1634: The Ram Rebellion

by Eric Flint

  “Oh,” Vince said.

  “Sort of like scalping,” Stew added. “But all over their bodies.”

  “Ugggh,” Janie Kacere said.

  “Wasn’t the duke of Coburg the one who disapproved of burning witches?” Wade Jackson asked.

  “Yeah,” Stew answered, “but that was because he didn’t believe that witches really exist or do the things that their accusers claim that they do. He knew for sure that these guys were trying to spike his guns. Or, at least, his commander on the scene did. The old guy probably wasn’t with them—he was nearly seventy and already pretty sick last year. What was there was what was called the Coburg Ausschuss. That, as far as I can tell, is the part of a local militia that actually gets good enough at it to do some fighting beyond trying to keep foragers out of a village or throwing rocks down from the town walls. Compared to the local militia as a whole, who don’t usually. When Ausschusse get involved, the fighting tends to get sort of up close and personal, so to speak. Old grudges.”

  Stew seconded Cliff Priest’s motion to request that Tom O’Brien be sent from Grantville down to Bamberg to shore up the local military contingent. And asked that Matt Trelli be assigned to go with him when he rode up toward Kronach and points north.

  Bamberg, February 1633

  “The thing to keep in mind is that it didn’t start last year,” Johannes Mattheus Meyfarth was saying. Steve Salatto had sent him up to Bamberg to give the staff there a rapid seminar on Kronach.

  “Most of the Franconian imperial knights became Lutheran during the Reformation. No matter how small their territories are—no matter how ridiculous they look to you—they still were covered by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. By the cuius regio provisions. They had the right to determine their own religion and that of their subjects. Which didn’t cause too much trouble until 1624, when the prince-bishop of Bamberg decided to try to force the knights to return to Catholicism. Part of what you call the Counter Reformation in your history books. Kronach lay on the border, of course, between the Catholic and Protestant princes. And was a strong point. So there have been armed conflicts ever since. With Coburg, with Bayreuth. Even though the independent knights don’t want to be absorbed by the Lutheran princes any more than they want to be absorbed by a Catholic bishop, to tell the truth.”

  John Kacere asked, a vaguely hopeful tone in his voice, whether their was any prospect of reconciliation.

  Meyfarth looked doubtful. “It’s been years now. And both sides have been equally brutal. Catholic soldiers and militias invade Protestant territories; Protestant soldiers and militias invade Catholic territories; each side retaliates against the other. The forces from Kronach have raided through the whole territory around Kulmbach. That belongs to the margrave of Bayreuth. Also through Coburg. They plunder travelers. They rustle cattle and drive them back to the city. The farmers call them a ‘nest of robbers’.

  “The soldiers, at least, are professionals. For them, the brutality is part of the job. It doesn’t really make much difference to them which side they are on. The militias, though, the people who are trained for civil defense—for them, it is more. The Protestants don’t have the slightest qualms about torturing the prince-bishop’s subjects. The Catholic militia from Kronach does things just as horrible in the villages subject to the prince-bishop’s Protestant neighbors. Nobody has any idea how to stop it. I most certainly do not, if that is what you were hoping for.”

  “Hell,” Tom O’Brien said emphatically. “I did not, ever, not once in my worst nightmares, expect to have a re-enactment of Northern Ireland on my back porch, so to speak.”

  “Northern Ireland?” Meyfarth asked politely.

  Tom explained, as briefly as possible.

  “Did the people of Northern Ireland try to burn witches?” Meyfarth asked.

  Tom said that he didn’t think so.

  “The Kronacher have been, for the past fifty years or so. The citizens complained. Not because of the absurdity of the accusations but because of the location of the spot chosen for the executions. Prevailing winds, you see. They did not care for the smell.”

  Janie Kacere swallowed rather hard.

  Bamberg, March 1633

  When Tom O’Brien came down to Bamberg, he brought his wife Stacey and his daughter Amanda. Except for John and Janie Kacere, and Bennett and Marion Norris, whose kids were grown and who had come as working couples, Tom was the only up-timer in Bamberg who had his wife with him. Vince’s wife, Cliff’s, Wade’s—they had all stayed in Grantville, because they had jobs to do. They couldn’t drop them and come to Bamberg any time soon.

  Stew Hawker was thinking. His wife Lesley was helping his parents run the farm; Barbara Marcantonio and Summer Jackson were both practical nurses; Summer was also in the fire department. Maybe, once Grantville managed to get a few more women through the LPN classes and train some more down-timers as fire fighters, they could be spared.

  Maybe.

  After all, Bamberg could use a couple of LPNs, too. Stew Hawker, now assigned to the new “Hearts and Minds” team, was drafting an argument which explained how very helpful they would be on his and the EMT Matewski’s projects. That would be great for Vince and Wade, if it worked. If some miracle didn’t happen that let them go back home themselves. If some disaster didn’t happen that meant they would never go back home at all.

  Whether Stew could talk his father into doing what the other farmers inside the Ring of Fire had done and hire a couple of down-time hands was another question. Stew’s dad was one stubborn old man.

  Stew filed his proposal until it would be the right time to bring it out. He would really like to have Lesley here, he thought, if he had to stay much longer. But he couldn’t exactly make his father do something.

  Maybe, though, if Lesley just up and left for Bamberg, Willie Ray Hudson could make him hire someone. It was a thought, anyhow.

  * * *

  “You know, Janie,” Stacey O’Brien was saying, “I never had the slightest idea that you could speak Latin. And I’ve known you ever since I married Tom.”

  “It’s not exactly the sort of thing that comes up in conversation. Not even the church services use it any more. The funniest thing is that when I was filling out Ed Piazza and Melissa Mailey’s questionnaire on ‘what skills do you have,’ I almost didn’t put it down. Just like Roberta Sutter didn’t put down that she could read the handwriting that they have down-time. I thought they meant useful things, like nursing and such. After all, when the census up-time had a line that asked if I spoke any foreign languages, I always said no. ‘Cause I don’t speak it, really. I just read and write it.”

  Kronach, April 1633

  Carl Neustetter, who was also called by the name Stürmer, stood on the walls of Kronach. Watching a young man with binoculars watch him. There were some things for which the far-sightedness of an old man was no problem.

  He was no longer as young as he used to be. He didn’t deny that. He had, after all, been military commander of the city and fortress of Kronach, of the entire Kronach Amt, for more than twenty years. So when the war moved into Franconia in 1631, first the Swedes and then the imperials, the bishop of Bamberg had sent him some reinforcements. A “military adviser,” the Bavarian officer Francesco de Melon. Really, given that any practical assistance was far more likely to come from Maximilian of Bavaria than from the Austrians, his boss now. And one of the bishop’s relatives, a canon in the Bamberg cathedral chapter: Wolf Philipp Fuchs von Dornheim.

  The three men had been through a lot together, already. He had developed a grudging respect for de Melon. For the bishop’s cousin . . . He shook his head.

  The first major enemy attack on Kronach had come in May 1632. The inhabitants of the neighboring Protestant territories had not needed much encouragement to attack Kronach. They hated the Kronacher already. A Swedish commander, Colonel Claus Hastver, brought the Coburg militia, the Ausschuss, to attack. Kronach beat them back. Then Margrave Christian of Bayreuth tried it wit
h troops from Kulmbach. They didn’t have any more success with a direct attack, so he moved to a siege. It had been during that period, on June 13, 1632, that the death registers of the Kronach parish recorded the deaths of the five volunteers from the city’s own Ausschuss—the skinned men.

  Thank God for the militia, he thought. He looked at the banners moving below him. One with the walled tower and three roses of the Rosenberg. One with the arms of the bishop of Bamberg. One with his own arms and colors. Or those of his house, at least. Armed, armored, drilled regularly on the muster place. The city was very short on regular troops. So far, the skills of the militia had been the deciding factor in repelling attacks by the Swedes and their allies. And the city did, at least, have a resident gunsmith. Guns that broke could be repaired and put back into use.

  If he only knew what these new allies of Gustavus Adolphus intended to do. He had heard stories of the Wartburg. Probably every imperial and Bavarian garrison commander had heard stories of what they did to the Spanish at the Wartburg.

  So far, they had shown none of the war machines outside the walls of Kronach. He would wait. There was nothing to be gained by impetuousness.

  He wondered who was going to pay for it all, now that the bishop had fled and the up-timers were collecting the taxes. There were some possibilities, if the imperial troops came back. The previous year, Ernst von Wildenstein at Weissenbrunn had declared for the Protestant side. Wallenstein had declared him guilty of high treason and transferred his possessions to Kronach. Which did not mean, penned up as they were, that they actually had possession of his estates. There were some other possibilities, as well. Maybe the properties of Veit von Redwitz at Theisenort. He had declared for the Protestants also, so it the imperials came back, there would be estates available at Stockheim; others in the Haßlach valley.

  He continued to think about the realities of financing war as the militia drilled in the cramped space of the market square. When they weren’t under siege, the city maintained its own shooting range and muster place outside of the walls. When it was under siege, then they just had to make do.

  Kronach, May 1633

  Matt Trelli had spent a lot of time studying the walls and towers of Kronach – more specifically, of the Festung Rosenberg as well as the city itself—with the best binoculars that Grantville had been able to provide to Cliff Priest. Partly by himself; some of the time with Tom O’Brien; and finally with both Tom and Cliff. Then, by the end of the month, all three of them with Scott Blackwell, Cliff’s boss from Würzburg.

  He was sort of glad—well, more than sort of glad—that the rest of them agreed with him. There was no way that Grantville could take that fortress. Not with the resources they had available in Bamberg. Not with any resources they were like to have in Bamberg any time soon.

  At least, he thought to himself, with some relief, he wasn’t just a gloom-and-doom-sayer. It wasn’t helping that Gustavus Adolphus’ allies in the region were nagging them incessantly to do something. In the bloodiest of terms. At a minimum, they thought that the up-timers should be bombarding the city. In their view, the Kronacher were “like the devil, and their women nine times worse.”

  Getting across the point that the up-timers were here to govern Bamberg for the benefit of its inhabitants, including specifically the Catholic ones, wasn’t easy to get across to a Franconian Lutheran. It sure wasn’t what the allies wanted to hear, Matt realized. The folks around here functioned on the basis of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Or, more accurately, he remembered from CDC class, what Mr. Piazza had told them that the “eye for an eye” had been supposed to control.

  The villages that belonged to Kronach—its “hinterland” was the technical term that Janie Kacere had given him—were a different matter from the city itself. They weren’t fortified. The dearest wish of the local allies was to destroy them all, level them to the ground, drive out their inhabitants, and generally do unto the villagers what the Kronach militia had done to them. After all, each village had contributed its portion of men to the Kronach Ausschuss over the years. Not that any of them had a choice.

  So far, Matt had kept saying no.

  Stewart Hawker explained patiently, over and over, that that was not what Grantville’s regency here in Franconia was all about. His “Hearts and Minds” team, almost all of them down-timers, started working in the villages.

  That didn’t keep raiders out of Thunau from burning one village. Most of the villagers. And two of Stew’s guys with it. The raiders just went back into the Protestant Freiherr’s territories. When Matt went over to deliver Vince Marcantonio’s formal protest, the guy who had led the raid stood right next to his lord and said that as far as he was concerned, he would not spare an unborn child in the mother’s body if it came from Kronach or was one of its subjects.

  Matt had opened his mouth and said, “You didn’t, did you? I was there when they buried the bodies.”

  The man didn’t even look away.

  Bamberg, June 1633

  Matt had come down to help Stew explain what they were finding out about the status of the villages in Kronach’s hinterland.

  “Subjects,” Stew was saying, “is exactly the right word for it. Back in the middle ages, they were the city corporation’s serfs. They still owe it rents and dues. Just like to any human person who holds jurisdictional rights.

  “And talk about officially second-class. The mayor of one of the villages, Dörfles it’s called, has a copy of the city ordinances. They go to church in Kronach, when the gates aren’t locked up tight, that is, but they have to sit in a balcony, cordoned off from the city people. When raiders come through they can take refuge inside the walls—if, that is, the city council decides that there is room and enough food on hand. On market day, for the first three hours after the market opens, only the town’s citizens can shop. They have first right to buy anything that the vendors display. The farmers from the villages that belong to Kronach are only allowed to shop after the citizens have taken their pick. Finally, after they’ve had an hour to look at things and buy what they want, foreigners and non-citizens are graciously permitted to spend their money.”

  Wade Jackson was looking at Vince Marcantonio. “Have we,” he asked, “checked to see what the laws in the other cities here have to say about this?”

  Vince shook his head. “It hadn’t even occurred to me,” he said honestly.

  As political appointees went, Jackson wasn’t a bad guy, Matt figured. “Me either,” he admitted.

  Bamberg, July 1633

  By July, five-year-old Amanda O’Brien seemed likely to become the most spoiled kid in Bamberg. Honorary grandparents and uncles were in competition. Until Stacey, taking a hard look at what was happening, brought home Gerhard and Emilia Kirchhof; orphans aged five and three, and gave Tom this melting look. She told him that she was pregnant again after the adoption went through.

  John and Janie Kacere had acquired a couple of boys as foster children, but they were basically too old to be spoiled, both in their early teens. Both had been recommended by a Jesuit at the church the Kaceres attended as brilliant but poor and without known relatives. Farmers’ sons, from rural villages that had been burned out. One from Weissenbrunn, one from Hummendorf. One burned by the Catholics from Kronach; one burned by the Protestants in revenge. Equal opportunity mayhem. Both villages had been confessionally mixed; neither set of raiders had bothered to stop and ascertain the confessional affiliation of their victims.

  For the time being, they were attending the Latin school in Bamberg, with tutors to help them catch up, while John and Janie taught them English. In a couple of years, the Kaceres thought, they would be able to take them back to Grantville, to go to the high school there.

  * * *

  Reece Ellis, from the Special Commission on the Establishment of Religious Freedom, came up from Würzburg to see what Walt Miller and Matt Trelli had been doing. When he found out that Walt was down by Forchheim building a road and M
att was up by Kronach trying to figure out what, if anything, Vince Marcantonio and Cliff Priest could do next about the stalemate there, he was less than happy.

  A lot of the things that Reece said made Matt feel awfully guilty. He knew that he should have been working on the commission stuff. It was assigned to him. But . . . he just didn’t have time.

  * * *

  Vince Marcantonio handed Matt a handful of pamphlets. From Jenny Hinshaw, back in Grantville, he said.

  The letter in the package explained things. Her husband, Guy, had just been sent off on some kind of special detached duty. She knew that he had written a briefing paper for the Bamberg team earlier, since he had been stationed in Bamberg up-time and had explored a lot of Franconia while he was there. Picking up tourist brochures, which he had squirreled away. She had stumbled across them the week before while she was looking through some boxes in the closet. There might be something useful; maybe not. In any case, they were welcome to use them, but she would like them back, please, when they were done. They were, after all, Guy’s souvenirs. But she thought she would send the originals. Who knew? Maybe even the photos might be of some help.

  One term caught Matt’s eye. And one name. War of religion. You would think that even when people changed jobs, they would at least stay on the side of the same religion. Sometimes, it seemed, it was just a matter of personal advantage. Or ambition. One guy, an artillery general, Count Johann Philipp Cratz von Scharffenstein, had been in and out of Kronach in 1632 in his capacity as Emperor Ferdinand II’s artillery general.

  Back then, up-time, in 1633, he had been commander at Ingolstadt, took offense at something Duke Maximilian of Bavaria did or didn’t do—the pamphlet wasn’t very clear on that—and conspired to turn the Bavarian fortress over to Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Who, up-time, had still been fighting for the Swedes. The whole thing got extremely confusing. Scharffenstein’s plot didn’t succeed, but he managed to get away. The upshot had been that in 1634, Scharffenstein, who had helped set up Kronach’s defenses when he was on the “Catholic” side had switched sides and turned up as a commander in the “Protestant” army that put the city under siege.