The Tangled Web(31)

"You were thinking of some other candidate for administrator?" the archbishop's confessor asked.

"I was just going to point out that any administrator should be appointed by the archbishop of Mainz rather than the archbishop of Cologne," Hoheneck said.

"Casimir Wambold von Umstaedt is a refugee in Cologne also," the Capuchin answered. "He will allow himself to be guided by Archbishop Ferdinand's wisdom, I am sure."

Hoheneck was not so sure of that. After all, the archbishop of Mainz was close to Friedrich von Spee, who had been in Grantville and was now in Magdeburg. Overall, the archbishop of Mainz was closer to the Jesuits than to the Capuchins.

As, in fact, were the abbots of Fulda.

While it appeared that Hatzfeldt might have quite a lot in common with Echter. If the bishop of Würzburg was going to try to use this to pull Fulda under his authority and come out of it, once the imperials eventually won this war, with an expanded sphere of influence and Fulda nothing more than one mediatized monastery . . . what would be the point in becoming abbot of Fulda?

Privately, he was quite certain that Hatzfeldt was the wrong candidate for administrator.

Fulda, Buchenland, April 1634

"The 'Ram Rebellion' or 'Brillo Movement' does not appear to have spread significantly from Würzburg into Buchenland."

Wes finished up his monthly report.

He was profoundly glad that he had been able to write that last sentence.

Maybe there were some advantages to being in a spot that was such an economic backwater and political boondocks that nobody else cared about it. Not even revolutionaries.

Fulda, Buchenland, May 1634

"It's the surveyors," Orville Beattie said.

Roy Copenhaver turned a page in his notebook. "What surveyors?"

"The ones planning for pushing the railroad network out farther. It's a long way off, considering what a struggle it was to find supplies just for Halle-Stassfurt-Magdeburg. Iron by itself . . . But they're doing more surveys this summer. Gustavus Adolphus wants to see a line head out from Erfurt-Eisenach to Frankfurt am Main and Mainz. Tie his administration together. So they're laying out a route along the Fulda Gap. The landgrave of Hesse-Kassel signed onto the project and approved having it come through his lands way last fall. Howard Carstairs had some old topo maps he had squirreled away—he served with Third Armored—so they're making pretty good time, in spite of the changes."

"Why does this lead to a peasant revolt?" Wes Jenkins frowned. Surveyors in the north didn't seem to connect with the stuff he had been getting from Steve Salatto to the south.

"The landgrave doesn't seem to have explained it all very well," Orville said. "Not surprising, since he's been out in the field managing armies for Gustavus Adolphus, his wife has been in Magdeburg politicking, he got his brother appointed Secretary of State so he's in Magdeburg too, and they seem to have left a vacuum into which the rumors could come flying. The district administrators can't explain anything to the farmers and village councils because they don't know anything much themselves."

"Anything specific about the rumors?" Roy asked.

Orville wrinkled his nose. "This is what I've gotten from the granges. The leaseholders, the people who actually farm the land, have gotten the impression that they're going to be thrown off with no compensation. Apparently a few of the surveyors made some rather loose statements about using the power of eminent domain to take the right-of-way if owners didn't sell voluntarily. 'Owners' brought to mind landlords. The farmers got the impression that any payments that come out of this will be going to businessmen, or charitable institutions, or nobles, who hold the Lehen. Not to the guys on the spot, who will be left holding the short end of the stick and trying to get the value of the broken leases back from the owners. Who most likely won't be interested in making payouts."

"So?" Andrea pulled her pencil out of her hair and started twirling it around with her fingers, like a cheerleader's baton.

"So they're having a peasant revolt. Meetings, gatherings, marches, protests, broadsides, poems, pamphlets, guns pointed at local administrators." Orville put a bright and cheerful expression on his face. "All the regular amenities, as I understand how these things go."

"Brillo?" Wes asked with some trepidation.

"Not in Hesse. His fame does not yet seem to have reached such exciting spots on the map as Friedlos and Schrecksbach. I sort of hate to tell you, though . . ."

"What, Orville?"

"We're seeing more and more of the ram stuff here in Fulda. In Buchenland, that is. Especially to the south where it borders on Würzburg. The 'Hearts and Minds' people are circulating through the whole area, trying to talk things down. The best argument we have right now is that the railroad isn't coming through Fulda anyway."