by Eric Flint
“The truth is, she’s pretty popular,” she said. “Even more than her husband Wilhelm was.”
Achterhof looked like he was about to say something, but Constantin drive over him. The Franconian could out-boom just about anybody.
“The last thing we need is to have one of the most powerful provincial armies in the nation fighting on the side of Oxenstierna and Wettin. But it’s not just Hesse-Kassel that’s at stake! Some of the other western provinces are unsteady, and could go either way.”
He stepped away from the window and held up his thumb. “Start with Brunswick, which borders on Magdeburg province. Lucky for us, Brunswick’s ruler is off in Poland with Torstensson, besieging Poznan. Let’s make sure he stays there, shall we? If he does what Torstensson is most likely to do—call down a plague on both houses—then Brunswick also remains neutral. That’s good for us, because we have no more chance of taking power in Brunswick than we do in Hesse-Kassel.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Albert Bugenhagen. The mayor of Hamburg rose to his own feet and pointed accusingly in the direction of Berlin. “At least half the stinking noblemen—and just about all the Hochadel—from Brunswick and Westphalia are in Berlin right now, plotting with Oxenstierna.”
“And there are just as many from my province and the Upper Rhine,” said Anselm Keller. He was a member of Parliament from the Province of the Main.
Now, Constantin sneered openly. “Who cares? The danger doesn’t come from that pack of jackals.”
“Most of them can raise their own armies!” said Bugenhagen.
Ableidinger’s sneer grew more expansive. “ ‘Armies’ is a bit grandiose, don’t you think? Even the Hochadel among them can’t raise more than a few hundred men—and you don’t want to look too closely at them, either. A fair number of those ‘armed retainers’ are sixty years old and missing an arm or an eye. Admit it, Albert—against such as those, our stout CoC contingents will send them packing. Just as we did in Operation Kristallnacht.”
That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was close enough to the mark that Bugenhagen sat down without pursuing the argument. And while Keller’s jaws were tight, he didn’t contest the matter.
“The real military threat lies elsewhere,” continued Constantin. “First and foremost, in the provincial armies—real armies, those are—that can be raised by the provincial rulers. Stop worrying about Freiherr Feckless and Reichsritter Holes-in-His-Boots. Start worrying about the Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel and the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Westphalia, instead.”
“They never made that Danish bastard a prince,” said Keller sullenly.
Rebecca wondered how long Constantin could keep that sneer on his face.
“Who didn’t?” sneered Ableidinger. “They didn’t make him a prince because Gustav Adolf put his foot down. But what do you think are the odds that Oxenstierna won’t hand him the title, if Frederick gets pissed at us and makes friendly noises toward Berlin?”
There was silence in the room. Ableidinger maintained the sneer right through it.
“Then there’s the other serious threat,” he went on. “Those are the town militias, especially the ones from the bigger towns. They won’t fight in the countryside, but they’ll keep their towns solid against us—”
“Not Hamburg!” protested its mayor.
“No, you’re right. Not Hamburg. Not Luebeck or Frankfurt, either. But they’ll hold Augsburg and Ulm, won’t they? And probably Strassburg, too—and what’s more important, they’ll hold at least three-quarters of the smaller towns in every province except Magdeburg, the SoTF and Mecklenburg. All right, fine. Only two-thirds of the towns in the Oberpfalz. How parochial can you be, Albert? You think the world begins and ends in Hamburg?”
Rebecca decided to intervene before Ableidinger’s abrasive manner set off a pointless eruption.
“I think we need to consider Constantin’s points carefully,” she said. “He’s right that if there’s a full-scale civil war most of the official militias will be arrayed against us—and that’s especially true if they believe we are the ones who started the war. If they hold the towns against us and our CoC contingents have to face regular provincial armies in the field, we will lose. It is as simple as that.”
Achterhof scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “In effect, you’re saying we’ve lost the war already.”
“She said a full-scale civil war, Gunther.” That came from Ulbrecht Riemann, who had been silent up until this point. He was a central figure in the Fourth of July Party in Westphalia, although he held no post in government.
“As opposed to what?” asked Keller.
Riemann shrugged. “There are lots of different kinds of wars, Anselm. So why shouldn’t there be different types of civil wars? The thing some of you don’t seem to grasp is that Oxenstierna has to win this conflict outright. We don’t. Why? Because we’re winning every day as it is, day in and day out. Week by week, month by month, our cause advances and his cause retreats. That’s why he’s taking this opportunity, for all the risks involved. I don’t know if he realizes it consciously or not, but on some level Oxenstierna—all those reactionary swine—have to sense they’re losing.”
Achterhof was staring at him, practically cross-eyed. Rebecca had to stifle a smile.
Riemann was right, though, whether Achterhof understood his point or not. Her husband had said much the same thing to her, many times. He’d used different words, but the gist was the same.
The aristocracy and the city patricians needed formal power in order to maintain their control over the Germanies. The democratic movement didn’t—although holding such power was certainly helpful. Its influence spread everywhere, every day, down a thousand channels. Schools, unions, insurance associations, all manner of co-operatives and granges. Steadily, if sometimes slowly, the strength of the reactionaries faded.
Constantin could see it also, probably because he came from Franconia. Achterhof and the other Magdeburg militants suffered from a perhaps inevitable myopia. Say rather, tunnel vision. Everything in the nation’s capital was clear, crisp, sharp. Magdeburg was a place of factories and working-class apartments. Over here were the toiling masses, who constituted the city’s great majority. Over there, in the palaces, were the class enemies.
There were not many of them, either. So why not just sweep them aside?
Franconia—still more so, Thuringia—was a very different place. The USE’s most populous province had many political shadings, and well-nigh innumerable layers in its populace. The Americans and their allies had been able to politically dominate it since the Ring of Fire primarily because they had provided stability and security. They had put a stop to mercenary plundering, fostered the economy, built and maintained roads, schools and hospitals.
Whether or not they agreed with the Fourth of July Party’s program—and a great many of them didn’t—the majority of the population of the State of Thuringia-Franconia kept voting for them, election after election. For some, out of radical conviction. But for just as many, for the opposite reason—a conservative reluctance to upset the applecart. The very full applecart.
It helped a great deal, too, that the president of the SoTF was Ed Piazza. He was not a flamboyant, exciting, romantic—and rather scary—figure like Mike Stearns. Rather, he exuded steadiness and stability. He governed his province much the same way, as a high school principal, he had governed his teaching staff and his students, with relaxed confidence and equanimity.
So, despite the many features of Thuringian and Franconian society that resisted the democratic movement, even resented it bitterly, that movement continued to broaden and deepen its influence.
“Don’t give them a clear target,” Michael had told her. “Let them wear themselves out for a while. They haven’t got the wind for a long fight. As long as you keep them from winning by knockout, you’re staying ahead on points.”
Her husband was fond of boxing analogies. She decided to share one
of them with the group.
“We’ve been discussing this for hours,” she said. “I think we are ready to take a vote.”
She looked around the table and was greeted by nods. From Gunther, Anselm and Albert, also. They’d been the most intransigent of her opponents.
“Very well. All in favor of Gunther’s proposal to seize official power in Magdeburg, raise your hands.”
The number was clearly short of a majority.
“Very well. All in favor of my approach—which, following my husband’s guidance, I shall call ‘rope-a-dope’—raise your hands.”
The jest was perhaps unwise, since there was an immediate outcry to explain it that delayed the vote. But in the end, her viewpoint was adopted.
Afterward, Achterhof grunted and leaned back in his chair. “Easy for us to say ‘rope-a-dope.’ But it’ll be Gretchen and her people in Dresden who have to take the punches.”
Chapter 13
Dresden, capital of Saxony
Jozef Wojtowicz watched workmen laying gravel onto the cobblestones of the huge city square. What madness possessed me, he wondered, to come to Dresden?
He was still possessed by the same madness, to make things worse. He had more than enough money to have gotten out of the city any time he wanted. His employer was his uncle Stanislaw Koniecpolski, the grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania and one of the Commonwealth’s half-dozen richest men. He was no miser, either. Jozef had never lacked for the financial resources he needed.
Yes, here he still was. And if he didn’t leave by tomorrow—the day after, at the outside—he probably wouldn’t be able to leave at all. Banér’s army was already setting up camp just south and west of Dresden’s walls. It wouldn’t take the Swedish general very long to have regular cavalry patrols surrounding the city.
Jozef might still be able to pass through, if the cavalrymen were susceptible to bribery. Mercenaries usually were. It would be risky, though. There were already reports that Banér’s troops had committed atrocities in some of the villages northeast of Chemnitz, in their march through southern Saxony. Banér was known for his temper and his brutality, and commanders usually transmitted their attitudes to their soldiers. A cavalry patrol that Jozef encountered might decide to murder him and take all his money rather than settle for a bribe.
But…
He couldn’t bring himself to leave. Dresden was just too interesting, too exciting, right now. When he’d lived in Grantville, Jozef had come across the up-time term “adrenalin junkie” and realized that it described him quite well. Since he was a boy he’d enjoyed dangerous sports—he was an avid rock-climber, among other things—and part of the reason he’d agreed to become his uncle’s spy in the USE was because of the near-constant tension involved. Whenever he contemplated his notion of Hell it didn’t involve any of the tortures depicted in Dante’s Inferno; rather, it was to be locked in a room for eternity with nothing to do. Jozef had a very high pain threshold, but an equally low boredom threshold.
Besides, he could always justify the risk on the grounds that staying in Dresden gave him an unparalleled opportunity to study the Committees of Correspondence in action. Gretchen Richter herself was in charge here! What better opportunity could you ask for?
That very moment, as it happened, he saw her entering the square from the direction of the Residenzschloss, surrounded by a dozen or so people. She and her CoC cohorts had effectively taken over the palace of the former Elector of Saxony, John George, as their own headquarters.
You had to add that term “effectively” because Richter still maintained the pretense that the Residenzschloss was primarily being used as a hospital for wounded soldiers. She’d also been heard to point out that the province’s official administrator—that was Ernst Wettin, the USE prime minister’s younger brother—also had his offices and quarters in the Residenzschloss. The fanciest ones available, in fact, the chambers and rooms that had been used by John George and his family before they fled the city.
Both claims were thread-bare. True enough, Richter was reportedly always polite to the provincial administrator and made sure his stay in the palace was a pleasant one. She even provided him with a security detail, since Wettin had no soldiers of his own. But that fact alone made it clear who really wielded power in the city.
As for the soldiers who’d been sent to Dresden to recuperate from their wounds, by now most of them had regained their health. They still lived in the section of the Residenzschloss that had been designated as the hospital, but that was simply because there were no barracks available and Richter had decreed that no soldiers would be billeted on the city’s inhabitants. Nor had the few officers objected, although the woman had absolutely no authority to be making any decisions concerning soldiers in the USE army.
And there was another thing Jozef found interesting about the situation. All of the USE officers here were very junior. There was not so much as a single captain among them, much less any majors or colonels. They were all lieutenants—and newly-minted ones, at that, for the most part.
How was that possible? How could an army division fight as many battles as the Third Division had fought during the summer and fall without any of its company commanders or field grade officers being wounded?
Had they all been killed? The odds against that happening were astronomical.
And they had to have been engaged in the fighting. No army could possibly win battles if the only officers who placed themselves in harm’s way were lieutenants.
There was only one possible answer, from what Jozef could see. For whatever reason, the commanding general of the Third Division had deliberately sent only his most junior officers and his enlisted men to Dresden. Those of higher rank who’d been wounded he must have sent elsewhere.
Jena, probably. The USE had a big new hospital there, already reputed to be one of the very best in the world. General Stearns could have sent the more senior officers there on the grounds that there was only limited space in Jena so he was making a priority of giving them the best treatment available.
Whatever his thinking had been, the end result was that several hundred combat veterans—almost all of them no older than their twenties—were in a city about to undergo a siege, and they had allied themselves with Dresden’s inhabitants. And this was no grudging alliance, either. Jozef had seen for himself that tactical command of the city’s defenses had been taken over by the dozen or so USE army lieutenants present. The one named Krenz seemed to be in overall charge.
Could Stearns have foreseen that?
He…might. By all accounts, he was a canny bastard. And a labor organizer, in his background, not a military man. That meant he was accustomed to fluid relations of command and obedience, where a man’s authority derived almost entirely from his ability to gain and retain the confidence of the men around him. To use an up-time expression, he had to have very finely honed “people skills.”
It was all quite fascinating.
“I’m warning you,” said a voice from behind him, “there’s no point trying to seduce her.”
Turning around—and feeling quite stupid; had he really been ogling the woman that openly?—he saw one of the men he’d met the night before in the Rathaus. The basement tavern of the city hall had been taken over by the CoC, for all practical purposes.
Another Pole, as it happened. Tadeusz Szklenski, a Silesian from a town near Krakow.
The only thing Jozef remembered about him from the previous evening was that the man’s Amideutsch was pretty decent if heavily accented and he insisted on being called by the up-time nickname of “Ted.”
The grin he had on his face was just friendly, so Jozef decided to return it with a grin of his own.
“And why would you think I’d have that in mind to begin with?”
“Three reasons. The first is that Gretchen Richter’s very good-looking. The second and the third are named Ilse and Ursula.”
Jozef couldn’t stop himself from wincing. Ilse and Ursula were wa
itresses in the Rathaus tavern. He’d slept with both of them in the course of the past week. Once again, and for perhaps the hundredth time, he cautioned himself that his attraction to women was foolish for a spy.
The problem was partly that Jozef himself was very good-looking, a quality that most men might prize but was a nuisance for someone working in espionage. The other part of the problem was that he had a personality that many women seemed to find irresistibly charming—and, alas, the reverse was also true, if the women were bright and had a sense of humor.
“I hadn’t realized anyone was monitoring my personal habits,” he said stiffly.
Szklenski shrugged. “The fellows came to me about it. They wanted to make sure you were okay. We’re both Poles, you see.”
He seemed to think all of that was self-explanatory. But Jozef found it all very murky.
Who were “the fellows?” Why would they come to Szklenski? What did “okay” mean in this context? And what difference did it make that they were both Poles?
His puzzlement must have been evident. “CoC guys,” Szklenski explained. “They’re always looking out for spies. They figured I could sniff you out if you were, since we’re both Polish.” He shrugged. “I don’t think that last part makes a lot of sense, myself, but that’s how they felt about it.”
“They thought I was a spy?” Jozef tried to put as much in the way of outraged innocence into the term as he could—while keeping in mind the danger of over-acting given that he was, in point of fact, a spy.
“Silly notion, isn’t it?—and I told them so right off. What kind of idiot spy would screw two girls in one week who both worked in the same tavern?”
An excellent question, Jozef thought grimly. Perhaps he should start flagellating himself to drive out these evil urges. Or wear a hair shirt.
“You’d better stay out of Ursula’s sight for a while, by the way. Ilse is easy-going but Ursula’s not at all.”