The Baltic War(189)

Having finished his precise folding of the message, Don Fernando tucked it away and took a few slow steps to reach the top of the berm that gave him a good view of Amsterdam. Manrique remained below, allowing his commander some distance to ruminate in peace.



Once into the Baltic, Simpson might bombard Copenhagen, but Don Fernando thought it far more likely that he'd press on to Luebeck Bay and attack the big Danish and French fleet stationed there. If he could drive them off—and assuming, which the prince thought it would be wise to do—that Gustav Adolf had sent orders to Stockholm for the Swedish navy to sally . . .



They'd have transports, too, bringing fresh troops from Sweden.



For a moment, silently, Don Fernando cursed the fact that his artisans had not yet been able to develop a radio capability of their own. They might have, if he'd ordered them to start soon enough. But until recently, he'd accepted the common assumption that radio operations required the sort of huge towers the enemy had erected in Grantville and Magdeburg. Or, later, the cables they'd attached to existing towers in Amsterdam and Antwerp, which had provided him with a radio connection to Antwerp and to Magdeburg. He had seen no need to do more than have a few of his artisans tinker with radio, thereafter, since building such structures would require many months and a tremendous diversion of resources.



Only a month ago had it dawned on him that the up-timers might not necessarily need great high antennas for radio communication. There were clues aplenty in the up-time books, once he looked at the problem seriously. He then realized, finally, that the diplomatic responses he'd been getting from Rebecca Abrabanel were too rapid. Even granting that she'd been given a great deal of leeway as an envoy, being the wife of the enemy prime minister, she was making decisions that were just that little bit too important, just that little bit too quickly.



Which meant the towers were probably a ruse of war. Don Fernando wasn't positive, but he had come to the tentative conclusion that the up-timers had other methods of using radio, that were neither as cumbersome nor as visible. And, if true, that meant they were able to coordinate their actions far better than the League of Ostend's armies and navies, even leaving aside their advantage of possessing interior lines.



He stared at the walls of Amsterdam, but they were really just a blur. His thoughts were focused inward.



So . . . If he was right, one of the principal axioms of the League of Ostend's military calculations was a mirage. Richelieu and Christian IV—probably Charles, as well, but it hardly mattered what that dolt thought about anything—had been certain that Gustav Adolf's strategy would come to naught in the end, defeated by the simple realities of war, since it so obviously depended on bringing together four major and widely scattered forces in precise and proper sequence: his own army at Luebeck, Torstensson's army that was now being repositioned at Hamburg, Simpson's flotilla, and the Swedish fleet at Stockholm.



Impossible, on the face of it. The Swedish king had grown arrogant and overconfident from his past success. His elaborate plans would come to pieces, each of the separate forces arriving whenever they did—if they did at all—and being defeated in detail.



But what if all four of those forces were in constant touch using radio? What then?



Suddenly, Amsterdam came into focus again. The city that was right in front of him, as it had been for the many months of the siege.



Almost half a year, that siege had lasted, far longer than Don Fernando had foreseen in the heady days right after he seized Haarlem and began his rapid reconquest of most of the rebellious Dutch provinces. Half a year—and it would require at least another half a year to take the city, if he could do it at all. And that assumed—not likely!—that if Gustav Adolf was victorious in northern Germany he would not continue onward to come to the aid of his ally the prince of Orange.



The cardinal-infante knew that he'd been lucky, at that. The diseases that normally ravaged besieging armies after a time had been thankfully mild, in this siege. But that was mainly due to the quiet assistance he'd gotten from the medical specialists in the besieged city itself. That, and the tacit agreement that the siege would not be a hard-fought one, so his soldiers could devote enough time, energy and resources to maintaining good sanitation in the trenches and fieldworks investing Amsterdam.



Enough. It was time to decide. There was Amsterdam in front him; concrete, palpable, a victory that was already within his hands. Or there was the storm coming to the east, as nebulous as it was dark.



He turned away and trotted down from the berm, where Manrique waited for him.



"Have the tercios ready to march out within three days, Miguel," he commanded. "Let's say . . . half of them. That should be enough."