Turenne shrugged. "Not so amazing as all that, Robert. The Americans are no different from anyone else. Once people get a notion firmly fixed in their heads, they usually become blind to any alternative." His early scowl started coming back. "I could show you a much worse example—not that I'd subject you to the misery—at any collection of generals back in Paris."
"They haven't budged at all?"
"Not an inch. I'm afraid I'm partly to blame for that. They're none too smart at the best of times, but this degree of mule-headedness is unusual even in their circles."
"They resent you, Henri, it's as simple as that." Du Barry clapped Turenne on the shoulder. By now, at least in private, their relationship was as much that of two friends as commanding and subordinate officer. "You're half the age of most of them, and already a marshal."
Turenne grunted softly. "Yes. I often think the cardinal made a mistake, promoting me so quickly."
"That's crap. Pure crap. I know those generals in Paris. And why are they still in Paris to begin with, dining in palaces—when their soldiers are shivering in trenches around Luebeck? I served under them, for more years than I want to remember, not being a sprig like you. De la Valette is probably the worst of the lot, but none of them are any prizes. It's been too long since France fought a real war, that's all, unless you count that butchery in Mantua. The officers have gotten rotten and the men are mostly undisciplined. And what good young officers do show up, like Jean de Gassion, have been coming into your service. No fools, they."
"Yes, I know. It means I have as good a cavalry force as probably any in the world—but that's still only five thousand men. Even if every last man in the ranks was armed with one of these"—he pointed to the rifle—"five thousand men simply can't withstand what's coming in the spring."
"That bad?"
"I think so, yes," said Turenne gloomily. "Fucking idiots. All they hear from the spies—all they listen to, rather—is 'volunteer regiments.' So they assure the cardinal that the Swede will be bringing nothing but a poorly trained rabble into the field. All the rest of what the spies tell them, they simply ignore. Have no illusions, Robert. Say what else you will about him, Gustavus Adolphus is one of the great captains of the day. He didn't sit in Luebeck for months waiting for Torstensson to present him with a shiny new army, if he thought it would collapse at the first trial of arms."
He threw up his hands. "But what does Gustavus Adolphus know? A barbarous Norseman, is he not? We shall forget that he's probably fought and won more battles—and bigger ones—than all of today's French generals put together."
The firing range was filled with a grim silence, for a moment. Then du Barry sighed and said: "So we'll be depending even more heavily on Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and his mercenaries than ever. At least you can always count on that shithead to fight. He can move troops quickly, too. Enough that he could come up in time from Alsace, even with his fifteen thousand strong army."
Turenne made a face. "I'm not so sure about that, any longer, I'm afraid."
Robert cocked his head. "You know something?"
"I don't know anything. Neither does the cardinal, I don't believe. Servien told him that getting spies into Bernhard's inner circles had proven impossible, so far. I just have a bad feeling about that whole situation. Mostly"—here he smiled, thinly—"because I've noticed that Bernhard hasn't been bragging as incessantly as usual, the past two months."
"Ah." Du Barry swiveled his head and studied the target at the other end of the range. The thick wooden post was getting pretty badly shredded, by now. "Yes, that is a bad sign."
Two hours later, as Turenne was putting his coat and hat on for the long trip back to Paris, du Barry reminded him of an overlooked detail.
"The name of the rifle. You still haven't decided."
Turenne finished buttoning his coat, while he thought about it. Then, with a smile: "Let's call it the Cardinal."
Besançon,
The Franche-Comté
From Saint Etienne, a high plateau that opened onto the Jura massif and overlooked the ancient town of Besançon, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar studied the Doubs. The river made a great loop below, which enclosed the town on three sides—more like eighty percent of its circumference, actually. The town itself was situated inside the loop, with a fortress protecting the neck and the beginnings of fortifications on the two hills which flanked it.
Only the beginnings yet, at Besançon. Bernhard's official military headquarters were much farther to the northeast, at the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul at Schwarzach on the Rhine. Though by nature a very thrifty man, Bernhard had spent a great deal of money to acquire his own copies of the Encyclopedia Brittanica brought by the Americans through the Ring of Fire. He'd chosen that location, to the discomfiture of the Benedictine monks residing there, on the basis of his careful reading of some of Louis XIV's Rhineland campaigns in the 1680s. That world would now not happen, of course, but the logic of the choice of location remained. Schwarzach had a convenient set of large buildings and was not far from what had once become Fort Louis. What was now becoming Fort . . . Whatever, since it didn't have a name yet. But construction was well advanced.