So it had proved. Once again, Hans Georg von Arnim would face the forces of Gustav Adolf on a battlefield.
Not Gustav Adolf himself, though. Saxon spies had said the Swedish king was taking his own forces north to do battle with Brandenburg. More importantly, since von Arnim had no great confidence in the elector's espionage apparatus, the Poles said the same. It had become clear to von Arnim that Koniecpolski had a very capable spy network in the USE.
Unfortunately, Koniecpolski would be absent from the coming battle. The Polish Sejm was still squabbling over whether or not to come to the aid of Saxony and Brandenburg. King Władysław IV wanted to do so, but without the Sejm's agreement Koniecpolski would not move. And the king was not foolish enough to think his will could override that of the grand hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
So, there was only a token Polish force here. Cold-bloodedly, von Arnim intended to order them into the thick of the battle. They'd probably suffer terrible casualties. If von Arnim managed to fend off the USE army—he had no real hope of defeating them—and could prolong the war, then the blood shed by those young Polish hussars might be enough to tip the scale in the Sejm. Their commander was an Opalinski. If all went well, he might be killed himself.
"You watch," grumbled Lubomir Adamczyk. "That Saxon bastard's going to get us all killed."
Lukasz Opalinski glanced at the young hussar riding next to him. "He's Prussian, actually."
Adamczyk sneered. "What's the difference? They're all Lutherans."
Lukasz thought most Brandenburgers were Calvinists, although he wasn't sure what von Arnim's own beliefs were. But there was no point discussing that with Lubomir. Like most hussars, Adamczyk's range of knowledge and interests was limited. It certainly didn't include delving into the fine distinctions between Protestant sects. Why bother? None of them were Catholic and thus all of them were damned. Question closed.
When it came to military matters, on the other hand, Lubomir was no dimwit. Opalinski thought his assessment of the current situation was quite accurate. Von Arnim would try to get them killed. A number of them, anyway.
Allowing for perhaps excessive ruthlessness, though, Lukasz didn't really blame him that much. The Saxon elector had placed his army commander in an exceedingly difficult position. Von Arnim, with no significant advantage in numbers, had to face the same army that had recently crushed the French at Ahrensbök. Even allowing that the reputation of the French army had probably been overblown, no one really doubted that it had still been superior to the Saxon army. It was just a fact that the only significant feat of arms of Saxony's forces in recent times had been their ignominious routing at Breitenfeld, less than four years earlier.
Von Arnim had only two factors in his favor. The first was that one of Torstensson's three top lieutenants was the American Mike Stearns. However capable Stearns might have been as a political leader, he had no significant military experience. Von Arnim would surely concentrate his attack on Stearns' units. If, by doing so, he could at least achieve a stalemate at this coming battle . . .
. . . and if the small Polish contingent that had come to join him should happen to suffer sadly severe casualties in the doing . . .
. . . especially if one of those casualties was from the very influential Opalinski family . . .
Well, then. Who could say? Perhaps the notoriously temperamental Polish Sejm might cease its bickering and unite furiously in the cause of avenging their wrongs.
No, Lukasz didn't much blame the Saxon commander. On the other hand, he had no intention of obliging him, either.
He leaned in his saddle toward Adamczyk. "Remember. We're mostly just here to observe."
Lubomir made a face. "On a battlefield, that's a lot easier said than done."
Alas, true.
Looking across the field at the Saxon army as it came into position, Thorsten Engler felt nervous. Unusually so, he thought. He couldn't remember feeling this nervous when the battle of Ahrensbök began.
But at Ahrensbök he'd just been a noncommissioned officer in charge of a single volley gun battery. Today, he was a captain in charge of an entire company.
No, it was worse than that. Thanks to the whim of a princess, he was now the imperial count of Narnia. A silly title, but it had apparently been enough to draw the attention of the division commander, General Stearns.
And so, Thorsten Engler had been brought into the subtle plans of Stearns and his own commander, General Torstensson, where most officers had not. And so, he'd learned of the trap they hoped to lay for the Saxon commander, von Arnim.
Traps require bait, of course. And so, Thorsten had discovered his role in the coming battle.
Not as bait, though. Oh, no, it was much worse than that. He was the fellow—a child-princess' fantasy of a fairy-tale count—who had to go charging in and rescue the bait after the trap had been sprung and the monster had it in his teeth.