So be it. He had a fleeting and regretful thought of Caroline, but pushed it aside. He'd die or he wouldn't.
But it never came to that. That final volley shattered what was left of the charge. Only a dozen French cavalrymen made it into the ranks of the gunners, and a good third of them were wounded. Even with their superior weapons, they were simply too outnumbered to put up much of a fight.
The officer leading them was bleeding badly and half-slumped over his saddle before his horse passed through the line. Fortunately for him, his half-panicked mount instinctively avoided the guns and so he passed just beyond the range of partisans being wielded on either side. Then, not thirty feet beyond, a sudden panicky lunge to the side by his horse spilled him from the saddle. He landed on the ground like a sack of meal, his helmet coming off and flipping over twice. Then, with a little spasm of an elbow motion, the officer managed to roll himself over on his back. Half of his face was covered in blood.
Thorsten trotted his horse over and saw that the man was still conscious. That head wound wasn't as bad as it looked. A lot of blood, as always with head wounds, but the wound was a gash across the side of his head just above his ear, not anything that had penetrated the skull. He'd been creased by a bullet, was all.
The French officer groaned and raised his right hand to the wound on his head. The hand was bleeding also.
Thorsten dismounted and came to one knee beside him. "Hold still," he said. "I'll get a bandage on as soon I can, so you don't lose too much blood."
Bleary-eyed, the officer stared up at him. Only then did it occur to Engler than he might not speak German.
Apparently he did, however. The critical phrase, anyway. That might be the only phrase in German he knew, which he'd have memorized as a young soldier.
"Je suis Jean-Baptiste Budes, comte de Guébriant," he whispered. Then added in German: "There is a ransom."
Eric Krenz had run over and arrived just in time to hear. He stooped, hands planted on knees, and gave Engler an evil-looking grin. "Not that it'll do you any good, Thorsten. You're neither a widow nor an orphan, and don't have any even if you'd gotten killed, since you didn't marry Caroline yet. Makes you long for the good old days, doesn't it?"
Thorsten gave him an exasperated glance. Leave it to Krenz to make wisecracks about an issue that had practically caused a mutiny in the army, back in training camp. The mercenary soldiers—who were few, in the ranks, but constituted almost half of the officers—had taken it for granted that any ransom for captured enemy officers would accrue personally to the soldiers who actually did the capture. With a rightful portion accruing to the officers in charge, naturally. That had been the established custom for centuries; the army's version of naval prize money.
But, led by their CoC component—very large component—the volunteers in the regiments would have none of it. Medieval barbarism, that was. Instead, in solemn assemblies that they technically had no right to hold but fuck the authorities if they didn't like it, the soldiers voted in their great majority that all ransom money should be turned over to a common pool, to be dispensed to the families of those soldiers who were slain or crippled in action.
The officers had tried to suppress the assemblies, the soldiers had taken up weapons, and things had gotten very tense. Fortunately, General Torstensson was able to keep the situation from escalating to actual violence long enough for the emperor in his siege at Luebeck to rule on the side of the soldiers.
A number of mercenary officers had resigned at that point. But since they were usually the ones who'd been foremost in trying to suppress the near-mutiny, it was just as well. Certainly for them. Very prominent among the American loan words that had made its way into Amideutsch—especially as spoken in the volunteer regiments—was the term "fragging."
Most of the mercenaries stayed, however, grumble as they might. In part, because Gustav Adolf sweetened the deal for them by saying that he'd pay bonuses out of his own imperial coffers to officers whose men did well in the fighting—and it was understood that one of the important determinations for "doing well" meant capturing enemy commanders, especially the noblemen who completely dominated the French officer corps.
So, the issue had died down. The soldiers were now arguing over exactly how to organize the disbursement. Some favored using the CoCs, but even most CoC members felt that would be inappropriate. Others wanted to set up special committees for the purpose in the regiments. But that had the disadvantage of impermanency, since the regiments were supposed to disband in three years—the men felt very strongly on that subject—and a widow or orphan was likely to need the money for a lot longer than that.