by Eric Flint
Janos spent a couple of minutes studying the diagrams. There was no point spending more time than that, since it was obvious from the drawings themselves that they were only approximations based on memory.
"There is no sense of scale. How big are they?"
Grassi shrugged. "Hard to say. The cavalryman claimed they were enormous, but I imagine a device like that would inevitably seem enormous to someone who'd never seen one before. When I pressed him on the weapons they carried, though, he claimed they only occasionally dropped explosive devices and those were not large ones. Mostly, it seems, the Turk used the things as flying scouts."
Which was quite bad enough. Janos had spent a lot of time over the past few years studying the campaigns and battles fought by the USE-and before it came into existence, by the little nation created by the up-timers in Thuringia, when they first arrived. The New United States, as they'd called it. One of the things that had quickly become obvious to him was how difficult it would be to fight an enemy who always knew where your own forces were because of their aircraft. Except in bad weather, at least. The Poles under Koniecpolski had been successful because they'd been able to take advantage of storms, when the airplanes were grounded.
Possessing aircraft of any type gave an army an enormous advantage, whether or not those aircraft could carry weapons. The real danger the things posed was their extraordinary expansion of an army's reconnaissance capabilities.
He leaned back in his own chair. He was now feeling weary himself, in mind if not in body.
"I'm still puzzled, though." He gestured with a thumb toward one of the windows. That window looked out over the town's main thoroughfare. The window was closed because of the cold, but the sounds of the heavy traffic outside could easily be heard.
"What produced all these refugees?"
Grassi frowned. Then, rose and went to the window. After studying the scene below for a few seconds, he chuckled softly.
"Those aren't precisely 'refugees,' Baron. They're not people fleeing their homes ahead of an invading army. They're mostly merchants racing ahead of an invading army to make sure their business concerns aren't jeopardized when the army arrives. That's why they've come so soon, even though they don't expect anything to happen for some time yet. Arranging such business can be time-consuming."
"Ah." That made sense, now that it was explained. There was a fixed season for campaigning, if you were the Turk seeking to march a huge army through the Balkans. That sort of mobilization presupposed enormous numbers of livestock. You couldn't start the march, therefore, until the spring grass was coming up or your horses and oxen would starve.
In the Balkans, once an army got past Belgrade, that meant waiting until early May. So the merchants crowded in the streets out there and packed into the taverns had three months or so to do their preparations.
"I take it they don't have any doubts that the Ottomans plan to attack Vienna next year."
Grassi chuckled again. "Not any, Baron. Neither do I. After such a great victory, the Turk is flushed with pride and ambition. That new young sultan intends to become as famous as Suleiman the Magnificent. More famous, even. And to do that…"
Suleiman had conquered most of Hungary, after the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. That, perhaps more than anything, is what had cemented his reputation as the greatest sultan in the Ottoman line. If Murad IV intended to match him, much less surpass him, he would have to take most of the Austrian empire. Conquer it, not simply defeat it and extract concessions.
Janos rose and came to stand by the window next to Grassi. In his case, not to study the crowd in the streets but the sky.
"The weather looks to be holding up," he said. "I'll need to leave early on the morrow."
Grassi cleared his throat. "Yes, I thought you would. Back to Vienna, I assume?"
"Yes. I need to speak to the emperor as soon as possible."
"Do you remember the occasion when you offered me sanctuary, should I ever need it?"
Drugeth nodded. "Yes. The time has come, I take it."
"Indeed so. Schmid has disappeared entirely. I have no idea where he is. So has the Dutchman, Haga."
Perhaps even more than Schmid, Cornelis Haga-or van Haag, as he preferred to style himself-was the epitome of an "old Ottoman hand" when it came to European ambassadors to the Sublime Porte. He'd been Holland's ambassador in Istanbul for almost a quarter of a century. If he'd gone into hiding-or been taken in custody by the Turks-then things were getting chancy indeed.
"Is Murad on a rampage?"
Grassi made a face. "Hard to say, with that man. His rages are notorious, but I think at least some of them are feigned. Don't make the mistake of under-estimating him, Baron. He's probably the most capable sultan the Turks have had in a century. He's certainly the most dangerous."
The doctor turned away from the window. "Certainly too dangerous for me, at least for a while. I think my health would be greatly improved by a stay in Vienna."
"Early tomorrow morning, then. This time of year, the weather can also be dangerous."
Chapter 38
Pirna, in southern Saxony Mike paused the march into Saxony when the Third Division reached Pirna, the first major town north of the border with Bohemia. He'd been driving the men hard and they needed to rest and refit. There was another storm coming across northern Europe, too, and Pirna was the best place in the area for the division to wait for it to pass. In addition to the town itself, there was a large castle nearby-Schloss Sonnenstein-that could hold a number of the division's soldiers. The castle also made an excellent spot for Mike's radio operators to set up. As soon as the storm was over, he wanted to broadcast some messages that were sure to be picked up anywhere in the USE that had a functioning radio.
The time for subterfuge and deception was almost over.
They'd learned of the coming storm from radio messages sent by the military weather stations along the Baltic coast. The air force's stance of official neutrality was now threadbare. Colonel Wood was careful to maintain the needed reconnaissance patrols for Torstensson's two divisions besieging Poznan, and he scrupulously refrained from using any sort of weapons against either Oxenstierna's own forces or the various reactionary paramilitary outfits that had sprung up in many places to counter the CoCs' armed contingents. But he provided Mike with all the reconnaissance he needed and responded to every such request from the Swedish chancellor with silence.
Simpson and the navy were being more scrupulous, still. But Jesse had told Mike that Simpson was moving the two ironclads he had under his control out of Luebeck. For the duration of the crisis he'd keep the SSIM Constitution and the SSIM United States stationed in Rostock. From that port, he could interdict the Baltic and prevent Oxenstierna from bringing any more troops over from Sweden.
He'd do it, too, Jesse had assured Mike.
"Hey, look, you know John. He's a tight-ass, sure, but you can't actually sharpen pencils in his butt. If Oxenstierna pushes it too far, the admiral will take off the gloves."
How and by what arithmetic Simpson had decided to draw the line that defined "too far" as a major Swedish troop movement across the Baltic wasn't clear to Mike. There weren't all that many soldiers left in Sweden to begin with. Once you subtracted the bare minimum needed to maintain order, Mike doubted if there were more than five or six thousand available to reinforce the twenty thousand soldiers Oxenstierna already had in Berlin.
But he'd take what he could get, with no complaining. He was already heavily outnumbered, after all. Even if you subtracted ten thousand men from the armies Oxenstierna and Baner had due to illness and desertion, the Swedes still had twenty-five thousand men against his ten thousand. Then, add the ten thousand Saxon troops on the Swedish payroll under von Arnim's command in Leipzig. All told, Mike was looking at odds no better than three-to-one and probably closer to four-to-one against him.
That was the bleakest way to look at the matter, though. On the positive side were at least three major factors:
First, every indication was that von Arnim was desperately trying to keep himself out of the fight.
Second, Oxenstierna had the strongest of the three armies-and he was in Berlin, a hundred miles to the north. That was one hundred miles as the crow flies. Swedish mercenaries not being crows, they'd have to travel at least half again that distance in order to bring themselves into play. An army that size would be doing well if they could march an average of fifteen miles a day-in summertime.
And that was the third factor, of course. General Winter. Mike was counting on that most of all. His was the only army of the lot which was really equipped to fight a winter campaign. If he could keep von Arnim penned in Leipzig while he dealt with Baner, he'd then have some time to deal with whatever Oxenstierna threw at him.
The technical expression was "defeat the enemy in detail."
In theory, it sounded great. It remained to be seen how well Mike could carry it out in practice.
There were other factors, too. One of them was standing in front of him this very moment, in the chamber in Schloss Sonnenstein that Mike had set aside for his headquarters.
Georg Kresse himself, along with his chief assistant Wilhelm Kuefer and a young Slovene cavalry officer by the name of Lovrenc Bravnicar. Somehow or other, Kresse's army of irregulars had managed to acquire the services of a troop of professional cavalrymen.
The Vogtlander leader was giving Mike an odd sort of look. Odd, but one that Mike recognized. There was a certain type of German revolutionary who thought that Americans were all a bunch of weak sisters. Too delicate, too squeamish. Nice enough people, but not ones you could count on in the crunch.
Probably best to start there.
"Are you worried that I won't come through?" he asked Kresse. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "You think I marched ten thousand men all the way from southern Bohemia in order to make rude noises at the Swedes and then turn around and march back?"
"Ah…"
Mike grinned. It was that savage grin that came naturally to him and which he'd perfected in his days as a prizefighter. He'd found it was a more effective way to intimidate opponents than snarling or scowling at them. Oh, I'm going to have so much fun beating the crap out of you, punk.
"Rest easy, Herr Kresse. There are only a handful of Americans in the Third Division. Granted, the commander is one of them and the division's toughest regiment is commanded by another. But I can assure you that neither I nor Colonel Higgins is much given to doubts and hesitations."
"Ah…"
"If it makes you feel any better, people back home thought I was probably a monster."
Kresse's sidekick Kuefer started laughing, then. Not loudly, but these were real laughs, not chuckles.
"Poor Georg!" He slapped Kresse on the back. "He hates having his certain notions upset."
Kresse gave him an irritated look. "Stop clowning around." To Mike he said: "All right, General. We will assume you will make good on your promises."
"I didn't make any promises, Herr Kresse. No general with half a brain makes promises, when it comes to fighting a war. What I explained to you was my intentions." He pointed a finger at one of the windows facing north. "I intend to drive Baner out of his siege lines around Dresden. I intend to defeat him in battle if he chooses to fight. I intend to prevent von Arnim from interfering in this little civil war we're having. And I intend to do whatever has to be done to deal with Oxenstierna, if he comes out of Berlin."
He paused, staring at Kresse. Not quite challenging him, but close. After a few seconds, he started speaking again.
"What would be helpful here would be a discussion of the various ways you might be able to assist the Third Division in carrying out these intentions."
Kresse nodded abruptly. "Very well. We can certainly provide you with a lot of intelligence. Not as quickly as what you might sometimes get from the air force people, but probably in greater detail."
"Much greater detail," said the Slovene cavalry officer, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. "The pilots can't really tell you much except raw numbers and movement. By now, we've gotten to know Baner's army quite well. It's like most mercenary armies. Some units are excellent, many are good, as many are mediocre, and some aren't worth dog piss. Those are the sorts of details we can provide you."
His German was fluent and idiomatic. He seemed to have a slight accent, but that might be Mike's ear missing a cue rather than anything Bravnicar was saying. Mike's own German was also fluent and idiomatic by now, and he didn't have a particularly pronounced accent. Still, it wasn't his native language. He couldn't necessarily tell when something that sounded like an accent was just a different dialect or regional speech pattern. Seventeenth century German was very far from being a standardized and homogenized language.
"That would certainly help. What about cutting the Swedish supply lines, if Baner comes out of the trenches?"
The Slovene cavalryman waggled his hand back and forth. "Maybe yes, maybe no. It will depend on a lot of things. Which unit is guarding the lines and the weather, most of all. Still, at the very least we can make their lives a bit miserable and force the pig to detach units for guard duty."
"The pig," Mike had discovered, was the term that seemed to be universally used in Saxony to refer to Johan Baner. By anyone and everyone, from Kresse's people to street urchins.
"We can also fight in battles," said Kresse. "But only if you are willing to make accommodations. We do not have the training or the equipment of regular soldiers." A bit stiffly, he added: "Nor, being honest, do most of our men probably have the temperament. They're not cowards, but…"
Mike nodded. Being a soldier in this day and age, that historical period of gunpowder warfare when the weapons were very powerful but not very accurate, posed some particular challenges. Mental challenges, most of all. A man had to be willing and able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his mates on a battlefield, exchanging volleys with an enemy at what amounted to point blank range. It required not simply courage but a sort of almost surrealistic fatalism. Mike wondered sometimes if the rise of Calvinism had been at least partly conditioned by the warfare of the era. About the only mental armor a man could take with him onto such a battlefield was a belief in predestination-and the hope, at least, that God had selected you for His favor.
Kresse's men, on the other hand, were irregulars whose informal training was quite different. They didn't lack courage, but it was a different sort of courage.
"Yes, I understand. If I use you in a battle, it'd be to hold some defensive positions. I wouldn't expect you to be able to maneuver on an open field."
The tone of the meeting warmed up considerably, after that. Mike thought he'd probably passed some sort of test.
Two days later, the storm had passed and it was time to make the transmissions. Jimmy Andersen and his little crew of radio operators had had everything ready for some time, but Mike waited until the evening. He wanted to make the broadcast during the so-called "window," when the conditions were best for radio transmissions.
So, he took a moment to compose himself. Once he made that first transmission, he'd crossed the Rubicon.
Which-he'd looked it up once-was a river so small it would have been considered a mere creek in West Virginia.
"Piss on it," he murmured. "Okay, Jimmy, let's go. The first message is a transmission to Oxenstierna." To Axel Oxenstierna, chancellor of Sweden From Michael Stearns, major general in command of the USE Army Third Division Your behavior over the past three months has become intolerable. I refer specifically to the following acts: First, the illegal detention and imprisonment of the nation's prime minister. Second, the creation of a rump so-called convention that has attempted to usurp the powers of the nation's legitimate parliament. Third, the sequestration of the injured emperor under conditions of inferior medical care, a deeply suspicious act that smells of treason. Fourth, the imposition of martial law on Saxony and ordering General Baner's assault on Dresden, a peaceful and
orderly city, despite the express orders of the province's administrator personally appointed by the emperor.
Thank you, Ernst Wettin. Mike took a moment to think kind thoughts about a small and unprepossessing nobleman whose integrity dwarfed that of most others of his class. Fifth, the commission of atrocities by Swedish troops against the Saxon populace, such atrocities including murder, rape, arson, bodily mutilation and theft. Sixth…
The list went on for quite some time. The kitchen sink wasn't there, but only because Mike hadn't been able to figure out a plausible way to accuse Oxenstierna of stealing it.
He did accuse the chancellor of imperiling the nation's sanitation measures and increasing the danger of epidemics, though.
"It's off, General."
"The second message is a transmission to Magdeburg. The first of two, actually." To Princess Kristina Vasa, heir to the throne of the United States of Europe.
He'd considered adding her titles to the thrones of Sweden and the High Union of Kalmar as well, but eventually decided against it. A great deal of the legalities involved in all this derived from the nature of Gustav Adolf's triple monarchy. Much of the case against Oxenstierna, in the end, came down to the charge that he'd used his position in the Swedish government to interfere-completely illegally and with no authorization whatsoever-in the affairs of a separate nation, the United States of Europe.
Mike saw no advantage to undermining his case by dragging in two other nations himself. Officially, his ties to Kristina as a general in the USE army were derived solely from her position in that nation and no other.
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.
