He pointed to the rest of the papers on Ed's desk. "You'll find a draft of our proposal to Congress enclosed. In brief, our recommendation is that the SoTF Congress just scoop up all of the little Reichsritterschaften and petty lordships in Franconia and incorporate them. Not confiscate the property from the owners, mind you; just end their jurisdictional authority over their so-called subjects who are now our citizens. The people in general voted for incorporation. If you want to, I suppose, we could do an individual referendum in each of them, but I don't think it's necessary."
Ed looked up. "Will the Congress go for that? Especially the House of Lords?"
Arnold nodded. "I think so. Most of the lower house of the Congress consists of commoners who have been angry at these petty lordships for centuries. And the larger rulers in the House of Lords, the counts and such, have been annoyed by them for just as long. It's one of the few topics on which the commoners and upper nobility are in harmonious agreement. Both of them think that the quasi-independent lower nobility are big pests and a plague on the landscape. It goes right back to the days when the Swabian League went on a campaign to wipe out as many of the robber barons as it could lay hands on. That's more than a century ago. Plus, it also fits well into the national project of abolishing internal tolls and tariffs. I think it will be safe to present it. Especially if you go on to the next item."
Ed read on.
"If the SoTF congress agrees to this, just incorporating them as we propose without any further fuss and feathers, then Margrave Christian of Bayreuth, upon behalf of himself and his nephews, will petition for admission into the State of Thuringia-Franconia on the same terms as the other of its counties and with a seat for each of the principalities in the SoTF House of Lords. The only special point he will be making is that he wants the approval of Congress to do unto the Reichsritter and petty lords who have enclaves within his and his nephews' territories just what we are proposing to do unto them in Würzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda."
Ed frowned. "Does the margrave actually mean this?"
"I think so. Informally, apparently, he has already taken oaths of allegiance from a lot of their subjects. Backed up by the ram. Given the geography of Franconia, he'll be a lot stronger if he can manage that. He'll have us as a buffer between him and Gustavus Adolphus when the crowd of the dispossessed start spewing petitions and lawsuits like a volcano. For that matter, he will have our military to back up his if they go into revolt. Not that that's very likely, given what happened to Mitwitz and von Bimbach. Apparently, he's willing to accept being, for all practical purposes, a constitutional monarch within Bayreuth County, Thuringia-Franconia, as a reasonable trade-off."
"Is Gustavus Adolphus going to like it? The arrangement he made with Mike, whatever it was, didn't include having us swallow his allies." Ed was sure of that.
"The king, ah, emperor, can't do much about it. Margrave Christian is volunteering. His politics are local; his main interest has always been keeping the war out of Bayreuth. Right now, he sees us as his best bet for doing that. No guarantees that he would continue his allegiance if we fall flat on our faces at some future date, of course. But for right now, I think, our honorable captain general will just have to live with it."
"I'll put the best face on it that I can. Mike should love it, even if he has to keep his own face poker-stiff. Next?"
"All right. Steve's final point. The Nürnberg city council is increasingly worried about the quasi-independent status of Nürnberg as an imperial city and an independent state within the USE, separate from Thuringia-Franconia."
Ed raised his eyebrows. "Do they have reason to be?"
Arnold looked at him. "Not right now. After all, Rhode Island managed to survive. It will depend, in the long run, if they're good enough politicians to hang on. If they aren't . . ."
"Speaking of politicians, what's Big Bad Brillo doing at the moment?"
Arnold smiled. It was a rather thin smile. "Running for Congress. He was thrown out of law school, you know. What else is left for him, when he isn't organizing a revolution?"
Magdeburg, October, 1634
"I still don't like capital punishment," Mike Stearns said softly, in a tone of voice that was more thoughtful than accusatory. He was standing at the window of the USE prime minister's office, looking out over the Elbe river, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Yes, Michael, I know you don't," came Francisco Nasi's voice from behind him. "But—be honest—that's not so much a moral or religious stance on your part, as it is a matter of . . . I'm not sure what to call it. Class antagonism, perhaps."