by Eric Flint
"You were right, you know," Veronica said. "To leave, if it was so important to you that your children not be schooled as Catholics. Somehow, it did not make that much difference to us. The first time we were plundered, by Mansfeld's 'Protestant' troops in support of the Calvinist Winter King, we were still good little Calvinists ourselves, just as the elector declared that his subjects should be. So, my stepson Anton figured, how could becoming Catholic make it worse? We delayed as long as we could; that's true. We did not leap enthusiastically into the arms of the damned Bavarians, the way Johann Stephan's brother Kilian did. He threw himself upon their breasts, practically, when they first occupied Amberg in 1621. But in 1628, when Duke Maximilian declared that we must become Catholic or leave, we became Catholic."
Nodding at him, she continued. "It isn't as if Johann Stephan brought up his children the way your father brought you up. He didn't suffer fools gladly. Even though he died long before this war started, he had more than enough of the back and forth between the Lutherans and the Calvinists. I can only think what he would have said about adding Catholics to the stew. After one of the changes, when the ecclesiastical visitor complained of his apparently minimal familiarity with the doctrines and teachings covered on the questionnaire, he replied, 'It may be that I do know the answer. I'm just not sure which one you are looking for this time.'"
"Ah," Brechbuhl said. "Yes. I do believe that I heard that story from my father." He smiled. "And many others about Johann Stephan. The various religious changes generated a lot of jobs for printers. Just think of how many copies of the Mandatum de Non Calumniendo were needed when one of the electors decided that the Lutherans and Calvinists had taken their theological disputes to a far from genteel level of rhetoric. 'Thou shalt not insult one another.' Indeed, think of all the pamphlets that led to the issuance of the mandate. Such controversies must be very profitable for the printing trade."
Veronica also smiled. More grimly. "Gretchen had not been confirmed as a Calvinist. The ministers and teachers were exiled first; she wasn't old enough for confirmation when they left. Although she accepted the conversion like the rest of us, she was no longer exactly a child, so she has never really been instructed in the teachings of any church at all. Hans was confirmed as a Catholic. He was obliging enough about it, but he was, I think, a little too old when they started teaching him. He was ten. He didn't really take it all very seriously." She blinked. "He reminded me of Johann Stephan, in many ways."
Then she looked directly at Brechbuhl. "Annalise has no clear memory of having been a Calvinist, ever. She is Catholic, Elias-truly a Catholic, instructed as one and content to be one. So few years, barely six, between the oldest and the youngest, to make such a difference. The years of childhood are very short. We are working in common, now. Someday, maybe, you will have to decide if you will let your children know a cousin who is truly a Catholic. But it isn't something that we need to face today. Or even tomorrow."
Brechbuhl looked down.
She shook her head. "In 1628, we were plundered again. As Catholics. This time by some of Tilly's 'Catholic' troops in a land that was now 'Catholic.' Nor did our obedient change of confession move Duke Maximilian to protect us from his allies. That is when Anton was killed and his wife taken. And we were taken."
She looked directly at her stepdaughter's widower. "I intend to get Johann Stephan's property back, Elias. I will get it. Enough to send the Catholic granddaughter of a Calvinist publisher to a down-time college teaching up-time subjects headed by a Lutheran abbess. That much, the damned Bavarians owe Anton's family. Do not expect me to handle things the way I would have done ten years ago. I am not the respectable widow of an established printer any more. Nor am I entirely the wife of the mayor of Grantville. I have seen and done things that even Elisabetha and her sisters, with all the hardships of exile, have not and did not. I am an old hag of a camp follower also, Elias. You will do well not to forget that. Just as people will do well, as time goes on, to remember that Gretchen was a young camp follower. These things do not leave a person the same."
****
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
Duke Ernst had been polite about making the acquaintance of most of the party from Grantville. Not that he wasn't interested in seeing the up-timers for himself, but he was, after all, a very busy man, with many demands on his time. He suspected that he faced extended conversations with Mary Simpson and Veronica Dreeson. The appointments were on his calendar. He would do his duty. But after their first conversation, he had been utterly enchanted to make the acquaintance of Keith Pilcher. If they were not kindred spirits, they had, at least, a common appreciation of straightforward facts.
"Bocler," he said. "Get me my notes."
****
"Buckler?" Keith asked, looking after the secretary's retreating form.
"No," Duke Ernst said absently, following the direction of his guest's gaze. "Bocler."
Keith made a note to himself to ask the kid how to spell his name.
Turning back to Keith, Duke Ernst said, "We do, of course, have the materials from before the war. The Palatinate has been very well-governed. We have plenty of inventories and surveys. But they are terribly obsolete, because of the destruction. My first project has been to determine just what the current status is. However, here is what there was before the war."
Keith nodded. "It's always good to have a base line for comparison."
"You do realize," Duke Ernst asked, "that not all of this area properly belongs to the Upper Palatinate?"
"I didn't know it," Keith answered. "But I think that I could have guessed. We've seen a lot of that sort of thing since we landed in Thuringia. It really complicates life."
Duke Ernst, obviously proud of his increasing command of modern English, said "Tell me about it," and beamed. "The Upper Palatinate proper, the lands of the young Elector Karl Ludwig, is in two main sections, northern and southern. Between them are part of Pfalz-Neuburg, then Amt Vilseck, which belongs to the bishop of Bamberg and is a great nuisance to your administrators there since it is quite detached from the remainder of the diocese, and, of course, Leuchtenberg. Although we are, currently, administering Leuchtenberg, since the landgrave fled from Pfreimd into Bavaria when the Swedish army arrived in the vicinity."
He cocked his head. "You will have become used to the word Amt, I think, for a local administrative district. Here, though, it is called a Pfleggericht. There is very little difference in the functions. Amberg is in the southern main part of the Upper Palatinate, along with Pfaffenhofen, Haimburg, Rieden, Freudenberg, Hirschau, Nabburg, Neunburg vor dem Wald, Wetterfeld, Bruck, Retz, Waldmunchen, Murach, and Treswitz-Tenesberg. In the northern part, you have the districts of Bernau, Eschenbach, Grafenwohr, Holnberg, Kirchentumbach, Auerbach, and Hartenstein. Plus, just so things don't become too neat, the treasury Amt of Kemnat, the Landgericht Waldeck and a little free lordship called Rothenberg. Which is not the imperial city of a similar name, which is in Franconia. Plus, there are little exclaves to the west, intermixed with the jurisdictions subject to Nurnberg."
As all the place names went rattling past his ears, Keith recognized one familiar word. "Mrs. Dreeson says that she comes from Grafenwohr. We all caught that. God, that was funny. In our day, it was a huge center for army maneuvers; Americans by the hundreds of thousands trained at Graf. Does this mean that if she wants to go up there, she actually has to go through some spot that doesn't belong to the Upper Palatinate? That isn't under your control?"
"There are some Pfleggerichte belonging to Pfalz-Neuburg in between. Pfalz-Neuburg was set up by the Emperor Maximilian in 1505; it belongs to a cadet line of the Palatinate. The mother of the first counts was the daughter and heiress of Duke Georg of Landshut and most of it was taken from his lands, not those of the Palatinate. It's divided currently into three parts. Like Gaul. The largest belonged to Wolfgang Wilhelm-the one who married Maximilian of Bavaria's sister and turned Catholic for the sake of an inheritance on the lower Rhi
ne. Then there are two smaller sections belonging to his younger brothers, who remained Lutheran, August and Johann Friedrich. Well, August's widow, now that he's dead. On behalf of Gustav Adolf, I have been working quite closely with Johann Friedrich and his widowed sister-in-law. And fairly successfully. The king, ah, emperor, decided that they should co-administer Wolfgang Wilhelm's former lands, since they are both Lutheran. Gustav Adolf doesn't wish to seem greedy."
Duke Ernst grinned. It made him look like a leprechaun. "Also, it is really more convenient in a way, since there is a nice Pfalz-Neuburg enclave on the south side of the Danube which Maximilian would most certainly gobble up if the king, ah, emperor, claimed it, since General Baner is currently besieging Ingolstadt. It makes a rather nice base of operations for some things. From our perspective, that is. From Maximilian's viewpoint, I'm sure that Neuburg and its hinterland are as great an irritant to him as Ingolstadt is to us. Except that they are not half as well-fortified. Few places are as well-fortified as Ingolstadt."
Duke Ernst looked up, an idea seeming to strike him. "I don't suppose that your administration in Franconia would be interested in trading Vilseck to the Upper Palatinate in exchange for something that we may have that is closer to their administrative center? I would certainly be happy to explore the possibility."
Keith was a bit taken aback. This was out of his league. But they had come through Bamberg on the way down, so he had a name handy. "You could always drop a note to Vince Marcantonio. He's the administrator there. He'll have to buck it up, through Steve Salatto to Ed Piazza. But I expect that they would be willing to talk about it." That, he thought, should be safe enough. "Don't expect an answer right away, though. Steve and Vince sort of have their hands full at the moment, what with…"
"Oh, yes," Duke Ernst answered serenely. "The peasants and their ram. Peasant revolts are always time consuming while they are happening, but things eventually settle down. Bocler, draft a letter please, for my signature, to Herr Marcantonio. I'll expect to have it in the morning."
He returned his attention to the statistical survey of the Upper Palatinate. "According to the survey done in 1609, the Montanbereich had four hundred twenty-eight employers in industries connected with mining and related industries. The mining was mainly iron, but also tin, lead, and calamine, the ore that you call zinc. The related industries were ore processing, and the manufacture of metal goods, mostly wrought iron up to and including something the size of ship anchors."
He paused. "And, of course, transporting these. It takes certain specialized wagons, heavy horses, and skilled drivers to get something the size of a ship's anchor from here to Venice."
"I can see that," Keith agreed.
Duke Ernst continued. "These businesses directly employed 10,550 miners and other metal workers. With dependent family members, this meant that 36,400 people out of a population of 180,000 in the region were directly supported by mining and metalworking."
Keith did some rapid calculations in his head. Dividing 428 employers into 10,550 employees did not come out to a bunch of little one-master shops with a journeyman and a couple of apprentices. Assuming that there had been some little shops, and there were bound to have been, the rest had been big businesses by down-time standards.
Duke Ernst was marching through the statistics. "That does not include those who worked in transport, with a network that ran into Hungary, northern Italy, and all through Germany. The Upper Palatinate's teamsters were widely known. The exemptions from toll and tariffs that the emperors granted to them go back to the 14th century in many cases. Back to the time when the Goldene Strasse received its privileges."
Keith wished that he could have brought the guy a battery-operated laptop. With a spreadsheet program. He'd love one. "Must have given them a bit of an advantage, trade wise, getting their stuff to market without all those add-ons."
"Oh." Duke Ernst smiled a little smile. "Yes, of course. It was much resented by the robber barons. And not always enforced during times of turmoil. But the principle was well established."
He leaned over, turning a few more pages in the ledger. "A lot of the 'agricultural' workers were also doing things other than growing food, such as working in the charcoal industry that supported the metal processing industry. Again, according to the 1609 survey, 310,000 measured meters of wood were cut in the Montanbereich that year; there were 1,460 charcoal burners who were counted as industrial workers, but also the 1,100 woodcutters and 1,950 people working in 'side jobs' associated with charcoal manufacture who were counted as agricultural. The regulations for managing the forests to maintain the supply of charcoal go back to the late 1300s: replanting, banning of goat-keeping, and the like."
He stood up. "Then the war came."
Keith nodded. It always seemed to come back to the war.
Chapter 21
Mulieres Intrepidae
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
The trade delegation had taken quarters in an inn, at Cavriani's urgent recommendation. Over the past century, there had been numerous episodes of serious tension between the metals cartel, the Hammerinnung comprised of the owners of the mining enterprises, smelters and mills, and the various other businesses that transformed metal into finished products, and the rulers and their officials. Episodes caused, largely, by the suspicion of the owners that the rulers of the Palatinate would be quite happy to impose monopolistic controls on the iron trade, to their own profit. Which, indeed, they would have been. The counts of the Palatinate had been mercantilists before mercantilism, so to speak. It would be bad, Cavriani insisted, to give a first impression that the Grantville delegation was directly sponsored by the regent.
Moreover, the innkeeper subscribed to several newspapers. Everybody in the delegation waited anxiously for the latest installment of the eagerly expected, distant but very important, spring season soap opera that Keith Pilcher called, "How to Squash the League of Ostend Like a Bug," starring Gustav Adolf, Lennart Torstensson, and John Simpson with supporting roles to be taken by Mike Stearns and… well, who knew. Perhaps the USE would have some new heroes in the next couple of months.
The ladies were another matter. Duke Ernst had naturally insisted on providing them with quarters in the Amberg Schloss. At his own expense. And, when he discovered that they had somehow managed to travel without a bevy of maids, with attendants suitable to their station. Chambermaids. Ladies' maids.
Mary Simpson thanked him very graciously.
While Mary was thanking him, Veronica managed to put on her Abbess of Quedlinburg face. Then she did the same, thinking dourly that she was going to have to use that face and voice more often than she wanted to this summer. She had practiced, since that reception in Magdeburg. She had watched the way that women such as Mary and the Abbess did it. She was not dumb; she was not yet too old to learn new tricks. If they were useful.
****
One of the chambermaids at the Schloss, Afra Forst, still had family in Pfreimd. Augustin Arndt, Landgrave Wilhelm Georg of Leuchtenberg's agent in Amberg, was able to use this leverage to persuade her to report to him everything that she observed about the up-time women.
It was no secret that Arndt was the landgrave's agent in Amberg, of course. He was a lawyer. His function was to represent the financial and political interests of the exiled ruler to the current government. That was quite normal. It would be peculiar only if Landgrave Wilhelm Georg had not employed an agent. That would have created a great deal of suspicion, indeed.
The regent and his officials assumed that Arndt spied when he could and sent reports to the landgrave. What else could one expect? He watched them. They watched him-when they had time, of course. The gathering of intelligence on the level of the local bureaucracy tended to be a business in which the two operative sentences were "That's not my job; that's his job" and "Who's paying for this, anyway?"
Several of the people who had been watching Arndt when they had time were now at Ingolstadt with General Baner. Keeping an eye on
Herr Arndt was fairly low on the regent's priority list.
Right now, Arndt was operating on the basis of old instructions from the landgrave. For the past eighteen months, all he had received were the payments on his retainer. Those came more or less regularly, transmitted by a steward. As long as they kept coming, he would continue to send reports.
Kilian Richter's ties to Arndt were not of any interest to the Amberg authorities. Richter was not a citizen or resident of Amberg, nor did he any longer own property there. The man had entered some, not much, a few years back, but promptly sold it. His interests lay miles to the north. His connection with Arndt was not the obvious one of employer and agent that linked Arndt to Leuchtenberg. Who cared now that Richter had used the attorney's services once before, for a short time, several years ago. Every practicing lawyer had multiple clients.
Arndt was not especially happy that Richter, when he had first read the newspaper reports of "that harridan Veronica's" planned trip to Amberg, had contacted him again. But it shouldn't involve any adverse consequences for Arndt, himself. It was only natural, after all, that Richter would be hiring a lawyer in the capital to defend his property claims.
****
Duke Ernst was more impressed by Veronica Dreeson's letter of introduction than she had been herself. That was, indeed, an original signature. Or the initials, at least, had not been scribbled by an adjutant. GARS. Gustavus Adolphus Rex Sueciae. The king of Sweden, emperor of the United States of Europe and the prospective head of the renewed Union of Kalmar meant seriously that he himself, Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, should personally lend assistance to the grandmother of Hans Richter, the hero of Wismar. A postscript indicated that Prime Minister Stearns agreed that it would be a good idea.