The Saxon Uprising(121)

Suleiman had conquered most of Hungary, after the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. That, perhaps more than anything, is what had cemented his reputation as the greatest sultan in the Ottoman line. If Murad IV intended to match him, much less surpass him, he would have to take most of the Austrian empire. Conquer it, not simply defeat it and extract concessions.

Janos rose and came to stand by the window next to Grassi. In his case, not to study the crowd in the streets but the sky.

“The weather looks to be holding up,” he said. “I’ll need to leave early on the morrow.”

Grassi cleared his throat. “Yes, I thought you would. Back to Vienna, I assume?”

“Yes. I need to speak to the emperor as soon as possible.”

“Do you remember the occasion when you offered me sanctuary, should I ever need it?”

Drugeth nodded. “Yes. The time has come, I take it.”

“Indeed so. Schmid has disappeared entirely. I have no idea where he is. So has the Dutchman, Haga.”

Perhaps even more than Schmid, Cornelis Haga—or van Haag, as he preferred to style himself—was the epitome of an “old Ottoman hand” when it came to European ambassadors to the Sublime Porte. He’d been Holland’s ambassador in Istanbul for almost a quarter of a century. If he’d gone into hiding—or been taken in custody by the Turks—then things were getting chancy indeed.

“Is Murad on a rampage?”

Grassi made a face. “Hard to say, with that man. His rages are notorious, but I think at least some of them are feigned. Don’t make the mistake of under-estimating him, Baron. He’s probably the most capable sultan the Turks have had in a century. He’s certainly the most dangerous.”

The doctor turned away from the window. “Certainly too dangerous for me, at least for a while. I think my health would be greatly improved by a stay in Vienna.”

“Early tomorrow morning, then. This time of year, the weather can also be dangerous.”





Chapter 38


Pirna, in southern Saxony

Mike paused the march into Saxony when the Third Division reached Pirna, the first major town north of the border with Bohemia. He’d been driving the men hard and they needed to rest and refit. There was another storm coming across northern Europe, too, and Pirna was the best place in the area for the division to wait for it to pass. In addition to the town itself, there was a large castle nearby—Schloss Sonnenstein—that could hold a number of the division’s soldiers. The castle also made an excellent spot for Mike’s radio operators to set up. As soon as the storm was over, he wanted to broadcast some messages that were sure to be picked up anywhere in the USE that had a functioning radio.

The time for subterfuge and deception was almost over.

They’d learned of the coming storm from radio messages sent by the military weather stations along the Baltic coast. The air force’s stance of official neutrality was now threadbare. Colonel Wood was careful to maintain the needed reconnaissance patrols for Torstensson’s two divisions besieging Poznań, and he scrupulously refrained from using any sort of weapons against either Oxenstierna’s own forces or the various reactionary paramilitary outfits that had sprung up in many places to counter the CoCs’ armed contingents. But he provided Mike with all the reconnaissance he needed and responded to every such request from the Swedish chancellor with silence.

Simpson and the navy were being more scrupulous, still. But Jesse had told Mike that Simpson was moving the two ironclads he had under his control out of Luebeck. For the duration of the crisis he’d keep the SSIM Constitution and the SSIM United States stationed in Rostock. From that port, he could interdict the Baltic and prevent Oxenstierna from bringing any more troops over from Sweden.

He’d do it, too, Jesse had assured Mike.

“Hey, look, you know John. He’s a tight-ass, sure, but you can’t actually sharpen pencils in his butt. If Oxenstierna pushes it too far, the admiral will take off the gloves.”

How and by what arithmetic Simpson had decided to draw the line that defined “too far” as a major Swedish troop movement across the Baltic wasn’t clear to Mike. There weren’t all that many soldiers left in Sweden to begin with. Once you subtracted the bare minimum needed to maintain order, Mike doubted if there were more than five or six thousand available to reinforce the twenty thousand soldiers Oxenstierna already had in Berlin.

But he’d take what he could get, with no complaining. He was already heavily outnumbered, after all. Even if you subtracted ten thousand men from the armies Oxenstierna and Banér had due to illness and desertion, the Swedes still had twenty-five thousand men against his ten thousand. Then, add the ten thousand Saxon troops on the Swedish payroll under von Arnim’s command in Leipzig. All told, Mike was looking at odds no better than three-to-one and probably closer to four-to-one against him.