Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  The men around the table looked with awe as the tiny woman transformed into a dragon lady.

  “Ummm, Diane...” Tony said.

  She glared at Friedrich again. “There are things you need to learn. First, you will not have an independent Baden any more. It may be in Burgundy, or it may be in the USE’s Province of Swabia, but it will be in something, somewhere. Just because your father administers that imaginary province now, there is no reason for you to think that a margrave of Baden will always be its administrator. Gustavus Adolphus appointed your father. He can appoint someone else. Hear the word of God, which you should already know. ‘The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.’ He gave me three sons and he took them away, left up-time. The same is true for an emperor.”

  Margrave Friedrich nodded. “Do not put your trust in princes; they are mortal men who cannot save.”

  Diane barreled on. “Yes. That is what I said. This world’s princes give and take away. There is no law that Gustavus must appoint you or one of your brothers to succeed your father in Swabia. If Mike Stearns has his way about constitutions, by the time your father’s term expires, the make-believe province will elect its own make-believe head of state.”

  Friedrich opened his mouth. Then he shut it again.

  Tony doodled ‘prudently’ on the margin of his note pad.

  “So. How do you think that it is worse for you to have lands in Burgundy than in the USE? Why is it so bad for you to have some of your lands in each country?”

  Friedrich repeated his fish-like mouth maneuver.

  “How do you think that moving them all into the USE Province of Swabia would improve matters? Bernhard is one of your own. A down-time duke. He is actually likely to leave your father and you more of your precious perks than Gustavus is. Not that anyone asked me. You sit here arguing about such things while death and disease are breaking out all over the place. Now. Are you all ready to listen to Colonel Raudegen discuss plague?”

  Each man at the table averred that he was entirely prepared to enter into an orderly discussion of plague.

  Bolzen, Tyrol

  “We are, of course,” the regent of Tyrol said, “more grateful than ever that We had the foresight to send the three Padua-trained plague doctors to Burgundy last November. Since at that time We had not yet considered that there might be a prospect of a marriage alliance in that direction... Perhaps it was the working of divine providence. Burgundy will be far better prepared to deal with the coming plague now than it would have been otherwise.”

  Marcie Abruzzo, who often suspected that she and her husband were mainly the regent’s “trophy up-timers” even though they were assigned plenty of real work, whispered to that same husband, Matt Trelli. “Cast your bread upon the waters and it will come back sponge cake.”

  It was a little embarrassing when the chancellor, Dr. Bienner, caught the whisper and she was forced to repeat the sentence aloud, translating it into three languages, and explaining what sponge cake might be and how it resembled the type of sponge used for washing one’s body with soap and water.

  “An irreverent play upon Ecclesiastes 11:1, I presume,” was Bienner’s deadpan comment.

  It was considerably more embarrassing when she was tasked by the regent with the duty of writing her mother and requesting a sponge cake recipe. In Marcie’s view, one of the great advantage of having attached themselves to a great household was that even though she was now a married woman, somebody else did the cooking. Namely, a cook. Or cooks. Kitchen staff. Somebody whose job it was to do the cooking. Not her. Just like the cafeterias in high school and college and the cafeterias at USE Steel. She didn’t have the vaguest idea how to bake a sponge cake, nor did she want to learn.

  But, ye gods, did the down-timers know their Bibles backwards and forwards.

  Lorraine

  March 1635

  The four regiments of Irish dragoons under Butler, Devereux, Geraldin, and McDonnell, which had been in the pay of the now-flat-broke Ferdinand of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne, since the previous year, started out from Euskirchen, west of Bonn, in late February and followed the Jakobswege south, moved into Lorraine at the little Sarreguemines neck with the intent of crossing through the protrusion of Bitche, making an eastward side raid to Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, crossing the Rhine, making their way southeast across Swabia, and entering into the employ of Ferdinand’s brother Duke Maximilian.

  The French, busy with their own concerns after the previous spring’s debacle, had only minimal forces in Lorraine. They were minimal, at least, compared to what Richelieu had sent in 1631 and 1632 when he drove the ducal family out. Lacking instructions, the troops on the ground basically huddled in the garrisoned towns of the main body of the duchy to the west and made no effort to impede the Irish colonels’ transit––neither of the dragoons themselves or of the large, unwieldy, baggage train that followed them.

  Nobody paid any attention at all to a straggling group of peddlers, coming from the direction of Forbach, who attached themselves to the camp followers shortly after the entourage reached Sarreguemines, even though a couple of the peddlers were ill. People got sick all the time. The arrival of illness and death in one’s midst was simply a fact of life.

  Chapter 4 All Sorts of Inconvenience Here

  “...weil sie in hiesigen stättlein allerley ungelegenheit verursachet,...”

  Brussels

  March 1635

  “Don’t trust him, Marchéville,” Henri de Beringhen said. “You haven’t told me what he’s planning this time and I don’t want to know, but don’t trust him for a single instant. If there’s a single thing about Gaston that a person can rely on, it’s this––he will always be ready to conspire with you, but he will always be equally ready to betray you if he thinks it may be to his advantage.”

  Henri de Gournay, born a minor noble and made comte de Marchéville by grace of Duchess Nicole’s father, thirty years old and ambitious, shook his head. “That’s––harsh.”

  “It’s nothing less than the truth. Take it from a man who survived the Day of Dupes by fleeing into Holland. Stay out of it. Remember how he treated Montmorency. Don’t ever say that I didn’t warn you. The man was simply born to cause trouble and unpleasantness, in every place he turns up.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Charles IV of Lorraine refused to even lodge a diplomatic protest in regard to the Irish dragoons’ transit through Lorraine. He then left Brussels for a long ride in the countryside, the goal of which was the mansion to which his current lady-love’s mother had removed her in hopes of putting an end to their affair.

  He felt that Beatrice’s maman simply did not understand the depths of their mutual passion. She was being seriously uncooperative. She was threatening to send her daughter back to their family home in the Franche Comté. Quel horreur. Right now, he had no time for tedious politics. Didn’t Nicolas understand the concept of ‘emergency’?

  The adviser who drew the unlucky lot of informing the king and queen in the Low Countries that in the duke’s opinion, after all, the Irishmen had barely crossed Lorraine territory at all––certainly not one step farther than had been necessary for them to––cleared his throat. “The duke feels that their transit cannot be considered a major or deliberate incursion into the duchy.”

  The king in the Low Countries did not appear pleased. The queen’s expression was more noncommital.

  “We have tracked their progress, to some extent,” the adviser said. “At no time did they bear on a southwesterly course, as if to enter by way of Thionville and pose a possible threat to Metz. They bore strictly to the southeast, in accordance with what we know of their intentions to accept Maximilian of Bavaria as their new Kriegsherr.”

  The adviser was well aware that his duke’s refusal to intervene was not so much that a policy decision as that he was distracted by his enthusiastic pursuit of the charming and all-too-cooperative Beatrice. Charles of Lorraine was in love. Again. Still, all in all, it made a reasonable r
ationale.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Officially, Fernando, king in the Low Countries, chose to take Duke Charles’ inaction as an offense against his hospitality to the exiled Lorrainers. His grounds for this were––deliberately––more than a bit murky, but the decision led him to initiate an investigation. The investigation led not only to the pretty and accommodating Beatrice, but to the discovery that the duke’s two Lorraine regiments, which for the past two years had been uselessly battening on the Flanders countryside, had quietly disappeared.

  The duke of Lorraine said, “Moi?”

  When Nicolas of Lorraine said, “Oh no. Tell me they didn’t,” the investigation picked up its tempo.

  Fernando’s first apprehension was that somehow the archbishop of Cologne had scraped up enough money to replace the Irish dragoons with Lorraine cavalry. However, that was not the case. Ferdinand of Bavaria was still broke, his lands on the left bank of the Rhine still Catholic, still threatened by the Hessians, possibly also threatened by the Republic of Essen, still tantalizingly undefended.

  Henry Gage and Arthur Aston, Fernando’s English agents and translators, asked about possibilities that the duke had hired them out to Charles I of England, who was still recruiting mercenaries on the continent. No.

  Scaglia asked around in regard to possibilities that the Lorraine regiments might also be making a circuitous way in the direction of Bavaria. Maximilian was known to be looking for more cavalry, which was why the Irish dragoons were in transit in the first place. No.

  “Ah,” Claude of Lorraine said to her husband. “Ummn, Nicolas.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I haven’t seen Henriette for several days, nor Antoine de Puylaurens, either. Nor, for that matter, Monsieur Gaston. He does have a talent for causing problems everywhere he goes. I’d assumed they were just engaging in revelry, somewhere out of view of people who take Lent seriously, but...”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Money,” Henriette said firmly. “It always comes down to money, Antoine, my dearest one.” To ameliorate the impact of this statement, she nuzzled the nape of his neck.

  Puylaurens looked up.

  “Truly, my darling. Before you can go dashing around the countryside, cutting a figure of gallantry and chivalry, you simply must be able to pay the soldiers. I am very much afraid that neither my brother nor your prince have given sufficient consideration to this aspect of the matter.”

  His eyes turned blank.

  “So, no, you are not going with Gaston. For several weeks, at least, he can do without you in this adventure. You are coming with me. I have a list. Merchants. Bankers. Would-be industrialists. People with potential investment interests, if only the administration of Lorraine were not French.”

  Puylaurens made a sound that seriously resembled, “Ulp.”

  “You do understand, I am sure. My holdings may be small, but they are not far from the German Saar region. Saarbrücken. Coal mines. Iron deposits. If I offer them a protected, environment for establishing administrative headquarters with favorable terms for incorporation, outside of the USE but right on the borders of the USE...”

  “I neither understand nor want to understand,” Puylaurens protested.

  She intervened by massaging his neck with her fingers, deeply.

  He moaned.

  “Yes, you do, my adorable cabbage. Truly, you do. Economics is not a “‘dismal science”’ no matter that some of the up-time books term it so. If you look at it properly, it is quite enthralling. We must raise money.”

  “Aaaahh,” Antoine responded. “Aaaahh! Yes! There!”

  Brussels

  Fernando, stooped over the table he was using for planning, brushed one stack of paper out of the way and laid out a map. “It would certainly be nice,” he said, “if I could move out troops by way of Sedan. I suppose, though, that the La Tour d’Auvergne family would be offended by a violation of their territory.”

  Maria Anna looked at him with utter exasperation. “Turenne, my darling husband. Turenne. The cavalry commander. That man. It’s a sovereign principality just as much as the Low Countries are. Sedan is where Turenne was born.”

  “It is also where Turenne’s idiot brother Frédéric Maurice––the duc de Bouillon––is the sovereign.” Fernando snorted. “I have every suspicion that he let Monsieur through. There’s no other way that Gaston could have gotten Charles IV’s regiments into Lorraine so...‘invisibly.’ I guess that’s the word I want. Or so quickly. Bouillon is a nut. In his idiotic dreams of providing a sanctuary and refuge for the French Huguenots, Frédéric-Maurice will support anyone who claims to oppose Richelieu––even if the person is nuttier than himself.”

  “Yet even he has sufficient intelligence not to follow a course that, in the other world, saw his principality annexed by France within his lifetime.” She moved to a window to catch the warmth of the weak late winter sunlight shining through the glass. “Since, in this world, he has not made a Catholic marriage, we can only presume that he will continue on a pro-Huguenot course. In fact, we can practically be certain of it, since he married Maria Elisabeth von der Pfalz-Veldenz in November. Her grandmother was Gustavus Adolphus’ aunt.”

  She leaned against the window sill and chewed her lower lip. “As a family head, rather than as emperor of the USE or high king of the Union of Kalmar, Gustavus has made some interesting moves in the last few months. I only have to wonder if he has fully apprised his political ministers and advisers of his personal initiatives. I cannot think that Stearns would...”

  “Even be interested, if Gustavus did try to tell him.” At Copenhagen, Fernando’s observers had taken a certain measure of the up-timer. One thing they had brought home was a sharp sense of his pervasive distaste for traditional European family-based politics as opposed to ideological or socio-economic politics.

  Maria Anna crossed the room with a swish of skirts and looked over his shoulder at the map again.

  “I can see why you are tempted. But, Fernando, no. It would not be prudent to go through Sedan without his consent. Not even if he consents to let Monsieur Gaston through.”

  She smiled as she looked at the lines. “It might, though, be a favorable conjunction of the stars for you to ask Frederik Hendrik to go visit Frédéric-Maurice very soon. There are advantages to having the premier Calvinist prince of Orange as the ‘second gentleman’ of the Low Countries. In time, if things should so fall out that Sedan must lose its independence, it would certainly be preferable, from the perspective of Habsburg interests, that it should fall to the Habsburgs rather than to France.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Don’t be naive, young Nicolas.” Isabella Clara Eugenia pointed an arthritic finger at the younger of the two dukes of Lorraine a few days later. “Gaston wants what he wants. That’s true, the worst thing being is that sometimes he does not know what he wants, except for glory. So he is running around your brother’s duchy with soldiers.

  “But do not forget that Louis XIII and Richelieu want what they want also, which is the aggrandizement of France. On the excuse that your brother allied with the Habsburgs, they will, if they can, nibble the duchy entirely away from him. As far as they are concerned, the main conflict will always be between France and Spain––and Spain means the Habsburgs.” She gestured toward her chest. “Us.”

  Duchess Claude nodded. “You believe that they will not tolerate a Lorraine allied with the Low Countries, or with the County of Burgundy any more than they would accept a Lorraine allied with the Holy Roman Empire in that other world?”

  “Precisely. That is why they occupied Lorraine in 1632. Make no bones about it, children. They will pursue their aims. Richelieu is not about to give up. ‘Vigorously’ will be an inadequate adverb to describe how he will handle Lorraine, unless something comes along in France to distract him. Then, he will relax in Lorraine only as long as he is distracted. Once the distraction disappears, he will return. He does not lose sight of his goals.”

 
Claude tilted her head. “Would he accept a Lorraine that was neutral? Or even one allied with the USE, which is scarcely a Habsburg power?”

  The infanta motioned in the negative. “Any excuse he can think of to justify snatching Lorraine out of the hands of the ducal family, he will use––and if the historical justifications reach back to the days of the Roman Empire itself, then––well, the duchy was already settled then, so why should he limit his ingenuity to the modern days since the elevation of Charlemagne? The man will not stop until he has brought the eastern borders of France to the Rhine.”

  Chapter 5 Out, Out, Out!

  Sedan

  “W

  e could use some Croats,” Monsieur Gaston said.

  “Hélas, I have no Croats to offer you,” Colonel François Arpajon replied. “Not as a unit. There may be a few mixed in among the other men of Duke Charles’ regiments. There are Poles, I am sure. Hungarians and Bohemians. Germans of a dozen varieties. Irish, but again no organized units. Even some Lorrainers. I have the honor to command the scum of every nation in Europe, as do Clinchamp and Vernier.”

  Personally, Arpajon was just as glad not to have a unit of Croats. They were magnificent horsemen, but almost impossible to control. They made him uneasy.

  “If we had some Croats, we could get these damned Sedanese peasants to render up the food we need. We might as well live off the country as much as we can on the march and save what we brought with us for when there’s nothing else to be had.”

  “If we plunder too much from these damned Sedanese peasants, Bouillon won’t let us back through Sedan. Should that become necessary, of course,” Cliquot added hastily, noting the anger on the face of the duc d’Orleans. “Right now, it’s more important for us to get into Stenay.”