He continued to think about the realities of financing war as the militia drilled in the cramped space of the market square. When they weren't under siege, the city maintained its own shooting range and muster place outside of the walls. When it was under siege, then they just had to make do.
Kronach, May, 1633
Matt Trelli had spent a lot of time studying the walls and towers of Kronach—more specifically, of the Festung Rosenberg as well as the city itself—with the best binoculars that Grantville had been able to provide to Cliff Priest. Partly by himself; some of the time with Tom O'Brien; and finally with both Tom and Cliff. Then, by the end of the month, all three of them with Scott Blackwell, Cliff's boss from Würzburg.
He was sort of glad—well, more than sort of glad—that the rest of them agreed with him. There was no way that Grantville could take that fortress. Not with the resources they had available in Bamberg. Not with any resources they were likely to have in Bamberg any time soon.
At least, he thought to himself, with some relief, he wasn't just a gloom-and-doom-sayer. It wasn't helping that Gustavus Adolphus' allies in the region were nagging them incessantly to do something. In the bloodiest of terms. At a minimum, they thought that the uptimers should be bombarding the city. In their view, the Kronacher were "like the devil, and their women nine times worse."
Getting across the point that the uptimers were here to govern Bamberg for the benefit of its inhabitants, including specifically the Catholic ones, wasn't easy to get across to a Franconian Lutheran. It sure wasn't what the allies wanted to hear, Matt realized. The folks around here functioned on the basis of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Or, more accurately, he remembered from CDC class, what Mr. Piazza had told them that the "eye for an eye" had been supposed to control.
The villages that belonged to Kronach—its "hinterland" was the technical term that Janie Kacere had given him—were a different matter from the city itself. They weren't fortified. The dearest wish of the local allies was to destroy them all, level them to the ground, drive out their inhabitants, and generally do unto the villagers what the Kronach militia had done to them. After all, each village had contributed its portion of men to the Kronach Ausschuss over the years. Not that any of them had a choice.
So far, Matt had kept saying no.
Stewart Hawker explained patiently, over and over, that that was not what Grantville's regency here in Franconia was all about. His "Hearts and Minds" team, almost all of them down-timers, started working in the villages.
That didn't keep raiders out of Thunau from burning one village. Most of the villagers. And two of Stew's guys with it. The raiders just went back into the Protestant Freiherr's territories. When Matt went over to deliver Vince Marcantonio's formal protest, the guy who had led the raid stood right next to his lord and said that as far as he was concerned, he would not spare an unborn child in the mother's body if it came from Kronach or was one of its subjects.
Matt had opened his mouth and said, "You didn't, did you? I was there when they buried the bodies."
The man didn't even look away.
Bamberg, June, 1633
Matt had come down to help Stew explain what they were finding out about the status of the villages in Kronach's hinterland.
"Subjects," Stew was saying, "is exactly the right word for it. Back in the middle ages, they were the city corporation's serfs. They still owe it rents and dues. Just like to any human person who holds jurisdictional rights.
"And talk about officially second-class! The mayor of one of the villages, Dörfles it's called, has a copy of the city ordinances. They go to church in Kronach, when the gates aren't locked up tight, that is, but they have to sit in a balcony, cordoned off from the city people. When raiders come through they can take refuge inside the walls—if, that is, the city council decides that there is room and enough food on hand. On market day, for the first three hours after the market opens, only the town's citizens can shop. They have first right to buy anything that the vendors display. The farmers from the villages that belong to Kronach are only allowed to shop after the citizens have taken their pick. Finally, after they've had an hour to look at things and buy what they want, foreigners and noncitizens are graciously permitted to spend their money."
Wade Jackson was looking at Vince Marcantonio. "Have we," he asked, "checked to see what the laws in the other cities here have to say about this?"
Vince shook his head. "It hadn't even occurred to me," he said honestly.