Foreword
The purpose of this foreword is to provide a little orientation for readers of the series as to how this book fits into the timeline.
The beginning of the story derives from the decision made by Henri, duc de Rohan, to send his younger brother, Benjamin duc de Soubise, to England to deal with Michel Ducos and his cadre of fanatical Huguenot assassins (Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce, 1635: The Dreeson Incident).
In the ten-plus years since that book came out, Eric developed another idea he wanted to use for dealing with Ducos and his people in the British Isles, which left the authorial team with the literary challenge of extricating Soubise from England in a plausible manner, so as to prevent his presence from interfering in the . . . well . . . what Eric is going to write about it. Tum-te-tum-tum, snerk collar, and all that.
That challenge led to my writing The Red Headed League, which came out in the Ring of Fire IV anthology (Baen: 2016), portions of which have been incorporated into The Trouble with Huguenots by gracious permission of Baen editor Toni Weisskopf. That reworked material makes up about a third of The Trouble with Huguenots. Another part has been adapted from the story “Les Futuriens,” which ran in the Grantville Gazette, Numbers 65 (May 2016) and 66 (June 2016). The sections of those publications not included in the book have not been thereby excluded from the 1632-verse canon; they just weren’t pertinent to this narrative. Approximately half of the material in the book is new.
The Trouble with Huguenots runs chronologically parallel to The Legions of Pestilence (Ring of Fire Press: 2019; Baen Books ebook: 2024). It involves a number of the same characters and locations, especially Besançon, the capital chosen for his new country by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, grand duke of the Free County of Burgundy. However, aside from the high politics that float along in the background of both books, there is little duplication of events. Every major player on the European stage was trying to keep several balls in the air and a wary eye on several more which were, for the time being, lying placidly in a groove, but any one of which might suddenly spring into the midst of the active ones.
For example, Henri de Ruvigny and his friend August von Bismarck play significant roles in the first half of this book. Then they disappear for much of the second half, because they are employees of Grand Duke Bernhard and in The Legions of Pestilence he pulls them back from being on loan to Henri de Rohan and sends them off to do two other sets of errands for himself.
Please do not be distressed, dear reader. It will all make sense in the end.