Chapter 13
Westphalia
September 1635
Frederik was greatly relieved to be back from Magdeburg, even though he had returned to find that his staff had performed efficiently and there was a constitutional convention going on. Or about to go on. Or a convention to draft a provincial charter going on. Or about to go on. Call it a charter convention. Province-wide, with delegates from each constituent territory and principality (which had been made feasible by the need to develop “election districts” for the nationwide elections).
Suffering from growing impatience (no Westphalian Estates to vote tax revenues equalled no tax revenues coming in), Frederik (or, to be technical, Rist in his name) issued a mandate unilaterally that every election district (not every polling place) was to send a delegate to a charter convention by a set date. Most did. Some of the delegates had actually been elected. Some of them essentially were appointed by the local lord. Some of them were the local lord. What had that girl at Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt’s reception in Magdeburg said? The joke only worked in English; German did not have the needed parallelisms. “In a democracy, you vote counts; under feudalism, your count votes.”
Some things were non-negotiable. He put that forward in the mandate. Any draft the charter convention completed had to be in conformity with the USE constitution, or there would be no point in putting it to a vote. Among other things, that meant it would have to include provisions for religious toleration.
Some things were negotiable. Simple majority vote or two-thirds majority vote? Bicameral or unicameral provincial estates? Or a “provincial legislature.” Or a “provincial congress.” Did it make any difference what it was called?
Well, of course it did. It would be a Landtag, as there had previously been a Reichstag. People knew what a Diet was and what delegates to one were supposed to accomplish. Why expect them all to start over?
But there had to be a province-wide Landtag. One clear truth lay before him. Frederik knew what Estates were and how Estates functioned, so unless the convention determined otherwise, they would remain “Estates” in his mind. Before he could staff and pay a central administration (given that the subsidy from his father was unlikely to continue ad aeternitatem and most certainly would not continue at all if at some future time the province had a governor who was not his father’s son), Westphalia needed some kind of Estates or other legislative authority to grant taxes over this disparate body of hitherto unrelated entities so the provincial administration would have revenue coming in.
Magdeburg had provided no instructions whatsoever pertaining to acceptable methods by which he was to achieve acceptable results in the form of a draft of a provincial charter. He did receive, by way of his father, who obtained it from a “consultant” he had hired in Grantville, a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order. Since each individual territory that Gustav Adolf had tossed arbitrarily into the province had its own individual procedures, few of which were the same, Frederik announced equally arbitrarily that the delegates would either agree to use Robert’s or the dissenters could pick up their marbles, go home, and have no say in the final product.
Frederik suspected, given the results of the negotiations for the admission of Tyrol to the USE and the ad hoc carving of Württemberg out of Swabia by its late duke, that Magdeburg had not worked out any set of accepted methods. He certainly hadn’t seen any when he was there for the House of Lords.
So he appointed himself President pro tem.
* * *
Hardly anyone outside of the province even noticed the charter convention. That was fine with Frederik.
He might have even contributed to the obscurity of the event.
Various towns had wanted to host the delegates; others had utterly refused to host the delegates. He decided on his own discretion to hold it at Wildeshausen which was (a) about in the middle of the distance between Bochold in the southwest and the most distant reaches of northeastern Holstein, jutting out into the sea past Eutin; and (b) had come down in the world a lot since its medieval heyday, but still possessed a Rathaus adequate for holding the meetings. Moreover, its Rat hadn’t expressed an opinion one way or the other. If the delegates weren’t willing to pack themselves into the Remter (the chapter house of the former Stift) like salted fish in a keg, sleeping on cots, they could either rent space from the citizens (contracts would be inspected by lawyers) or live in tents. If enough of them ended up living in tents, that might spur them on to stop debating and adopt a draft.
Diepholz would have been more convenient for travelers, but that site would have introduced possible, and unnecessary, awkwardness with Brunswick.
The larger towns, even those that had not wanted to host the convention, were, naturally, indignant that the governor had designated someplace else. Someplace smaller and less distinguished. The sputterings of their mayors garnered a small amount of coverage in the news, but not much.
The newspaper reporters, who would have to hie themselves out into the middle of nowhere if they wanted first-hand stories, were by-and-large as indignant as the passed-over towns. Frederik did not regard their reluctance to go out in the field as a disadvantage.
* * *
He had to have a charter drafted; it had to be a charter that the USE officials in Magdeburg would accept. It also had to be a charter that the voters of Westphalia would adopt.
Non-negotiable. The final design contained in the Provincial Charter would have to provide for genuine provincial Estates. Province-wide Estates. A Landtag. Not some kind of compilation of existing local Estates. Non-negotiable because the existing local Estates that originated in the middle ages had been legendarily reluctant to grant taxes and other revenues to their ruling princes. Much less taxing authority; see for reference purposes the contemporary English, British, parliament which had caused his Aunt Anne’s late husband, and now her son Charles, so much difficulty. Thus greatly limiting the ruler’s scope of action quite sharply, in practice.
He let it be known that his stance on this was adamant.
He didn’t feel so strongly on some of the other issues, so he wasn’t concentrating on them so closely. People in the rest of the province kept doing things whether he was presiding over this convention or not, and a fair number of those things ended up as memos in his In Box, flagged for his attention.
Seated at the podium, he looked out at the array of benches. Backless benches. Unpadded benches. Benches a little too low to be comfortable for the average man, a little too close together to allow easy passage between them. Along with the crowded rooming conditions, he had some hopes that they would contribute to a swift and efficient completion of this project.
When it came to allocation of seats in the new provincial Estates . . . or legislature . . . or congress . . . or . . . Landtag, yes, Landtag . . . that were being sculpted (that sounded so much more elevated than “ground out like sausage”), the approach favored by most of the delegates who were themselves local lords, or who had been de facto appointed by local lords, or were already members of existing local Estates—that type of person—was to grant each of the territories that had been thrown into the province the same number of delegates, regardless of population.
“Somebody,” Rist said direly, “has been reading about the Senate of the United States of America.”
“Or has been reading the Britannica,” Christian Ulrik responded cheerily. “It has an informative article about ‘pocket boroughs’ as they exist, and for a long time kept on existing, in the British parliament’s House of Commons.”
Kerstin Brahe contributed that the American electoral college also offered certain charming possibilities to those who were deliberately setting out to throw sand in the grease that lubricated political wheels and axles. She wouldn’t be surprised if some of these rural toads had come across a description of it.
Simon Gruber, delegate from Lingen, brought in a proposal for province-wide proportional representation which would set up an electoral system in which parties gained seats in proportion to the number of total votes cast for them, with local governments picking the people to hold each seat. That caused even more screeching than the parallels with the once-upon-a-time American Senate.
The popularly elected delegates to the convention regarded the proposals favoring non-popular representation with notably less favor than the local nobility of, say, Tecklenburg. Gerrit Bemmeler had been on a roll in his vociferous opposition and presentation of reasons why not. Primarily! Secondarily! Was there such a word as thirdarily? Tertially? He got lost in his own verbiage and the forcefulness of his oratory dribbled down to ineffectiveness.
“You should have stuck with ‘firstly, secondly, thirdly,’” Peter Schorfmann said that evening. “Good, straight, plain German is always better than fancifully Latinized German.” Agnes Bemmeler, taking notes, nodded her head in agreement. “Let Tönnies do the talking tomorrow.”
“Get to a radio,” Tönnies said. “It’s one thing to be a delegate. It’s another to be a delegate who is the designated spokesman for the Bremen Senat. Draft up something on popular representation on which we can make a ‘Here I stand.’ Fast.”
“What’s the point of making such a fuss about how representation will work in the rest of the province?” Peter Schorfmann thought that was a reasonable enough question. “Why are we putting so much effort into participating in this convention? What Bremen wants to do is secede from Westphalia, not send delegates to its Landtag.”
“Oh, perish the thought of the word secede,” Bemmeler said. “Most of the up-timers, the ones we need to have our backs, the Fourth of July Party people, don’t like it at all. They had a whole civil war about it somewhere in the future.”
“But look at Württemberg. If what they’ve done under Eberhard’s will doesn’t amount to seceding from the Province of Swabia, I’m blind, deaf, and dumb. And the FoJP has backed them and turned his girlfriend Tata into a national CoC heroine.” Schorfmann threw up both of his hands in exasperation.
“One of their proverbs,” Bemmeler said, “runs, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
Agnes frowned at her brother reproachfully. “No. It comes from a collection of essays by an author named Emerson. I bought a reprinted copy at Jensen’s bookstore less than a month ago. ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.’ The crucial word in understanding it is ‘foolish.’ Dumm. Unklug. Töricht. Whatever else the national FoJP leadership may or may not be, so far it has not shown itself to be foolish. Tata is of great utility for what we want to achieve.”
Tönnies Breiting stood, leaning his back to the wall, thinking about little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Most of the CoC in Bremen, most of the CoC members of the Senat, for that matter, were sailing along in cheerful confidence that Frau Abrabanel, wife of General Stearns, she was, that Ed Piazza, that the other FoJP national leaders would surely, surely back Bremen’s wish to be a free imperial city. Surely, since Bremen would give their party one more sure vote in the USE House of Lords if it happened.
Another proverb ran, the only sure things in life are death and taxes.
If Bremen did not succeed in breaking free . . .
He stood up straight. “Bemmeler, forget that. Don’t draft the memo to the Senat and take it to the radio right now. Give me an hour to get my thoughts in order; I’ll draft it.”
“But not send it without running it past the rest of us.” Schorfmann’s voice revealed his irritation. Breiting might be CoC, but . . . for Peter Schorfmann, he would also be a twig and sprig of the patriciate’s family tree as well. Never entirely free of the suspicion that his commitment to the cause was . . . less complete than that of the rest of them.
But the memo was good. Persuasive. “Gerrit does the talking,” Breiting said. “I’m not much of a public speaker.”
So Bemmeler stood up again the next morning, speaking for the Senat of Bremen. Popular representation in the new provincial Estates was non-negotiable. The principle of “one man, one vote . . . ” Err. “One person, one vote.”
Agnes had directed some input at the first draft of the radio message to the Senat.
Some groups on both (or multiple) sides of the issue took up “we shall not be moved” stances; one outright reactionary who had come across the phrase, used it to defend the point he was making in an impassioned speech, which was picked up by the newspapers and led to considerable hilarity among the up-timers who read about it in Magdeburg.
At least, the few who noticed the paragraph on page three; the reporter who sent the article in was a second-stringer. But Pete Rush spotted it. Even Ben Leek laughed. Phil Hart forwarded it along to Grantville and Bamberg.
Bemmeler’s impassioned speech defending the principle of popular election seemed to be going well until Magnus Jurgens from Loccum Abbey—which had borne a certain grudge against Bremen since the events of Krystalnacht—arose from his seat, dashed into the floor space that separated the podium from the benches, skirted the tables where various scribes and scriveners were taking minutes, and punched him in the nose. Sigmund Romberg, jumping up from the front row, grabbed Jurgens’ shoulders to pull him back; Jurgens’ colleague from Verden shoved Romberg to the floor. The defenders of popular representation surged from their seats to defend Bemmeler; the defenders of proportional representation rose to drag them down, with every intention of silencing the speaker. Half the people in the room were crushed into the small space between the front row and the podium, jerking one another around: elbows in stomachs and knees in groins. The other half were standing on the benches for a better view of the entertainment.
Frederik banged his gavel on the lectern in an agreed-upon rhythm that sent one of the guards at the door running and brought the Wildeshausen city militia, whom once-Lieutenant, now Captain Reineke Meyer had briefed and conveniently stationed in the back corridor of the Rathaus for such all-too-likely emergencies.
Bemmeler finished his speech. The evening was uneasy; groups of delegates caucusing, muttering, avoiding one another. Some taverns held only those who favored one position; others the supporters of the opposition.
But the next morning’s session opened calmly enough. They even managed a vote, by which popular representation, while not winning, squeaked through with a plurality.
The honorable delegate from Tecklenburg proposed a run-off between the two voting proposals with the greatest support. The honorable delegates from Bremen cried foul.
Then . . . Frau Hanna Jacobi, from Friesoythe, heiress of a large peasant farm, larger than many a noble manor, one of the most conservative of the conservatives, arose and moved that if all adult individuals were to have the right to vote, it followed that they must be clearly identifiable, so each person in the province must adopt a fixed family name, not a patronymic, and fix it to the family line by heredity. No more Jan Classen who was son of Claus Janssen who was son of Jan Friessen. No surname; no vote.
Frederik sat, twirling the gavel, and thought. It had some merit, if it could be accomplished.
“What kind of a name is Jacobi?” Schorfmann could not resist contributing. Agnes dragged him back down into his seat and told him to shut his mouth. He popped up and yelled, “Patronymic.”
“Borne by my family for four generations! My father’s name is Hendrik!” Frau Hanna usually gave as good as she got.
“Nor farm names, either,” someone shouted from the rear of the room. “No changing your name when you lease a different farm, any more. No making a son-in-law adopt his wife’s farm name if he wants to take over the lease.”
“Out of order! Out of order!”
While Frederik was gathering his thoughts, Magnus Jurgens—who, obviously, bore one of the despised patronymics—stood up and said that if this was to be imposed on commoners by the aristocratic Crown Loyalists and their sycophants, then it should be imposed on nobles as well. If there were to be no more farm names, then also no more “von” this or that, using the names of landholdings. Either adopt a family name, like Wilhelm Wettin had done, or else pick one of the landholdings and make it a family name. If the vice-president of the SoTF could be a Gundelfinger permanently because she’d had some long-ago ancestor who came from Gundelfingen, then some arrogant “von Lenken” in this day and age could turn into a “Lenkener” and stick with it.
According to Robert’s Rules of Order, none of this was properly on the table. Frederik banged his gavel and said so.
Over the rising din, Jurgens howled at the top of his lungs, “I so move.” From his colleague from Verden, a powerful, “Second the motion” arose.
“Out of order,” yelled the delegate from Tecklenburg. Jurgens charged forward again, this time followed by a dozen other men who were jumping from bench to bench to avoid the crowded aisles, mostly skirting those delegates who still remained seated—but not always. The scribes prudently grabbed their papers, ledgers, pens, and paraphernalia, disappearing under the tables with all of it. Romberg was holding his own; Friedrich Horst from Hoya had two fist-fighting delegates who came from, Frederik thought, somewhere around Quackenbrück, and had been arguing against one another since the first bang of the gavel, under control, each of his massive hands pinching a neck. It was starting to subside. It had remained one more simple brawl. Punching. Shoving. Slapping. Hair pulling. Kicking.
Some of those kicks had to be painful, but . . . an ordinary brawl. Nothing that a group of schoolyard bullies wouldn’t do when hazing new boys.
Until Gruber cracked Jurgens’ head against a corner of the scribes’ table and Horst, letting go of the two men he had previously grabbed, picked up a bench. After that it involved daggers, poniards, and a few short swords. Before Frederik could signal for the town militia with his gavel, Hannes Carstens from Meppen hoisted himself onto the podium and grabbed it out of his hand, throwing it at Horst as if it were a hammer before setting out to drag the governor off his chair and back towards the space between the podium and the wall.
Fortunately, the guard at the door had enough initiative to summon the militia without being signaled to do so. Which, technically, put him in violation of his orders, but Frederik wasn’t going to make a point of it. Hiring the man himself might be the better option.
After order was restored . . . By the time the brawl was over . . . By the time the militia and the surgeons had completed their tasks . . .
He adjourned the session. Gave them a couple of days to cool off.
Smirked.
Personally commended all the ladies who were delegates for having, most of them, refrained from participating in the fights and praised them for exemplifying parliamentary decorum.
Leaked the commendation to the newspaper.
Several aggrieved delegates, when they had their chance, informed the newspapers that the governor had exercised intimidation and stifled freedom of speech. Which was another right guaranteed by the constitution of the USE.
When the meeting reconvened, the delegates from Bremen were able to present themselves as voices of sweet reason. And took the opportunity to present additional demands for points that Bremen thought would improve the charter as it would be presented to the people for a vote. Points that were not on the official agenda as it had been prepared by the governor in advance of the charter convention.
Frederik reacted to Bremen’s new proposals with reasonably good grace as far as his public face was concerned, adding them to the agenda, permitting them to be considered by the rather chastened delegates and voted up or down. The convention adopted several. Proceeding decently and in order.
Privately, he resolved to revoke the relevant provisions the first time an opportunity arose.
Frederik did not enjoy making significant concessions. Concessions that he did not want to make.