1634: The Bavarian Crisis (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  Munich, Bavaria

  The news was waiting for Maximilian when he returned to Munich. The Swedes had crossed the Danube near Ingolstadt. In force.

  "Horwarth!" Duke Maximilian exclaimed. "We should have known that Farensbach could not have been acting alone, or only with a few subordinates. Horwarth must have been involved, as well. And he is there. What an irony that we sent him to act at the execution of his co-conspirator. Order his arrest, at once."

  ****

  Even though Duke Maximilian consistently dismissed most of the privy councillors from the meetings before he proceeded to a consideration of the situation at Ingolstadt, this did not keep them, and the lesser members of the official staff of the Bavarian government, from thinking about it.

  If nothing else, the intensified assault there provided them with something to think about other than the fact that Duke Albrecht was in Bohemia and any one of them who had ever supported Duke Albrecht in any privy council discussion was now, very likely, in a precarious political position.

  Something to think about other than where Duke Albrecht's sons, the heirs to Bavaria, might be. If in the hands of the Swede, as suspected, and if he chose to have them reared as Protestants… Oh, dear. Duke Maximilian could not live forever.

  Something other than where die Habsburgerin might be and why she had failed to go through with the wedding. How many of them had been seen talking to her politely at the various festivities that took place while the wedding procession had been en route and after its arrival in the city? Would this be interpreted by the duke as opening the possibility that they had been part of a conspiracy leading to her escape?

  Other than the fact that several of them had daughters who had attended the English Ladies school, so it was to presumed that the inquisitors simply had not yet gotten around to interviewing them yet. But that an inquisitorial interview lay somewhere in the near future.

  Better to think about Ingolstadt. Every available soldier in Bavaria who could be pulled from other duty was now crisscrossing the duchy on his way to Ingolstadt. The duke's commanders were recruiting again, but at present the duchy was so hemmed in that recruitment, at least of veterans, was hard. Which meant that the heretics might succeed in taking the fortress in spite of their best efforts. What would the Swede do then? Ingolstadt was fifty miles from Munich. Fifty miles was by no means far enough for comfort. The up-time histories said that in 1632, the Swede's forces had reached Munich.

  Better to focus one's mind on facilitating the movement of troops, providing them with fodder and horses, allotting forage districts to the various regiments, dealing with bitter complaints from the residents of the forage districts, than to think of the multiple, multiple reasons why a man might be losing his own head. Not to mention, his regular job.

  ****

  Ingolstadt

  Johann Cratz von Scharffenstein watched the soldiers taking young Horwarth out of Ingolstadt, toward Munich.

  Arrested. For treason. On grounds that were…

  "Flimsy" was the mildest term he could think of.

  So far as the commander of the Ingolstadt garrison could determine, the charges against Horwarth came down to no more than two, both of them completely circumstantial. First, the poor fellow had offered-none too willingly, by all accounts-to provide the Landgrave of Leuchtenberg with a comfortable resting place for his last months of life at the Horwarth family estate at Planegg. Secondly, Duke Albrecht and his now-dead wife Mechthilde had used the same estate as a staging ground for their escape.

  But they had done so in Horwarth's absence, and the murder of the estate's huntsmen by Albrecht's guards would surely seem to indicate that they did so without Horwarth's complicity. As for the supposed "conspiracy with the Landgrave," the charge was almost laughable. Georg Wilhelm had been senile, for the love of God.

  "Flimsy"? It would be better to call the charges "insane."

  A term which, the more von Scharffenstein learned about Maximilian's ever-expanding purge in Munich, seemed appropriate to apply to the duke of Bavaria himself. For whatever reason-peculiar, on the face of it, since the duke had seemed quite indifferent to his new bride-to-be-Maximilian had reacted to the archduchess of Austria's flight with almost insensate fury. He'd even had the young woman's entourage executed, despite the vehement protests from Vienna.

  Insanity indeed, especially from a military viewpoint. Bavaria had been badly stretched as it was, fending off the Swedes here at Ingolstadt. Now, Duke Maximilian had severed his ties to his closest and most reliable ally. For what? The faithlessness of a young woman he didn't care about in the first place?

  Cratz von Scharffenstein was now inclined to believe the rumors he'd heard, that the death of Duchess Elisabeth Renata had unhinged her husband's mind. Of course, it was the iron mind of an iron ruler in his sixties, so it had taken some months for the madness to become manifest. It was like watching an ancient dam, finally crumbling.

  Crumbling it surely was, though-and Cratz von Scharffenstein himself might be caught in the ensuing flood. It was time to consider all his options. As the commander of the Ingolstadt's garrison, those options were…

  Not flimsy. Not flimsy at all. And, unlike Farensbach, whose head had been removed along with the "von" from his name, Cratz von Scharffenstein was not incompetent. There hadn't actually been anything wrong with Farensbach's scheme, as such, if the bastard hadn't bungled the matter.

  Chapter 51

  Multiformis Atque Multimodis

  Bavaria, south of Ingolstadt

  Leopold Cavriani considered himself a practical man. When the troop of Bavarian cavalry stopped him and confiscated his horse, he made no more protest than an Italian merchant ought reasonably to have made. Demanding a receipt, stating that he would be sending a request for compensation to the duke's officials.

  The captain, after finding his papers in order, had said, "Be my guest. There's a long line." They had left him his purse, so the duke was not yet so desperate for funds that his soldiers were authorized to strip foreign merchants. Nor so desperate for men that his officers had lost control. On this day, there was still discipline in the Bavarian army; a fact to be filed away.

  So he had walked into Hohenkammer, where he now stood fuming. There was not a decent horse for sale in the entire region; the Bavarian troops were taking them all. Plus fodder, plus food. The Bavarian army was foraging all through the duchy between Munich and Ingolstadt. Not just through the duchy, either. They had ended all pretense of respecting the jurisdictional boundary between Bavaria and Pfalz-Neuburg. From what he heard here, Bavarian troops were foraging all over the southern and western portions of the enclave.

  Possibly over more of it than that, but thus far he had only heard reports of what was going on in the southern and western portions. There weren't a lot of refugees on the roads yet, trying to get south against the stream of troops, but there were a few. They said that the Bavarians were treating Neuburg as enemy territory, enforcing the Brandschatzungen and such that went with foraging. He had the names of three villages that had been burned out already.

  So here he stood in Hohenkammer. Twenty miles in two days. Miserable time, but he had been moving slowly, asking discreet questions, looking for a party of women on foot whom he had not found.

  Where could they be? Which way next? He had planned on going to Reichertshausen, then through Ilmmuenster and Pfaffenhofen to Reichertshofen; from there he could go north to Ingolstadt or northwest to Neuburg as seemed most convenient.

  Suddenly, he laughed. Twenty-five years ago, he would have relished this. What had Ed Piazza's wife said when she described them to him? He spoke English with Mrs. Piazza. "Middle-aged, middle-class, and middle-brow." She had laughed; she considered it a joke. He, once she had explained "middle-brow" to him, had found it very apt. Succinct and graphic, an excellent aphorism.

  So here he stood, middle-class, middle-aged, and middle-brow himself, wondering if he should not have stayed home and sent out someone els
e. He laughed at himself.

  Ah, no, Leopold my friend. You are not ready to stay home in Geneva. Not yet, not quite yet.

  The inns here had not yet been stripped of their provender. People were walking up and down the street, chewing on sausages. He might as well get something to eat.

  Pork Schnitzel, by a miracle. Nudeln to go with it. Fresh fruit. "No bread today," the innkeeper apologized. The last group of soldiers had taken it all. Bread kept. Of the things in his larder that spoiled easily, they had only eaten their fill and then moved on. They lieutenant had even given him a chit for the cost, not too bad an estimate, either. If the treasury honored it.

  Leopold took his wooden plate out to the picnic tables at the side of the inn and sat down where he could watch the road.

  ****

  Mary Ward stood by the side of the road, frowning, as a cavalry company rode past them on its way north. Thus far, they had not been molested. Older women mainly, poor to judge by their clothing, several of them together, one thin, feeble old man. The passing troops had a goal, to get to Ingolstadt. None had paused to harass them. They had been moving much more slowly than she had thought they would, because they left the road so often to let faster groups go by, to get out of the way of teams pulling cargo wagons.

  They also needed to let Mrs. Simpson nurse the blisters that were causing her to limp so badly, to appear so feeble. She did not complain, but the only shoes they had been able to find for her were very poorly fitted and her feet had no calluses at all. Mary Ward had never seen such delicate feet before. Even the archduchess-that is, even her "niece" Maria Anna-had harder feet than the up-time woman. They could not let Mrs. Simpson wear the shoes she had when she was brought to them. Those, they had to leave in Munich. Sturdy, well-made, but so different! They would have attracted surveillance like a lighthouse beacon.

  Mary Simpson had not let them go to waste, though. She had given them, with many other things, to their cook who worked at the Paradise Street house, days before they left. The cook had agreed to hide it all.

  The cavalrymen were still riding past, not even looking at them. When they got closer to Ingolstadt, though… Ingolstadt was another thirty miles. If, closer to the fortress, the army was already encamped, if the troops were out foraging in small groups? They might not be so indifferent, she thought. She kept worrying. She was far from sure that the plan with which she had left Munich was going to work. She was supposed to find the brother of the cook. He would agree to take them to the left bank of the Danube, the north side, under cover of the fleets of small boats that set out every night to resupply the fortress.

  What was happening at Ingolstadt? Why were all the troops on the move? The siege had been going on for months, now, without reaching a crisis point. Why now?

  The mounted company was past. They might as well go on into Hohenkammer. They would be safer in even a small town than out here, on an open road. They were not vagrants; they would be allowed to spend the night, at least.

  Perhaps she could find bandages, salves.

  ****

  Maria Anna took the "old man's" arm. "Papa," she said. "Papa, we need to walk on."

  Veronica pulled her lips back between her bare gums. She missed her teeth, but she couldn't wear them. No old woman in Bavaria had teeth as perfect as hers. If she wore them, they would attract attention.

  "Papa." If a "Papa" the size of Mary Simpson had begotten Maria Anna, he would have had to marry a giantess. She started to make up a story to entertain herself, this one of a weakly grocer's apprentice who successfully courted the oversize daughter of a miller.

  Perhaps, she thought a little grimly, once they managed to return to Grantville-if they did-she would write it down. Sell it to the despised printers of Harlequin Romances. Make some money and send Annalise to college. God knew, nothing else that she had done this summer had made the slightest progress toward that goal. All outgo, no profit. She was worse off than she had been to start with.

  At least, the story kept her mind off where she was and what she was doing.

  Another creek. They would have to wade. The ford was churned up, muddy from the horses that had recently crossed. She looked at Mary Simpson. Her feet inside the rough shoes, the open sores. What might be in that water? What "germs" that would lead to what "infection"? She had listened to Dr. Abrabanel just as carefully as anyone in Grantville. More carefully, since she was the mayor's wife and had to set a good example. It was still at least a mile until they could rest at Hohenkammer. The wet shoes, muddy water squelching inside them, would be rubbing against the open blisters.

  She stopped on the bank and said: "No." Stubbornly refused to go on. Until Maria Anna broke the impasse by simply picking "Papa" up and carrying "him" across.

  For the first time since the young woman had joined the group, Veronica said, "thank you." She did not want to. She had no charity for the nobility in general, and even less for the Habsburgs in particular. But, "pretty is as pretty does," so thanks were in order, however grudgingly given.

  ****

  Mary Ward sighed. The old Oberpfalzerin was a problem. One expected village women to be ignorant, superstitious, often poorly instructed in their faith. But this one! Catholic, she said. The wife of a prominent man in this Grantville, of the mayor. Far from ignorant, not at all superstitious. But never, ever, in a half century of life, had Mary Ward met a purportedly Catholic woman who was so poorly instructed in her faith. Or so stubborn in refusing instruction.

  She didn't even know the rosary.

  She didn't even have a rosary. They had not noticed, in Munich. There had been plenty of rosaries available in the house on Paradise Street and the two interned women had not participated in the Ladies' liturgies.

  No rosary. That could be repaired. Not elegantly, right now, but repaired. As they walked, Mary Ward plucked small twigs, sliced them up into bead-sized lengths with her dinner knife, and poked the soft pulp out of the center with one of the large needles from the sewing kit in her pocket. A length of thin grapevine was functioning as the string. One length of twig forced through another for the cross. Unblessed. Good enough, as a teaching tool. Until the instruction began to take hold, perhaps unblessed was preferable. It would avoid any possibility of blasphemy if the old woman treated the beads disrespectfully.

  ****

  Hohenkammer, finally. An inn ahead, with benches and tables. People were eating. A place to rest.

  And the Oberpfalzerin was running.

  Actually running to the inn. Mary Ward started after her, then stopped.

  She was running up to a man who sat there, eating. Speaking to him. Not a high-born gentleman, by his dress, but certainly a prosperous merchant.

  ****

  Almost, Veronica started to greet him as an equal. Then remembered how she was dressed, where she was. That she had no teeth. Instead, she forced herself to curtsey humbly, as a servant to an employer, or to a friend of her employer. "Herr Cavriani. Ah, I am grateful to have found you at last."

  ****

  All that Leopold could think at first was, "How did they get behind me?"

  Then, when he recognized the younger woman who was assisting the old man, he realized that he had been thinking of putting his adventuring days behind him much, much, too prematurely.

  ****

  One of the waiters at the inn saw the old woman run up to the merchant, noted the other women who were following her, and the old man. As requested by a "beggar" who had, for the past several years, paid him a modest weekly sum for providing information on events in the Pfalz-Neuburg enclave to the duke of Bavaria's bailiff in Schleissheim, he duly noted their presence in Hohenkammer. Two days later, when the "beggar" made one of his regular stops at the inn to request a handout, the waiter sent his weekly report, which the bailiff received the next morning.

  And put at the bottom of his inbox. He was very busy. Like every other local official north of Munich, his time was fully absorbed right now by the need to move troops
to Ingolstadt-demands for forage, fodder, food, supplies, transport, cash; complaints from farmers, complaints from townspeople, edicts from Munich. Schleissheim, since one of Duke Maximilian's favorite rural hunting lodges was located there, was busier than most. Almost a week after it arrived, the bailiff extracted the report, combined it with other reports he had received concerning women moving through the area, and forwarded it to the chancery in Munich.

  ****

  Munich, Bavaria

  In the Munich chancery, the report from Hohenkammer arrived on the desk of a minor official assigned to collate the various reports in regard to women traveling in Bavaria, where it joined many others. Many, many, others. In a jerky, disjointed, unsystematic manner, greatly complicated by the troop movements, surveillance went on.

  The minor official who received the report felt overwhelmed already-partly by the reports and partly by his concern that, since he had previously worked under the unfortunate Dr. Donnersberger, neither his tenure in office nor his life would be particularly secure if he did anything to bring his existence to the duke's attention. It was very hard to be sufficiently inconspicuous when compiling reports for the duke's own eyes. And there were, certainly, a plenitude of reports. Surely not every woman in Bavaria could be traveling, the hapless bureaucrat thought wearily. Surely, it only seemed that way.

  Of course, one could always count on pilgrims. There were so many shrines and pilgrimage sites. One old woman on a decrepit donkey, accompanied by her son and two nephews, on her way to Altotting to pray for relief from some unspecified physical ailment. Nothing suspicious there. Pile one.