1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  Ulrik hesitated.

  “Damnation, Ulrik!”—that was the first time the colonel had ever used his first name without preceding it with his title—“you’ll be close enough to the action to satisfy anybody except Evel Knievel!”

  The airplane passed overhead, flying very low. Ulrik looked up and followed its flight for a couple of seconds.

  Who is Evel Knievel? he wondered.

  Two miles north of Kraków

  “Now!” shouted Christin.

  “Now!” she shouted again, two seconds later.

  The instant the second bomb was dropped, Eddie brought the plane up and sharply to the left. Ever since the battle began, he’d been careful never to give the magnates’ troops a good target. The only time he flew low and straight was in the very last seconds of a bombing run.

  Several musket men did fire at the plane. A pikeman got the tip of his blade within twenty feet of the fuselage, which was closer than any of the bullets came.

  Half a mile northwest of Kraków

  Within twenty minutes, Janusz Łohojski managed to get his own forces marshaled for a counterattack on the rebels who’d seized the battery on the rise. He even managed to persuade Potocki to commit his own army, although that would take longer.

  Potocki was a solid fellow. Łohojski was confident that he’d bring his men up in time for the final surge against the rebels—sooner than they could get the big guns repositioned to fire on Łohojski himself, which was what mattered. From all he could see, the rebel force which had seized the battery was made up entirely of cavalry.

  Cavalry were good—could be good—on the offense, if they caught their opponent off guard and sent them into a retreat. But for defense, which was what the rebels needed now, they were not nearly as good as infantry. They had no pikemen to fend off attackers, and the only guns they’d have would be pistols.

  Łohojski himself had enough cavalry to ravage the rebels’ flanks, but most of his force was made up of infantry. It would take them a bit, but they’d keep the enemy pinned on that rise. And then, once Potocki’s army came up, they’d drive them back into Kraków and retake the guns.

  They were less than a quarter of a mile away from the rise, now. Łohojski rode forward to get a better view of the rebels’ dispositions.

  * * *

  The APC had reached the rise and taken position atop the crest. It wasn’t much of a rise—not more than fifteen feet higher than the surrounding terrain—but it did give the riflemen in the forward turrets a superb view of the oncoming enemy.

  The rifleman in the left front turret was a hussar by the name of Ambrozy Krampitz. When he spotted the horseman coming forward from the front ranks of the approaching pike-and-musket formations, he brought his rifle to bear on him.

  It would be a long shot, but he thought it was within the capability of his marvelous new rifle. The weapon was far more accurate than anything he’d ever fired before.

  He took careful aim…and squeezed the trigger. That had taken some practice to do it properly, since he was accustomed to firing matchlocks, which were so inaccurate that you just yanked up on the lever which served as a trigger.

  Damnation, missed! Like most Polish szlachta, Ambrozy had a relaxed attitude toward blasphemy. It was disgraceful when a bad person did it. He was not a bad person.

  * * *

  He didn’t exactly miss. The bullet didn’t hit Łohojski but it did strike the flange on top of his helmet. It was a shallow glancing blow, with not enough force to either remove the helmet or twist it badly askew. But it certainly startled the commander.

  He reached up a hand and felt the helmet. What—?

  The next bullet struck the back of his wrist and shattered it. Shouting in pain and yanking on the reins, Łohojski brought his horse rearing up.

  The rifleman in the other turret, Tomek Wrzesiński, had by then also brought his weapon to bear. His first shot struck Łohojski’s horse in the throat. The animal screamed and toppled over, blood gushing from its neck.

  Łohojski was a very experienced horseman. Despite the agony produced by his mutilated wrist, he managed to get his feet out of the stirrups and throw himself off the horse without letting it fall on top of him. The impact on the ground was hard, but didn’t break any bones. Bruised and somewhat battered, he staggered to his feet; then, turned away from the enemy and began running—as best as he could, anyway—toward his own lines.

  Wrzesiński’s next shot missed him entirely.

  Krampitz had taken more time to aim. His next shot struck Łohojski in the back of his right leg, a few inches below the knee.

  It was only a flesh wound, since the bullet passed through the leg without striking a bone. But it was enough to cause Łohojski to stumble and fall on his knees.

  The next shots fired by the riflemen in the turrets struck Łohojski almost simultaneously. Wrzesiński’s bullet struck the back of his helmet and knocked it right off. It also broke his skull. Krampitz’s shot struck him in the lower back, just below the edge of the cuirass. It missed any vital organs but caused a lot of internal damage and bleeding.

  Łohojski collapsed. By then, a dozen of his cavalrymen had raced up and were now surrounding his body. Some of them dismounted to provide him with assistance. Others, still on horseback, fired their wheel-lock pistols at the far-distant APC—which was pointless, at that range, but angry men do pointless things.

  * * *

  “Do you think we got him?” asked Wrzesiński.

  “Don’t know,” said Krampitz.

  “Who was he, d’you think?”

  “Don’t know,” said Krampitz.

  * * *

  Within a few minutes, the cavalrymen had brought Łohojski back to their own lines. He was still alive, but no longer conscious.

  The officer who now took command of Łohojski’s army was named Jerzy Dziedzic. He was an experienced and competent soldier, but Łohojski had selected him for the post because of his reliability, not his imagination and intelligence. Faced with a situation that confused him, Dziedzic chose the safest course, He ordered his men to take defensive positions while they waited for Potocki to bring up his army.

  By then, the Galicians had the first culverin turned around and were starting to load it.

  Airstrip south of the Vistula

  Kraków, official capital of Poland

  Actual capital of Lesser Poland

  As soon as the Steady Girl landed and taxied to a stop, Christin climbed out of the cockpit and rushed toward the hangar, where men were already pushing a cart toward the plane. Denise clambered out right after her and rolled herself under the fuselage.

  “Move it! Move it!” Christin shouted.

  “Well, I won’t be like that when I’m a mom,” Denise muttered. “If I’m ever a mom at all.”

  Chapter 49

  Half a mile north of Kraków

  Lukasz Opalinski lowered the binoculars he’d been given by Jozef Wojtowicz and handed them back to him. The two men were standing atop the rise looking north.

  “They’re coming too quickly,” he said. “We won’t have more than two—maybe three—of the culverins ready to fire in time.”

  “You know more about these things than I do,” said Jozef, “so I think you’re right. That’s how it looks to me, too.” He put the binoculars back into the small holster he’d had made for them while he was still in Grantville. They were up-time made but neither fancy nor powerful—what the Americans called “opera glasses.”

  Having done that, Jozef turned his head to look at the APC. “On the other hand…”

  Lukasz finished the thought. “Everyone who’s ever been in a battle knows that cavalry can’t break a solid and well-organized formation of pikemen—and unless I miss my guess, that’s Potocki’s army coming at us, which means they’ll be both. For that, you need artillery, which we don’t have. On the other hand, I believe that marvelous giant machine of yours will do better than even a battery of forty-two-pounders.”


  “It’s worth a try.” Jozef cocked an eye at his longtime friend. “I trust I can count on you to follow up with a proper charge.”

  “In the finest hussar tradition,” Lukasz assured him. He glanced at the mob of cavalrymen who had gathered on the south side of the rise, most of whom were now out of sight of the oncoming enemy. “Well…enthusiastic tradition, anyway. But that’ll be enough, Jozef, if you can shatter that formation of pikemen.”

  * * *

  Before getting back into the cab, Jozef climbed into the interior of the former coal truck. He’d have much preferred to leave Pawel and Tekla in the care of a couple of hussars, who could be spared from the battle to bring the children to safety inside the city. But he knew they’d put up a fierce fight against the idea, and he simply didn’t have time to deal with it.

  When he reached the padded box in the middle of the interior, he leaned over the side. Pawel and Tekla were looking up at him. The two children seemed a bit worried, but not afraid.

  “We’re going into a battle,” he told them. “I think you’ll be safe but I want you to promise me you won’t leave this box under any conditions.”

  “We promise, Papa,” Tekla said. Pawel just nodded a few times, very quickly.

  Jozef hesitated. Then: “I love you. So does your Mama.” And he left.

  * * *

  By then, Jakub had reached the rise also. Behind him came the Silesian militia made up almost entirely of Polish farmers and German townsmen, along with those members of the former garrison of Kraków who had volunteered to join them. Thankfully, those volunteers included the two veteran sergeants named Michal Kozłowski and Nicolai Korczak. Jakub had found himself leaning heavily on their advice, since the Opalinski brothers had chosen to make him what the Polish military called a pułkownik—roughly the equivalent of a colonel in other armies.

  From civilian to colonel in three days. Jakub was still trying to adjust to the idea. He understood the logic of it, which was political, not military. No one expected the Silesian militia to play much of a role in this battle. But for political reasons it was essential that they be actively involved, especially the Poles. That would simultaneously help blur the extent to which the Galicians were relying on the support of USE and Bohemian forces, as well as blurring the national character of Lower Silesia itself.

  Gretchen had been particularly insistent on that point. She had come to the conclusion that she’d be spending most of her time and effort in the future in Silesia, not Saxony. In fact, she might very well have to resign her position as Chancellor of Saxony in order to be able to concentrate entirely on her position as the Lady Protector of Silesia. That was all the more true because she was bound and determined to turn Lower Silesia into a republican state. The only practical way to do that was to make Lower Silesia a province of the USE—and that couldn’t be done unless the ethnic and religious identities of Silesia’s inhabitants were subordinated to their political identity.

  Most people of the time thought of the USE as “the nation of the Germans,” but Gretchen didn’t. Neither did any of the top leaders of the CoCs—nor did Mike Stearns. They wanted the USE to become the same sort of nation that the USA had been in another universe. A nation founded on citizenship and political principles, not blood and soil.

  Jakub agreed with that himself, although in his case the nation he was dedicated to transform was his own Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He still thought the idea of him being a pułkownik of a mostly Silesian unit was fairly ridiculous. But he could live with ridiculousness in a good cause.

  * * *

  Jakub was on horseback, unlike most of the members of his unit, who were all infantry. So he got to the rise a few minutes before the rest of them did. Once there, he went immediately to the Opalinski brothers to get their instructions.

  The older of the brothers, Krzysztof, was officially the head of the Galician army. But it was Lukasz who had by now become the effective commander, at least on a battlefield.

  “Just be ready to follow us when we launch the attack,” Lukasz told him. “You won’t be able to keep up, but it doesn’t matter. One of two things will happen. Either we will smash Potocki’s army and send them running, in which case all you will have to do is hold a lot of prisoners and tend to a lot of wounded men—theirs as well as ours. We’re not Huns. Or we will be defeated and you will need to cover our retreat. In which case, a lot of you will die.”

  That was what Jakub had expected to hear. His two sergeants, Kozłowski and Korczak, had already explained the battlefield facts of life to him.

  “Okay,” he said. The Americanism was becoming as ubiquitous in the Commonwealth as it was in western parts of the continent. Poles were even more prone than most to adopt the word, being ever insistent on making the distinction between themselves—Europeans, through and through—and those half-Mongol Russian barbarians.

  He then remembered to add, “Sir. And sir.”

  Lukasz and Krzysztof both grinned. “Relax,” said the older brother. “We’re Poles. We will damn well get rid of that idiotic liberum veto, but that doesn’t mean we’re becoming Germans.”

  A mile and a half north of Kraków

  Jeff ordered the Hangman Regiment to take up a defensive position once they got within a quarter of a mile of the enemy. He would have preferred to do so earlier, to give his men more time to get ready, but there simply hadn’t been any suitable terrain. Here, a dirt road ran parallel to a very low rise—not more than two feet, but that could make a huge difference on a battlefield, because the soldiers could fire behind shelter. That wouldn’t have made much difference if they were still using muzzle-loading muskets, but the rate of fire the Hocklott breech-loading rifles gave them changed the whole equation.

  Von Mercy had withdrawn his cavalrymen, partly to give them a rest and partly to see what the Hangmen could do. So, for the moment, the Hangmen were pretty much on their own. The Polish army they were facing—it was either Lubomirski’s or Wiśniowiecki’s; the intelligence they’d gotten wasn’t clear—outnumbered them at least two-to-one, even if you included the Bohemian Jewish battalion which was serving the Hangman Regiment as a reserve force.

  But Jeff didn’t think the magnates really understood what they were facing. Their private armies had never encountered the accuracy and rate of fire that breech-loading rifles could produce. Nor had they encountered the sort of mortars that were even now being set up a hundred yards behind the riflemen now positioned along on the road.

  Deciding he had time, Jeff trotted his horse back to the mortars.

  He went first to Prince Ulrik, who had a somewhat glum expression on his face.

  “I’m feeling useless again,” he said. Nodding behind him, he added: “Major Krenz is doing all the real commanding.”

  “Eric’s got the experience and you don’t, Prince,” said Jeff. “Just relax. If it’ll make you feel better, contemplate the possibility you might still be struck down at any time by enemy fire, whether you’re bossing around anybody or just looking good.”

  He examined Ulrik for a moment. “Which you do, by the way. I don’t even want to think how much that armor cost you.”

  Ulrik’s sour expression was replaced by a smile. “Cost my father, actually. I’m far too frugal to have bought something like this myself.”

  That was true enough. As many people had before him, Jeff was coming to the conclusion that, when the time came, Prince Ulrik was going to make one hell of a good emperor.

  I can’t believe I just said that to myself, Jeff thought. “One hell of a good emperor.” I can remember when my friends and I used to argue Democrats versus Republicans. Welcome to the year 1637.

  But that was immediately followed by a very different thought. And welcome to the same year that has my wife in it. Ms. I-will-boil-you-in-oil revolutionary with the title of Lady Protector.

  He wondered what she was doing, right then.

  Cloth Hall

  Kraków, official capital of Poland


  Actual capital of Lesser Poland

  Gretchen was doing what millions of women had done throughout history, when their husbands were on the verge of combat. Trying not to think about it by keeping themselves busy.

  Of course, that number dropped to hundreds—no, dozens; at most—if you only included women who were distracting themselves by plotting revolution.

  In this instance, with two co-conspirators, Judy Wendell and Noelle Stull.

  It was a peculiar trio, contradictory in more ways than Gretchen could count without getting dizzy.

  She herself was a revolutionary dedicated to the overthrow of the European royal and aristocratic establishments. Who also happened to be the Chancellor of Saxony, the Lady Protector of Lower Silesia, and the wife of the colonel who commanded her nation’s most famous—and fearsome—regiment. A nation which was ruled—to a degree, at least—by an emperor. The continent’s most powerful emperor, in fact.

  Noelle Stull was a former agent for the Americans who had played a central role in igniting Europe’s revolution—but was a noblewoman herself now, the Countess of Homonna, as well as being the wife of the closest confidant of the emperor of Austria-Hungary.

  Judy Wendell could claim to be the most homogenous of the three, since at least she bore no titles beyond the rather dubious Austrian one of “Serene Highness.” More to the point, she was now the paramour of one of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth’s most prominent revolutionary leaders.

  She also happened to be the best friend of an Austrian archduchess and was wealthier than most noblewomen. A fortune she’d begun to amass by selling dolls.

  Go figure, as Gretchen’s husband would say.

  * * *

  “All right,” Gretchen said. “I agree”—she raised a stiff, cautionary forefinger—“provisionally, that Jakub’s strategy is probably the best one. The most quickly effective one, at least. But I will have to refrain from open support of the idea and if Red Sybolt responds as we all think he will, I will support him. And that will not be a pretense, either. I will support him.”