The Saxon Uprising(150)

Fussy and slavish devotion to the facts was the poorest of cousins. The claims made in the newspapers that day would by and large become fixed in the nation’s mythology. These in particular:

The Prince of Germany had waged a tactical masterpiece of a battle, anticipating his hapless Swedish opponent’s every move and thwarting him at every turn.

Colonel Higgins led his Hangman Regiment in the decisive charge that routed the Swedes. On horseback, waving his sword—and a fair number of accounts had that sword responsible for sweeping off the head of Johan Banér.

Gretchen Richter personally led the sortie that took the Swedish siege lines. Some of the accounts had her bare-breasted in the doing. In February, in a snowstorm.

And the silliest of them all:

Every soldier in the Prince’s army was a stout-hearted German. Every soldier in Banér’s, a brutal and rapacious Swede.

The last fabrication was perhaps a necessity, for the nation that exploded that morning. For eighteen years, the great war had washed back and forth across German soil. Every nation, it seemed, had either plundered the land and brutalized the populace or (in the case of the French) paid others to do it.

(The one nation that could legitimately claim to be quite blameless in the matter was Poland—which the USE had repaid by invading. Once again illustrating the adage that no good deed goes unpunished.)

The Germanies had been helpless in the face of the catastrophe. And yet—

Almost every army that had wreaked havoc for all those years had been heavily or even largely German in its composition. The rulers who commanded the brutal deeds might have been foreigners and so might the generals. But most of the soldiers had come from the same people who were being savaged.

That had been just as true in the snowfields southwest of Dresden on February 26, 1636 as it had been on almost every battlefield of the war. Johan Banér himself was a Swede, and so were many of his officers. But at least two-thirds of his mercenaries had been Germans and at least half the officers who commanded them as well. The truth was, there were probably more Scottish officers and soldiers in Banér’s army that day than there were Swedes.

The Prince of Germany didn’t simply defeat an enemy that day, he erased a national humiliation. For the first time in years, an army that everyone considered a German army had decisively defeated a foreign army—in defense of a German city.

Mike Stearns would always be the Prince after that day. To almost any German, regardless of their political affiliations—regardless of whether they would have voted for him or not for political office, which many of them wouldn’t, then or ever. A title that had begun as a nickname bestowed upon him by radicals had now become an accepted national verity.

His views didn’t matter. His origins didn’t matter. Indeed, there were plenty of Germans who thought God had sent him across the Ring of Fire for this specific purpose. Germans reacted to his victory much the same way Americans in another universe had reacted when Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling—magnified ten-fold. Most of the people who’d cheered for Louis had had no respect for his race, wouldn’t have voted for him if he ran for vote, and would have had a fit if he’d come courting their daughters.

It didn’t matter. On that day, in that ring, he was the national champion—against a political cause that Americans by and large detested. (Which was quite unfair to Schmeling himself, who was very far from a Nazi. But historical verdicts are often unfair to persons.)

So it was again. Almost every city and town in the United States of Europe exploded that morning, except the few who didn’t get the news until the afternoon—and then exploded.

For the most part, exploded with excitement and joy, which they expressed with impromptu parades and half-organized festivities. Flags were flown, many of them handmade on that same day. Speeches were given, almost of them cobbled together on that day. At least half of the male children born that day were given the name of Michael—a name which had previously been almost completely absent from the Germanies but henceforth became rather popular.

The tavern in every Rathaus did a land office business—or would have, except the town councils often (and in some cases very wisely) offered the beer for free.

The militias in at least three-fourths of the towns held a march celebrating the victory. The militias in the other fourth argued about it. In the months to come, it was noteworthy that the militias which had refused to march had a hard time recruiting new members.

Almost all apprentices celebrated that day; at least four out of five journeymen; and well over half of all guildmasters.

Here and there, the explosions came in darker colors. The city council of Heidelberg had been dominated by extreme reactionaries who had carried out harsh measures against any opposition. But they’d made the mistake of falling between two stools. They’d been more than harsh enough to infuriate a large part of the population but not harsh enough to destroy all resistance. The backlash on February 27 would destroy them instead.