1635: The Eastern Front Read online

  "You'll do fine, Captain Higgins. The 12th is a good battalion with good companies. And the commander of your regiment is Colonel Friedrich Eichelberger, who is a superb officer."

  "But . . ."

  Schuster shook his head firmly. "The decision is made, Captain. I discussed the matter with General Stearns himself, and he concurred in my decision. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the officers of your battalion immediately. The campaign is already underway. We should reach the Saxon border within four days, possibly even three." He cleared his throat. "Whatever might be their other failings, our soldiers march quite well."

  It took Jeff until sundown to find his battalion. Somehow or other, it had managed to get shuffled out of its officially allotted place in the marching order.

  At least the battalion was ahead of place, not behind. Apparently they were eager-beavers instead of shirkers. Under most circumstances, Jeff would have thought that a positive trait. Under these . . . ​he wasn't sure. Bad enough some idiot brigadier had placed a twenty-three-year-old captain with an oddball military resume in charge of a whole battalion, after consulting with a top commander who apparently had the IQ of a turnip. (At a rough count, he'd silently cursed Mike Stearns at least five hundred times that afternoon.) To add to his misery, it seemed that his new battalion was full of vim and vigor and would have absurdly unrealistic expectations of their new commanding officer.

  His fears proved too great and too little.

  Too great, in that the 12th Battalion turned out to be a veritable CoC hotbed. Every noncommissioned officer, it seemed, as well as half the grunts, were hardcore activists from Magdeburg.

  Given that Jeff was married to the woman who was generally viewed as the quintessence of the CoC spirit, his appointment as the battalion's new commander was very highly regarded by the enlisted men.

  And that was the bad news too, of course. "Absurdly unrealistic expectations" was putting it mildly.

  Chapter 9

  After Jeff left, Gretchen didn't spend more than half an hour moping around and feeling sorry for herself. She'd inherited her grandmother's stoic disposition and hardheaded attitude toward life's travails.

  Besides, there were the children to be settled down. There weren't as many as Gretchen had handled when she was a camp follower. Baldy and Martha had stayed behind in Grantville, which left only four of her foster children in addition to her own two sons Willi and Joseph. But all four of them were now entering their teen years and were almost the same age—Karl Blume, the oldest, was fourteen; Christian Georg, the youngest, was twelve. The other two, both born in 1622, were thirteen.

  So, they were rambunctious. On the other hand, Gretchen was Gretchen. It didn't take her more than half an hour to set them all about various household chores, obediently if not exactly happily.

  The problems would come later, once the little devils figured out that the apartment building was as much in the way of a CoC headquarters—national headquarters, at that, with Gretchen in residence—as it was a private dwelling. They'd handle that knowledge each according to his or her own temperament. Otto and Maria Susanna, charmers both, would sweet-talk the various residents into taking on at least some of their tasks; Karl, the most independent, would be ingenious in evading his responsibilities; the very youngest, Christian Georg, would sulk long and mightily.

  Gretchen would have none of it, though, sweet-talk and scheme and sulk though they might. She'd never heard the old saw "idle hands are the devil's workshop." That was an English saying that probably originated with Chaucer. Many Americans knew it, especially the more religious ones. But none of them happened to have used the expression in front of her.

  Had she heard it, though, she would have agreed immediately and vigorously.

  Which brought her to the next problem at hand. The children now dispatched for the moment, Gretchen turned and gazed upon that problem.

  Who, for her part, gazed back at Gretchen from her seat on one of the benches scattered about the side walls of the vestibule. The young woman was modestly dressed—enough, even, to minimize a bosom almost as impressive as Gretchen's own—and had her hands clasped demurely in her lap. She was the very picture of an unassuming person. From the style of shoes she was wearing, a town-dweller rather than someone from rural parts. But clearly a commoner, nonetheless.

  The last part was true. The girl, who went by the nickname of Tata, was indeed a town-dweller. Her father owned a tavern in Mainz.

  Everything else was illusory. Or would be soon enough. Gretchen would see to it herself, if need be.

  But she didn't think she'd need to do anything. Tata's story was already spreading through the ranks of the CoCs, all across the Germanies, even though the critical events involved had happened less than two months earlier.

  Such is the power of a splendid legend. The CoCs had found their Esther.

  A legend it was, too, if Tata herself was to be believed.

  "Eberhard came up with the idea all by himself," she insisted. "Not that I didn't think it was a clever move for something so spur-of-the moment, when he told me. But there wasn't time for a lot of deep discussion. He was going to die. Not in minutes, but certainly within hours."

  The "he" in question had been Duke Eberhard, the young ruler of Württemberg, who'd been killed in Schorndorf while driving out the Bavarian mercenaries who'd occupied the city.

  That was the bare bones of the tale. It got quite a bit less heroic when you added the meat to the bones. The mercenaries had not been driven out in the course of a valiantly fought siege, but by pure luck. An accident in a cook shop had started a fire during high winds which soon spread the flames through the whole town. The duke had been mortally injured in the course of helping a stubborn pastor trying to save valuables from his burning church.

  But none of those pedestrian details mattered, because of what had come next. Duke Eberhard's two brothers had already died in the war, so he'd been the sole heir—and, on his deathbed, he'd bequeathed the duchy to its entire population.

  Noblemen had relinquished their titles before, to be sure. The new prime minister of the USE, Wilhelm Wettin, was one of them. He'd given up his title as one of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar in order to make himself eligible to serve as prime minister. But Eberhard had been the first and so far the only nobleman who'd relinquished his entire realm—and given it to the people who'd previously been his subjects, to boot.

  It hadn't taken the story more than two weeks to spread all across the USE. So was born the legend of the Good Duke—or, often, the Three Good Dukes, giving credit to Eberhard's younger brothers who had also died in the struggle. So too was born the legend of the young tavern-keeper's daughter whom the duke had loved, that selfsame love presumably being the motive for his righteous deed.

  The fact that the girl's father happened to be the head of the Mainz CoC didn't hurt, of course.

  The story was mostly nonsense. So much was obvious to Gretchen just from listening to Tata's version. The relationship the girl had had with the duke had fallen quite a ways short of the legend. There was nothing tawdry about it, if you had reasonable standards concerning such things. It was hardly the first time a charming young nobleman and an attractive town girl had had an affair, after all. Tata had been genuinely fond of Eberhard, and he of her. But most likely they'd have drifted apart, had he lived.

  As for the duke's motives, Tata insisted that they had nothing to do with her.

  "He was just pissed off, the way the Swedes kept jerking him back and forth. You know how they get with their German subordinates, if they're noblemen. So he got even by dumping a mess in their laps."

  A mess it was, too. The prime minister's bureaucrats and emperor's lawyers were already trying to get the duke's will invalidated. The lawyers working for the Fourth of July Party were pushing back just as hard. And no matter which way the legal tussles went, the CoCs in Württemberg were having a field day. For once, they could claim to be the party of legitimacy. Their popular
support in the southwestern province was growing rapidly.

  Here, though, Gretchen thought Tata was actually being too modest. She didn't doubt that the driving force behind Duke Eberhard's decision had been his irritation with the often high-handed methods of Gustav Adolf and his officials. Many German noblemen allied to the Swedish king chafed under his rule.

  But, without Tata and the CoC to which she belonged, would his deathbed revenge have taken the form that it did?

  Gretchen thought not. For all her hostility toward the aristocracy in general, she thought that the dying Eberhard had been moved, at the end, by a genuinely noble impulse. One that Tata could at least claim to have watered, if not seeded.

  If even Gretchen was that well-disposed toward the memory of the young duke, she knew full well how the masses of the Germanies would react. Tata could say whatever she wanted. The CoC legend would roll right over it.

  Maybe Esther had acne, too. Who cared?

  So. Gretchen had a legend on her hands. The question was, what to do with her?

  The answer was obvious. The best way to solve a problem is to apply it to another proiblem.

  She waggled her hand in a rising motion. "Come, Tata. I want to introduce you to someone."

  Obediently, the girl rose.

  Once they left the building, a contingent of CoC activists closed in around them. Others stayed in place, guarding the building.

  Looked at from one angle, the level of protection being provided to Gretchen was excessive. Here in the heart of Magdeburg's working class district, no large group of enemies would dare to move in force. Not unless an army had already taken the city, in which case a relative handful of security guards would be a moot point.

  But conflict had a psychological as well as a physical component, which Gretchen had come to respect as the struggle continued. Spartacus understood that also, and Gunther Achterhof practically worshipped at the shrine of what he like to call "psyops." He was addicted to such Americanisms.

  Partly, Gretchen had come to that understanding on her own. Mostly, though, she'd come to it from years of watching Mike Stearns.

  Gretchen had suspicions concerning Stearns. His willingness to compromise with the enemy readily and easily was something that rubbed her the wrong way, and always had. At the same time, as the years had passed since the Ring of Fire and her rise to prominence as a leader of Europe's principal revolutionary organization, she'd become a great deal more sophisticated. The girl whose aspirations toward striking back had once been limited to sliding a knife into the brain of a mercenary thug was now a young woman who'd commanded the defending forces of a major city under siege and had negotiated with two princes—one of them a king now—and an archduchess.

  One of the things she'd learned from Stearns was that aggressive negotiating—understanding that "negotiating" was a concept much broader than the formalities involved—could often preclude the need for violence altogether. Or, at the very least, reduce the scope of that violence.

  So, when she walked in public, Gretchen's stride was sure and confident. So, too, were the strides of the men guarding her. So, at such times, Gretchen's expression was equally sure and confident. And the expressions of the armed men at her side were downright belligerent.

  Who could say? Perhaps when his spies reported, an enemy would be moved to negotiate rather than fight. And perhaps, even if he did choose to fight, he would enter the conflict with his self-confidence already frayed.

  What still bothered her about Stearns was that she was not sure when negotiation stopped being a means for the man and became an end in itself. There was an insidious dynamic at work. A ruling class had several ways to maintain its domination. One, of course, was brute force. But another was co-option, absorption, seduction. Offer a rebel—usually a man from the lower classes—a prominent place in society. Offer him status; titles; positions—and, of course, a munificent salary. All the things, in short, which he'd never had and whose absence had been, at least in part, the motive for his rebellion.

  How long does such a man remain a revolutionary? In his core, not simply in the trappings and appurtenances?

  To be sure, most of Europe's dynasts and noblemen still shook their fists at Mike Stearns and reviled him publicly and privately. But how much did they really fear him, any longer? How much, in their heart of hearts, did they really worry that a man who'd borne the title of a prime minister, bore now the title of a major general, and could easily obtain a loan to buy a mansion for his family, was still their mortal enemy?

  The Swedes did not, obviously. The Swedish king Gustav Adolf's relationship with Stearns might be ambivalent, and the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna might often be downright prickly. So what? They were still willing to let him wield a great deal of power and influence, and never failed to treat him with respect.

  So how long would he last? Gretchen simply didn't know. Neither did Spartacus or Gunther Achterhof or any of the central leaders of the Committees of Correspondence. To the lower classes of the Germanies, including those of them who adhered to the CoCs, Mike Stearns was the "prince of Germany." The leadership of the CoCs did not demur publicly. But, more and more, they were beginning to wonder. Might the day come when they would be calling him "the traitor of Germany?"

  Gretchen let none of those inner worries show on her face, though, as she moved through the crowded streets of Magdeburg.

  "Stop looking nervous," she said quietly to Tata, walking at her side.

  The girl grimaced a little. "I've never seen so many people. And it's so crowded."

  Actually, it wasn't very crowded—for her and Gretchen. As packed with people as the streets were, on such a fine midsummer day, they gave way for Gretchen and her entourage. Willingly, too, not because they were worried the guards might get rough. Still, even for a girl from a small city like Mainz, Magdeburg would be startling. No city in the Germanies was growing as rapidly as Magdeburg. Its population was still quite a bit less than Paris or London's, but it was already more than twice that of the next largest German city, Hamburg.

  "It doesn't matter what the reason is," said Gretchen. "Never look nervous. Our enemies might be watching."

  Spartacus and Achterhof were waiting for her in one of the back rooms of the city's central Freedom Arches. This building had served for almost a year as the more-or-less official headquarters for the Committees of Correspondence—everywhere, not simply in Magdeburg. It would no doubt retain that position, even though Gretchen's new apartment building would sometimes double as an informal headquarters.

  The building was located next door to Magdeburg's original Freedom Arches, which was still in operation and which still resembled a tavern. The new Freedom Arches, on the other hand . . .

  The first time Melissa Mailey laid eyes on the thing, she'd rolled her eyes. "Oh, swell. It's a cross between Chateau d'If and the Lubyanka. Who was the architect? Frank Lloyd Rack? Mies van der Thumbscrews?"

  When informed that the architect had actually been a city employee and one of the mayor's top assistants, she'd been a little dumbfounded. Why would a proper gentleman like Otto Gericke lend his assistance to such a project?

  She'd asked Gericke herself, three days later, at one of the soirees hosted by Mary Simpson.

  "You see the CoCs as a force for revolution, Melissa. Which you mostly support, albeit with some reservations. But I am in charge of a city—the largest, fastest growing and most dynamic city in the Germanies. In some respects, in the entire world. And from my standpoint, the Magdeburg Committee of Correspondence is a stabilizing force. I hate to think what the situation with disease and crime would be, were it not for the CoC patrols. Not to mention—I am first and foremost a scientist, don't forget—that they have an almost mystical faith in science and invariably support any initiative the city undertakes for scientific education and progress."

  She must have had a surprised look on her face. He'd gotten a wry smile. "Melissa, I am often at political loggerheads with the Committe
es of Correspondence. By and large, however, I think they are a force for good. And regardless of anything else—whatever may be the delusions of the Crown Loyalist party—they cannot be ignored or shuffled aside. That being so, I think it is entirely in my interest to give them institutional validity. Yes, I know that from a purely architectural standpoint that new headquarters of theirs is a blocky monstrosity. But it helps them feel secure, and I find a secure CoC quite a bit easier to deal with than one which is edgy and apprehensive."

  Gericke had shaken his head. "However politically radical you Americans may be in some respects, Melissa, you enjoyed a sheltered life as a people. There was nothing in your history equivalent to the aftermath of the Peasant War, when the aristocracy butchered a hundred thousand farmers after their rebellion was defeated. That was only a century ago. Many of those people sitting right now in the CoC headquarters on October 7th Avenue are the direct descendants of those slaughtered folk. If you were to inquire among the members of the Ram Rebellion—some of whose representatives you can now also find in that same building—the number would be even higher. It would not take much of a provocation for the CoC in Magdeburg to launch a violent uprising. That uprising would succeed rapidly here in the city, be sure of it. Whether it would spread across the USE or be crushed is harder to gauge because there are so many variables involved. But either way, it would be a bloody business. I'd just as soon avoid it, if we can."

  He hadn't sounded very optimistic.

  The meeting room was on the second floor, where most of the smaller meeting rooms were located, as well as the offices of the city's CoC. The big assembly hall was on the first floor, along with the offices of various organizations affiliated to the CoC. Those included the city's trade unions as well as the regional and national trade union federations; the sanitation commission; credit unions; life and health insurance cooperatives; the retirement insurance association. The smallest office held the just-launched employment insurance cooperative.