1634: The Bavarian Crisis (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

Passau, he thought. Passau, at the edge of the pavilion. In the archduchess' household. A girl, standing on her very tiptoes, straining to see to see the ceremony. The line of the neck, the ears. The boy. Neck. Ears. Archduchess. Not a boy; a girl. She had not been traveling with the other four, as far as he knew. But it was worth splitting the party-and he would follow the girl. He sent his corporal and one of the men on toward Ulm, with a copy of the questions they were to ask, and turned back towards Donaueschingen.

  ****

  "I know it isn't safe to travel at night," Marc said, "but we have to keep moving, I think, as late as we possibly can, every single day. If you recognized that captain, then, if he crossed the convoy that Papa was with, coming this direction, maybe he recognized the archduchess and the other ladies. Maybe they are riding to get assistance. We have to catch up with Papa, now, as fast as we can. Even if we do things that are riskier. We have to warn them."

  ****

  Donaueschingen

  "Nobody here saw Papa when the convoy from Ulm went through. Or any of them."

  "Maybe they were keeping out of sight," Susanna suggested. "This town does belong to Count Egon von Furstenberg. He's an imperial commander. Sometimes under the Bavarians and sometimes under Tilly. But he's been in Vienna, sometimes for weeks on end. He would certainly recognize Archduchess Maria Anna if he saw her. So would quite a few of his staff, I think. He isn't someone she would want to meet while she is running away." She paused. "He's not someone I would want to meet."

  "Would any of the count's people have been in Bavaria? For the wedding procession, that is, or in Munich? Could they have seen Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson, also?"

  "Maybe. It's not as likely, but it's possible. Count Egon is a powerful man, the right kind of wedding guest for Duke Maximilian to invite."

  "Well, we can't just stay here. We have to make up our minds. Let's just figure that Papa did what he planned. It's still pretty decent weather. Better, really, than it was last summer; not so hot. Let's turn south tomorrow morning and go on to Basel. If he isn't there…" Marc paused, mentally reviewing Susanna's demonstrated history of being able to finagle him into doing things that he didn't think were the best idea available. "If he isn't there, I'm taking you straight to Geneva and letting Mama deal with you. I have four sisters. She's used to girls."

  Chapter 60

  Magnus Dies

  Basel

  The bright mid-morning sunshine of a perfect autumn day did not improve Diane Jackson's mood, which had been very bad for several weeks. After all the trouble she had gone to, coming to Basel to let this son of Gustav Adolf's ally inspect an up-timer for himself, she had hardly spoken to Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach. Or, more precisely, he had hardly made time in what he asserted was a very, very busy schedule to speak to her. She did not regard guided tours of the Basel region as an adequate substitute, even though her guide was doing his best.

  "So then, Your Excellency," Johann Rudolf Wettstein said, "my father and his brother came to Basel from a little place called Russikon in the administrative district of Kyburg in the canton of Zurich and started to rise in the world. Father became the business manager of the Spital. From what you have told me of your world up-time, that would be a kind of combination of an orphanage, a retirement home, and an assisted living center. He did well. When I was sixteen, in 1610, he applied for both of us to become members of the vintners' guild."

  Diane blinked. When she had agreed to become an ambassador, she had not realized that almost everyone she met would substitute "Your Excellency" for her name. She still had to pause and remember that people were talking to her.

  "How did managing a hospice lead to manufacturing wine?" Diane asked. "Was he starting to sell supplies to this hospital?"

  "Oh, we were not vintners. We had never been vintners; we will probably never be vintners. I was studying to become a notary public, a chancery official. But in Basel, to qualify to participate in city politics, you have to be a member of one of the guilds, and the vintners' guild is the most influential. He could afford the fee, so that's the one we joined. Some people are members of more than one guild, to qualify them to be members of different sections of the city council. For instance, for some you need to be in a merchant or finance guild; for others, you need to be in a craft guild. In this city, you do not have to work at either one. Guild membership is, you might say, a figment of the imagination. Of the political imagination. It is not an occupation, not a profession. One does need to be Protestant, of course. The city turned Protestant over a century ago. It threw off the prince bishop of Basel's claims to lordship and exiled the Catholic families of the old medieval patriciate, so the bishop no longer has rights in the city and hinterland-only in his own territories."

  "And you have continued to rise in Basel politics ever since your father joined this vintner's guild?"

  "Not, ah, entirely smoothly. It is not easy for outsiders to enter the Basel political system and many still consider our family outsiders. Not really part of the oligarchy. In spite of the fact that Basel accepted Protestant refugees from France, Flanders, and Italy as residents, it has not admitted many of them as citizens. The government of the city is still largely in the hands of the leading guilds. For all practical purposes, because the merchants and bankers can purchase membership in more than one guild, in a craft guild also, leadership has stayed in the hands of a small number of wealthy, influential, elite families."

  "Oh," Diane answered. "Yes, like the book that I read once. Animal Farm, it was called. The pig says that all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others. This is always true. In Grantville, the UMWA members like Mike and Frank now are somewhat more equal than others, no matter what they say. Not according to the law, but really." She looked at Wettstein. "I will ask them to send me the book. For you."

  "When I was in my early twenties," Wettstein continued, "after a slight difficulty, I entered the Venetian military service for a while-nearly four years." He looked a little abashed. "It was there, with the Venetians, that I met some persons from the kingdoms of eastern Asia. So when you came to Basel, the city council decided…"

  "That you would be a 'perfect liaison.'" Diane sniffed. "Then you find out, when I point to spots on the great globe in your city hall, that I am from a place you never heard of. But it is too late, so you must still play guide."

  ****

  Wettstein smiled down at the cynical little woman. Asiatic ambassador sent by the king of Sweden, absurd as that might be. He rather liked her. Although he had more than enough to do in his current job as district supervisor of Riehen, Basel's territory on the right bank of the Rhine, he had still learned a great deal during their tours. That made them worthwhile for a man with political ambitions. Someday, when his title was, perhaps, mayor of Basel; perhaps, who knew, even ambassador in Magdeburg. These weeks would have been well-enough spent, even if his colleagues were laughing at him behind his back because he had been assigned to watch her. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  "Escorting you is a refreshing change from considering customs and tolls, which are the main concern of the district administrator of Riehen, Your Excellency," he said. "Or from calculating budget projections for procurement of provisions. The citizens of Basel eat a great deal and the council has no intention that they should starve in case of adverse political events."

  "In case the French should attack you?" Diane asked.

  "I would prefer not to be too specific," Wettstein replied. "But certainly, it is always possible that someone might attack the city. It would be a mistake to focus solely upon the French. If you look here, for example," he gestured to a series of stones mounted in the ground, "this is the boundary between Basel territory and that of Austria, here on the right bank of the river. Basel never thinks of the Austrians as being far away, in Vienna or Prague. We always think of them as being next door. Always. Uneasy neighbors." He paused. "Some day we Swiss will be legally free of Austria. Not just ef
fectively free of Austria. That is my goal."

  He shook his head. He tended to tell this little woman more than he should. Damn, but she was shrewd. Not articulate, in the way one ordinarily expected of envoys, but clever and observant.

  "In any case," he continued, "that is about all there is to see here in Riehen. Tomorrow, I think, if the weather remains fine, we will drive upstream along the Rhine to see the Roman ruins at Pratteln."

  Diane nodded her head. She seemed to expect very little from Roman ruins.

  ****

  Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach was reading his mail. Because he ran the Baden-Durlach government-in-exile for his father, here in Basel, he got a lot of mail, some of it through the postal system and some through private courier. For the predictable number of urgent but brief messages, he kept a pigeon loft. So, as far as he knew, did every major bank and commercial firm in the city.

  The current letter had arrived by pigeon. The signature at the bottom had nothing to do with the sender's real name. Margrave Friedrich smiled. He appreciated ambitious young men. Ambitious enough to take risks; young enough to take some really stupid risks. Talented, carefully sheltered young men with prosperous middle-class parents who provided them with tutors and Latin schools and university educations in law or in political economy.

  He stood up and thumbed through his files. Johann Freinsheim, also known as Ioannes Freinsheimius. Age twenty-five, he confirmed. Born in Ulm. Most recently at the University of Strassburg studying history and German literature under Professor Matthaeus Bernegger until he decided to make a journey to France as part of his grand tour and somehow managed to enter the royal household there as a secretary in the interpretation service. In which capacity he met Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar who was, although a traitor to the king of Sweden, nonetheless the brother of Wilhelm Wettin. And of Duke Ernst in the Upper Palatinate, whose secretary, Heinrich Bocler, had also studied under Bernegger, at the same time as Freinsheim, it so happened. Through which connection, Freinsheim came into correspondence with Margrave Friedrich's father, who was in the service of Gustav Adolf and who had managed to ship the young man a small crate of pigeons who believed that Basel was home. And thus into correspondence with Margrave Friedrich.

  It was astonishing how much a simple secretary in the French interpretation service could learn. It was also gratifying, given the proximity of Baden to Alsace, which until very recently had been the secondary focus of Duke Bernhard's military operations. Secondary, at least, until Bernhard's recent abandonment of the Mainz front and probe into Swabia. Margrave Friedrich was very concerned about what Duke Bernhard was doing in Swabia.

  The problem had distracted him terribly from what he should have been learning from the up-time ambassadress, Frau Jackson. Or trying to learn. The woman was very close-mouthed. He had been quite gratified, however, to discover that he was considered sufficiently important that the Grantville general had sent his own wife.

  ****

  Pratteln

  Basel was a natural focus for trade. It had been for four centuries, since the bishop built the first bridge across the Rhine at the site of the city. The road from the bridge ran across the Gotthard Pass into Italy. The city had papermaking and printing; a major university. It traded in ideas as well as in goods. Having a university, it naturally had students of antiquity. For the excursion to Pratteln, Herr Wettstein had acquired a guide.

  Herr Professor Buxtorf. Professor Buxtorf, junior. Professor Buxtorf, senior, an eminent Hebraicist, had been dead for some years. Professor Buxtorf, junior, who had accompanied them this morning, was a slightly less eminent Hebraicist. Naturally, a Hebraicist also knew Greek and Latin and took a scholarly interest in classical antiquities. He did not, however, know English. He and the ambassadress found one another's French mutually incomprehensible, so Wettstein was translating.

  Diane was receiving far more second-hand information about Roman ruins than she had ever wanted to know. She had looked at her watch several times. Unfortunately, Wettstein thought, it had not stopped. Time really did move that slowly in the company of Professor Buxtorf. He was only in his mid-thirties, but he had "pedantic" down to an art form.

  Wettstein's mind wandered. Buxtorf was becoming quite famous in his own right, not just as his father's son, due to his extended academic controversies with a French Huguenot scholar on the topic of whether or not the vowel points and accents in contemporary printed Hebrew had existed in ancient Hebrew. Buxtorf took the position that they must have, given that the Old Testament manuscripts were first recorded in writing, since by definition the text was divinely inspired and completely unchanged. Louis Cappel's argument for the modern origin of vowel points and accents, which he had published in 1624 contrary to the advice of the older Buxtorf, if it were accepted, would make it much more difficult for Calvinists to argue that the Bible was infallible because had been handed down from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration.

  Well, Buxtorf was becoming famous in a limited sort of way, Wettstein admitted to himself. Only a certain number of scholars had strong feelings about the issue, although it did have interesting theological implications, more for Protestantism than for Catholicism. If the whole doctrine of the verbal inspiration of scripture should be undermined by this controversy on Hebrew punctuation, what would be left to keep the Protestants from splintering into endless sects? How many sects had Her Excellency told him co-existed in this little town of Grantville alone? Had, at some point, Cappel's views prevailed over those of Buxtorf?

  Wettstein pulled his mind back to the matter at hand.

  The two up-timers from the USE embassy guard who never left Diane Jackson's side when she was out of the embassy building itself were looking impatient. Lee Thomas Swiger, one of them was named. About fifty. He was here, Her Excellency had told Wettstein, because he had "served with Frank in Viet Nam." Wettstein had not pursued the matter, but was of the opinion that Swiger was a dangerous man-dangerous, at least, to anyone who might threaten General Jackson's wife during this mission. James Dean Gordon was the other one. "National Guard," Her Excellency had said. Something like militia. Younger than the other man, perhaps thirty-five. Physically abler than Swiger, but less threatening. A half-dozen down-timers, all armed.

  From the road, somebody calling. "Diane! Thank goodness. Diane!"

  Every one of the embassy guards had his gun out at once.

  Johann Rudolf Wettstein was beginning to think that this trip had been a bad idea.

  The woman who had called out the first time yelled again. "Swiger, Gordon, don't shoot at us, please. That's all we would need, getting this far and then being shot by our own people."

  The older up-time soldier dropped the muzzle of his rifle, putting on the safety. The others followed him.

  The woman ran toward them; she and the ambassadress embraced one another.

  Diane Jackson turned to Wettstein. "The embassy has guests," she said. "I have been notified to expect them. Just not right here. Nobody said anything about Pratteln."

  The first woman had been joined by three other people. Another woman, another embrace. A third woman and a man; no embraces.

  The man and Professor Buxtorf? A few words about kinship, or at least connections, through the Curio family. Buxtorf's mother was a Curio, of course; it appeared that the man's-Cavriani, was it?-wife's uncle was married to a Curio. Wettstein was no longer surprised. The Italian Protestant emigrant families in Switzerland were closely intertwined.

  Her Excellency extended her hand to the man-Leopold Cavriani-whom she appeared to have met before. She was looking at the third woman with some puzzlement on her face, as were the embassy guards.

  Diane turned again. "Herr Wettstein, this is Mary Simpson, Admiral Simpson's wife. This is Veronica Dreeson, Henry Dreeson's wife. He is the mayor of Grantville This is Leopold Cavriani. He does a lot of business in Grantville." Then she turned to the others. "This is Johann Rudolf Wettstein. He is on the small council of
the city of Basel, so he is important. He is not rude. Margrave Friedrich of Baden has been very rude. I told Frank and Mike so. At least, Tony Adducci told them so for me. And I do not know your guest."

  Mary, Veronica, and Leopold looked at one another. Mary drew in a rather deep breath, then turned to the younger woman. "Your Highness," she began, "permit me to present to you Mrs. Diane Jackson, ambassadress of the United States of Europe to the city of Basel, and Herr Wettstein of the Basel city council."

  The tall, tanned, brunette smiled graciously. Mary continued. "Diane, Herr Wettstein, this is Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria."

  Lee Swiger and Jim Gordon grasped their rifles rather harder than they had before. Mary looked at them. "Thanks, but we've managed to get this far without shooting anybody." She turned her head. "Diane, I do think that all of us would be a little bit easier in our minds if we could get into embassy property, now that we've announced ourselves. Just because of diplomatic immunity. We were sort of wondering the best way to come through the city gates, but if we can come in with you and your escort…"

  "Oh," Diane answered. "Gosh, yes. Welcome, Your Highness."

  "Yes," Wettstein seconded. "Welcome to Basel, all of you. I do think it would be best that your go into the embassy before anyone else, officially or unofficially, knows that you are here." His mind was very busy, sorting through the implications.

  ****

  Basel

  "I wish," Veronica said, "that Leopold was staying at the embassy."

  "He had a point," Mary answered. "He isn't a USE citizen, after all, so he might make, as he said, an 'uneasy guest' for Diane. And the embassy is a perfectly ordinary town house. It's already full of people right up into the attics."

  Diane Jackson nodded.