Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Afterword
Cast of Characters
1635: The Wars for the Rhine – eARC
Anette Pedersen
Advance Reader Copy
Unproofed
Baen
An exciting addition to the multiple New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire alternate history series created by Eric Flint. Time travelers from our modern age are thrown into the deadly straits of the Thirty Years War in Europe of the 1600s.
In the year 1635, the Rhineland is in turmoil. The impact of the Ring of Fire, the cosmic accident which transported the small modern West Virginia town of Grantville to Europe in the early seventeenth century, has only aggravated a situation that was already chaotic. Perhaps nowhere in central Europe did the Thirty Years War produce so much upheaval as it did in the borderlands between France and Germany.
Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne shares the religious fanaticism of his older brother, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. He is determined to restore the power of the Catholic Church over the middle Rhine, the so-called “Bishop’s Alley,” and has unleashed a plot for that purpose. But that same middle Rhine is territory which Landgrave William V of Hesse-Kassel is determined to seize for himself, under the guise of expanding the influence of the United States of Europe.
Add to the witch's brew the deaths in battle of Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg and his son, which leaves his young widow Katharina Charlotte as the heir to those much-prized territories. She is now on the run, in disguise—and pregnant. Add the unexpected arrival of Austria’s most capable general, Melchior von Hatzfeldt, along with the most ruthless spy and torturer in the Rhineland, Felix Gruyard.
The wars for the Rhine have erupted, and only the devil knows how they will end.
The Ring of Fire series:
1632 by Eric Flint
1633 by Eric Flint with David Weber
1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint with David Weber
1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint with Andrew Dennis
1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce
1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce et al
1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint with Andrew Dennis
1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce
1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint
1635: The Papal Stakes by Eric Flint with Charles E. Gannon
1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint
1636: The Kremlin Games by Eric Flint with Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett
1636: The Devil’s Opera by Eric Flint with David Carrico
1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies by Eric Flint with Charles E. Gannon
1636: The Viennese Waltz by Eric Flint with Gorg Huff
1636: The Cardinal Virtues by Eric Flint with Walter H. Hunt
1636: The Ottoman Onslaught by Eric Flint (forthcoming)
1635: The Tangled Web by Virginia DeMarce
1636: Seas of Fortune by Iver Cooper
1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz by Kerryn Offord & Rick Boatright
Time Spike with Marilyn Kosmatka
Edited by Eric Flint
Grantville Gazette, Volumes I-VII
Ring of Fire I • Ring of Fire II • Ring of Fire III • Ring of Fire IV
For a complete list of Ring of Fire books and to purchase all of these titles in e-book format, please go to www.baen.com
1635: THE WARS FOR THE RHINE
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Anette Pederson
A Baen Book
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN:978-1-4767-8222-5
Cover art by Tom Kidd
Maps by t/k
First Baen printing, December 2016
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Prologue
Cologne
April 1, 1634
"Agreed."
"D'accord."
"Agreed."
Two of the three men at the table stood up, bowed, and left, while the third refilled his glass with wine and took it to the east facing window. There were no lights visible on the ground. The moon was still up, turning the Rhine River into a glittering band of silver, but in the horizon the first pale traces of the false dawn were beginning to show.
Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne sipped slowly of the wine, and looked towards the section of the Rhine once known as Bishop's Alley. The Protestant conquest had not stopped until Mainz had fallen, and now only the archbishopric of Cologne remained. But that would change. The Rhine formed the link between central Europe and the western oceans, but Cologne sat as the gate, and Cologne was still his. Tonight he had irrevocably joined in on a desperate and dangerous gamble, but he would win. Not just what had been lost, but all of the middle Rhine, proving to the entire world his might as a statesman of the church. At whatever cost.
Chapter 1
Düsseldorf, the Castle
May, 1634
“Katharina Charlotte, you cannot desert your God-given husband!”
“I’m not going to, Elisabeth,” Charlotte replied, without turning from the window to look at her sister. “I’m simply considering making a short journey up the Rhine to Cologne to ask our mother’s old friend, Archbishop Ferdinand, to help me pray for the safety of my husband and his heir. That I also don’t trust Marshal Turenne, and think that he is making my husband attack Essen for some secret French purpose is entirely beside the point, and probably just one of those funny ideas pregnant women sometimes get.”
“You keep looking for excuses to leave your home and husband, Charlotte, but he was quite within his rights to beat you. It is your duty to obey him in all things, and you told me yourself that you had talked back to him.”
Charlotte shrugged. Three years ago at the barely nubile age of sixteen her father had married her off to his old first cousin Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg.
As the third of six daughters she had looked forward to having a household of her own, and all things considered it hadn’t been a bad marriage until the previous autumn, when Ferdinand Phillip, the son she had so proudly—and painfully—born, had died, and her husband had berated her for her weakness in bearing such a fragile wimp. Her answer: that bearing children before she was fully grown was not her idea, had cost her a front tooth, the most unpleasant night she had ever spent, and daily beatings until she showed pregnant again. A plea to her father for protection had resulted only in a lecture on obedience, but now her father was dead, and her husband was taking his heir and his army to try to conquer the rich industrial area of Essen just north of his own land.
Charlotte felt no grief for the death of her father, and certainly didn’t expect to feel any if her husband got himself killed. All scraps of daughterly—never mind wifely—duty and affection had long since been worn away, but if Philipp, her stepson, died she would be carrying the heir to not only some of the Neuburg lands on the Danube, but also the lands of Jülich and Berg here on the Rhine. If that happened, then the guardianship of a living son would be a windfall wanted by every German prince, and that of a living daughter only slightly less so. And if the child died—thus leaving Wolfgang without an heir—then the codicil to her marriage contract that her father had somehow talked Wolfgang into signing meant that Charlotte herself became the trophy. She would be hunted like a twelve-point stag unless she was safely within the protection of someone she could trust. Preferably that would be her young brother, Friedrich. He had been in Italy on his Grand Tour when their father had suddenly died, but he should be coming home by now. Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne was another possibility, but if she could not reach Friedrich, it might actually be safer just to hide herself somewhere in the City of Cologne. Especially if Wolfgang didn’t do her the favor of getting himself killed. The archbishop would certainly just send her back to Wolfgang, but darling Friedrich was now Count Palatine of Zweibrücken and the new head of her family, and he had quarreled bitterly with their father, when he had agreed to the marriage in return for that mine near Saarbrucken.
Wolfgang of course expected to return in triumph with the gold of Essen at his disposal and all the lands once belonging to his mother’s family firmly within his grasp. This, he believed, would enable him to strike west and start taking the Protestant holdings within the USE. In Charlotte’s opinion that made as much sense as the mad fantasies of Wolfgang’s maternal uncle, Phillip the Insane, whose lack of an heir cost them the lands in the first place.
The campaign had been proposed by the French Marshal Turenne, who had first gotten both the archbishop’s and Wolfgang’s permission to move French troops a few at a time across their lands to gather in Düsseldorf before striking northward. Turenne had paid well for the privilege, and then talked Wolfgang into joining the undertaking of some complex maneuvers that would supposedly take the army of Essen completely by surprise. Charlotte didn’t know enough about warfare to judge whether the plan stood a chance of success, but her question about what the French would actually be gaining in return for their money and men had only resulted in yet another black eye.
As the sound of shouting reached her, Charlotte moved her eyes from the harbor to the street below her window. Cavalrymen wearing her husband’s colors were forcing what was obviously the last speed out of lathered horses. Charlotte opened the casement and leaned out.
“They are dead! They are all dead! The French betrayed us, and the army of Essen is right on our heel!”
“Elisabeth.” Charlotte turned from the window. “Send Harbel to see that the boat is ready, and Maria to attend me in my bedchamber. Then go pack your most valuable possessions, but only what you can carry yourself. We are leaving in as soon as I am ready.”
Vienna, The Palace
“I assure you, the child is mine.” Melchior von Hatzfeldt, Count and General of the Holy Roman Empire, looked with frustration at the man he expected to soon become his liege-lord and emperor.
“I do not doubt you,” Archduke Ferdinand of Austria said with a slight bow of his head, “but it was born less than ten months after old Mansfeld's death and allowing you to claim it would create a nasty heritage squabble. And I do want their goodwill. I’m sorry, my dear general, but it is in the best interest of the HRE that you allow your child to be reared as the heir to a quite sizable fortune, and an apparently ever growing influence within the Catholic world. And talking about the Catholic world: I have a task for you.”
Melchior swallowed his protests and rubbed his eyes before nodding. “As you wish.”
“I want you to pay a visit to your family in Cologne, look around the area and report to me when you return. My sister’s marriage to Duke Maximilian should ensure our alliance with Bavaria, but Cologne is an important link to our Spanish cousin in the Netherlands.” Archduke Ferdinand rose from his chair in the sun, and went to pick up a stack of papers on a nearby table. “The furlough, permits, etc. should all be in order. Didn’t you mention that your brother was marrying into the von Worms-Dalberg family this summer?”
Melchior nodded again, not quite trusting his voice.
“Well, that should serve as a reason for your presence in any casual conversation.” Archduke Ferdinand looked directly at Melchior and sighed. “I truly am sorry, Melchior, both for you losing the one woman to break down that chaste reserve of yours, and for denying you the right to claim your child. But the child is more likely to be spoiled by doting aunts than mistreated, and the cost would simply be too high.”
“I understand.”
Melchior bowed himself out in the correct manner, and went slowly down the stairs to the entrance hall, absently nodding to colleagues and acquaintances. His mother had always predicted than when Melchior would finally fall in love, he’d fall hard, and sweet Maria with her big dark eyes and lively manner had completely stolen his heart. He had always been a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage and total fidelity, but even the fact that she had been a newly married woman when they first met had not been enough to completely kill his interest. Maria had clearly been unhappy in her marriage, as well as too young and impulsive to hide her dislike of her husband, but Melchior had very carefully kept their relations completely platonic for almost two years, playing the role of a friend and occasional escort whenever his duties took him to Vienna. Only when her husband had died, and Melchior had found her alone—except for her Nubian slave—when paying a condolence visit after the funeral, had he lost his head and his hold on his emotions. Maria had refused to publish their relationship with a betrothal before her mourning year was over, even when she proved pregnant with a child that she assured him could only be his. Instead she had promised that as soon as the child was born, she would come back to Vienna, and marry him before the summer was over. But she had never recovered from the birth, and when he had gone to the Mansfeld estate to attend her funeral, Melchior had been denied all access to the baby. And now his last frail hope of having the crown interfere on his behalf was gone as well.
“Sir?”
Melchior look blankly at Lieutenant Simon Pettenburg, the courier who had come with him to Vienna, then pulled himself together. “We’re leaving for Linz this afternoon. I need to talk with General Piccolomini first. Go pack our belongings, and I’ll meet you at the inn.”
Magdeburg, House of Hessen
Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg, wife to Wilhelm V Duke of Hesse-Kassel, was widely acknowledged as one of the most astute players on the new political scene. So it was no wonder to anyone that she was having morning tea with the equally astute Abbess Dorothea of Quedlinburg and Princess Eleonore von Anhalt-Dessau, whose husband, Wilhelm Wettin, many people expected would become the next prime minister of the USE.
That Amalie chose to hostess the small gathering in the only finished room of what was to become the new House of Hessen, rather than in her apartment in the government building, might seem a bit odd. But then all off
icial areas were getting so overcrowded that there were no possibility for privacy. Besides, the noise of the carpenters putting up the wall panels in the next room served nicely to disguise anything being said over the tea cups.
Both Dorothea and Eleonore were quite aware that Amalie had an extra agenda, so once the official business of inviting young female relatives to visit and benefit from the abbess’s political lessons was done with, the abbess asked with a smile in her eyes. “And if no one has anything else to talk about, I believe that we are finished?”
“Very funny, Abbess Dorothea.” Amalie filled the cups again. “Have you ever known me not to want to run down the political situation as well?”
“No, but sometimes you so want to be devious, that it takes you forever to get to what you really want to talk about. And I’ve had more than enough recently of rehashing the situation with that tiresome King Christian of Denmark and the situation in the Baltic.” The abbess grinned and suddenly looked several decades younger than her actual years. “But if you’ve got the wind of something new brewing? That is of course a different matter.”
Amalie smiled and tapped a fingernail on the teacup making the fragile porcelain chime. “Cologne.”
“Wha...” Eleonore coughed and swallowed her tea. “Amalie, do you have an army of small gnomes listening at keyholes all over town?”
“No.”
“Then what do you know about Archbishop Ferdinand?”
“That the captain of his personal guard has travelled to hire some of Wallenstein’s former mercenary colonels, and that the archbishop’s personal torturer, Felix Gruyard, has been seen entering Duke Wolfgang von Neuburg’s castle in Düsseldorf late at night. Nothing conclusive.” Amalie leaned back in her chair, easing her stomach just beginning to swell in her tenth pregnancy. “Some members of the Bavarian ducal family have a tendency towards obsessions. Often religious, but not always. Archbishop Ferdinand has been obsessed with becoming a cardinal since the death of his brother Cardinal Philip. But since Ferdinand never had his brother’s intellectual and spiritual qualities, the only way he can achieve his ambition is by gathering power. The Protestant conquest of most of Bishop’s Alley along the Rhine has severely reduced his power, and with the USE looking to stabilize and consolidating their hold, it should be only a matter of time before he tries something desperate.”
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