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Chapter 11


Magdeburg

July 1635


Frederik begrudged every hour he spent in Magdeburg for the meeting of parliament. He was not a verbose man; he didn’t have much patience with the verbose. He kept his mouth shut.

Charlotte Kienitz, one of the leaders of the Fourth of July Party from the Province of Mecklenburg, asked Ed Piazza where Helene Gundelfinger was. Helene, Ed’s vice-president in the State of Thuringia-Franconia.

“She’s in town. Just not in this room yet.” Ed laughed. “She should be here later. Schools. That means sorting things out with the other ladies of the school committee, mostly the abbess of Quedlinburg, who is here visiting Mary Simpson. Plus, Veronica Richter is also visiting Mary Simpson. With Annalise in tow; she graduated this spring and Ronnie is in the process of dispatching her off to the preferred college. Preferred by Ronnie, in any case; I’m not so sure that Annalise shares her enthusiasm.”

Melissa Mailey gave a laugh that was more pained than amused. “I swear, I’ve never seen anything that generates more wrangling over details than schools do. That’s one thing the two worlds on either side of the Ring of Fire have in common.”

Charlotte winced. “Last week, we had a woman in town from some ‘boondocks place’ as you would call it, Ed, off in the north of Westphalia Province; more boondocky than even Mecklenburg can manage. A kind of mini-abbess of Quedlinburg from some kind of mini-Damenstift. What was her name? Gerdruth von Campe. If you ever want to meet someone who can talk your head off, look her up.”

“I’ll pass,” Ed said mildly.

* * *

Mary Simpson had encountered Gerdruth von Campe, too. As had the abbess. “She had letters of introduction from several of the administrators that Frederik of Denmark has put in place in the former Bremen Erzstift.”

Helene Gundelfinger laughed. “The famous ‘Prince of Westphalia’ who has not yet been granted that desired distinction by the emperor.”

“She seemed to be interested in the Normal Schools Project,” Vanessa Clements said. “I’m the one who drew the lot of talking to her at length. Along with Lisa Dailey. Then we sicced her onto Tiny Washaw to discuss libraries.” Vanessa laughed. “She seemed pretty pleased that we ladies are doing it ourselves, without having to have a man to be a provost and run legal interference for us or represent us in public. We may have opened whole new horizons for her. She seemed a little disappointed when I referred her to Heinrich Schlosser and David Elsisheimer at Countess Kate school in Grantville for more details and she realized that they were men.”

Livvie Nielsen, Vanessa’s amanuensis and general gofer, stuck up her hand. “Does anybody actually know what is going on in Westphalia? I’ve heard—a rumor mind you, but from a usually reliable source—that Christian IV is also pushing the emperor to make Frederik the hereditary ruler of Westphalia. You know, the way the dukes are in Brunswick and now in Tyrol, and the landgravine . . . her son, really, but you know what I mean . . . in Hesse.”

That evening Mary Simpson wrote to her son Tom.


It doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Well, maybe it’s reasonable that Christian IV would want it, but it’s unreasonable for anyone to think that Gustav Adolf might grant it. The way he has Ulrik and Kristina positioned, the last thing he would be interested in is undermining their control when Kristina succeeds him by having created a hereditary principality in the USE permanently headed by another branch of the Danish royal house. Not a cadet branch, exactly, since Frederik is older than Ulrik. But it would certainly fall in the category of having an “overmighty subject.” Considering the struggle to control the nobility that the Vasas have had in Sweden ever since the emperor’s grandfather . . . 


She finished the letter and encrypted it. A simple family encryption that Pete Rush had provided for them. Any intelligence officer in Europe could break the code, but it was enough to thwart the curiosity of the average curious postal clerk.

Tom shared the letter with Rita, who passed the rumor on to Rebecca Abrabanel without including her mother-in-law’s cautionary words about its improbability.

Rebecca filed it somewhere in her preoccupied mind.


Magdeburg

July 1635


At the meeting of influential members of the Fourth of July Party, by now, it was assumed, simply taken to be a given. Westphalia, one of the “technically self-governing” provinces that nevertheless did not have an elected head of state, but rather one appointed by Emperor Gustav II Adolf, would always provide a majority vote for the Crown Loyalists. And Frederik of Denmark, the administrator appointed there, was not content to have the emperor’s preferred title of “Governor.” It had been all over the newspapers for a year. He wanted to be named “Prince of Westphalia” but the emperor had not agreed. So far, at least.

“Gustav Adolf will probably give in eventually, though,” a backbencher muttered. “The fucking Danes are pushing for it hard enough, according to everything that a person reads.”

* * *

“In the view of the moderate Crown Loyalists . . . ” the abbess of Quedlinburg said.

The party of aristocratic ladies, most related to the Wettins or to the princes of Anhalt’s various subdivisions, was gathered in the parlor of the landgravine-regent of Hesse.

“ . . . that is to say, more or less, in our opinion . . . ”

The landgravine nodded.

One of the Anhalt ladies picked up the conversational thread. “ . . . since with a few exceptions, the outstanding one being the State of Thuringia-Franconia, the important provinces are relatively homogeneous in religious terms . . . ”

The landgravine nodded again, privately reserving the thought that such an assumption was a bit of an overstatement on the part of her fellow politicians of a Crown Loyalist bent. With Hesse-Darmstadt now in the Province of the Main, for example . . . not to mention the longstanding problems in the Oberpfalz . . . And the multiple Calvinist sub-lineages of Anhalt in Magdeburg Province! She focused her mind back on the conversation.

“ . . . whereas an established church for the entire USE would lead to constant problems, it will be feasible enough, stable enough to require that each individual province settle on an established church. In the emperor’s opinion, each of the eleven provinces should . . . allowing the State of Thuringia-Franconia to opt for no establishment . . . ”

All of them? Amalie Elisabeth thought. Upper Rhine? Württemberg is homogeneous, but the rest of Swabia won’t even have a Lutheran majority now, will it? Westphalia? What are they thinking?

* * *

Grandma Richter announced to Gretchen that she and Annalise would be on their way; Mary Simpson was accompanying them on the trip to Quedlinburg.

Gretchen frowned. “But school won’t be starting for two months.”

Her grandmother beamed. “Yes. Delightful. Two months of quiet with not a squalling child to be found . . . ”

It had taken her a while to get to this point. A year or so earlier, back in Grantville, she had still been arguing it with Annalise, who had kept bringing up alternatives.

Prague: in Ronnie’s view too far away, under that man Wallenstein’s control, and without dormitories. Roths in Prague or no Roths in Prague.

Then Annalise resorted to Bamberg, which was not so far away and in the bounds not just of the USE but the SoTF. St. Elisabeth’s, the new women’s university that Bernadette Adducci from Grantville was founding.

Still no dormitories, Ronnie had pointed out, and the tuition no cheaper than Quedlinburg. That it was a Catholic school, however much that might appeal to Annalise, was a matter of indifference to her grandmother, who had through the years been Lutheran, Catholic, Calvinist, and back again as the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the principle of cuius regio, eius religio as interpreted and applied by the various rulers of the Upper Palatinate determined.

Ronnie had stood her ground. “Quedlinburg. If I can find the tuition, of course. It has supervised dormitories. Plus, Mrs. Nelson from Grantville is teaching there. You know her perfectly well, Annalise. She used to be at the middle school here.”

The money had come from the investments that David Bartley had made on behalf of Jeff, Gretchen, and herself. Investments of which she had not been aware.

After the reality of the money sank in, she had quietly let the abbess know that she would reimburse the Stift for its expenditures on Annalise’s scholarship and work-study wages. She didn’t intend to let the girl know about their financial windfall: it was an item of nearly religious doctrine with her, more than anything contained in a recited creed of whatever denomination, that children appreciated things more if they had to work for them.

There was a proverb, after all: an indulgent mother makes a scabby daughter. The same applied to grandmothers.


Bremen

July 1635


“The Crown Loyalists have fucking got to be kidding,” Peter Schorfmann exclaimed. “The way Westphalia is set up now, their party is a political majority. How have they managed to let it escape their attention that their own membership is split up religiously about on the same lines as the population as a whole? That means it’s about forty percent Lutheran, mostly up here in the northwest and over in Holstein, but with scatters everywhere else. About forty percent Catholic, mostly down in the southwest, but more than scatters up here in the Münster Niederstift. Fifteen percent Calvinist, scattered everywhere.

“I suppose they aren’t including the Jews and Mennonites and such, who are all pretty much FoJP.”

Tönnies Breiting looked up from the memo he was writing. “Even here in Bremen itself, given how many Lutherans have moved in since the end of the Baltic War, and with the expansion of voting rights. Here in the city, it’s not close to being uniformly Calvinist any more. Twenty percent of the population, maybe, are Lutheran? Maybe more, and it’s only going to get higher since there aren’t that many Calvinists out in the rest of the province who have any reason to come and settle in Bremen.”

Gerrit Bemmeler agreed. “We’re a little island in the middle of a large ocean, and likely to be swamped. What happens if we do get independent free city status, establish a Calvinist/Reformed church, and ten years from now Calvinists are in the minority? That’s not unlikely, even in the Altstadt. If we—the FoJP, I mean—manage to persuade to emperor to grant us a decent-sized hinterland along with imperial city status and we bring in the Alte Neustadt and a chunk of unfortified land on both sides of the river, the Calvinists will become an instant minority.”

Peter Schorfmann beamed beatifically. “If that happens, if we gain our vote in the House of Lords and control both sides of the river, think. We can choke the economic life out of the ‘Prince of Westphalia’ and the fucking Crown Loyalists who control his province.”

Breiting shook his head. “Along with the economic life of the ordinary people who live there.”

“Omelettes and eggs,” Schorfmann retorted. “Omelettes and eggs, my boy.”


Münster

July 1635


“The ‘important’ provinces being ‘relatively homogeneous’ in religious terms.” Kerstin Brahe looked up from the recently arrived information sheet that the Crown Loyalist party was distributing to its adherents and probable adherents. “What are they thinking? Westphalia being counted as not ‘important’ in their opinion, I suppose. Or else it slipped their minds?” she complained to her husband. She had only been in the province for three months, but was already beginning to feel somewhat protective of it. Or, perhaps, possessive about it.


Magdeburg

August 1635


“It’s utterly ridiculous that the emperor is supposedly thinking about promoting that loser of a Danish prince from West-failure,” Benjamin Leek proclaimed. “He’s obviously accomplished nothing at all throughout Krystalnacht. Except for that one officer who was killed in some minor skirmish, nothing even happened there that rated more than three paragraphs on page four. Which is probably just as well; considering that he didn’t even make a showing toward stopping that miniature massacre the CoCs carried out at Loccum, there’s no way he could have coped with a major crisis.

“We’re having a national crisis right now, right here, and he’s already gone back to where he came from.”


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