpensier offered only potential future complications. Gaston’s little bastard Marie didn’t count at all, of course, except as a possible pawn some day, to be bestowed upon a minor ally.

  Gaston’s second marriage, though... In that other world, according to the encyclopedias brought by the up-timers, Richelieu had delayed as long as possible the royal consent and papal approval of the unsanctioned marriage of Gaston to Marguerite of Lorraine in 1632–indeed, he had prevented it for a decade, until his own death. Knowing that since Louis’ estranged queen, Anne of Austria, was apparently unable to carry her pregnancies to term even when the royal couple occasionally reluctantly slept together and she conceived, Richelieu had feared that if Gaston had legitimate sons, his leverage at court would increase immensely.

  Surprisingly, although Gaston was not only a threat to the monarch but also normally very low on practicality, he had been unwilling to risk challenges to the legitimacy whatever children he might beget by Marguerite. In that other world, the eldest had not been born until 1645.

  Now, whatever Richelieu might be planning otherwise, he had taken information received through the Ring of Fire into account, gritted his teeth, and, concluded that France needed heirs sooner rather than later. Instead of than delaying the permissions and approvals, he had expedited them. In this world, Marguerite of Lorraine was not only fertile, but younger, stronger, and, alas, right here in Brussels.

  As Gaston put it, she was “safely out of the clutches of her royal brother-in-law and his lackey of a cardinal.” She was also awaiting the birth of her first child within the next six weeks.

  Richelieu might view the prospect of legitimate sons from Gaston’s second wife as a nerve-wracking balancing act. Gaston might view it as enthralling. Isabella Clara Eugenia considered it a troubling complication.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “I can hardly wait.” Henriette de Lorraine-Vaudémont bounced on her toes.