The Ram Rebellion(124)
Stew Hawker was thinking. His wife Lesley was helping his parents run the farm; Barbara Marcantonio and Summer Jackson were both practical nurses; Summer was also in the fire department. Maybe, once Grantville managed to get a few more women through the LPN classes and train some more down-timers as fire fighters, they could be spared.
Maybe.
After all, Bamberg could use a couple of LPNs, too. Stew Hawker, now assigned to the new "Hearts and Minds" team, was drafting an argument that explained how very helpful they would be on his and the EMT Matewski's projects. That would be great for Vince and Wade, if it worked. If some miracle didn't happen that let them go back home themselves. If some disaster didn't happen that meant they would never go back home at all.
Whether Stew could talk his father into doing what the other farmers inside the Ring of Fire had done and hire a couple of down-time hands was another question. Stew's dad was one stubborn old man.
Stew filed his proposal until it would be the right time to bring it out. He would really like to have Lesley here, he thought, if he had to stay much longer. But he couldn't exactly make his father do something.
Maybe, though, if Lesley just up and left for Bamberg, Willie Ray Hudson could make him hire someone. It was a thought, anyhow.
"You know, Janie," Stacey O'Brien was saying, "I never had the slightest idea that you could speak Latin. And I've known you ever since I married Tom."
"It's not exactly the sort of thing that comes up in conversation. Not even the church services use it any more. The funniest thing is that when I was filling out Ed Piazza and Melissa Mailey's questionnaire on `what skills do you have,' I almost didn't put it down. Just like Roberta Sutter didn't put down that she could read the handwriting that they have down-time. I thought they meant useful things, like nursing and such. After all, when the census uptime had a line that asked if I spoke any foreign languages, I always said no. 'Cause I don't speak it, really. I just read and write it."
Kronach, April, 1633
Carl Neustetter, who was also called by the name Stürmer, stood on the walls of Kronach. Watching a young man with binoculars watch him. There were some things for which the farsightedness of an old man was no problem.
He was no longer as young as he used to be. He didn't deny that. He had, after all, been military commander of the city and fortress of Kronach, of the entire Kronach Amt, for more than twenty years. So when the war moved into Franconia in 1631, first the Swedes and then the imperials, the bishop of Bamberg had sent him some reinforcements. A "military adviser," the Bavarian officer Francesco de Melon. Really, given that any practical assistance was far more likely to come from Maximilian of Bavaria than from the Austrians, his boss now. And one of the bishop's relatives, a canon in the Bamberg cathedral chapter: Wolf Philipp Fuchs von Dornheim.
The three men had been through a lot together, already. He had developed a grudging respect for de Melon. For the bishop's cousin . . . He shook his head.
The first major enemy attack on Kronach had come in May, 1632. The inhabitants of the neighboring Protestant territories had not needed much encouragement to attack Kronach. They hated the Kronacher already. A Swedish commander, Colonel Claus Hastver, brought the Coburg militia, the Ausschuss, to attack. Kronach beat them back. Then Margrave Christian of Bayreuth tried it with troops from Kulmbach. They didn't have any more success with a direct attack, so he moved to a siege. It had been during that period, on June 13, 1632, that the death registers of the Kronach parish recorded the deaths of the five volunteers from the city's own Ausschuss—the skinned men.
Thank God for the militia, he thought. He looked at the banners moving below him. One with the walled tower and three roses of the Rosenberg. One with the arms of the bishop of Bamberg. One with his own arms and colors. Or those of his house, at least. Armed, armored, drilled regularly on the muster place. The city was very short on regular troops. So far, the skills of the militia had been the deciding factor in repelling attacks by the Swedes and their allies. And the city did, at least, have a resident gunsmith. Guns that broke could be repaired and put back into use.
If he only knew what these new allies of Gustavus Adolphus intended to do. He had heard stories of the Wartburg. Probably every imperial and Bavarian garrison commander had heard stories of what they did to the Spanish at the Wartburg.
So far, they had shown none of the war machines outside the walls of Kronach. He would wait. There was nothing to be gained by impetuousness.
He wondered who was going to pay for it all, now that the bishop had fled and the uptimers were collecting the taxes. There were some possibilities, if the imperial troops came back. The previous year, Ernst von Wildenstein at Weissenbrunn had declared for the Protestant side. Wallenstein had declared him guilty of high treason and transferred his possessions to Kronach. Which did not mean, penned up as they were, that they actually had possession of his estates. There were some other possibilities, as well. Maybe the properties of Veit von Redwitz at Theisenort. He had declared for the Protestants also, so if the imperials came back, there would be estates available at Stockheim; others in the Haßlach valley.