The problem was not a new one. It had erupted before, most notably during the so-called “Magdeburg Crisis” that followed the battle of Wismar, when the capital city’s celebration of the victory began transforming itself into an insurrection. Only the quick and shrewd action of Mike Stearns and Spartacus averted a catastrophe, when they managed—just barely—to turn the uprising into a mass rally and celebration.
Even two years ago, with Torstensson and his troops camped just outside the city, the rebels might very well have managed to seize Magdeburg itself. The whole province would surely then have followed. It was conceivable, though not likely, that Thuringia and Franconia might have followed suit.
But the rest of the Germanies would not, as Mike had known very well. Soon enough, the traditional elites would have rallied most of the populace behind them—and they’d have the full backing of the Swedish army with Gustav Adolf at their head. He would view such an insurrection as treason and a personal betrayal, and conduct himself accordingly. The end result would have been a crushed rebellion and a monstrous setback for the democratic movement.
Most of the same factors were still in play two years later, although the variables had all changed. The greatest change of all, of course, was the incapacity of Gustav Adolf. With his heir a girl still just short of nine years old and an unsettled order of succession in two out of the three realms for which Gustav Adolf had a crown, legitimacy and legal authority had murky edges and lots of gray areas.
But for that very reason, Rebecca thought, the democratic movement had to avoid anything that clearly transgressed legality. Oxenstierna was driving this conflict, with Wilhelm Wettin trailing behind. That meant that it was the Swedish chancellor who, willy-nilly, had to make the first moves that would be clearly revolutionary. It was essential that the blame for upsetting the established order could be clearly and squarely placed on the forces of reaction. Clearly enough and squarely enough, furthermore, that most of the USE’s populace could see and understand what had happened.
The very worst mistake they could make was to launch their own offensive. As unpleasant and frustrating as it might be, they had to wait until the time was right—and if that meant giving Oxenstierna the first blows, so be it.
Her husband called it “counter-punching,” and he’d told her many times that the greatest danger an inexperienced boxer faced in the ring was being unable to control himself.
“You’re nervous, you’re excited, the adrenalin’s pumping—dammit, you came here to fight, not dance around. So you haul off and throw a haymaker, and the next thing you know the referee’s standing over you counting to ten. And it looks like there’s at least two of him, you’re so dizzy.”
She wished desperately that he was here. Michael could have kept control over the situation. Whether or not she could was still an open question.
For a moment, she also wished that Ed Piazza were here. But…
Most likely, he wouldn’t be able to help much. The problem was that the most hardcore CoC leaders like Gunther and many of the people around the table—Gretchen Richter too, although she wasn’t present—were suspicious of Americans.
Well…“suspicious” wasn’t really the right term. The CoC hardliners didn’t doubt that most Americans had good intentions. But they viewed the up-timers as squeamish, hesitant, and prone to vacillation.
In a private conversation, Constantin Ableidinger had once said to her: “They led a sheltered life, Rebecca. Study their history. Once they gained their independence, they were only invaded once—and that was two centuries before the Ring of Fire, and it was really just a raid on their coast. In that same stretch of time, at least half a dozen wars and several revolutions were fought on German soil. And that’s not counting everything that came earlier—the Peasant War and all the rest of it.
“They’re good and decent people, by and large, I’ll be the first to say it. And there’s no question that their arrival in the Ring of Fire is what broke everything open. But you just can’t trust them not to flinch and turn aside when the time comes to settle accounts. They’re like a farm boy who gets upset by the sight of blood trying to butcher a hog. They’ll make a bloody, bungled mess of it.”
There was enough truth to his viewpoint to make it hard to argue with. All the more so, because in the four and a half years since the Ring of Fire the Americans had mostly been able to sidestep the problem.
In the first year and a half, to be sure, they’d had to fight off enemies who came right at them—at the Battle of the Crapper, at Jena, at Eisenach and the Wartburg, and the Croat raid on Grantville itself. But those had been simple and straight-forward military clashes, with no political subtleties and complexities involved.