1634: The Bavarian Crisis (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  The insufferable smile thinned, just slightly. Farensbach leaned over the desk and retrieved the document from Cratz's loose grip. "I don't object to 'project,' commander-so long as it is clearly understood that my authorization comes from Duke Maximilian himself. Make sure your subordinates understand that they will co-operate with my investigations."

  With every stressed word, the bastard's smile flickered just that little bit more insufferably. Farensbach straightened up and looked down his nose at the garrison commander. "The duke was most emphatic in his orders. Which he gave to me personally, you understand, not simply in written form. Ingolstadt must not fall into the hands of the heretics-and I was the one he charged with the responsibility to see to it that all necessary security precautions have been taken."

  He bowed, if such a miniscule movement of the head and shoulders could be graced with the term. "And now I'll be off. I must see to my duties immediately, you understand."

  After he left, Cratz von Scharffenstein spent several minutes muttering curses, as many of them heaped upon Maximilian of Bavaria as his Farensbach creature. The duke's discourtesy to his loyal subordinates was positively outrageous!

  ****

  Once he left the commandant's office, the smile vanished from Farensbach's face. True, the interview just passed had gone quite well. And, true also-his new commission from the duke himself as the chief of Ingolstadt's security was certain proof of it-Farensbach's embezzlements from certain of the Bavarian military accounts had gone undetected.

  Well… embezzlements was an absurd way to put it, really. Farensbach had simply lent himself money, unofficially, from accounts under his immediate control. With the full intention of paying them back, soon enough. Unfortunately, "soon enough" had not allowed for the possibility that the duke might send him out of Munich on this fool's errand to Ingolstadt.

  Undetected-so far. But that wouldn't last, not with Farensbach no longer on the scene to oversee the keeping of the books. If he could return within a month, perhaps even two, things would work out well enough. But given the tense situation at Ingolstadt, with that maniac Swedish general Baner so obviously determined to press the siege, Farensbach might be stuck here for months and months. Eventually, the discrepancies were bound to turn up.

  He'd have to think of something. If he didn't, the day would come when new soldiers would arrive at Ingolstadt bearing new orders-and that fat swine Cratz von Scharffenstein would be smiling evilly at him instead of the other way around. When he was led back to Munich in chains.

  As he paced down the hall of the military headquarters, Farensbach's scowl was enough to keep anyone from approaching him while he chewed on the problem. Word had gotten out, obviously, concerning the nature of his assignment-and no garrison soldier in his right mind wanted to draw attention to himself.

  All the better, all the better. No one, and certainly not the lazy garrison commandant, would be paying much attention to Farensbach's movements. More precisely, they'd be paying attention-but only from a distance. That would probably give Farensbach the leeway he needed, no matter what he decided to do.

  And by the time he exited the headquarters and passed into the outer fortress, the decision had already been made. It wasn't as if Farensbach really had any other workable option.

  So. Hopefully, the Swedish general's mania extended to his purse, as well. Safe and financially well-off was a far better prospect than simply being safe, after all.

  ****

  Brussels, Spanish Netherlands

  "No problems with the cease fire, then?" asked Don Fernando. "Not even from CoC irregular units?"

  The Spanish prince's chief political adviser, Pieter Paul Rubens, smiled in response to that. His chief military adviser, Miguel de Manrique, chuckled aloud.

  "No, Your Highness," he said. "Not any. From all accounts, the Richter woman maintains a ferocious discipline over her people. I'm quite envious, actually. I wish my troops were that obedient."

  Don Fernando was not actually that pleased by the news. True, the absence of any incidents with Dutch CoC hotheads was an immediate blessing. But he could foresee a time in the not-so-distant future when he would find that same Richterian discipline a monstrous nuisance. Even now that he'd met the woman personally, it was sometimes hard not to think of her as a she-devil. She'd almost certainly maintain the same rigorous control over the CoCs when they entered the political arena.

  But, that was a problem for a later day. For now…

  One of Miguel's many pleasing qualities was his ability to sense when the prince needed a private moment. He bowed and excused himself, with some vague comments about business he needed to attend to.

  After he was gone, Don Fernando slouched back in his chair. "Any word yet from the pope?"

  "No, Your Highness," said Rubens. "But I really didn't expect to hear anything yet. You need to keep in mind-always-that once such a missive arrives in Rome, it's impossible to keep its contents really secret. By now, any number of Urban's advisers will be aware that you have presented the pope with a petition requesting his permission to relinquish your position as a cardinal of the church. No priest stays for long in such a position in Rome if he lacks brains. They will understand immediately that there can only be one logical reason for your petition-and at least one of those priests is certain to be in the pay of the Spanish crown."

  He cleared his throat. "And at least one other will be in the pay of the Holy Roman Emperor. Who is not actually stupid, once you look past his stubborn bigotry."

  The prince nodded. "Yes, yes, I understand. Soon enough, my brother will be seething with fury-and Ferdinand II is likely to be congratulating himself for having already married off his oldest daughter. That only leaves the younger, Cecelia Renata, as a cause for him to be caught in a Habsburg crossfire."

  "You're most likely right, Your Highness. And what's to the immediate point is that Pope Urban is bound to hesitate himself, for a time. In the end, I'm confident he'll grant the petition-at which point he will be caught in the crossfire."

  The prince grunted. "Why are you so confident he will? It would seem to me that if he refused, he'd get the best bargain of all. On the one hand, he avoids bringing down enmity on his own head-but he also must know that I'll go ahead and resign the cardinalship without or without his agreement to the petition. So he gains that benefit, as well."

  Don Fernando sat erect. "I don't actually need his permission, after all. I never took major vows. I am not a priest, nor even a deacon."

  Rubens shook his head. "You're thinking like a prince of a realm, Your Highness, not a prince of the church. In the end, the pope's power rests on his moral authority far more than it does on the dubious merits of that small army he maintains in the papal territories. That's been true for sixteen centuries. It would be worth far more to Urban to have it known that the newest branch of the Habsburgs asked-and received-his permission to found a dynasty than whatever temporary gains he might make from evading the issue."

  He shrugged. "Besides, the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs are already angry with him for having appointed Mazzare the cardinal-protector of the USE. This way, at least he gains the friendship of a new third branch of Europe's most powerful family."

  The young prince pondered the matter, for a moment, and then sighed. "Yes, of course you're right. I suppose I'm just impatient."

  He sighed again. "I don't know why, really. It's not as if I'm impatient to marry! Not given the choices left. It's too bad that…"

  Almost hastily, he rose from the chair. "But that's pointless. What news from Scaglia, in Copenhagen?"

  Chapter 31

  Pompa Introitus

  At the Passau Border, Bavaria

  Maria Anna stood passively, submitting to the protocol that required her to be undressed in public. Why flinch at this? After all, when they reached Munich, she would be married. Her wedding night would have witnesses who would take proofs of her virginity; she would give birth to her children with fifty or sixty
people in the room, taking official notice of the event. Which was certainly not as bad as the long-ago Constance, who had given birth to the future Emperor Frederick II in a tent with its walls up in the city's market square, just to make certain that those who might claim that she was too old for childbearing and assert that her child was an imposter could be confuted. The life of a ruler's wife was by its very nature a public one.

  Mama stood behind her, receiving the Austrian garments in her arms. That did not mean, of course, that the glorious dress she had been wearing to cross the border would go to waste. Or even that it would be given to Cecelia Renata as a hand-me-down. The ceremony was largely a symbolic one. The seamstresses would check that the dress was still in good repair and pack in back into her trunks with the rest of her trousseau. Dona Mencia was standing behind Mama, waiting to take the discarded clothing from her hands when this part of the ceremony was over. Frau Stecher was standing inconspicuously behind Dona Mencia, waiting to remove it from the pavilion.

  There would be other occasions for her to wear the dress, she hoped. Duchess Mechthilde was starting to reclothe her. The new dress was also quite luxurious, the bodice covered with lace and pearls. It was very beautiful, if you liked black brocade embroidered in black.

  She wished, with one last flicker of nostalgia, that Papa had chosen to marry her into the Spanish Netherlands. Then, she could have traveled a long way, seeing new things. Conditions in the Germanies being what they were at the moment, through Tyrol and Switzerland; then France and Luxembourg, she supposed. She would have gotten to see something different. Marrying into Bavaria was just like, well, moving next door.

  Possibly Cecelia Renata would get to travel to the Spanish Netherlands. It was an open secret now, within the diplomatic community, that Don Fernando had privately written to Urban VIII asking whether a petition for laicization would be looked upon with favor. Maria Anna assured herself that she would not be envious of her sister if that happened. Envy was a mortal sin. She would not commit it. If she did unthinkingly commit it, she would repent of her error, confess it with contrition.

  She had learned her German from the servants. She had no difficulty in understanding the ribald cries and shouts coming from the crowd outside the pavilion.

  She was supposed to stand with her eyes modestly downcast throughout the reclothing. Quickly, she flicked them up. Uncle Max was not watching her.

  What would she call him when he was no longer her uncle, but rather her husband?

  ****

  Although Duke Maximilian was maintaining a passive indifference to the proceedings, this was not the case with any other person within the court pavilion. This marriage represented a crisis for every member of the Bavarian nobility, male or female; for every Bavarian government official, all male. If the Austrian managed to get pregnant, it would result in a shuffling of power structures and relationships at the Bavarian court that people had been setting up for nearly two decades. There was a great deal of curiosity; the courtiers pressed forward to view her.

  ****

  The next stage of the proceedings began. First, the prince-bishop of Passau stepped forward. Maria Anna looked at him affectionately. That was natural enough; he was her younger brother Leopold Wilhelm, just twenty years old. He had been a bishop since he was eleven. Like his older brother and sisters, he was the product of a Jesuit education. The pluralistic ecclesiastical offices that he held were a burden to his conscience already; more, undoubtedly, would be heaped upon him in the future in the interest of maintaining Habsburg political power. Papa's plans for him included the dioceses of Strassburg, Halberstadt, Magdeburg, Olmuetz, Breslau, the headship of the order of the Teutonic Knights. Although he was devout, determined to conduct himself in a manner that would cause no personal scandal, he would be more than delighted if he could get rid of them and go into a secular, military or diplomatic, career.

  The canonical scandal of plurality itself was one that he could scarcely avoid. The lands, Maria Anna thought. So much of what we do, that we call "defending the church," is directed at controlling the lands, the secular power and wealth that are in the hands of the church.

  Father Lamormaini had never really answered her question. If there must be a choice, was it more important for the church to hold its property or to care for the souls of its flock? The lands had not always been there. In the days of the early church, there had been no lands.

  … the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to rest his head. The apostles had not been prince-bishops.

  The prince-bishop of Freising stepped forward. Veit Adam von Gepeckh. He could scarcely have been excluded, no matter how furious Duke Maximilian had been in 1618 when the cathedral chapter elected him instead of one of the duke's brothers. Duke Maximilian had no qualms at all about violating canon law by heaping up a plurality of benefices when it came to his brothers, although he had presented himself as extremely concerned by the allegations that Gepeckh had fathered more than one child. He had brought charges; initiated investigations. The papal investigator, the Bishop of Augsburg, had issued a finding that there was no bar to Gepeckh's consecration. Eventually, he had sworn to lead a model life henceforth if confirmed, admitting only by implication that his conduct thus far had not been ideal. Reluctantly, the duke had consented to the papal confirmation of his election. As far as anyone knew, Gepeckh had done as he had promised and become the very model of an energetic and reforming Catholic Reformation bishop, not to mention introducing major measures of economic reform into his territories.

  It had been a lovely scandal while it lasted, though. And everybody present knew that Duke Maximilian had no intention of ever accepting the election of another prince-bishop of Freising who was not a member of his own immediate family.

  Bishop Gepeckh was accompanied by the papal nuncio, Carlo Carafa. Maria Anna smiled at him. He had served as nuncio in Vienna in 1621; she had known him since she was a child.

  ****

  The nuncio smiled back. He moved steadily. Scheduled events went on, even when the morning's despatches, delivered by a non-stop relay of couriers and horses from Rome to Passau, brought news of an attempt to assassinate the pope. That was not public yet, here in Bavaria. He assumed that the duke had received a message from his Roman agent Crivelli, also, since a special courier had arrived for him this morning.

  ****

  Father Johannes Vervaux, S.J., was standing behind his two charges. Within a month of Duchess Elisabeth Renata's death, his position in the Bavarian court had changed rather significantly. From being the confessor of an elderly woman, he was now the tutor of two very, very, lively boys; of three, on the comparatively rare occasions when the eldest was in a mood to receive some academic instruction. Karl Johann Franz was fifteen; he was far more interested in fencing and riding, gymnastics and other "knightly arts" than in intellectual matters. He was aching for the day that he received permission to serve in Bavaria's army. He would be sixteen in November; there would probably be no holding him back from a cavalry regiment once he passed that milestone.

  The two younger boys showed much more promise, in Vervaux's opinion. Duke Albrecht and his wife had lost a child between Karl and the two younger boys; when he was nine years old, which often ached far more than losing an infant. Maximilian Heinrich was twelve; Sigmund Albrecht, ten. Both, whether Duke Maximilian's new marriage proved fruitful with a quiver of sons or whether Karl did eventually succeed to the duchy, would be destined to lives in the highest offices of the Catholic church. The elder, almost certainly, would follow the in the sequence of Wittelsbachs who had become Archbishop-Electors of Cologne; for the younger, there was a wider range of possibilities.

  Freising, perhaps. Duke Maximilian really wanted Freising in the family. Regensburg or Passau would be possible; if Bavaria managed a real coup, Salzburg.

  It was, in any case, Vervaux's assignment to form and mold them in such a way that they would be a credit to their vocations. All too many politic
al appointees to high church office were not, nor had been since the earliest historical records of the Church. Consequently, he did not consider his new post to be a demotion. He would grant that it might be so in the eyes of worldly men; it certainly was not so in the eyes of God. Nor, if he succeeded in his task of providing them a good spiritual formation, in the eyes of the Jesuit Order.

  At the moment, however, his task was to see that they did not stand on tiptoe; neither squirmed nor wiggled, craned their heads, nor in other ways acted like boys. They were in the middle of a formal court ceremony. Their father, Duke Albrecht, ignored them, focused entirely on his role in the welcoming ceremony for Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. Duchess Mechthilde, although carrying out an equally important part in the ceremony, flashed occasional glances their way, anxious to confirm that they were behaving themselves.

  This was not surprising, considering that they were boys, and at the moment their mother was occupied with stripping Archduchess Maria Anna down to her shift, in order to re-clothe her in garments of Bavarian manufacture. It was difficult to keep boys from displaying an unseemly interest in something like that.

  Vervaux smiled inwardly. It was difficult to keep even a middle-aged Jesuit from displaying an unseemly interest in something like that. The ceremony by which the archduchess was being transferred from the custody of her father to that of her future husband required a public change of clothing. The crowds who were attending, beyond the limits of the enclosure for court personnel, were making no effort to refrain from unseemly interest. He gathered his errant thoughts up and disciplined them. Surely, there were more edifying topics to which he could devote his consideration than the degree of dress, or undress, of the future duchess of Bavaria as she stood surrounded by her ladies in waiting.