The Saxon Uprising(29)

Wettin might or might not know that himself. He had some military experience, though nothing like the experience of his younger brother Bernhard, who was an accomplished general in his own right.

As was Oxenstierna, who most certainly did know the price Torstensson’s army would pay for such an assault. Knew—and wanted the assault for that very reason. Oxenstierna was afraid of the USE’s army, because he couldn’t trust its soldiers to obey orders when he launched the counter-revolution he was so obviously preparing. So, he’d sent Stearns and his Third Division down to Bohemia and was keeping Torstensson and the other two divisions in Poland.

The orders were officially coming from Wettin, of course, since Oxenstierna had no legal authority over Lennart’s forces. He was Sweden’s chancellor, not the USE’s. But Torstensson was quite sure that Oxenstierna’s was the driving will in Berlin.

To hell with them. Lennart was fond of that up-time expression, even if some Lutheran pastors thought it perilously close to outright blasphemy. Wettin and Oxenstierna could send as many scolding messages as they wanted. They couldn’t force him to do their bidding unless they relieved him from command—and that would be far too risky.

What if he refused? Indeed, what if he led his army back into the Germanies and went knocking on Berlin’s gates?

Who would stop him? Torstensson’s two divisions were as numerous as the Swedish mercenary forces the chancellor had at his disposal in Berlin, better trained, and far better equipped. They were veterans, too, and their morale would be splendid if Torstensson led them against Oxenstierna and Wettin.

As it happened, Lennart had no intention of doing any such thing. Until the situation with Gustav Adolf became clarified, he would remain strictly within legal bounds. But Oxenstierna couldn’t be sure of that.

Even if he were, what then? The discipline that held the First and Second Division in check was shaky already. If the chancellor removed Torstensson and replaced him with a new commander, there was a very real chance—a likelihood, in fact, in Lennart’s own estimation—that the army would mutiny and march on Berlin anyway.

True, they’d be easier to defeat if their leadership was informal and hastily assembled, than if they still had Torstensson in command. But not that much easier. At the very least, they’d bleed Oxenstierna’s forces badly—right at the moment he needed them most to deal with an increasingly restive populace.

No. Oxenstierna and Wettin would growl and scold and complain—possibly even shriek with fury, from time to time—but they wouldn’t do any more than that. Torstensson’s men would stay in the trenches. They’d suffer badly anyway, as soldiers always did in winter sieges. But there wouldn’t be the butcher’s bill that a mass assault would produce.

He glanced at the sun, which was nearing the horizon. Nothing more to be done this day. There wouldn’t be much to do, beyond routine, for many days to come.

Later that night, after supper, Torstensson retired to his quarters in the tavern of a village he’d seized not far from Poznan. Before going to bed, he lit a lantern and began resumed reading the book that had arrived from Amsterdam earlier that week.

Political Methods and the Laws of Nations, by Alessandro Scaglia. The book was one of a very limited edition, intended only for private circulation. Lennart had received it as a gift from the author himself, with a hand-written flowery dedication and signature on the frontispiece.

He was a little more than halfway through, and found the book quite absorbing.





PART II


December 1635

Unequal laws unto a savage race





Chapter 10


Prague, capital of Bohemia

After he entered the huge salon that served Morris and Judith Roth for what Americans left back up-time would have called a living room on steroids, Mike Stearns spent half a minute or so examining the room. No casual inspection, either—this was a careful scrutiny that lingered on nothing but didn’t miss any significant detail.

By the time he was finished, his hosts had seated themselves on a luxurious divan located toward the center of the room and the servants had withdrawn at Judith’s signal, giving them some privacy.

Morris had a pained expression on his face. “Go ahead. Make the wisecracks about the nouveau riche so we can be done with it.”

Mike took a last few seconds to finish his examination and then took a seat on an armchair across from his hosts.

“Actually, I was going to compliment you on your judgment,” he said. “God help me for my sins, but I’ve become an expert on gauging ostentation, the proper degree thereof. I’d say”—he raised his hand and made a circular motion with his forefinger—“you’ve hit this just about right. Splendid enough to cement your position with the city’s Jewish population and satisfy any gentile grandee who happens to pop over that you’re a man to be taken seriously, but not so immodest as to stir up the animosity of those same gentiles.”