“So,” he said to August von Bismarck. “In Prague, I did matriculate at both the Carolina and the Roths’ new university, just to get my signature in the books, and I even managed to pick up a few lectures, not that some of the faculty in Jena will appreciate my efforts. I’m almost the youngest kid enrolled there. I’ve been living in Dr. Gribbleflotz’s dorm for his apprentices. But what next? Right now, I mean? There’s not even a university here in Besançon–it’s in Dôle, I looked it up just in case I’d get to sign the matriculation book and add another one to my collection–and I’m pretty sure my French isn’t good enough to take lecture notes, even if there was one. So what am I going to do? Just go back to Grantville? None of the rest of the family is there. Dad and Magda were still in Prague when I left. Ron and Missy went off to Hesse in February and I think they’re either still in Kassel or somewhere in Lorraine. Frank and Gia, who knows?”
“You could simply stay in the duc de Rohan’s household over the summer, until it’s time for you to return to Jena,” Bismarck began. “Everybody knows that the best way to learn a new language....”
But by the end of April, Rohan’s household, like almost every other resident of Besançon who had a room to let–or, in this case, to sub-let–had decamped to the countryside, where they were in tents on the other side of the Doub, so that he, like everyone else in the city, could make some money by letting or sub-letting said rooms to theologians and their staffs. Catholic or Calvinist, Lutheran or Orthodox, large groups or isolated wandering Bohemian Brethren, the clerics and their entourages were all having to pay premium rates to have a roof over their heads. Nice tents, but tents. Gerry moved in with Bismarck and Ruvigny rather than go with the Rohan group. A childhood at the Lothlorien Commune had made him strongly averse to close communion with nature if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. If God had truly intended man to eat among the flies and ants, he wouldn’t have permitted the invention of window screens, as far as Gerry was concerned.
✽ ✽ ✽
May of 1636 didn’t begin well. No fair maids going a-Maying. No flowers that bloomed in spring, tra la. Instead they barely made it past May Day, not even as far as cinqo de Mayo, when the conclave was going to start. A squad of Bernhard’s soldiers came running down from the citadel one morning, crossing paths with another squad going up.
Gerry abandoned his breakfast and stuck his head out the window. He listened; pulled back in. “Bismarck, are they saying what I think they’re saying?”
“The king of France is dead.”
“Louis is dead? Dead! Whadd’ya mean? The king of France is dead?”
“Hell, he’s not even old.” That was Bismarck. “He’s only ten years older than I am.”
“People are yelling that it was on the radio, not ten minutes ago. Richelieu, too, they think. Attacked by bandits in a forest yesterday.”
“So now there’s going to be a baby king? With all the maneuvering that goes into choosing guardians, regents, nursemaids, tutors.... Mazarin, I guess, since he’s said to be Anne of Austria’s current favorite.”
“Last I heard, the queen was still just pregnant,” Ruvigny said. “No baby. No obvious heir. No way to know if it’s a boy or girl, which makes a big difference under the Salic Law. Not like with the emperor and Kristina. Or even England, with its reigning queens.”
Ruvigny and Bismarck had military duties, so they sent Gerry with a local guide to take the news up to the Rohan campout.
“Boy, this is really going to take the spotlight off the conclave next week,” Dominique Bell said. “Nobody except a few dried-up old sticks will take ten minutes to think about theological doctrines when actual exciting things are happening in other parts of the world.”
The down-timers just looked at her and shook their heads.
✽ ✽ ✽
It was less than a week before the other shoe dropped.
“Gaston is in France already? I thought he was in Savoy. Monsieur Gaston has assumed the throne? The baby was a prince, but Gaston is playing the wicked uncle? He’s making himself king of France? The same Gaston who was dicking around in Lorraine last year? That one?”
“Yeah?”
“What happened to the baby?”
“Doesn’t seem like anyone knows.”
Everyone on the streets scattered in search of a building with radio reception.
“I bet that the grand duke is livid,” one of the men in the tavern said that evening. “Wherever he is. “‘Inspecting the army”’ in Lorraine, according to the newspaper. It’s really convenient for him that he found so many ‘Truly Important Things that Really Had to Be Done Right Now”’ that he was able to get out of town to his castle in Lorraine before the theological deluge arrived. And he told the grand duchess to clear out of town with the kid and all the nursemaids and nannies, too.”
“Makes sense. There’s always a lot of pestilences of various kinds with coming and going of people from everywhere. If this vaccination stuff really works, it’s too bad they didn’t get us all protected before all the out-of-towners came into town. Plus, if they aren’t here, they don’t have to play host and hostess for a pile of really expensive parties. And can generously turn their house over for the use of some of the delegates.”
“Well, the political, not to mention financial, implications of what Gaston has done are appalling. Do you have any idea what it’s going to do to our taxes if Bernhard has to double the regiments on the western border in addition to, probably, sending more to Lorraine? Gaston’s wife’s a Lorrainer. He was claiming the duchy in her right, last year. Or trying to, according to what the papers reported. That’s what the dicking around was about.”
Henri de Rohan was back in the city, for various values of “in town.” He was bunking up in the Citadelle, in the barracks. His reaction was livider than the one that tavern gossip was attributing to Bernhard. If there was such a word.
“What Rohan seemed to be saying yesterday,” Gerry said to Lisa Lund, “in French that was coming out of his mouth very fast, just before he headed down to the Quartier Battant looking for somebody or the other, is that his wife and daughter need to get the hell out of Dodge, and this time he’s not taking ‘no’ for an answer. Amid all the rabid frothing at the mouth that he did.”
“Ruvigny is going to be frantic, too.” Then, “What’s ‘Dodge’?” Bismark asked.
Carey answered, “Dodge is a town in Kansas where a lot of wild west movies were set. A lot of the plots involved that it wasn’t safe for someone to stay in Dodge, usually because a US Marshal was after him. Ruvigny....”
Bismarck shook his head. “Ruvigny and I went to Paris last fall. We....”
Ruvigny was coming up the road to the Citadelle fast, or at least as fast as his dispirited horse would agree to move. “I’m the guy you’re going to Paris with again, August mon ami. Rohan’s borrowing us from Bernhard again. The order this time is to remove the ladies, by skullduggery if possible and by force majeure if necessary. And leave yesterday, if not the day before.”
“This time?” Gerry raised his eyebrows.
“Like I said, we went to Paris last fall. We tried to bring them back last fall. No luck. La Maman loves court life.This time it’s going to be, ‘tell, don’t ask.’”
“FUBAR,” Gerry said. “Even more than usual.” Then, “Can I go?” he asked.
“No, ye gods!” Lisa Lund exclaimed. “Why?”
Gerry pointed his thumb at Bismarck. “He says that traveling in France is the best way for me to improve my French. There’s nothing else for me to do here until Ms. Dunn and the cordon sanitaire folks get their act together. It’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Why not?”
“We’re leaving now. Right now.”
“I haven’t even unpacked my duffel bag. It’s behind the door.”
Lisa groaned.
✽ ✽ ✽
The next time the two of them got together, several months later, Gerry told Ron that he wasn’t a bit so
rry that they’d left Besançon so fast that he missed the assassination of the pope. Well, he probably wouldn’t have been right there watching it this time, considering how long the authorities had managed to cover up the whole business, but still. One papal assassination per lifetime, successful or not, was enough for any guy. Especially when it was the same pope.
HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER
Chapter 32
Besançon
April-May 1636
Pope Urban VIII, having survived a succession of perils, summoned a Europe-wide theological conclave for the spring of 1636. Not a council of the Catholic church, as Trent had been or as Vatican II would have been in the other world, but a meeting of the most prominent theologians of all the continent’s fractured faiths. A surprising number agreed to come, the concept of all mainly excluding the Spanish and Borja’s adherents on the Italian peninsula.
Bernhard, Grand Duke of the County of Burgundy, perceived several thousand potential pitfalls that might be associated with a continental conclave that Urban decided to summon to, or all unreasonable locations, his newly chosen capital city of Besançon. Oh, there were reasons enough from the embattled pope’s perspective, one of them being its comparatively central location and another that there were not, just at the moment, any warring armies occupying the immediate surroundings.
This was clearly an opportunity for the city’s municipal officials to demonstrate their mettle and capabilities. The mayor and council should clearly be in charge of making the local arrangements. (“You want responsibility?” the grand duke asked. “You get responsibility.”) When speaking to one another, out of grand ducal hearing, the designated and afflicted city officials described this procedure as “shoving it all off on us.” Still, the conclave would bring in a lot of revenue. Income from outside sources was nothing to be scorned. They and a multitude of clerks, many of them borrowed temporarily from other towns, buckled down to work.
“But,” Dr. Guarinonius protested, “What about the quarantine provisions?”
“You deal with it. Do the best you can. Yes, the foreigners will be violating the restrictions. It’s like the movement of produce wagons and cattle drives. There’s no feasible way to stop them from coming. At least, plague hasn’t been as bad this summer as it was last year.”
Grand Duke Bernhard himself found that his duties as co-protector of Lorraine were very onerous at the end of April and during the early part of May. Leaving Rehlinger to deal with the day-to-day administrative matters of the duchy and Erlach to keep an eye on the internal military situation, he relocated to Lorraine. Châtel-sur-Moselle was really a very nice fortress. Also, he was not precisely lying. He really did have a lot to do.
Grand Duchess Claudia, no sooner than she had returned from what would have to be the last visit she made to her children in Tyrol for quite some time, barely passed through the city. At the end of April, she left with little Ernst Wilhelm, proclaiming that she needed to protect the heir’s health from diseases that might be carried by all the out-of-town people coming to the conclave. She took up temporary quarters in Dôle, the second-most-important city of Burgundy.
Bernhard, temporarily, stayed in Lorraine, calling two more regiments up out of
Burgundy to reinforce his garrisons, and communicating regularly with the king in the Low Countries about what might be expected next, given what Gaston was doing in France.
At the middle of May, Claudia, leaving Ernst Wilhelm with his entourage of nurses, wet nurses, nannies, noble governesses, and bodyguards in Dôle, promptly came back to Besançon to provide stronger direction as the town coped with the chaotic aftermath of the conclave, which had, inevitably, significantly raised the prevalence of disease in the capital.
Chapter 33
Besançon
June1636
What Gaston did, an act more disastrous than a direct military invasion of Lorraine would have been as far as Bernhard’s long-range plans were concerned, was reveal to an interested public the secret agreements pertaining to the subsidy that Cardinal Richelieu had paid out to Bernhard for the past few years. Gaston achieved this by announcing the information very publicly in a meeting with every foreign ambassador in Paris, accompanied by copies of the relevant, previously secret, documents and a newspaper release. He immediately followed up with a proclamation that he was cancelling the subsidy.
This caused a very real specter of imminent bankruptcy for Burgundy if Bernhard wasn’t able to find some new source of income. He returned from Châtel-sur-Moselle as quickly as he could, leaving Kanoffski in overall charge of his regiments in Lorraine, under strict orders not to do anything without consulting with Aldringen first. He also sent Sydenham Poyntz back to Brussels.
✽ ✽ ✽
“There’s a proverb,” Kamala Dunn said. “I’m pretty sure there’s a proverb, about someday, you have to pay the piper.”
“That was a German story, wasn’t it?” Dominique Bell asked. “Something about musicians from Bremen.”
Dominique’s mother shook her head. “That was a different one, about abused animals, I think,” Carey Calagna said. “Maybe you’re thinking about the Pied Piper of Hamlin, Kamala. That was German, too.”
“What does ‘pied’ mean?” Kamala’s daughter Shae Horton asked. “Cherry or pecan? Pumpkin or gooseberry? I always wondered when our teacher read the story out loud to us in school, but I didn’t want to make myself look stupid by asking.”
Carey tilted her head. “You’re ahead of me, just by wondering. I never thought about it–what pied was, I mean. I sure don’t know. But I think that’s still the wrong story. Or, at least, it’s a story with the wrong moral for what’s going on here. It was about the employers who would need to pay the piper or he’d march off with their kids and lead them over a cliff. That was sort of what happened to Richelieu. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t expect that when he didn’t pay everything he’d promised, Bernhard would use the part that he had actually paid out to take over Burgundy.”
Nods. “Yep,” Lisa Lund said. “There’s some other proverb, about how he who pays the piper is–the guy who has the money is–I’m sort of stumbling around here. He’s the one who calls the tune. He says, he tells the hired musician, what song is going to be played at a dance or party. Richelieu wasn’t exactly calling Bernhard’s tune; at least, he wasn’t calling it very efficiently. But he wasn’t paying very efficiently, either, so he got about what he paid for.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The plague came back in Lorraine, not as bad as the year before. Second waves were always weaker, since there was some “herd immunity” among the survivors of the first wave, Kamala Dunn told him. Bernhard reckoned the plague as a minus and herd immunity as a plus. Erlach, from somewhere, found enough money to send the plague fighters back north.
A couple of French regiments started to move toward the Lorraine frontier, which Bernhard reckoned as a minus, but pulled back after Spanish tercios invaded France itself. Bernhard counted that as a plus. The Lorraine protectorate in general, Carey Calagna said in a lecture she gave some of his staff, should be classified as an “unfunded mandate” as far as Burgundy’s budget was concerned. Bernhard coordinated with Aldringen and Fernando to see what extent Lorraine could fund its own problems, now that French occupying forces had stopped extracting as much as possible of the duchy’s revenues.
A couple of French regiments moved near the frontier with Burgundy itself and didn’t go away. A definite minus, because three of Bernhard’s regiments moved near the frontier with France, where they had to be supplied. That left him without much in the way of reserves, so he would need to start recruiting again. Any new regiments, additional regiments, would need to be trained. Officered, largely by men he wasn’t accustomed to working with. And paid.
Burgundy’s economy was doing, all things considered, quite well. The tax revenues from the territory would fund the needs of the territory. The tax revenues from Burgundy would not fund his obligations in Lorrain
e, much less an expanded army.
Money. Where was the money coming from? From June into the next winter, Bernhard continually, rather frantically, kept looking for money to replace the French subsidy, as unsatisfactory as it had been. Gaston in France meant that his former banking connections in Lyons were now a washout.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Who?” Erlach asked at the next gathering of Der Kloster. “Who is the most ticked-off at Monsieur Gaston right at this very minute?”
Erlach, on principle, refused to refer to Gaston as the king of France. “That’s where the money will come from.”
“Not really,” Kanoffsky said. “One thing doesn’t directly equal the other. Obviously, Spain is out as a source for us, no matter how ticked-off Philip IV and Olivares are with Gaston. Can we get anything more from Fernando? What strings would be attached?”
“No hope,” Bernhard answered, “not with all the repercussions he’s going to get from giving sanctuary to Anne of Austria and her son.” He waved at Michael John, who started writing bullet points on the large easel at the front of the conference room.
Lorraine is already a drain on his treasury, just like it is on ours.
Plus, he’s going to have to be keeping an eye on Spain. He has to be thinking that if his brother and Oliveres actually sent tercios into France–well, there’s plenty of precedent in the long war for Spain’s sending tercios into the Netherlands.
And he’s still trying to digest the new territories he annexed from the archbishop of Cologne.”
“Is there any way to get more funds on credit out of Switzerland?” Ohm asked.
Rehlinger shook his head. “No, I’ve talked to my uncle. The bankers are too aware of just how close to the margin Burgundy is. They are strongly disinclined to throw good money after bad.”
Kanoffsky leaned back. “Would, or could, Grand Duchess Claudia provide credit from Tyrol? Or are the regents there holding too tight an oversight to the budget? Would there be additional complications now that the county is a province of the USE?”
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 26