"Oh," Vince said.
"Sort of like scalping," Stew added. "But all over their bodies."
"Ugggh," Janie Kacere said.
"Wasn't the duke of Coburg the one who disapproved of burning witches?" Wade Jackson asked.
"Yeah," Stew answered, "but that was because he didn't believe that witches really exist or do the things that their accusers claim that they do. He knew for sure that these guys were trying to spike his guns. Or, at least, his commander on the scene did. The old guy probably wasn't with them—he was nearly seventy and already pretty sick last year. What was there was what was called the Coburg Ausschuss. That, as far as I can tell, is the part of a local militia that actually gets good enough at it to do some fighting beyond trying to keep foragers out of a village or throwing rocks down from the town walls. Compared to the local militia as a whole, who don't usually. When Ausschusse get involved, the fighting tends to get sort of up close and personal, so to speak. Old grudges."
Stew seconded Cliff Priest's motion to request that Tom O'Brien be sent from Grantville down to Bamberg to shore up the local military contingent. And he asked that Matt Trelli be assigned to go with him when he rode up toward Kronach and points north.
Bamberg, February, 1633
"The thing to keep in mind is that it didn't start last year," Johannes Mattheus Meyfarth was saying. Steve Salatto had sent him up to Bamberg to give the staff there a rapid seminar on Kronach.
"Most of the Franconian imperial knights became Lutheran during the Reformation. No matter how small their territories are—no matter how ridiculous they look to you—they still were covered by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. By the cuius regio provisions. They had the right to determine their own religion and that of their subjects. Which didn't cause too much trouble until 1624, when the prince-bishop of Bamberg decided to try to force the knights to return to Catholicism. Part of what you call the Counter-Reformation in your history books. Kronach lay on the border, of course, between the Catholic and Protestant princes. And was a strong point. So there have been armed conflicts ever since. With Coburg, with Bayreuth. Even though the independent knights don't want to be absorbed by the Lutheran princes any more than they want to be absorbed by a Catholic bishop, to tell the truth."
John Kacere asked, a vaguely hopeful tone in his voice, whether there was any prospect of reconciliation.
Meyfarth looked doubtful. "It's been years now. And both sides have been equally brutal. Catholic soldiers and militias invade Protestant territories; Protestant soldiers and militias invade Catholic territories; each side retaliates against the other. The forces from Kronach have raided through the whole territory around Kulmbach. That belongs to the margrave of Bayreuth. Also through Coburg. They plunder travelers. They rustle cattle and drive them back to the city. The farmers call them a `nest of robbers.'
"The soldiers, at least, are professionals. For them, the brutality is part of the job. It doesn't really make much difference to them which side they are on. The militias, though, the people who are trained for civil defense—for them, it is more. The Protestants don't have the slightest qualms about torturing the prince-bishop's subjects. The Catholic militia from Kronach does things just as horrible in the villages subject to the prince-bishop's Protestant neighbors. Nobody has any idea how to stop it. I most certainly do not, if that is what you were hoping for."
"Hell," Tom O'Brien said emphatically. "I did not, ever, not once in my worst nightmares, expect to have a reenactment of Northern Ireland on my back porch, so to speak."
"Northern Ireland?" Meyfarth asked politely.
Tom explained, as briefly as possible.
"Did the people of Northern Ireland try to burn witches?" Meyfarth asked.
Tom said that he didn't think so.
"The Kronacher have been, for the past fifty years or so. The citizens complained. Not because of the absurdity of the accusations but because of the location of the spot chosen for the executions. Prevailing winds, you see. They did not care for the smell."
Janie Kacere swallowed rather hard.
Bamberg, March, 1633
When Tom O'Brien came down to Bamberg, he brought his wife Stacey and his daughter Amanda. Except for John and Janie Kacere, and Bennett and Marion Norris, whose kids were grown and who had come as working couples, Tom was the only uptimer in Bamberg who had his wife with him. Vince's wife, Cliff's, Wade's—they had all stayed in Grantville, because they had jobs to do. They couldn't drop them and come to Bamberg any time soon.