The air force commander cocked an eyebrow and started reading the message. It wasn’t very long. By the time he got to the end, his relaxed half-slouch had vanished and he was sitting up straight on the edge of his chair.
“Jesus. H. Christ.” He looked up at Simpson. “I assume there’s no chance this is a fake?”
The admiral shook his head. “The prince had his own codes, which he used. I can’t see how anyone else could have gotten them, since I happen to know—he told me—that he was committing them to memory so there’d be no written copy anywhere except in our records. And who would want to fake such a message anyway? The only people I can think of who’d want to meddle in this would hardly be sending that message.”
Jesse looked back down at the little sheet and then handed it back to the admiral. “True enough. But…What the hell is she playing at?”
“I think you’re using the wrong pronoun, for starters. I’d be very surprised if the guiding mind behind this isn’t Prince Ulrik’s.” Before Jesse could say anything, Simpson made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure he’s not coercing the girl in any way. He wouldn’t need to. He’s very persuasive and by now she’s probably got a lot of faith in him.”
The colonel grunted. “Not to mention that she’s what they call ‘spirited’ herself.” He ran fingers through his short hair, which was starting to thin quite a bit in front. It was getting gray, too—and would probably be a lot grayer before this was all finished. Simpson’s own hair was turning white.
“What do you think he’s up to, then?”
Simpson looked out the window. His office was on the third floor of the navy’s headquarters building, so he had a good view of the city’s port. It was not what anyone would call a scenic vista, but the harbor was always busy and there was usually something of interest to watch. For the few seconds it usually took him to get his thoughts in order, anyway.
“I spent a fair amount of time in discussions with that young man during the Congress of Copenhagen, Jesse. He plays it very close to the chest, but I’m pretty sure he’s following the general line of reasoning that Scaglia’s been developing in the Netherlands.”
“Who?”
“Alessandro Scaglia. He’s a former Savoyard diplomat who’s now in Brussels working for Archduchess Isabella. He advocates a political policy he calls ‘the soft landing.’ His argument is that the Ring of Fire proves that some sort of democratic political system is inevitable in Europe’s nations, and so fighting to preserve monarchical rule and aristocratic privilege is pointless as well as wrong-headed. At the same time, given the existing realities and what he sees as the excesses that democracy led to in our universe—he’s not very fond of the Committees of Correspondence in this one, either—he thinks a transition period is necessary, during which time ruling monarchs gradually cede their power to democratic institutions of one kind or another. To put it another way, he advocates constitutional monarchy, with the emphasis shifting over time from ‘monarchy’ to ‘constitutional.’ ”
“Is he really that important? I’ve never heard of the guy.”
Simpson tried to figure out how to respond. It would be rude to point out that Colonel Wood rarely read any political treatises, and none at all written by contemporary down-timers. The admiral, on the other hand, had compiled quite an extensive library of such writings. His wife Mary was an even more assiduous student of the subject.
“Well, he keeps a low public profile. But he has the ear of the king in the Netherlands, I’m sure of that, as well as the queen. And since Maria Anna is the sister of Emperor Ferdinand III of Austria and Hungary—they’re reported to be quite close, too—I’d be surprised if Scaglia isn’t getting a hearing from that branch of the Habsburgs as well.”
He picked up the radio message and gave it a little shake. “The point being that this request—proposal, whatever you want to call it—has all the earmarks of a maneuver in that direction. A very bold maneuver, and if Ulrik pulls it off probably a brilliant one.”
Jesse frowned. “John, I’m a thick-headed flyboy. You’re leaving me behind in the dust.”
“Jesse, you know and I know that the USE is on the brink of a constitutional crisis.”
“That’s putting it mildly. The term ‘civil war’ comes to mind also.”
The admiral grimaced. “Let’s hope we can avoid that. But whether we can or not, there’s no question the domestic situation is going to erupt. What then happens if Princess Kristina—who is the heir to the USE throne, even if she is only eight years old—decides to side with the…what to call them? Plebeians, let’s say.”
The air force colonel shook his head. “I’m still in a cloud of dust. How does coming here to Luebeck put her on the side of the lower classes? I presume that’s what you mean by ‘plebeians.’ ”
“Oh, I doubt very much if she—or Ulrik, more to the point—plans to stay in Luebeck. The city is just a way station, where they can get themselves out of reach of Chancellor Oxenstierna while they figure out their next move. Which, if I’m guessing right, would be as dramatic as you could ask for. If things blow wide open, they’ll go to Magdeburg.”
“Magdeburg? John, if things blow wide open—your phrase, I remind you—then I’d think Magdeburg would be the last place they’d go. For Christ’s sake, the city is a CoC stronghold.”
Simpson just gave him a level stare. After a few seconds, Jesse’s face got a little pale. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Do you really think Ulrik is that much of a daredevil?”
The admiral shrugged. “It’s not actually as risky as it seems. First of all, because the girl is quite popular in Magdeburg. She’s sided with the Magdeburg masses twice already—that’s how it looked to everyone, anyway. Once during the crisis right after the battle of Wismar, and again during Operation Kristallnacht. And while she was living in the city she not only visited the Freedom Arches regularly but on at least one occasion I know about she went into the kitchen and helped with the cooking.” He smiled. “Of course, I doubt the cooks themselves found her that helpful, but you couldn’t ask for better symbolism.”
Again, Jesse ran fingers through his hair. “Okay, I can see that. You said ‘first of all.’ That implies a second reason. What is it?”
“Rebecca Abrabanel. That young woman has a spine of steel, don’t ever think otherwise. If Kristina and Ulrik show up in Magdeburg, Rebecca will make damn good and sure no harm comes to them. Not to mention milking the situation for all it’s worth, politically.”
Jesse cocked his head a little. “That sounds almost admiring, John. None of my business, but I’d have thought you’d be more inclined toward this guy Scaglia’s viewpoint than Becky and Mike’s.”
“In some ways, I am. Back home, I was a rock-ribbed Republican, although I didn’t have much use for the so-called ‘values’ crowd. I certainly didn’t have much use for the fundamentalists.”
Jesse grinned. “Being, as you are, the closest thing Americans have to a High Church Anglican.”
Simpson nodded. “Episcopalian, through and through. And Mary’s a Unitarian, so you can just imagine her opinion of the Bible-thumpers. Still, I’m a conservative, by temperament as well as conviction. I admit I screwed up badly when we first came here, and since then I’ve generally sided with Mike Stearns. But he still often makes me uncomfortable and there’s a lot I agree with in Scaglia’s approach. On the other hand…”
He trailed off into silence.
Jesse cocked his head still further. “Yes?”
The admiral sighed. “I don’t always trust Mike to do the right thing, but I do trust him to do something. And in the situation we’re coming into, I think that willingness on his part to act may be the most critical factor. Whereas I don’t see how Scaglia’s gradualism is going to be much of a guide in the days ahead.”
“To put it in my crude terms, you’ll side with Mike.”
“Not…exactly. I think what’s going to happen is that Prime Minister
Wettin is going to start breaking the law—the spirit of it, for damn sure—and then Mike will toss the rules overboard himself. Depending on the circumstances, I don’t know that I’d take Mike’s side. What I’m sure and certain of, though”—his face got stiff—“is that I’m damned if I’ll do Oxenstierna’s dirty work for him. And Oxenstierna’s the one who driving all this, it’s not Wettin.”
Jesse looked at the radio message lying on the table. “So you’ll tell her to come here.”
“Yes. She’ll be taking the Union of Kalmar across, so there’s no way the Swedish navy could intercept her. I’ll guarantee her the protection of the USE Navy while she’s in Luebeck. I’ve had my legal staff look into the matter, and while there are a lot of gray areas involved, the one thing that’s clear enough is that Wettin has no authority over the heir apparent. And Oxenstierna’s regency—I’m assuming that’s just a matter of time—would only have authority over her on Swedish soil.”
Jesse smiled. “It occurs to me that Luebeck is not Swedish soil.”
“No, it is not.”
“It also occurs to me that if the navy wants to, it can pretty much hold Luebeck against all comers. For a few months, anyway.”
“My own estimate is that we could hold it for at least a year, actually. It’s hard to take a well-defended port city when you don’t control the sea it fronts on. Not impossible, of course, but very difficult. It would help, though…”
Again, he trailed off into silence. Jesse’s smile widened.
“It would help if you had air support. If you needed it. God forbid.”
The admiral nodded solemnly. “God forbid.”
“Well, God doesn’t actually run the air force. I do. And I agree with you that our eight-year-old princess has the right to visit her own domains-to-be whenever she wants to, without interference from busybodies.”
There was silence in the room. After a while, Simpson said: “The Ring of Fire seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 9
Poznan, Poland
The grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania finished studying the enemy lines beyond the city’s fortifications. From his expression, Lukasz Opalinski thought he wasn’t very happy with what he saw. Not so much because of the enemy’s lines, but because of his own. Poznan had begun the process of renovating its walls with the modern trace italienne design, but had not finished it when the USE launched its invasion of Poland. As usual, funds had been short and erratic. King Wladyslaw IV was a spendthrift and the Sejm was feckless.
Stanislaw Koniecpolski turned away, shaking his head. “Lucky for us the Swedish bastards are pre-occupied with their own affairs for the moment.”
Lukasz decided that gave him the opening he’d been waiting for. “As it happens, I just got a letter from Jozef yesterday. He thinks—”
The grand hetman waved a massive hand. “I know what my n-nephew thinks, young Opalinski.” Koniecpolski suffered from stuttering, if he wasn’t careful. “My l-letter from him arrived the day b-before yesterday. I am w-willing to wager that if we m-matched the two letters, they’re word-for-word alm-most the same.”
The stuttering was much worse than usual. That was partly an indication of the grand hetman’s anxiety, and partly—so Lukasz liked to think, anyway—because Koniecpolski had developed a great deal of trust in his young new adjutant. He was less careful about his speech impediment in the presence of close friends, relatives and associates.
The grant hetman tightened his lips and took a slow, deep breath. That was his method for bringing the stuttering under control. It usually worked, as it did this time.
“I might even agree with Jozef,” Koniecpolski continued. “But it’s not my decision, something which Wojtowicz tends to overlook.”
Overlook wasn’t really the right word. Lukasz had had many long political discussions with Jozef Wojtowicz over the past two years. The grand hetman’s bastard nephew was disgusted with the state of Poland’s political affairs. Actually, he’d been fed up with them since he was fourteen years old. But his experience as the grand hetman’s spy in Grantville and later as the head of Koniecpolski’s espionage apparatus in the USE had brought that teenage semi-inchoate discontent into sharp focus. The reason Jozef kept urging courses of action on his powerful uncle was not because he “overlooked” the legal formalities but because he no longer cared much about them and had no confidence at all in either the king or in the Sejm.
Neither did Lukasz, for that matter. He wasn’t prepared to go so far as his older brother Krzysztof, who had become an outright revolutionary and was off somewhere in the Ruthenian lands agitating for the overthrow of Poland’s monarchy and aristocracy. Like Jozef Wojtowicz, Lukasz was still seeking a way to reform the government of the Polish and Lithuanian commonwealth.
But he was growing less and less sanguine about the prospects for doing so, as each month passed. He’d come to the point where he’d even prefer some sort of outright autocracy, if the autocrat was competent and decisive and would cut the Gordian knot of Polish and Lithuanian politics. He knew Jozef had come to that same conclusion months earlier.
There was only one realistic candidate for the position of Poland and Lithuania’s dictator, however, and that was the man Lukasz was standing beside this very moment. Unfortunately—at least, under these circumstances—Grand Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski was a staunch adherent to legality. Whatever he thought of the Sejm or the king, he kept to himself. And while the grand hetman was quite willing to extend his authority as far as the legal parameters allowed, he was not willing to go an inch beyond those limits.
He never had been, and Lukasz was now certain he never would be. Poland’s top military commander might have a supple mind on the battlefield or when it came to military affairs, but he was rigid when it came to Poland’s laws and political traditions. Had he still been a young man, perhaps that might be subject to change. But Stanislaw Koniecpolski was now in his forties. Early forties, true, but forties nonetheless. Not many very successful men were willing, at that age, to call into question their basic political and social attitudes. The grand hetman was no exception.
Lukasz decided there wasn’t any point in pursuing the matter. Koniecpolski would just get irritated. So, he let his eyes drift toward the fieldworks being put up by the army now besieging Poznan.
It was probably the best army in the world, leaving aside cavalry. The USE regular army’s first and second divisions, under the command of Lennart Torstensson. The third division was somewhere in Bohemia, according to Jozef’s reports. The American Mike Stearns was in command of that division.
The soldiers in those lines outside Poznan were not the polyglot mercenaries you found in the ranks of most European armies in the seventeenth century. Nor were many of them noblemen, as was true of the Polish military. The enlisted men were mostly Germans and almost all were commoners, volunteers driven more by ideological than pecuniary motives. They had the best military equipment in the world, thanks to the Americans, and the training to use it.
A sound from above drew his eyes to the sky. One of the USE’s airplanes had arrived, taking advantage of the recent good weather. It would probably drop a few bombs on the city’s walls, which wouldn’t do any real damage except to morale. But the blasted things gave Torstensson superb reconnaissance, so long as the weather was good. Polish armies could no longer maneuver as they were accustomed to doing, using the speed of their powerful cavalry to confuse their opponents. In good weather, they were always under observation; in bad weather, slowed by the weather itself. They were reduced to fighting what amounted to an infantry war, something which the USE army excelled at and they did not.
One siege after another. A Dutch style of war, not a Polish one.
Yet, the same thing that gave the USE’s army so much of its strength could also be its Achilles’ heel. Those soldiers out there were heavily influenced by the radical Committees of Correspondence. Given the recent political developments in the USE, there
was a very real chance that they might mutiny and turn their guns against their own rulers rather than Poland and Lithuania.
But they would be far less likely to mutiny so long as they were fighting a war. Their commander Torstensson was popular with his soldiers and could probably maintain discipline—provided the war continued and his army remained in Poland, and provided that his civilian superiors were not so reckless as to try to use his regular army divisions against the USE’s own population.
That was exactly why Jozef Wojtowicz was urging his uncle to make peace with the USE. If necessary to get that peace, even give up the territory that Gustav Adolf had already seized before he was so severely wounded at Lake Bledno that his chancellor Oxenstierna was now managing Sweden’s affairs. Those territories were only marginally Polish to begin with. Most of the population of most of the towns the USE had seized were German, not Polish.
So let the USE have them—and let Oxenstierna try to deal with an angry army coming back home, most of whose soldiers despised him and weren’t much fonder of the USE’s own prime minister. In all likelihood, the USE would dissolve into civil war.
Such a war wouldn’t last forever, of course. It was possible that the victor, whoever that might be, would then want to resume the USE’s aggression against Poland. But they’d have been weakened and, more important, Poland and Lithuania would have gained the time it needed to modernize its own military. The commonwealth didn’t have the industrial base the USE possessed, but it wasn’t backward and primitive Muscovy, either. With time, effort and determination, they could build a military capable of meeting the USE’s on more or less equal terms.
But as always, the king and the Sejm were being pig-headed.
The damned Swedes had invaded—again!
To arms! To arms! No surrender, no retreat, no compromise!
And never mind that the king would continue to be a wastrel, showering money on his whores instead of his soldiers. Never mind that the Sejm would be miserly with its money and profligate with its factionalism. Never mind that the great magnates would keep their powerful private armies at home to fend off rivals instead of sending them to the front. Never mind that the szlachta would guard their petty privileges far more assiduously than they would guard the commonwealth’s national interests.