1634 The Baltic War

by Eric Flint

  Ferdinand looked at the younger of his two sisters. "Sissy, have you read about your marriage in the other universe?" he asked abruptly.

  She nodded solemnly. "I married the king of Poland. A practical match, of course. The encyclopedias say that it was a disastrously unhappy marriage. They do not say why, but apparently it was so unhappy that people remembered the fact for three hundred and fifty years."

  Her eyes filled briefly with tears. "I won't complain. I know my duty. But Papa was always so nice to our mother, and to Mama." She jumped up and gave the empress a kiss. "And you and Mariana like each other."

  "Actually," Mariana said, "I love him quite dearly."

  "I think," Ferdinand III said firmly, "that in this universe we can rule the king of Poland out, Sissy. I'll think of some other way to handle Wladyslaw. That doesn't mean, of course, that any other marriage we find for you would necessarily be happier. But as I think about it, there is a place where you might be very helpful."

  Cecelia Renata raised her eyebrows.

  "Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar is now sitting directly on top of the Spanish Road. If he manages to hold that territory, then some time in the next two or three years, a marriage alliance might appear to be prudent. Not to mention helpful to Duchess Claudia in regard to the Swabian possessions."

  "If you were prepared to deal with being married to a heretic," Leopold Wilhelm said. Being a bishop, however unwillingly, he did feel obliged to bring the matter up.

  "Of course," Ferdinand III said to his younger sister, "Bernhard is not a king. He is only a duke, and a younger son, if that matters to you."

  Cecelia Renata rested her left elbow on the polished table; then rested her chin on the palm of her hand. "The Bavarian was a duke and Papa betrothed Maria Anna to him," she said placidly. Then she gave him a wicked grin. "Nor, for that matter, was our honored cousin Fernando a king. Not until last month, that is."

  Ferdinand III opened his mouth; then closed it again. "It's a fascinating possibility," he said. "If, of course, Hungary and the Turks do not demand all of our resources. The Ottomans can never be far from Austria's mind. If Austria falls, then Europe falls."

  Chapter 65

  Tu, Felix Austria, Nube

  Magdeburg

  Mike Stearns looked up in response to the knock on his office door. People rarely interrupted when Don Francisco was briefing him.

  "It's Ed," Claire Hudson said. "Finally."

  "Well, just send him on in. What happened?"

  "Track delays." Ed Piazza sat down in the softest available chair. "Those benches in the cars are really hell on a middle-aged rear end when there's a rough ride. Five hours of track delays. Can't you do something to make the trains run on time?"

  "If I could, I would. 'What's the news of the day, good neighbor, I pray?'"

  "No balloons up to the moon. At least not yet, but if we don't get a handle on these lighter-than-air enthusiasts, I wouldn't be surprised. Actually, I have the latest installment in the Gospel According to Annalise–and her cousin Dorothea."

  "So?"

  "The Richters are spreading out. One of Ronnie Dreeson's stepdaughters married a Nürnberger as her second husband, so she isn't leaving. Two of them and their husbands are going back to Grafenwöhr to handle the Richter property up that way. Brechbuhl is staying in Amberg and bringing his children back. Rastetter bought out Arndt's old practice and can use a partner. Brechbuhl can make a much better career there than he'll be allowed to by the Lutherans in Nürnberg, now that Duke Ernst has officially promulgated the religious toleration policy."

  "Any specifics on that?"

  "Full public toleration for Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics, with the Lutherans as 'first among equals,' more or less. Tacit toleration for everything from Jews and Anabaptists to Socinians, Moravian Brethren, and Mormons, on the presumption that they don't make waves or do the ecclesiastical equivalent of yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater."

  "Which concurs with the reports that I've received. I don't have a copy of the document itself, yet, but that pretty well covers the situation in the Upper Palatinate, as far as I've heard from Jake Ebeling, too. With the wrap-up at Ingolstadt, since things are still quiet with Wallenstein, Duke Ernst can focus on administration, which is what he does best." Francisco Nasi folded his hands.

  "It won't last," Ed Piazza predicted. "Once Wettin becomes prime minister, he'll pull Ernst out of the boondocks and make him Secretary of Education for the USE. He'll want him in Magdeburg, not Amberg."

  "The USE doesn't have a Department of Education. Just to be practical," Mike said.

  Ed shook his head. "It will under a Wettin administration. If only because Ernst is Wilhelm Wettin's brother. Ernst will do for the USE what Wolfgang Ratichius is doing for the SoTF–take the best of down-time reform ideas and combine them with certain elements of what Grantville brought along. Not with everything that Grantville brought along, by any means. I just don't see that the balance between church-sponsored schools and secular public schools is going to tip any time soon. Not even in the SoTF and Magdeburg Province. 'Soon' meaning 'in my lifetime.' Ernst won't want it to, any more than Wolfgang does. Gustav certainly won't be leading any crusade for replacing Lutheran schools with nondenominational ones. In any case, nobody has the money to scrap the existing system and start over. The way I see it, the secular public schools will be a supplement, giving educational opportunities to kids who don't fit the Lutheran or Catholic–or Calvinist–molds. "

  Mike grimaced with disgust. No matter how, well, unfeasible it was, he would rather see the old USA model exported to the entire continent of Europe, 'given his druthers,' as his grandma would have said. "Will he move the normal school to Magdeburg, then?"

  Ed shook his head. "Not with the sweetheart deal it has in Amberg. It isn't an either-or situation. He'll see to it that there's funding for another one here. There's plenty of demand and teacher education isn't all that expensive. It's not all that glamorous, either, but it sure is cheap compared to engineering or medicine. And we all know that Gustav is going to spring for Imperial Colleges for those in Magdeburg."

  "Duke Ernst can clone the normal school. Can he clone those two boys? It's pretty sure that either Maximilian's nephews stay in Amberg or Gustav decides to move them somewhere else. Somewhere farther from Bavaria and Bohemia." Nasi reached up and pushed his new reading glasses up his nose. Four years of serious, practically non-stop, reading of mostly handwritten reports and relations had taken their toll on his eyes.

  "You need to get those frames fitted better the next time you get down to Grantville," Ed said absently. "Have your secretary make an appointment with McNally."

  "About the young dukes of Bavaria," Nasi said. He was not about to be distracted.

  "I think the USE should leave them where they are for the time being." Ed glared at Mike, even though it was Francisco who had spoken. "They've been through enough, losing their mother and their home. Being separated from their father. I wouldn't recommend taking them away from a tutor they like and from a school where they're just starting to settle in–not at all. They're not just pawns on someone's political chessboard, you know. They're two boys. Real, live, people. Young Maximilian will be thirteen in October. Sigmund just turned eleven. Kids, still."

  "Sometimes, the fact that you've spent most of your life as a professional educator just shines through."

  "Can't help it, Mike. I did. That's what I am. Time enough to move them if you see some kind of a real threat. Right now, I don't see that Duke Maximilian is in a position to do anything serious. Any major effort would take money and their father is living on Wallenstein's charity. Leave them alone."

  "I'd be happier if they were someplace more central. Like Magdeburg."

  "If Wettin's smart, and he is, he's having Ernst make friends with them–between now and when the new administration comes in. Figuring the election and the transfer-of-power protocol we've written into the new constitution, that's eight or nine mon
ths. Ernst can bring them, and Vervaux, to Magdeburg when he moves. Which makes me hope that by then Larry Mazzare has a Jesuit collegium here to receive them."

  "Not a bad solution. Just as long as Duke Ernst can keep them safe between now and then."

  "He can. As well as anyone can. I've watched him in action, probably more closely than you've had time to. And I've talked to Duke Johann Philipp about his future son-in-law. Don't underestimate him."

  "So much for the Upper Palatinate, from personal soap opera to high policy, then." Mike dismissed one concern.

  Turning to Nasi, he raised the next one. "What do you think Austria is going to be doing?"

  "Thinking about what princesses they have available to marry to those two Bavarian boys in a decade or so."

  "God, Francisco. They're just kids." Mike winced at his involuntary echo of Ed's argument.

  "You know the proverb. 'Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, wage marriage.' I don't think that Ferdinand III will want to hold his other sister off the marriage market for several more years just to make a Bavarian marriage–especially since there's a lot less of Bavaria now than there was five years ago. The daughters of Claudia de' Medici, the archduchesses of Austria-Tyrol, are just about the right age and background to pair up with them. They aren't very closely related, either, the way the upper nobility sees these things. For that matter, the way my own people see these things."

  Mike frowned.

  "Not everyone is 'into' this maddening American preference for exogamy," Francisco said mildly.

  "Do you really think that Gustav will let those boys go back and rule Bavaria?" Ed asked.

  "The hereditary principle is still very strong. It's the best solution–once they've been given a reasonable education and character formation on the USE model."

  "What about Wallenstein's girl?"

  Don Francisco raised his eyebrows above the top rim of his glasses.

  Ed looked at him. "Well, now that his wife is pregnant again–if the child is a boy and survives, his daughter becomes not the heiress of Bohemia but just an incredibly wealthy and influential bride-to-be. And Catholic. Why wouldn't she make a decent wife for one of the Bavarian boys?"

  "She could. She might. It would depend on how firmly Wallenstein keeps control. We should factor her in as a variable, though. Maybe one of the Bavarian boys with an Austrian wife; the other with a Bohemian. That would leave the Austrians with Claudia de' Medici's youngest girl still to put into play...."

  "Will Tyrol fall in with Vienna's plans, or go its own way? Given the actions of Duchess Claudia in connection with Kronach–and now she's sent those three doctors of hers off to Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar."

  Nasi steepled his fingers. "There just aren't that many different eligible Catholic possibilities." He thought a minute. "It's my guess that Ferdinand III will pull his brother out of the church and marry him off. I've heard rumors that the up-time history books have put an end to the proposed Polish match for Archduchess Cecelia Renata. They'll still want to maintain the dynastic ties with Poland, though, so it would be only logical to marry Leopold Wilhelm to Wladyslaw's half-sister."

  "Konstanzia Vasa? I'm always a little disconcerted, still, when I have to think of Polish Catholic Vasas. I've gotten the notion of Swedish Lutheran Vasas so firmly in my head. Not to mention that I have to deal with the Swedish Lutheran ones on a daily basis." Mike grinned. "Even though the emperor's ambition is basically limitless, I have a problem with 'Gustavus Adolphus, King of Poland and Defender of the Catholic Faith.' It just doesn't ring right. Not that Gustav would draw the line at swallowing up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, if he could manage it."

  "If Wladyslaw manages to hang on, it's not likely to happen. Rest your mind," Nasi advised. "But I do think that Vienna is going to want a Polish marriage, and that's the only one on the drawing boards at the moment. Which leaves Anna de' Medici for Wladyslaw."

  "And still leaves Ferdinand III with his second sister to dispose of–advantageously."

  "Well, there is Don Carlos."

  "Don Carlos is dead." Ed frowned. "I was in a play about it, once, in college. Schiller. In an English translation, of course. I played the evil Philip II. Our drama professor, who was directing it, said that the history in the play was really lousy. The real Don Carlos was a nut rather than a hero and the real Philip II did his country a favor by offing him before he could turn into a real-life mad king."

  "Different Don Carlos," Nasi said. "This one is Philip IV's next younger brother, between him and Don Fernando–not his oldest uncle."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Philip III didn't put him into the church, the way he did Don Fernando. Kept him as the spare to the heir. He's the Grand Admiral of Spain. That's just a title, of course. I doubt that he's ever been to sea."

  Piazza grinned. "Even if he is the 'ruler of the king's na-vee.'"

  Nasi's eyebrows went up again.

  "Gilbert and Sullivan. Next time you're in Grantville, I'll have Annabelle put some on the stereo. It's nineteenth century English, though, so you'll probably miss a lot of the patter that makes the lyrics funny. Even most twentieth-century Americans couldn't follow it. People who put the plays on had to put explanations in the programs. But, anyway. To repeat myself. Never heard of him."

  "That's probably because he's eminently forgettable. Or he was, in your world, since he would have died a couple of years ago without having done anything much. He's in his mid-twenties, now. Said to be pleasant. Amiable. Inoffensive. But there may be more to him than that, given how hostile Olivares is to his influence on his brother. Olivares keeps maneuvering to separate the two of them. Since he isn't dead, the king is bound to start maneuvering to marry him off."

  Ed leaned back. "Why are you only suggesting Catholic marriages for the Austrians? And Wallenstein's girl?"

  Nasi sputtered. "Well... um... because... champions of Catholicism and all that."

  "The first time I met Cavriani, he told me that Lutherans are half-Catholic. So's the Church of England in a way, I suppose. They have bishops and all that, which is why the Puritans are so irritable most of the time. So–look at it this way. The grand dukes of Tuscany wouldn't have any interest in the Upper Palatinate, really. But given the geography, wouldn't Wallenstein be just as happy to see his little girl married to Karl Ludwig and safely installed next door in an Upper Palatinate that offers freedom of religion to Catholics? As happy as he would be to see her married to a second son in Bavaria, I mean. Maybe even happier to have her married to the heir rather than the spare, given how Mechthilde of Leuchtenberg ended up this summer. It might upset the Calvinists, but the Catholics there would be glad enough to see her coming, I should think."

  Mike shook his head. "Rebecca doesn't foresee any developments along those lines, any more than Francisco does. Maybe Wallenstein might consider it–he was born a Protestant, of course. But not the Austrians."

  "The Winter King had thirteen children. Ten of them are still alive. Throw them into the equation and everything changes." Ed smiled. "Give copies of a children's biography of Rupert of the Rhine to some little princesses and watch them start to sigh. They're about the right ages to marry Claudia de' Medici's children, too, without stretching it to the ridiculous age differences that some royal matches have had."

  "What about Duchess Claudia herself? And her sister?" Mike asked.

  "The sister's dead, according to the latest despatches from Tuscany. Which everyone more or less expected–she's been an invalid for years. Everybody expected her to croak when she got sick last December." Nasi was clearly proud of his mastery of that idiom. "Claudia, though..." He paused.

  "Thirty years old. Redhead. Good looking. Six children from two marriages, and five of them alive and healthy. That's pretty much what you could call a proven track record in this day and age. Odd that Don Fernando didn't snap her up when he had a chance." Mike looked thoughtful.

  "Someone will. You can bank on that."

  "I
f she were willing to marry a Protestant... What would be her bottom line?" Ed asked.

  "Duchess Claudia's bottom line is the bottom line in Bozen's account books. She's a descendant of the grand dukes of Tuscany, but never forget that the Medici were bankers long before they were princes."

  "Who's available? Fredrik of Denmark, but he's definitely second-string now that Ulrik is betrothed to Princess Kristina. Charles I in England, since Henrietta Maria's death. Umm... Wladyslaw, if he doesn't go for her niece Anna?"

  "Duke Bernhard."

  All three of them laughed.

  "At least we don't have to worry about Lorraine," Mike inserted. "What a bunch of flakes. Chaos-creators. What's it called? Forces for entropy? But unless someone's spouse dies, they're like the French. Out of the running until they produce a new generation."

  "And in this world, Monsieur Gaston hasn't waited for permission from his big brother and Richelieu to start sleeping with his Lorrainer wife. The newspapers say that she's pregnant. Ye gods, it's a damned epidemic." Ed looked at Mike. "How's Becky feeling, by the way?"

  * * * *

  Madrid

  "King in the Low Countries," Philip IV of Spain said, his voice tight with anger. "Just what does he mean by "king in the Low Countries."

  "I believe, Your Majesty," Count Duke Olivares said, "if I read the communication from Cardinal Bedmar correctly, that by being king 'in' the Netherlands, he claims that precedence only when he is within his own territories, and when foreign monarchs call upon him there. If, however, it should chance that he had some reason to make a state visit to Spain, he would come as an Infante of Spain and Your Majesty's younger brother. It is a fine distinction, perhaps."

  "Fine or not, it is a declaration of independence."

  "De facto, yes. But not quite de jure. Considering that, officially, the Spanish Netherlands are still governed by your aunt. The situation may well change upon the death of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia."