1634: The Baltic War (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  He'd lowered his hands by then. "So, yes. I think Simpson will concentrate on destroying the ships, not wondering until it's too late whether they're distracting him from something else. Coming like a spear through the smoke, seen too late to parry."

  Ulrik smiled. "It's a nice image, I admit. Let's hope it turns out that way."

  "I'm sure it will," Baldur said stoutly. "And I'm willing to wager that if I studied Snorri's sagas I could find exactly such a successful maneuver."

  "Those take place in Iceland. Anything can happen in Iceland. Those people are crazier than Norwegians."

  Norddahl scowled. "Your Highness, I am deeply offended. They most certainly are not."

  Minden, on the Weser river

  "We'll leave two hundred men with you; that's all I can spare," said Turenne.

  "Should be enough," said Philippe de la Mothe-Houdancourt. The young French nobleman stroked his nose, a habitual gesture of his that Turenne thought was most unfortunate. Philippe had the sort of very prominent nose that invited ridicule.

  Not from soldiers, though. The mestre de camp, as France referred to its regimental commanders, was a very capable officer and well thought of in the cavalry.

  "Should be enough," he repeated. Then, dropping his hand, Philippe glanced at the stone bridge that spanned the Weser. More than a century old, it was still in good shape despite being over two hundred yards long. "That'll be easy enough to defend against anything but an army, and we hardly need to worry that the bishop's garrison will challenge us."

  Turenne chuckled. "No, that's not likely, is it?"

  Minden was an independent principality under the authority of a bishop-but the exact identity of the bishop was in dispute. The Lutheran bishop who had ruled Minden, Christian von Braunschweig-Luneburg, had died the year before. While his Brunswick cousins debated over which one of them should inherit the seat, a Catholic counterclaimant named Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg laid claim to it himself. He was a morganatic relative of Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, and his younger brother Ferdinand, who controlled the archbishopric of Cologne as well as nearby Munster.

  In short, the political situation was another example of the reason the Germanies were generally considered a political laughingstock by powerful European dynasties like the Habsburgs and the French Bourbons-or had been, at least, until Gustav Adolf and Mike Stearns began unifying the Germans. However, for Turenne's immediate purposes, the political uncertainty in Minden was a blessing. It meant the town's garrison was not in the least inclined to fight a desperate and ultimately hopeless battle against an invading force ten times as strong. As soon as Turenne had appeared at the town's outskirts and demanded an immediate surrender, the garrison had complied.

  It was still a bit risky, leaving behind only a force of two hundred men to hold the town and its critical bridge across the Weser. But Turenne thought it would be enough. Philippe was certainly a better commander than the Swabian drunk who was the nominal head of the garrison; his troops were far better trained than those of the garrison, who were the typical mercenary dregs you usually found in such units; and, of course, they were far better armed. Having every cavalryman in his force equipped with a Cardinal rifle was a tremendous force multiplier.

  Besides, there was a danger in leaving too many soldiers in Minden. The complicated patchwork quilt of principalities in the northwestern Germanies had been a major theater of the war in its early years, and had been badly ravaged by all armies passing through. It still hadn't recovered much, which meant that the pickings would be slim for any large body of soldiers who stayed in Minden. Philippe's unit would get badly frayed, quickly, if they needed to send out plundering expeditions-and the inevitable outrages committed by a sizeable force so engaged might stir up the population. Whatever else, Turenne could not afford to leave behind enough men to simply squelch any resistance. So, he deemed it best to leave a minimum. There was enough in the way of provisions stored in Minden itself that they could get by for a few days.

  "Two hundred, then," the marshal repeated. "If all goes as planned, we'll be back very soon anyway."

  De la Mothe-Houdancourt grinned. "With a large army in pursuit, thank you very much."

  Turenne returned the grin with a smile. "Perhaps-and perhaps not. It's hard to say without knowing Torstensson's exact dispositions. The pursuing force would almost have to be USE troops. It's not likely that either the duke of Calenburg or the duke of Brunswick-Luneburg would send an army after us. And by the time we get back, Jean de Gassion should have arrived to reinforce you."

  De la Mothe-Houdancourt's grin never wavered. "If all goes as planned… I believe that's covered by the American expression 'famous last words.' "

  Turenne shrugged. "Yes, but who's to say? I see no reason that Murphy's Law itself isn't subject to Murphy's Law. Now and then, you know, things do go the right way."

  He turned toward his horse, and swung into the saddle. "Look for us in three days, Philippe. Four, at the most. We'll take Neustadt tonight, and the target on the morrow. Two days should be enough to gather up the plunder and get back, but let's allow an additional day just in case. If we're gone more than four days, we've had a disaster. If there's no sign of us on the morning of the fifth day, just get back to France. You can tell de Gassion those were my orders."

  The mouth of the Elbe

  When Mike got to Ritsenbuttel, he found a very tense situation. The crew of the Achates hadn't been able to do much to get the boat working again, since the critical repair couldn't be done until Mike arrived with the needed equipment-which had had to be brought all the way from Magdeburg.

  Instead, they'd spent most of their time and energy getting the Achates ready to be scuttled and helping the Marines man the jury-rigged fortifications on the docks that gave the disabled warship what little protection it had.

  Protection from whom? Commander Baumgartner didn't really know, but he seemed to be one of those people who invariably expect the worst. Perhaps a mob of outraged townspeople, although that didn't seem too likely. Being as how most of the townsfolk were huddling in their homes, far more frightened by the warship and its crew than vice versa. An enemy cavalry raid, perhaps. Or an enemy cutting out expedition, sent from… wherever.

  Since Mike didn't know anything more about fixing warships than he did about commanding military operations, he left all that to the experts. Now that they had several of the timberclads and a regiment of soldiers to guard them, along with the equipment they needed, Baumgartner and the crew of the Achates were able to relax and get seriously to work on the repairs. Meanwhile, Mike took the first necessary steps to secure the area as a whole.

  "Yeah, you heard me, Christopher. A parade. I want half the infantry and all the cavalry and dragoons turned out by midafternoon, ready to go. We'll parade right down the main street in Ritsenbuttel, with the band leading the way."

  So, Colonel Fey joined the ever-growing the-prime-minister-is-crazy club.

  By evening, however, the ranks of the club had thinned drastically. Down to only one man, in fact. Proving once again that he was a true and veritable Scotsman, Captain Richard Henderson stubbornly spent the whole evening sitting by himself at a corner table in the town's largest tavern, glaring at the ridiculous proceedings around him and muttering predictions of imminent disaster.

  He didn't even have the satisfaction, any longer, of having Captain Hamers on his side. Proving to everyone's satisfaction that he was indeed no true Scotsman, Juan Hamers spent the whole evening carousing with his crew-and trying his best to serenade one of the barmaids into his bunk on the ship, by singing one love song after another to her. Unfortunately, the songs were all in Spanish, which the barmaid didn't speak at all, and he carried a tune even worse than Mike did.

  So, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Captain Hamers wound up staggering back to his ship on his own. He was not overly distressed, however. There was always the next night, after all, and by now the town was very friendly indeed. The parade a
nd the band and-most of all-the hard Thuringian currency Mike spread around lavishly had produced a complete transformation in the attitude of the townsfolk toward the situation.

  And why not? Ritsenbuttel was not an independent town, and never had been. It had been under Hamburg's authority for centuries-and still was, as it turned out. A rather startlingly transformed Hamburg, to be sure. The CoC members whom Mike solemnly assured everyone were representatives of the new city council seemed to be a most unlikely set of burgomasters. They were too young; too roughly dressed; too mean-looking but not actually mean enough.

  Still, it was none of the Ritsenbuttelers' concern. Certainly not compared to the sudden boom in business, ranging all the way from the taverns and the inns packed to the gills with paying guests-and wasn't that a wonder, being as they were all soldiers?-to every craftsman and artisan in town being commissioned to help with the repairs of the Achates and expanding the piers to handle the new business the prince of Germany assured them would soon be arriving.

  Even the town's large number of fishermen were happy. Mike sent them off to catch fish to feed the regiment-and while they were at it, keep an eye out for nefarious evildoers who might be creeping up on Ritsenbuttel across the waters of the Wadden Sea or through the island channels.

  Within a day, the printing press was up and running, and Mike began flooding the town with impromptu propaganda. Then he hired whatever stray lads he could find with a horse or a donkey who could spread the good word to all the farming villages in the area.

  The propaganda was simple and to the point. Three points, actually.

  Point One was that Hamburg and all its environs had been incorporated into the United States of Europe. Legally, legally-indeed, the Hamburg city council had been most enthusiastic, and you could always come into Ritsenbuttel to chat with the council's representatives yourself if you had any doubts.

  Point Two was more or less a series of ferocious snarls aimed at The Dastardly Enemy-not too precisely defined-and boasting triumphantly of the overwhelming military might of the USE. Happily, among the printers brought from Hamburg had been an engraver who could work rapidly. By the third day, the broadsides had very nice if overlarge illustrations of the ironclads and the SRG rifle on every other page.

  Point Three was an announcement that a parade, picnic and political rally would be held on Sunday, in Ritsenbuttel, following church services. With music! And, of course, the food and drink to be paid for by the new authorities.

  Church services tended to be brief, that day.

  So, not long after Mike arrived in Ritsenbuttel, the Achates was ready to go again. And it would be reasonable to say that the whole area had become a hotbed of USE sympathizers and enthusiasts for the new emperor.

  Mike transmitted the gist of all that to Gustav Adolf. This time, using far more formal language.

  The reply didn't particularly surprise him. For a Swede-and a king, to boot-Gustav was quite adept at American idiom himself.

  Just stay put. Simpson should be arriving in Luebeck Bay any time. Expect all hell to break loose when he does. More to follow.

  Chapter 48

  The Bay of Kiel

  "What the devil is that imbecile shouting about?" Captain Jean-Marie Grosclaud, commanding His Most Christian Majesty's thirty-two-gun ship Railleuse, demanded impatiently.

  He stood on Railleuse's tall, narrow poop deck, glaring down at the Danish fishing boat that had emerged from the morning's slightly misty visibility. The French warship had almost run down the miserable little craft, and now the boat's master (Grosclaud refused to apply the term "captain" to a Danish fisherman whose so-called vessel was scarcely larger than his own ship's second launch) was standing beside the boat's tiller shouting about something.

  "I can't quite make it out, sir," his sailing master admitted. The master was the senior professional seaman in Railleuse's company. He also had the best command of their allies' language… which said truly appalling things about everyone else's Danish, Grosclaud supposed.

  "Well, tell him to stand clear," the captain said, even more impatiently. "The fool is probably saying we've ruined one of his nets or something of the sort."

  He snorted, eyeing the Dane with a mixture of disdain and irritation. The fishing boat master's fellow countrymen had been nothing but one enormous pain in the arse, as far as Grosclaud was concerned. In his fairer-minded moments, which he entertained no more frequently than necessary, Grosclaud was forced to admit that however ambitious their king might be, the majority of Danes weren't really particularly interested in helping Cardinal Richelieu's "League of Ostend" assail their fellow Protestants and never had been. Under the circumstances, he could scarcely blame them for that. If he'd been Danish, he certainly wouldn't have been madly enthusiastic over the notion, after all. Still, now that they were (supposedly, at least) committed, they could have been at least a little more efficient about doing it.

  The sailing master was shouting down at the fishing boat. Even Grosclaud, whose comprehension of Danish was nonexistent, could tell that the sailing master was speaking slowly and awkwardly, with frequent pauses as he searched for the right word. He was only part way through the delivery of Grosclaud's order when the fisherman started shaking his head, waving both hands, and expostulating more loudly than ever.

  "Tell him I'll drop a round shot through the bottom of his miserable boat if he doesn't stand clear!" Grosclaud snapped.

  There'd never been a fisherman born, no matter what his nationality, who wouldn't claim a warship had overrun his nets and torn them to pieces. The chance of having anyone believe him might be minute, but it was worth trying. Especially when the warship belonged to someone who was playing paymaster to the fishing boat's monarch. Grosclaud, however, wasn't in the mood for it.

  The sailing master waved his own hands, shouting more loudly than before as he cut off the meaningless babble of Danish. The fisherman stared up at him, shaking his head in artfully feigned disbelief, and Grosclaud snorted again. Railleuse was on her way home to France, and the captain had no intention of allowing a wretched fisherman's false claims of damage to delay his ship's escape.

  All the fault of those damned books from the future, he fumed silently. All that nonsense about year-round "close blockades." Madness!

  He didn't know who'd been responsible for deciding to apply that particular piece of lunatic brilliance to the present. It might even have been Richelieu himself, for all Grosclaud knew. It was the sort of convoluted, cunning notion that would have appealed to him, by all accounts. But even assuming that the books in question had told the truth (a point Grosclaud was inclined to doubt), those Englishmen of the future had never done it with ships like Railleuse. Nor, so far as Grosclaud had been able to discover, had they even tried to do it in the accursed Baltic!

  He shuddered as he considered the winter just past. Ice had been a significant problem once a ship got north of Gotland, and the Gulf of Riga-as usual-had frozen over. The winter's icy winds and wet misery had turned the lot of the ships' companies assigned to the blockade into a nightmare, and the fact that Captain Admiral Overgaard had been unwilling (for reasons Jean-Marie Grosclaud found perfectly understandable, however little he liked them) to take his ships any farther up the Trave River than he absolutely had to had only made things worse. Poor diet, inadequate clothing, poor sanitation, nonexistent hygiene, miserable, wet, unheated living quarters, and treacherous conditions aloft, had killed scores and left the ships full of sick and injured crewmen… as anyone but an idiot must have known would happen. The attrition rate was always high aboard ships that were forced to remain at sea for extended periods; doing so in the middle of a Baltic winter had only made it worse.

  Which, of course, was the reason-or one of the reasons, at least-why Grosclaud had no intention of letting a Danish fisherman's spurious claims of damage interfere with his departure.

  The sailing master shouted one last sentence, jabbing his pointing finger sharply westward, in the
direction of the mist-blurred outlines of the island of Funen. The fisherman grimaced. Then he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders eloquently, and started shouting at his motley four-man crew instead of Railleuse, and Grosclaud snorted a third time-this time in satisfaction.

  The fishing boat's sail filled as the crew sheeted home, and the smaller craft bore away from Railleuse. It was considerably faster in the current light wind conditions than Railleuse, and Grosclaud watched it go for several moments. Then he returned to his interrupted morning's exercise, walking up and down the leeward side of the poop deck as the mist turned the fishing boat into a fading ghost.

  So much for that, he thought. If God is good, that's the last Danish I'm going to be hearing this side of Hell! And even if He isn't, I don't see any-

  "Sail ho!" The shout came down from aloft, and Grosclaud's head snapped around as he heard the consternation in the lookout's cry. "Sail-ships-on the port bow!"

  John Simpson had decided against any sort of finesse as he made his way from the North Sea to the Baltic. His squadron had crossed the Skaggerak, rounded the tip of the Jutland Peninsula, swung east of the island of Laeso, then south through the Kattegat straight for the Great Belt, the passage between Zealand and Funen. It was the broadest (and most easily predicted) route he could have taken, but it was also a minimum of ten miles wide-once he got south of the east and west channels on either side of the island of Sprogo, at any rate. That was the decisive factor, as far as Simpson was concerned.

  He had his doubts about the probable effectiveness of mines built with seventeenth-century technology, no matter what pointers the builders might have acquired from purloined up-timer sources. On the other hand, he'd seen sufficient proof of seventeenth-century ingenuity to prevent him from investing too much confidence in those doubts of his. He'd come to the conclusion that the contempt some up-timers-Quentin Underwood came rather forcibly to mind-felt for the inherent ability of native-born denizens of this century was… misplaced. Given the persistent reports of King Christian's fascination with the concept of moored mines (and the fact that, for all his fondness for alcoholic beverages and his famed bouts of excessive enthusiasm, Christian was anything but stupid), John Simpson had no intention of entering the narrow waters of the Sound until he had to.