"We have to consider the problems presented by the other Upper Palatine territories, as well, especially Leuchtenberg. Duke Maximilian's brother is married to the sister of the landgrave of Leuchtenberg. Her brother and nephews fled into Bavaria when we came through on our way to Regensburg."
Banér snorted. "Of course we fucking occupied the whole region! There's really no practical way to conquer part of the squares on a game board and pass by the others."
Duke Ernst ignored him and looked at Böcler. "For your notes. Wolfgang Wilhelm is the duke of Pfalz-Neuburg. He married Duke Maximilian's sister in 1613 and converted to Catholicism in the expedient hope that it would enhance his maternal inheritance expectations in Jülich and Cleves. He's been in Düsseldorf for years now. For our purposes, even though his Bavarian duchess has been dead for five years and he has remarried, he's still basically Maximilian's client. Especially since he's got the Bavarian duke's brother, Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne, looking over his shoulder."
The young secretary nodded gratefully. He was learning fast, but he still was nowhere as close to being on top of the political developments of the past quarter century as his employer, who had been born to the job.
Duke Ernst was still dictating. "Wolfgang Wilhelm, seems, for the moment, to have no immediate intentions of undertaking military action to reclaim those parts of his Neuburg lands that are up here, north of the Danube, intermixed with those of the Upper Palatinate. That's probably because Gustav's main theater of military operation this spring and summer will be against the League of Ostend in the north and thus uncomfortably close to Wolfgang's lands on the lower Rhine and Düsseldorf itself. However, his local administrators are still in place in the Neuburg lands south of the Danube and he has filed a complaint against us with the Imperial Supreme Court on grounds that we have 'unjustifiably dispossessed' him of the north-Danubian lands that interpenetrate those of the Upper Palatinate."
Böcler mentally thanked his father for making him learn shorthand, because Duke Ernst wasn't even pausing between sentences.
"And, I expect, whether the acknowledged emperor of the Germanies be Swedish or Austrian, Lutheran or Catholic, in Magdeburg or Vienna, the imperial chamber court will hear the case. But what is immediately important to us as we sit in Amberg is that most certainly, given the slightest chance, Duke Maximilian will seize upon Wolfgang Wilhelm's grievances as an excuse to invade the Upper Palatinate, citing noble defense of the unjustly dispossessed as the casus belli of a just war."
Banér chimed in. "You can add to your notes that Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm of Pfalz-Neuburg is a son of a bitch—or would be, if his mother hadn't been a perfectly respectable woman. Still, he qualifies as a son of a bitch even though his mother was impeccably virtuous. His character has the kind of son-of-a-bitchiness that overrides such minor impediments. He—"
"What do you think of his brothers—the Lutheran dukes of the Junge-Pfalz? August at Sulzbach—well, he died a couple of years ago, so it's his widow as regent—and Johann Friedrich at Hilpoltstein?" Duke Ernst interrupted Banér's spiel with some apparently genuine curiosity. These cadets of the Pfalz-Neuburg ruling house held appanages, independently-administered lands that checkerboarded with those of the Upper Palatinate. Böcler knew that he dealt with them, or, at least, with their officials, on an almost daily basis.
"Honestly?" Banér asked. "I think that the 'ruling high nobility' of all of these crappy bits and pieces of the Palatinate would be a lot improved if someone did to them what the kings of Sweden did to their own nobility two generations ago. Namely, chop off their shitting heads. And keep chopping until the ones left alive become useful servants of the crown instead of hopped-up would-be-independent rulers. The Danes started that bloodbath method, I'll admit, the fucking bastards. They had all four of my great-grandfathers killed for being Swedish patriots. If I have anything to say about the peace settlement after the war, I'd be sending plenty of Danes to the chopping block, believe you me."
The general was in full tirade mode, now. Obviously recognizing the signs, Duke Ernst just settled back in his chair. There'd be no way to interrupt him at this point, until the choleric fellow got it all out.
"But whether it was shithead Danes who came up with the idea or not, it's still a good idea. Our native Vasa dynasty—my kinsmen, mind you—later had all sorts of petty kinglets and would-be kinglets and the like nicely shortened. You herd a hundred or so of these miserable Palatine Freiherren to me and I'll do you the same favor. Turn this running asshole of a place into something that looks like a country instead of this little mini-state here and that little mini-state there."
"Oh," Duke Ernst said. His tone was carefully non-committal.
Böcler had been taking shorthand "a mile a minute" as the up-timers put it. After the, "Oh," there was a pause, during which his mind wandered. He wished he knew what Duke Ernst was thinking. Although the Wettin family were natives of Thuringia and Saxony rather than of the Palatinate, there was little doubt in Böcler's mind that it probably fell into Banér's category of should-be-choppees. Particularly Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, of course, given that he was a traitor who had taken service with the French.
But the other Saxe-Weimar brothers were, more or less voluntarily, serving Gustavus II Adolphus because he appeared to offer the best option available to them as former Protestant rulers. Wilhelm had even abdicated his title as duke and become plain Wilhelm Wettin in order to run for the House of Commons in the USE's new Parliament. Even so, they were still nobles by up-bringing and temperament. This was always clear to Böcler, considering that he himself certainly was not.
While Wilhelm and Ernst had agreed rather gracefully when the up-timers "slid" Saxe-Weimar itself into the New United States, Wilhelm had been more than compensated—from the gritty standpoint of economics—by Gustav's giving him the Eichsfeld to administer. Ernst, through his long-standing betrothal to the little heiress of Saxe-Altenburg, had prospects for a prosperous future as well, presuming that she survived for a few more years and reached marriageable age. Plus, their brother Albrecht had stayed home to cultivate their remaining economic interests and private property in what had once been an independent Saxe-Weimar.
"Oh," the duke said again. Whatever he might have been thinking after Banér's diatribe, he introduced a change of subject-matter. "You asked for this special meeting," he said. "What is the topic?"
Böcler snapped to attention, pencil at the ready.
"I want to take Ingolstadt," Banér said baldly. "Letting the Bavarians keep a garrisoned fortress on the north bank of the Danube is a boil on our rump. And a danger to Horn's flank in Swabia. Which means that it's a threat to the king. I'm sick of it. And my men damned well need something more to do. I'm tired of having half my available men just sitting there, investing it. That bridge, the way the piers are built, is practically indestructible. Even when we manage to get rid of the planking temporarily—which , believe me, is not easy—we know perfectly well that it's being re-provisioned almost every night by those fleets of little boats that run through those multiple channels of the river to the south. And if you want us to keep the Bavarians off Wallenstein's back and make sure Maximilian is too busy to invade the Upper Palatinate this summer, a major campaign at Ingolstadt will give them something else to think about—actually pull Max's troops to the west, probably. A fair number of them, anyway."
"I am sure," Duke Ernst said judiciously, "that the fact that we hold Regensburg is just as much of an irritant to the Bavarians as their possession of Ingolstadt is to us."
Banér glared. He was not by temperament favorably inclined toward an even-handed, fair-minded assessment of the rights and wrongs of the military situation. From his standpoint, the ideal situation would be for Sweden to have every military stronghold in the Germanies firmly within its grasp.
"If you take all the rest of your regulars—or most of them—to Ingolstadt, what do I do about the rest of the borders?" asked the duke. "I'm still not so sur
e that we were smart to take that neck of hill and forest running down from Regensburg to Passau, just because it was north of the Danube and just because we could, right then, since the Bavarians were in full retreat after we took Regensburg. Admittedly, it's one of the few things that we've done that actually helps Wallenstein—giving him a fairly secure southwestern border against the USE rather than against the Bavarians as far down as Passau. But it's not an easy place to patrol. Plus the whole river, from Donauwörth to Passau. That's two hundred fifty miles by itself. Not counting the twists and turns."
Duke Ernst assumed a righteous expression—one that came to him rather easily because of extensive practice.
Banér's countering expression was closer to "Gotcha!"
"Hill and forest, you say? Then use your oh-so-valuable hillbillies and foresters. River bank, you say? Then use your precious river rats and their barges. Don't look so sanctimoniously at me, Duke. I know what you've been doing, training whole squads of non-soldiers to patrol the regions they know best. And you've been doing it because you fucking well believe that the first chance I have, I'm going to pull out of this twice-damned, thrice-cursed, totally-abandoned-by-God place and get my men back to my king and his war in the Baltic, which is where I belong and where I might, just might, have a chance to get a fucking promotion. Which is what I am going to do. For a general, it is a thoroughly career-destroying move to be stuck in a backwater where nothing is going boom. Be grateful that I'm solving Ingolstadt for you first."
Banér drained his tankard and stood up without the regent's permission.
Duke Ernst was used to that.
The general slammed the door on his way out.
Duke Ernst was used to that, too.
As Böcler duly noted in the margin. Of course, the clean copies of the minutes that he submitted to the duke never included his marginal notes.
Chapter 8
Idea Boni Principis
Duke Ernst rested his forehead upon his hands. Being a Lutheran, he did not believe in purgatory. He did, however, suspect that purgatory would not have been a necessity for even a Catholic, presuming that said Catholic was upright and God-fearing otherwise than in the matter of being a Papist, who was assigned to work with Johan Banér. Banér provided purgatory on earth.
Nonetheless, he admonished himself, he could not let his distaste for the man impede him from performing his duties. He had a job to do. Clearly, with young Karl Ludwig being a minor, there had to be a regency. The USE had certainly not wanted to see Ferdinand II establish an imperial regency for the boy. Which he might have tried, if he could have persuaded Don Fernando to transfer custody when he first captured the Winter King's widow and children.
But, worse, Don Fernando might try some version what the Spanish had done to William the Silent's oldest son. They had abducted him to Spain when he was fourteen, converted him to Catholicism, and kept him, basically, as a hostage against his father and brothers for fifty years. Only the mercy of God had granted that his marriage had been sterile—Fredrik Hendrik did not, right now, need to contend with Spanish-sponsored claimants from a senior line of the House of Orange.
If Don Fernando tried hard enough, with tutors, with the insidiously seductive plays and spectacles, with gestures of friendship, feigned or genuine, Karl Ludwig, at sixteen, might actually become a convert to Papistry. God preserve us all. Then how could the king reasonably refuse to reinstate him in his lands?
So, Gustav Adolf had sent him here, telling him to work with the cadet, Protestant, counts of Pfalz-Neuberg to set up a system that would be terribly hard for a hot-headed young count Palatine to mess with if the Spanish and imperials succeeded in converting Karl Ludwig and in a few years sent him to claim his hereditary property.
Lifting his head, he turned. "Just what we don't need," he muttered to Böcler. "A young bigot on the model of Maximilian or Ferdinand II, planted on the north bank of the Danube and both banks of the Rhine."
Böcler seriously wished that he had been able to take notes on whatever train of thought that had led Duke Ernst to that comment. But now the duke was saying, in his normal tone of voice, "Please prepare a memorandum for General Banér, reminding him that John George of Saxony has employed Heinrich Holk. If John George should, for some reason, decide to send Holk's men south toward us, rather than east toward Bohemia, the general and his regular troops will have plenty to do. Especially if, at the same time, Maximilian should decide to come north or Ferdinand should decide to come west."
Then he spoke rather shortly. "Find Zincgref," he ordered.
* * * *
After a half-dozen false starts—Julius Wilhelm Zincgref was not in his own apartments, not in the breakfast room, had not been seen by the clerical staff, and the like—Böcler finally found him in the exercise room, watching Erik Haakansson Hand work out.
Zincgref spent a fair amount of his time doing that. Hand, or more precisely, Hand's mother, was a cousin of the king of Sweden. Illegitimate, to be sure, an acknowledged daughter of Eric XIV by one of his mistresses. Zincgref, who harbored a passionate desire to produce a best selling neo-Latin epic poem glorifying the Lion of the North, spent a great deal of time trying to learn more about the omens of greatness that must have clustered around the monarch in childhood.
Hand couldn't seem to think of many. He was only a year or so older than the king, about forty, so his memories of the glorious ruler's infancy were, not surprisingly, rather vague. He had grown up in Germany as a page in the court of one of the dukes Mecklenburg; then learned his trade in the lifeguard regiment of Maurice of Nassau; then started as a lieutenant in the Smålands infantry in 1615. Captain in 1617; major in 1628; colonel of the Östergötland infantry in 1628. In 1631, he had been with the king at Breitenfeld and at the crossing of the Lech; at Alte Veste, he had commanded a full brigade, the Östgöta, Jönköping, and Skaraborg regiments, against Wallenstein. He had been severely wounded, left behind as dead or dying, in the fall of 1632 when the Swedes swept past Ingolstadt, into the Upper Palatinate, in pursuit of the Bavarians.
He had survived. He spent most of his free time, when he wasn't training the men who were training and would train the Upper Palatinate's local militias, in the exercise rooms, determined to regain as much function as possible. It seemed unlikely that he would serve his king in the field again. Today he was talking to Zincgref about his family and about service: his brother Knut, killed in Russia in 1614; his brother Arvid, killed in action at Riga, in Latvia, in 1621. His brother Jan was still alive, though, as were his three brothers-in-law.
"They haven't managed to do us in yet," Hand was saying.
Böcler had been unable to determine, thus far, whether Hand regarded Zincgref's persistent questioning as a nuisance or a way to pass the time. Surely, Böcler thought, it could not be interesting to spend hour after hour with one's right hand in a grip attached to a heavy bar, suspended from the ceiling on chains, which one was trying to move back and forth. But the curve of the bar, marked upon the wall, was longer this morning that it had been last week. In pulling it toward his chest, Hand had gained an inch; in pushing it away, nearly two. Some day, perhaps, the colonel would be able to straighten his right arm again.
* * * *
While his secretary was out of the room in search of the elusive Zincgref, Duke Ernst crossed his arms on the table and put his head down. He had already been up for six hours, which equaled the number of hours that he had slept the night before.
There was a lot to do in the Upper Palatinate after a dozen years of war and devastation. He was quite prepared to do it: to reorganize, to reconstruct, to locate settlers for abandoned lands and try to find businessmen who were willing to invest in a place that had proved to offer a very chancy return. He would not do it with the political flair of his brother Wilhelm, perhaps, but he was willing to do it. In fact, he rather enjoyed the challenge of trying to create a model administrative system, without having to deal with co-regents. He and his brothers had go
verned Saxe-Weimar as a committee.
Even without an outright military invasion going on, he spent a lot of time thinking about how he would cope if Banér and his army weren't there. Basically, Duke Ernst was of the opinion that General Banér tended to be too impatient. The nature of the war, thus far, was such that if a man stayed in one place, particularly in a strategically located place such as the Upper Palatinate, the war would come and find him. He thought that he might be able to manage to hold, at least. Not with the genius of his brother Bernhard—damn his arrogance and ambition—but to hold, long enough for somebody else to come to the rescue. That would have to do. He was willing to try.
His head was pillowed on the printed edition of the full transcript of the minutes of the Rudolstadt Colloquy. He had read it, all of it, several times, along with the C.F.W. Walther speech. The king of Sweden expected him to turn a province full of cynics— people who under the provisions of cuius regio hadn't had a full generation as Catholic, Calvinist, or Lutheran for the past century—back into devout Lutherans. The Peace of Augsburg, made between the Holy Roman Emperor and the German princes in 1555, had established the right of the ruler in each principality of the Germanies to determine the religion of his subjects—well, within the limits of whether that religion would be Catholic or Lutheran. Calvinism had not been included, much less the sectarians. Unquestionably, in the eighty years since then, the rulers of the Palatinate had changed their minds more than most, and several had, contrary to the 1555 agreement, become Calvinists and determined that their subjects should be Calvinist as well.
In the abstract, it would be desirable for all the subjects and residents of the Upper Palatinate to be Lutheran, of course. Duke Ernst had no doubt of that. Lutheranism was right, and the doctrinal positions of other faiths, when they differed from Lutheranism, were wrong. The basic principle was quite clear to him. But accomplishing Gustav Adolf's goal was simply impossible.