Legal folderol, it could be argued. Hadn’t Mike himself said publicly that what defined a civil war was the collapse of the rule of law?
Yes, he had. But defining something was not the same as advocating it. From the beginning, his side in this civil war had positioned itself to be the champion of law and proper procedure, and had forced Oxenstierna into the position of being the one overturning the rule of law. That might not count for much in the ranks of Oxenstierna’s diehard supporters—it certainly didn’t count for much in the minds of diehard CoC members—but it did matter to wide swaths of the German populace. So far, with very few exceptions, the town militias had stayed out of the fight. So had the provincial armies. Mike wanted to keep it that way.
Rest assured that the Third Division’s loyalty to the Vasa dynasty is not in question. Our quarrel is not with you or with your father. It is with the usurper Oxenstierna and his minions.
“That’s done too, sir.”
“Here’s the second transmission to Magdeburg.”
The Third Division commends the prudent actions of the legal representatives of the legitimate parliament, who have remained at their posts in the nation’s legitimate capital of Magdeburg. We give those legal members of parliament the same assurances we give the crown.
There followed a laundry list of praises heaped upon just about everybody who’d had the good sense to stay on the sidelines—not just the parliament members in Magdeburg but the regional heads of state, the mayors and councils of the imperial cities, town militias, etc., etc., etc. This list was even longer than the denunciations of Oxenstierna.
When he was done, Jimmy flexed his fingers for a few seconds. He was sending the transmissions in Morse code as well as vocally. Most of the USE’s radios were still limited to Morse code.
“Okay, sir. What’s next?”
“We’re almost done. This is the final one. It’s a transmission to General Banér.”
To Johan Banér, general in command of the Swedish army besieging Dresden
From Michael Stearns, major general in command of the USE Army Third Division
Your assault on Dresden is illegal, immoral, treasonous, and ungodly.
Mike thought the “ungodly” part was a nice touch. Being an agnostic himself, he had no idea how you’d parse the theology involved. But the Germanies were crawling with theologians. Within twenty-four hours of the transmission there’d probably be at least two competing and hostile schools of doctrine. Within forty-eight hours, charges of heresy were sure to be thrown about.
You have forty-eight hours to remove your troops from the siege lines around Dresden. Seventy-two hours after that, your troops must have departed Saxony and returned to the Oberpfalz, where you can employ them to fight Bavarian invaders instead of murdering German civilians.
I will expect an answer within twenty-four hours indicating your agreement to these conditions. Failing such an answer, I propose to move immediately upon your works.
The last clause was swiped from Ulysses Grant’s terms at Fort Donelson, if he remembered his history properly. Mike thought the words had a nice ring to them.
The entire message was designed to make Banér blow his stack. There was no chance the Swedish general would agree to end the siege of Dresden, no matter how Mike put the matter. So he figured he might as well see if he could so enrage the man—Banér’s temper was notorious—that he’d make some mistakes.
There was probably some term derived from Latin to describe the tactic in military parlance. Street kids playing a pick-up basketball game would call it “trash talk.” Mike had used the same term in his boxing days.
You never knew. Sometimes it worked.
“Anything else, sir?” Jimmy asked.
“No,” he said. “I think that will do.”
Chapter 39
Swedish army siege lines, outside Dresden
“I’ll kill him!” Johan Banér roared. “I’ll kill him!”
The Swedish general had already torn the message to shreds. Now he picked up the stool he’d been sitting on when he was handed the message and smashed it down on the writing desk. If his adjutant hadn’t been sensible enough to retreat as soon as he’d handed over the radio slip, his own skull would probably have been the stool’s target.
Banér was not a particularly large man, but he was quite powerful. That blow and the ones that followed with the leg of the shattered stool that remained in his fist were enough to reduce the desk to firewood.
“I’ll fucking kill him!”
Chapter 40
Dresden, capital of Saxony
Eric and Tata found Gretchen Richter standing in the tallest tower of the Residenzschloss, looking out over the city walls toward the Swedish camp fires. They’d gone in search of her to discover what preparations she wanted made, now that they knew the Third Division was coming.
Night had fallen and it was quite dark in the tower, with only one small lamp to provide light. So it took them a while before they realized that Gretchen had been crying. No longer—but the tear-tracks were still quite visible.
Krenz was dumbfounded. He’d never once imagined Richter with tears in her eyes.
Tata went to her side. Gretchen was gripping the rail with both hands. Tata placed a hand over hers and gave it a little squeeze. “It’s nice when people don’t disappoint you.”
“I wondered,” Eric heard Gretchen whisper. “For years, I wondered.”
It took Krenz perhaps a minute before he figured it out. At which point he was even more dumbfounded.
She’d wondered about the general?
Dear God in Heaven.
One of the letters Eric had gotten from Thorsten Engler after he was wounded at Zwenkau described the execution of twenty soldiers who’d been caught committing atrocities after the Third Division took the Polish town of Świebodzin. Thorsten’s volley gun battery had been given that assignment.
Till the day I die, I’ll never forget seeing those men tied to a fence being torn apart by a hail of bullets, Thorsten had written him. But that’s not what I have nightmares about, Eric. It was the look on the general’s face when he gave the order. A cold, pitiless rage that seemed to have no bottom at all.
Gretchen wiped her nose with a sleeve. “Always I wondered,” she whispered again.
Eric looked out over the Swedish campfires.
Banér was dead. He was already fucking dead. He just didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 41
Magdeburg, central Germany
Capital of the United States of Europe
Rebecca looked at the little stack of radio messages on her desk, wondering if she should read them again.
That was silly, though. By now, she practically had them memorized. Her desire to do so was just an emotional reflex.
Sepharad came into the room, with her brother Baruch in tow.
“Barry wants to know when Daddy’s coming home.”
Despite the tension of the moment, Rebecca had to fight down a smile. For whatever subtle reasons lurked in a child’s developing mind, Sepharad made it a point to pose as the detached and cool-headed one—quite unlike her emotional brother, full of needs and anxieties. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was the one who’d written the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in the universe her father had come from.
“Soon, I think, children. Soon.”
The answer was accurate, as far as it went. Michael would come home soon. If he came home at all. But Rebecca saw no reason to inflict three-year-old children with that caveat.
Within an hour after dawn the next morning, the town house was filled with anxious and needy politicians. Most of them, in a way, wanting the answer to the same question. Except in their case the question was when will the boss be coming home? Michael had been such a dominant figure in their political movement that, at least in a crisis, most of them felt a bit lost without him.
Constantin Ableidinger was one of the exceptions, thankfully. Re
becca was finding his outsized presence a great help this morning.
“Of course he decided to march on Dresden, Albert!” the Franconian was booming at Hamburg’s mayor. “Did you think we could maintain this half-baked civil war forever? Everyone—on both sides; no, on all sides!—is starting to get exhausted. Let this go on for too long and the nation will wind up siding with the damn Swede by default. If you ask me, the general chose the perfect moment to make his move. Right on the heels of Kristina and Ulrik’s arrival in the capital. He has the wind of legitimacy in his sails now!”
Rebecca thought that was a rather grotesque metaphor, but she agreed with Ableidinger’s underlying point. The nation was starting to get frayed by the constant uncertainty.
And now, as he had so many times over the past few years, the Prince of Germany was taking the decisive steps to resolve the crisis. That decisiveness alone would pull millions of the nation’s inhabitants toward him, regardless of what they might think of the specific merits of his political program.
In the royal palace not far away, another child was feeling anxious.
“What should we do, Ulrik?” asked Kristina. The girl was almost literally dancing up and down, with a sheaf of radio messages clutched in her little fist.
“We do nothing, Kristina.” Ulrik tried to figure out the best way to explain the matter. Then, as he had done so many times before, came to the conclusion that with Kristina it was best to just give her the same explanation he’d give an adult. An intelligent adult. She wouldn’t quite understand, perhaps, but she’d know she wasn’t being condescended to—which invariably threw her into a fury.
“Your role as the monarch in this situation is to be, not to do.” He pointed to the messages she was holding. “That’s why General Stearns was careful to stipulate his loyalty to the crown.”
Kristina frowned, while she thought it through. After a while, she sighed.
“I’d rather be doing something,” she complained. “I’m feeling nervous. And I don’t like it. It’s always better if I’m doing something.”
Caroline Platzer cleared her throat. Kristina’s mentor/confidant/governess was sitting on a nearby divan. She and Baldur Norddahl had finally arrived in Magdeburg a few days ago, having taken much slower means of transportation from Luebeck.
Ulrik gave her a quick, appreciative glance. “In that case, Princess, I think you should visit your subjects,” he said. “They’ll be feeling nervous today as well.”
Now, Kristina did start literally jumping up and down. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! That’s a wonderful idea, Ulrik! Where should we go first?”
Had it been necessary, Ulrik would have guided her to the right destination. But it wasn’t. Whether due to innate Vasa political instinct or simply childish enthusiasm, Kristina settled on the correct answer within seconds.
So, off they went. And if there was anyone in Magdeburg on that cold, clear day in February of 1636 who thought it was odd to see a large contingent of Marines in very fancy uniforms escorting the nation’s princess into the city’s central Freedom Arches, they said nothing about it.
The Marines probably thought it was odd—especially when Kristina told them to take off their shakos (“against sanitary regulations when working in a kitchen”) so they could help her with the cooking.
She even dragooned Ulrik and Baldur into helping her with the cooking. And Caroline, of course.
Platzer seemed quite at home in a kitchen, but Ulrik was well-nigh useless. He couldn’t recall ever cooking a meal in his entire life, much less preparing meals for dozens of customers. (Which soon became hundreds of customers, as the word spread.)
Baldur wasn’t much better. “They don’t have any salted fish,” he complained. Norwegians had certain definite limits.
But their skills didn’t matter. Neither did Kristina’s, which weren’t really any better despite the girl’s own delusions. Magdeburg’s central Freedom Arches was the premier such establishment in the whole of the United States of Europe. Its kitchen was huge, its cooking staff large and very experienced. They had no trouble making up for the royal errors.
The customers in the large eating rooms didn’t care in the least. They weren’t flocking to the place this morning to ingest food, they were flocking to ingest symbols.
Darmstadt, Province of the Main
By noon, the entire city council had gathered at the Rathaus. So had every guildmaster in the city and the leading figures of every prominent wealthy family. The tavern in the basement was packed.
The mayor read through all the radio messages again, for the benefit of the late arrivals. When he was finished, there was silence for perhaps ten seconds. Then the head of the city militia drained his stein and slammed it down on the table. Almost hard enough to break the thick glass. As it was, everyone sitting at that table jumped in their seats a little.
“Well, fuck!” he exclaimed.
One of the city councilmen sitting at the mayor’s table gave him a sour look. “Oh, give it up, Gerlach. It’s over.”
The militia commander scowled at him. “He’ll probably get beaten. He’s an amateur. Banér is as good as they come.”
“Banér is a Swedish pig,” said the master of the coopers’ guild. “Besides, what difference does it make? Listen to them out there.”
Even through the thick walls of the Rathaus, the chants of the crowd marching through the streets outside were quite audible.
Prince of Germany! Prince of Germany!
“All of my apprentices are out there,” continued the guildmaster. “So is every single one of my journeymen except Ehrlichmann, and the only reason he’s still at home is because he’s sick. Even if Stearns loses and Banér kills him, he just becomes the national martyr. Remember how many damn streets and squares they named after Hans Richter, after he got killed? How many do you think they’ll name after the Prince?”
He took a pull from his own stein. “Gunther’s right. It’s over.”
There was silence again, for a moment.
“Well, fuck,” said the militia commander. But his tone was one of resignation now, not anger.
Augsburg, one of the USE’s seven independent imperial cities
As ever, the commander of Augsburg’s militia had a very different viewpoint from his counterpart in Darmstadt.
“The rest of you can do as you like,” he said to the city council. His gaze swept around the table, his lip curled in a sneer.
“I’m going out there to join the parade.” He pointed toward a window. The sounds of the celebration outside came right through, closed or not.
Prince of Germany! Prince of Germany!
“And I’m taking the whole militia with me. Me and my boys are sick of the damn Swedes.”
And off he went.
After a while, one of the council members stood up.
“I’m sick of them too, now that I think about it.”
And off he went.
After a while longer, Jeremias Jacob Stenglin rose from his own chair. “Come on, fellows.” The head of the city council headed for the door. “The way people have their tempers up, if we don’t show we’ll never get elected to anything again. Under any kind of franchise.”
A tavern in Melsungen, in the province of Hesse-Kassel
“Here’s to the health of our landgravine!” shouted one of the revelers, holding up his stein of beer. “Long may she reign!”
The tavern was full, as it often was on a winter’s eve. Not a single stein failed to come up to join the toast.
Another reveler stood up, hoisting his stein. “And here’s to the Prince of Germany! May he whip that Swede like a cur!”
Not a single stein failed to come up to join that toast either. Or the seven that followed it, each succeeding one wishing a worse fate still upon Johan Banér. By the eighth toast, the revelers had him flayed, drawn, quartered, fed to hogs—and the hogs were dying of poison.
A tavern on the coast of the Pomeranian Bay
The fisherman
sat down at the table in the corner where his shipmates were waiting. “Believe it or not, there’s someone who admits to voting against the Prince.”
The fisherman’s two companions gave him a skeptical look. “Who?” asked one, as he lifted his stein. “Josias, the village idiot?”
The fisherman who’d made the claim shook his head. “No. It’s old Margarete, the baker’s widow.”
His two companions frowned.
“The Prince shouldn’t have let women have the vote,” said one.
The other nodded. “Yah. I almost didn’t vote for him myself, because of that.”
Leipzig
General Hans Georg von Arnim read through the message again. That was just to give himself time to think, not because he had any trouble understanding it. Chancellor Oxenstierna had been brief, blunt, very clear—and quite obviously irate.
“I thought the radio was broken,” he said.
The adjutant who’d brought him the message from Berlin shook his head. “No, sir. It’s working properly.”
“I thought the radio was broken,” von Arnim repeated.
The general’s adjutants were not chosen for being stupid. It didn’t take Captain Pfaff more than three seconds before the head-shake became a nod.
“Why, yes, it is, General. The operator tells me it’ll take days to fix.”
“At least a week, I think.”
“Yes, a week.”
“See to it, Captain.”
After Pfaff left, von Arnim moved to the fireplace. His servants had a big fire going, which was quite pleasant on such a cold day.
It made a handy incinerator, too. The message was gone in seconds.
Oxenstierna would have sent a courier, of course. No one except up-timers—and not all that many of them—relied entirely on the new radios. But it would take a courier days to make it here from Berlin, this time of year. The recent storm had left the roads filled with snow. Such as they were, in benighted Brandenburg.