Chapter 26
Minden
April 1636
It occurred to David Pestel that he would be out of radio communication once he left Minden. The network that Christian Ulrik had set up only went from one territorial seat to the others and to the provincial capitals. They had no portable or personal radio units. He sent the governor an urgent message bringing the presence of the four men in Bremen to his attention. He phrased it as a reminder and urged that it would be a good idea for the governor to take them along as guides, as well as witnesses, since they would be able to identify the main offenders on sight.
Then he rode out with the miniature non-regiment he had created ex nihilo and decorated around the edges with the Minden city militia. It had been a happy discovery that the Minden armory had more weapons than it had men. Not as many as the regiment had law clerks and students, but anyone who admitted to having ever shot a long gun, even once, was now carrying one, along with a couple of ammunition belts.
The others were carrying belts with extra ammunition and quite a lot of food.
Pestel had enough common sense to put the militia captain in command.
Hinrich Botterbrodt had enough common sense to issue as his first order to his unlikely new command, “Pad your shoulders so you don’t all get weeping, bleeding, blisters from those belts.”
“Do you suppose we should mention what’s going on to someone in Magdeburg?” Thomas Krage asked a little timidly.
“Nein,” Dirk Waßmann answered. “What’s the point? They never pay any attention to what we say anyway.”
Stade
April 1636
Frederik gathered an inadequate “domestic” force, mostly out of the villages of Erzstift Bremen and Stift Verden by way of his status as the episcopal administrator there. He had, maybe, two hundred men on horses, all basically mounted dragoons—not a bit of experienced cavalry. Additionally, there were perhaps three hundred local men who had, over the past years of warfare, gotten some army experience. These were organized into an infantry unit by Erik Stenbock, supplemented by every episcopal game warden who was young enough to march. They brought nothing in the way of common equipment to the muster and he had no common equipment to issue to them.
The Tech delivered Pestel’s radio message.
Frederik cleared his throat. “A reminder? I do not recall having seen any previous paperwork in regard to these men.” But Pestel was correct; as they were there, he should take advantage of their presence.
He moved out to Bremen, leaving a profoundly grateful Rist, who had ridden harder and longer than he ever wished to do again, with Aunt Hedwig. He took Stenbock (naturally), Christian Ulrik, Captain Meyer, and Lütkemann with him.
Bremen
April 1636
Gode, Barent, Hinrich, and Cornelis were somewhat surprised to have a messenger from the governor find them and abruptly end their new jobs. But they found time to tell their new friends good-bye. “The governor summoned us,” Bothmann said a little proudly. “He’s passing through on his way to some negotiations in Oldenburg.”
“Do you suppose we should send someone after him?” Peter Schorfmann asked. “To figure out what he’s doing?”
“Nah,” was Gerrit Bemmeler’s answer. “If he isn’t even going to bother dealing with the reactionaries in Holstein, what’s the point? Oldenburg isn’t one of our flashpoints right now.”
Oldenburg
April 1636
Frederik’s starting point, when he thought about it, was that Anton Günther was an ally, after all. Outside the USE, but an ally. Also a cousin, but then, everyone was a cousin. A cousin not only in Oldenburg, but of the House of Oldenburg. An ally, but not part of the government in Magdeburg. Not one of those involved in designing Westphalia.
He’d been careful with the provincial budget.
He’d been careful with the allowance from his father.
His new properties weren’t bringing in much income yet, but in time they would.
If Anton Günther was willing to take the risk, Frederik could afford a limited number of decent soldiers for a short campaign. Anton Günther might be willing to take the risk. Because. He had built his main residence, Oldenburg Schloß, on the foundations of a medieval moated castle. It was inside a set of good, substantial, walls. Not walls that would stand up to modern artillery, the type that the up-timers had used to batter their way past Hamburg, but sufficient to repel anything less.
Given the current demands on his resources, Gustav Adolf would be hard put to bring those huge guns to bear on those walls any time soon. The more cooperative an ally demonstrated himself to be, the less . . . what did the up-timers call it? . . . the less moral justification the emperor could show for invading the county. Not that he had needed any to invade Poland, and the up-timers had gone along with that.
Anton Günther would have his message by now. He would be mulling the same considerations. If he demonstrated a willingness to assist a USE provincial governor in carrying out his duties, would that assist him in keeping his independence? Or if he assisted a USE provincial governor who had been set up to fail by the Swedes in order to embarrass Denmark, would that be a disadvantage in maintaining his independence?
Frederik had to attend a reception and formal banquet, of course.
It wasn’t as tedious as it might have been. The count was currently building a town hall and diagrammed the plans and design on the tablecloth.
Frederik was impeccably polite to the count’s recently acquired morganatic wife, Elisabeth Margareta, when she took him out to show off the gardens.
“Once upon a time, I was Freiin Ungnad zu Sonnegg,” she said with some humor, “but Ferdinand II put an end to that when he expelled the Protestants from Austria. The Ungnads aren’t ‘zu’ anything at all, now. Although my brother had hopes that young Ferdinand might be more flexible and forgiving, I feel sure that the Ottomans are currently keeping him much too busy to think about any kind of restitution. So David is over in the Low Countries, trying to bamboozle his way into Frederik Hendrik’s diplomatic service.”
Frederik was somewhat surprised by the wry analysis and underlying sense of humor in her conversation. Most people who met her hadn’t mentioned them; had described her as “lush.” Which might be the word, but he thought that her appearance verged on “overblown, blowzy, and frowzy.” There might have been room for one more plume on her hat, if the milliner had made extraordinary efforts.
She was flanked by nurses with two babies, one a toddler and the other still in arms. Plus, unless her figure was extraordinarily lush, another baby-to-be in the not too distant future.
The next morning, as they rode out to see the famous stud—rode sedately, because the count had his toddler son riding in front of him—Frederik duly complimented Anton Günther on his wife. It couldn’t hurt to make a compliment. For a man who had abstained for so long, he had clearly plunged with enthusiasm into the pool of marital bliss.
“Don’t be mealy-mouthed.” Anton Günther drew his horse up and looked forward at the paddocks in front of them. “You’ve dealt with Christian long enough to know what was going on. I did consider simply keeping her as my mistress; she had already become my mistress. But then—given a world in which the Ring of Fire had happened and who knew what might happen next—I asked myself ‘wen kummerts?’ and married her. It’s not as if she was a commoner. A noblewoman, even if of lesser rank.”
He shifted a bit uncomfortably, aware of Frederik’s lack of enthusiasm for Christian IV’s morganatic marriage to Kirsten Munk, who was after all also a noblewoman by birth. He cleared his throat. “She was my mother’s goddaughter, after all. I could hear my mother’s disapproving voice in my ears.
“I was as near to fifty years old as not; what was the point of my advisers’ insisting I should hold back and make a marriage that was ebenbürtig; standesgemäß. If I hadn’t contracted a suitable and proper marriage after having lived nearly a half century, was I likely to ever do so?
“I’d spent that half-century paying a lot more attention to horses than women; traveled all over Europe choosing stallions to keep improving the breed from its basis in the Frisians. Building on the work that my father had done. He’s the one who brought in the Frederiksborgers from Denmark. The first Turkish stallions to breed into it; Andalusians; Neapolitans. Built our strong, plain, Frisians into magnificent war horses. I kept that up—went to all those places; added the best I found from Poland; the Barbary Coast, even.
“The horses are my life. Training them; showing them. Where would a wife fit in? Wanting me to do other things. Elisabeth was already here at the court; she already fit into the life I lead.
“And after all, what if another of those rings came along and moved me and mine to another universe? Christ did not limit himself to one miracle in the New Testament. What would limit God to only one in this day and age? Who would care then, after we were gone to someplace else?”
Frederik rarely smiled; this morning, he did. “The newspapers certainly made the most of your decision. I can’t help but ask. Did you promise her marriage in a document signed in your own blood?”
Frederik thought this was innately improbable, but gossip had celebrated a tournament with the circumstances of the count’s marriage.
“Pen and ink, I fear, duly drafted by lawyers and produced in multiple copies by the chancery. By the time I made my mind up to do it, she was seven months along with young Anton here—” He picked up the toddler, joggled him in his arms, and was rewarded by a delighted laugh. “There was no time to be wasted if I wanted him to be born in wedlock. No time for dramatics. Not that she demanded them from me.”
Young Anton was apparently a frequent visitor to the stables. There was a playpen waiting for him. With a rocking horse in it. An older child dashing out from one of the trainers’ houses alongside to keep an eye on the little boy.
They paced, up one side and down the other, looking at the famous Oldenburg horses.
“Why don’t you keep a stable?” Anton Günther asked abruptly. “A proper one, I mean.”
Frederik was riding a serviceable, sturdy bay gelding, strong enough to manage his weight over long stretches, but not, one could say, a horse of distinction. He patted the fellow’s neck. “Böhnchen here suits me. I have three more like him. Not a matched set for looks—one more bay, but Duxi is a roan and Gauner’s a chestnut—but rather for usefulness. I don’t have the knowledge to supervise a breeding stable; don’t even have the expertise to hire a staff to manage it for me. My time at Sorø wasn’t long enough to give me that, nor did it come up during the years I was at various universities. Nor do I want the difficulty of dealing with stallions in a town the size of Münster, either.”
The count was clearly appalled. Frederik could see the negotiations washing away like mud in a pouring rain.
He would not say: “I don’t care. A horse is a horse as long as it gets me where I need to go.”
Instead, he said, “Perhaps on one of the new estates down near Dorsten, once I get them up and running.” Then he turned the conversation to his rather wistful wish to see a railroad. “I am almost tempted to make up an excuse to visit the Netherlands and take a look at the one there, but have never had the time.”
Then he switched his admiration back to the count’s horses. They were beauties: compact and tough, generally; versatile. The Oldenburgers were not just war horses, although that was their greatest fame, along with the dominant coal black color. They were riding horses, happy to carry a saddle; would pull carriages as matched sets; even work the fields if trained to it. As horses went, they were magnificent. And good-tempered, as a general rule, which wasn’t something a man could rely on when it came to a ton of horse.
He patted Böhnchen’s neck again. If a breeding stable on one of his new estates was what it would take to get the count’s cooperation, then a breeding stable there would be.
Another dinner. More gossip, much of it catty and directed at Elisabeth Margareta.
A shrill voice. “Only an imperial title, that Freiherr that her father had. It hadn’t been in the family more than a century and a half. Originally Niederadel, ministeriales from Franconia who moved to Carinthia looking for the main chance. When? Oh, in the twelfth century or so.”
The next voice whined, “They say that if Ferdinand II hadn’t exiled the Protestants, her brother had his eye on becoming an Imperial Count. They say that he seriously considered staying behind when his parents and sisters fled, thought about converting to Catholicism to keep the family estates and to keep his career on the upswing. Now he’s in the Netherlands, since he stayed Calvinist; he’ll do whatever it takes to ingratiate himself with Frederik Hendrik. Pure opportunist, if you ask me.”
A pretense of shock. “And the way the mother pimped those girls out, twitching them under the noses of prominent men, when she landed in Ostfriesland as a refugee with nothing but the clothes on her back!”
Frederik listened. Calvinist? Well, Anton Günther was at best a Philippist, probably with crypto-Calvinist tendencies. Gustav Adolf should be glad that the count liked the Low Countries even less than he liked the Swedes, or Oldenburg might already have gone the way of Ostfriesland.
Nor were crypto-Calvinist tendencies anything that Frederik was in a position to complain about publicly, given his suspicions when it came to his own father’s private and personal religious convictions.
Much better to keep these negotiations focused on horses. Soldiers and horses. Soldiers mounted on horses.
The negotiations continued to take place in pastures and stables rather than conference rooms and offices.
“I love this county. I love the fug of peat smoke and fat bacon that envelops its villages, because it demonstrates that my subjects are warm and well fed through the worst winter. I love my horses, but I’m happy to export them to other rulers’ cavalry forces. I’m happy to share my stallions with my tenants and peasants, to improve the breed generally. Stud fees? Ah, well, not everyone can afford them and it improves the breed. After all, the boys enjoy it and there’s always more where that came from.”
Finally.
“I can’t understand why Gustav Adolf is so determined to take over Oldenburg. Or, at least, some of his military advisers are. Political realities being what they are, I’m willing to stand by Gustav as a loyal ally. I am not willing to bow and grovel as his subject.”
Frederik nodded.
Anton Günther quoted:
Maikäfer flieg!
Der Vater ist im Krieg.
Die Mutter ist im Pommerland.
Pommerland ist abgebrannt.
Maikäfer flieg!
“‘Pomerania is burned to the ground.’ And still remains so, for all that Gustav Adolf has proclaimed himself as its duke and votes its voice on his own behalf in the House of Lords. If it comes to ‘voluntary’ subjection or subjection by force, I will, reluctantly, accept the necessity of resistance. Which I request that you make known, personally, to the powers in Magdeburg.
“That’s my price for the soldiers you need now. For why will it be worse for my subjects for me to lead them in war than for me to sacrifice them to a ruler who will bleed them dry through forced contributions in order to finance his wars?”
The count slammed his hand down on the pommel of his saddle. “My memory is not deficient. Think back to what Gustav Adolf did in Pomerania when he first landed in Germany in 1630; the province still hasn’t recovered from the punishment of those forced contributions. He drained it and his appointed officials are doing little to assist the people who are now his subjects. A good part of the reason that Behr is stirring up the Holsteiners now is how Gustav Adolf treated Pomerania.”
Another slam of the hand. “If Gustav Adolf tries to take Oldenburg by force, I will resist. If the up-time admiral brings his ironclads, I will still resist, while being grateful that Wilhelmshaven has not yet been dredged into a deep water port. I will give those of my subjects who prefer not to resist the choice of going into Ostfriesland or the Netherlands without penalty. I will organize those who remain.
“And even though I will eventually be defeated, I will resist considerably more effectively than Brandenburg or Saxony did. For as long as possible, I will bleed the Swede dry and he will regret that he ever decided that as long as he had an army to hand, he might as well use it to conquer a land he had no need to conquer.”
That said, he provided Frederik with five hundred cavalry. Not trained cavalry units, most of them. Mounted soldiers. Mobile; usable as scouts. And each mounted on a ton or so of horse.
He consented that Frederik should ship his men and horses across by requisitioning the ferries ordinarily used for transporting cattle from Denmark to the Netherlands. Frederik paid for their use, but didn’t give the captains a choice. He had no compunction about requisitions.
As the strange little fleet pulled out into the Jade Bight, a sailor who had been in Lübeck for quite a while broke out into an English hymn he had learned from the up-timers there. Joined by a couple of dozen others, Frederik embarked to “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me.
Hamburg
May 1636
Observers from Hamburg saw Pestel’s little decoy regiment coming up the land bridge. It passed Verden; at last reports overnighted in Rotenburg. It was clearly headed toward Buxtehude with a probable intention of crossing to Altona west of the city.
Consulted on whether they should do something, the FoJP city council decided it wasn’t worthwhile. As one councilman commented, “Nah. If that’s all the Danish prince has managed to put together, he’s not serious about dealing with those reactionaries in Holstein. Too bad they neither burned witches nor persecuted Jews; if they had, the CoCs would have taken care of them during Krystalnacht. Harsh treatment of serfs wasn’t on the agenda, though.”
The commander of the USE forces in the city kept an eye on it, but nothing in the laws prevented a provincial governor from moving militia forces around within his own territory. He was more surprised that the governor had a regiment at all, as previous reports, combined with Frederik’s earlier request for aid, had indicated a startling lack of troops in the province. Maybe the Dorsten business had finally gotten that do-nothing Dane up off his ass.
Both Pestel and the militia captain wished they could have gone east of Hamburg, but that would have involved crossing a piece of Brunswick and then a piece of Mecklenburg. Better not.
“Once we get past Altona, though,” Captain Botterbrodt said, “I’m going to have us swing around that little northerly projection of Hamburg’s territory and go south. That’s where we’ll find the bastards.”
Frederik’s hastily sent instructions had omitted to tell Pestel where, or even that, this “regiment” was supposed to stop once it fulfilled its purpose of being conspicuously seen. So he nodded and agreed to the captain’s plan.
Holstein
May 1636
Godske von Ahlefeldt didn’t have good intelligence, but he thought he definitely knew that Frederik was coming up from Minden with a small regiment. He was also certain that small regiment wouldn’t, couldn’t, be all that Frederik was bringing into Holstein. Where would he be picking up the rest of his forces? He had to be getting USE military help from Hamburg. That was the only possible explanation.
That determined where they would have to set up, Godske decided. Facing south, toward Hamburg.
Stade
May 1636
Kerstin Brahe gave birth to a son, whom she named Gustav. He was a bit sickly at first, so she had the baptism done quickly by Aunt Hedwig’s chaplain. Gustav, of course, was the name of Erik Stenbock’s father; it might have nothing to do with complimenting the emperor of the USE. A lot of Swedish nobles were named Gustav.
Denmark
May 1636
Christian IV re-read the last letter he had received from Frederik and waited.