The Baltic War(226)

Not so bad, really. The cavalryman came from a farm family. Who, like all such stock, were accustomed to the perils of farm work. One of his cousins had been killed simply plowing a field. Tripped, somehow, and gotten caught in the equipment the horse was pulling. His leg was so badly gashed he bled to death before he was found. His brother had lost three fingers; his father's shoulder had ached since he was fourteen; one of his uncles—



Why go on? Not the least of the reasons the man had joined the army was that it was generally safer work than farming.



He didn't give a single thought to the Cardinal. None of his business, that.





"You are overreacting, Michael," said the emperor. His tone of voice sounded completely calm. Mike didn't think that was an artifact of the radio, either. It was just the manner of Gustav Adolf, under pressure in a military situation.



Like millions of people, Mike had watched the Ken Burns documentary on the American Civil War, when it came out in 1990. He could remember being particularly struck by a comment made by the southern historian Shelby Foote, with regard to Ulysses Grant. He'd depicted Grant as one of those relatively rare generals who had "four o'clock in the morning courage." Even startled and caught by surprise, as he'd been at Shiloh, he'd remained unruffled and steady.



Gustav Adolf was another. As he'd shown less than three years earlier at Breitenfeld, when the entire Saxon wing of his army had panicked and raced off the battlefield. The king of Sweden hadn't panicked at all—and had gone on to win the battle.



"I never expected we could maintain technological superiority everywhere," continued the emperor. "Foolish to think so. And in this instance, I am quite sure that these new rifles are not in the possession of the forces that Torstensson and I are facing here. Not in significant numbers, at least. We have quite good intelligence in the enemy camps outside Luebeck, you know. There's been no report at all of anything beyond the usual muskets."



There came an odd sound that Mike couldn't quite interpret. At a guess, Gustav Adolf had cleared his throat.



"I will admit—privately, and if you tell Axel I said so I will deny it vigorously—that the Committees of Correspondence have their uses. The point is, Michael, that while a sparrow may fall unnoticed in those enemy lines a short distance from here, I can assure you that no brilliantly designed new muskets could possibly do so. Flintlocks, percussion locks, it is irrelevant. They are not there, except possibly a few in the hands of officers."



Mike didn't doubt it. The ability of the CoCs to serve the USE as an informal intelligence agency was often uncanny, even when it came to purely military intelligence. That was usually because, quite unlike regular spy services with their limited funds, the CoCs could enlist—at no cost—the enthusiastic participation of all sorts of people who could move amongst the soldiers in a seventeenth-century army without being noticed. Servants for the officers, laundresses and cooks for the soldiers, even sometimes outright prostitutes. If nothing else, there was always a ten-year-old boy willing to go on an adventure—and who would pay any attention to such, as he scampered about a military camp playing games with his fellows? Armies of this day and age were always accompanied by camp followers.



That still left the possibility that the French were on the verge of sending a large shipment of the new weapons to their forces outside Luebeck. But before Mike could raise the possibility, Gustav Adolf did himself.



"Yes, I realize the situation might change, within a week or two. Although I doubt it, actually. If the French had that sort of production underway, they'd never have allowed one cavalry expedition to give away the secret on the eve of a major battle. But it doesn't matter. There won't be anything left worth talking about of the Ostender fleet in Luebeck Bay after today. Admiral Simpson's flotilla has already entered the bay and is preparing to engage the enemy. The Ostenders don't have one week left. They have one or two days. Three, at most. By tomorrow or the day after, the Danes will start pulling out of the siege lines. The French will have no choice but to follow. Watch and see if I'm not right."



Mike wasn't about to argue the matter. As the old saying went, his mama hadn't raised no fools. Granted, the advice Mike's mother had given him over the years hadn't included "and whatever else, you young scamp, don't argue military tactics with a general so famous he'll be remembered three and half centuries later." But she'd covered the basics, well enough.



"All right, Your Majesty. That does raise—"



"Yes, Michael, I know. Now that your timberclad has been repaired, what to do with it? Too late for the Achates to play any role in the Baltic, and while I might possibly have some use for it along the Elbe, it's not likely. Lennart has the French bastards trapped, now that he's cut their lines of retreat. They'll never get to the Elbe. Even if they do, I still have the five timberclads in Henderson's flotilla at Hamburg, if I need to use them.