* * *
Tim was still doing latrine duty when Moscow finally decided to send reinforcements. At that point the ranking Polish officer withdrew his army. The Lithuanian magnate’s campaign had not been sanctioned by either King Wladyslaw or the Sejm. Such private adventures by the great magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were not particularly unusual—and if successful, got after-the-fact backing. But if they failed disastrously, the magnate could face severe repercussions. If nothing else, he’d be in such a weakened state that other great magnates—they all maintained large private armies—would be tempted to attack him.
As for Third Lieutenant Boris Timofeyevich Lebedev, he continued to receive unpleasant assignments for the next six months, much to the irritation of his father. But Tim never complained.
Chapter 62
September 1634
“So how was the wedding, Colonel?” Boyar Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev asked.
“I found it quite interesting, sir,” said Colonel Leontii Shuvalov. “Though I will admit I was a bit disappointed to find that the Poles had held a war while I was gone and I wasn’t invited.”
“Rzhev made things much more difficult,” Sheremetev said. “Filaret is making noise about invading Poland again. And without Shein, we probably couldn’t hold him back. Shein figures we are getting stronger, faster, so time is on our side for now. But he will switch back as soon as he figures we’re ready.” Sheremetev shook his head in disgust. “None of them can see that Poland is not the real enemy. The real enemy is Gustav Adolf and his new USE. So tell me about the USE, Leontii.”
Leontii made his report. That the USE was rich and powerful and becoming more so every day was beyond question. He had seen several different kinds of airplanes. The largest of which was dwarfed by Testbed, but the slowest of which made the balloon seem a snail by comparison. But the real danger was the factories, which turned out hundreds of items in the time it would take a craftsman to make just one.
Yet Russia had factories, too. “While we are behind, we aren’t that far behind. I took a steamer from Rybinsk, one of the ones that they were using to resupply Rzhev. I was amazed by the factories along the Volga.”
Sheremetev grunted. “As new items come out of the Dacha, Princess Natalia doles them out to her friends at court. And they start hiring workmen and setting up ‘factories,’ as they call them. They are merely workshops.”
Leontii looked at his patron questioningly and Sheremetev grunted again. “Granted, they have a lot of serfs working in them except during planting and harvest. And I’ll even grant that the czar’s paper money has increased trade. But I don’t trust it. All these changes. It’s too much, too fast.”
“As you say, my lord,” Leontii said. “But it’s nothing compared to what they are doing in Germany.” Leontii went on to acknowledge the corrupting influence of the up-timers, but pointed out that Vladimir and the Dacha were proving incredibly valuable and were probably essential. “Sooner or later—not even Poles are that dumb—King Władysław or some of the magnates will recruit up-timers of their own. By the way, how are they taking the events at Rzhev?”
“The Sejm seems very upset at the outcome. More upset than cautioned, unfortunately. It must be our fault and we must have somehow cheated, they think.” Sheremetev shrugged, acknowledging that they might have a point. “Made a deal with the devil, something, anything, other than that they attacked us and we outfought them. They seem especially worried that we had such things as breech-loading cannon and that the walking forts proved so effective.
“It hasn’t made things any easier on the diplomatic front. About the only thing keeping them from a full-scale invasion is Gustav Adolf’s presence on their western border. The Truce of Altmark expires next year, and the way that Sweden and the USE have been going, Poland simply can’t afford to be involved in a war with us when Gustav Adolf gets around to them. What concerns me is I don’t see any particular reason for the Swede to stop at the Russian border.”
* * *
Through the fall and winter of 1634, the Boyar Duma debated. And talks with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth went nowhere. In the winter of 1634, Patriarch Filaret became ill and much of the heart went out of the faction that advocated an attack on Poland. Meanwhile more factories came on line. most of them using forced peasant labor. This upset the peasants because winter was their traditional light time. It also upset the great families because they couldn’t hire the peasants without their landlords’ permission.