The Eastern Front(116)

He almost regretted now his decision the day before not to take Zbąszyń. When he reached the town, he'd discovered that Koniecpolski had managed to get some of his troops into it already. Not very many, true—perhaps two thousand hussars. They had no artillery and hussars were cavalry, not really trained and equipped to defend a town under siege.

On the other hand, they were hussars. That meant that, trained or not, equipped or not, they'd still fight valiantly and ferociously. Gustav Adolf's forces outnumbered them by four-to-one and did have artillery. He didn't doubt that he could take the town within a day; two at the outside.

But Koniecpolski would be here on the morrow. There was no doubt of it. Once again, the USE Air Force was able to give the king of Sweden superb reconnaissance. The last thing Gustav Adolf wanted was for Koniecpolski to catch him in mid-siege. That could be disastrous.

Instead, he'd chosen to move south and take a stand against the lake. He thought he could at the very least fight the Pole to a standstill on open ground. And a standstill was all he needed. Within a day or two, the USE divisions would begin to arrive—Stearns' Third being the first, surprisingly—and the preponderance of forces would shift drastically against Koniecpolski. He'd probably choose to withdraw, in fact, before Stearns even got here. That would mean a siege of Poznań, soon enough, because that was certainly where Koniecpolski would withdraw his forces.

This was not what Gustav Adolf had hoped for, when he began this campaign. The reason he'd driven so hard and taken the risk of separating into six columns was precisely to circumvent the Poles' ability to tie him up in a succession of sieges.

But, war was what it was—above all else, no respecter of persons. There was still enough time before winter came to seize Poznań and possibly Wroclaw. Breslau, rather, as it should be called. The majority of the population in the territory Gustav Adolf had taken so far—in the cities and bigger towns, at any rate—were German Lutherans, not Catholic Poles. If worse came to worst and Gustav Adolf was forced to halt the campaign once winter arrived, at least he would have reclaimed all the territory that his despised cousin Wladyslaw had stolen while Sweden's back was turned.

So. All he had to do today was simply hold the field. And by now, two hours into the battle, Gustav Adolf was confident he could. The artillery barrages that began most battles—this one had been no exception—had been inconclusive. The Poles would now try to break his ranks with cavalry charges. No one did that better than hussars, either. They were without a doubt Europe's premier heavy cavalry, almost a throwback to the knights of the late middle ages.

Still, Gustav Adolf was sure he could withstand them. He'd placed himself against the lake because he'd been confident he could do so. Normally, he wouldn't cut himself off from a route of retreat that way. If the Poles did break his ranks, the result would probably be disastrous. On the other hand, the Poles could no longer use one of the sweeping flank attacks their hussars employed so well, either. They had no choice but to come at him straight on, and he was sure his veteran soldiers could stand against that.

Without talking his eyes off the enemy across the field, Gustav Adolf swiveled his head to speak to Anders Jönsson. The huge Swede and the dozen Scotsmen under his command served Gustav Adolf as his personal bodyguard—on a battlefield, as everywhere else.

"It's going well, I think. Well enough, at least."

He felt a drop of rain strike his hand. Then two, then three. A little patter of raindrops hit his helmet.

"Fuck!"



Jönsson had been afraid the king hadn't spotted the storm clouds coming. As it always was in a battle, Gustav Adolf's attention had been riveted on the enemy across the field. Some part of his mind had probably noticed that it was getting darker, despite the sun still rising. They hadn't reached noon yet. But that same part of his mind would have discounted the fact. Things often got darker in a battle, from the gunsmoke pouring out everywhere. Especially if there wasn't much in the way of a breeze, which there wasn't today.

Or hadn't been. Anders felt a sudden gust strike his cheek.

This was going to be another bitch of a storm, watch and see.

"Fuck!" repeated the king of Sweden, emperor of the United States of Europe, and high king of the union     of Kalmar.

Once again, war was respecting no person.



"Praise the Lord," murmured Stanislaw Koniecpolski. Technically, that might be blasphemy. But Koniecpolski was a Catholic, not a superstitious Protestant prone to seeing fussy rules and regulations in the way a man put on a button. He was also the grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania and one of its greatest magnates—a class of men who took a very expansive view of their rights and privileges. Much of the reason for Poland's tradition of religious toleration was because no great magnate was about to tolerate anyone—neither king nor pope nor sniveling Jesuit nor even the Sejm itself—telling him what he could or could not believe. He might be a Catholic himself, as most of Poland and Lithuania's magnates were, but he damn well had the right to convert to any brand of Protestantism that took his fancy, if he chose to do so.