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Chapter 26


August 1636


In accordance with the time-tested wisdom of new brooms sweeping clean, with the advice of the up-time text on principles of public administration he had obtained from the up-timer Professor Okey Rush at the University of Jena, and his own inclinations, Werner von Dalberg came into office intending to hit the streets hard in the first month of his term. There were so many desirable reforms that would benefit the citizens once his administration pushed them through the legislature. Just the material from Ms. Mailey on the rights of women, the legalization of labor unions, elimination of restriction of trade as applied to guild-controlled occupations, definition of residency, the matter of the age of majority…

He rarely managed to hit anything except his desk, and that only in exasperation.

***

“Governor von Dalberg.”

“Yes, Richius.”

“The dowager countess of Pfalz-Sulzbach would like to arrange an appointment with you.”

“I’m sure that she would. Is it too much to hope that she wants to discuss something practical? Economic development, perhaps?”

“To present you to her mother, who is currently visiting Nürnberg.”

Von Dalberg sighed.

“From Husum. That’s in Holstein. The mother of the dowager countess is a dowager duchess of Holstein-Gottorp. Lutheran, of course.”

“I did not harbor the slightest doubt that a Lutheran fanatic’s mother would also be a Lutheran.”

“That’s scarcely a correlation that a person can rely on. Wolfgang Wilhelm was a Catholic fanatic, but his mother wasn’t. Not a Catholic fanatic. Not even Catholic. And, Governor von Dalberg, if I may be permitted…”

“You are permitted.”

“I’m afraid that a reminder may be in order. Unlike Ernst Wettin, unlike Christian of Pfalz-Birkenfeld-Bischweiler, you are one. Catholic, that is. The dowager countess does not trust you. She will probably never trust you. She fully anticipates that you will be coming under pressure to reverse Duke Ernst’s decisions in regard to allocations of church property now that the emperor has agreed that Lutheranism will not be the established church in the province, but rather that there will be separation of church and state and suspects that you will be inclined to look favorably on petitions from Catholics, given that you were originally hired by…”

Von Dalberg’s face sank down into his cupped hands.

“I rather expect that she is planning to assure you of her undying watchfulness and intent to prevent any such trend. Moreover…”

“This episode cannot possibly require a ‘moreover’—or can it?”

“Moreover, or somewhat more to the point,” his secretary said, “the reason that the late Count August’s marriage to her in spite of his extremely modest inheritance was such a triumph was…”

“Surely not more genealogy!”

“The countess’ widowed mother is Auguste, one of the widowed sisters of King Christian IV of Denmark. The countess is named for her Aunt Hedwig, who was married to John George of Saxony’s older brother. The one who was in the papers when…”

“I remember,” von Dalberg said. “It’s probably a conspiracy.” He almost meant that.

When Paolo read the report of the meeting in the Amberg Global Times, he said the same thing. Unlike Werner von Dalberg, he laughed when he said it.

***

“Governor von Dalberg.”

“Yes, Richius.”

“The count of Pfalz-Hilpoltstein has returned from Magdeburg and requests an appointment with you.”

“I’m sure he does. Any clue as to why?”

“It pertains to the outcome of his audience with the emperor. If you would care to review this duplicate copy of…”

The governor reviewed the document. “It’s definitely a conspiracy.”

Carlo laughed when he read the opinion column. Jacob Ranke made no bones that he thought the whole thing was hilarious. His column was clever. Gustav Adolf had appointed the count of Pfalz-Hilpoltstein, known to some as the hornet, as “guardian of the Upper Palatine property interests” of young Karl Ludwig, oldest son of the Winter King.

“Karl Ludwig is still in Brussels. Gustav Adolf is much too shrewd to openly try to undermine the republican constitutional form of government in the Upper Palatinate to which he consented last summer. It would have been far to crass to call Johann Friedrich ‘regent’ or Statthalter or…. As guardian of the boy’s personal property claims, though—he and the governor will be dancing a perpetual ballet around each other in regard to who has authority to do what and which property belongs to whom.”

“A deliberate distraction?”

“To some extent, maybe. On the other hand, I think a lot of FoJP people in the new legislature would have happily voted to confiscate the lot and call it ‘escheated’ if the emperor hadn’t done this. It’s certainly what the CoC would approve. Gustav Adolf has granted significant concessions to Stearns and Richter, but that doesn’t mean he will abandon those to whom he feels obligations for other reasons. The widow and children of the late Winter King are certainly among those.”

***

“Governor von Dalberg.”

Werner looked up wearily, pushing the stack of papers on his standing desk to one side. “Yes, Richius. What now?” He yawned. There was still daylight coming in the window, but even though the days were getting shorter, at this time of year the sun didn’t set in Amberg until well past the eighth bell in the evening and the twilight lingered for an hour after that.

“A delegation from the Committee of Correspondence in Nabburg would like to discuss land reform. That’s Nabburg, not Neuburg. And here are four more recommendations from local FoJP chapters or CoC subcommittees, sometimes from local FoJP chapters and CoC subcommittees, in various towns in the province that you should replace me with someone else because I am too closely associated with the hereditary upper class.”

“You’re no more closely associated with it than I am.”

“True,” Richius answered with calm objectivity, “but you have the advantage of being an outsider. Your family were estate owners, but somewhere else, whereas my uncle, even if an emigrant and a long-time adherent of the emperor, is, or was, local. My best professional advice is that you should comply with their request, dismiss me from my post, and get some favorable publicity in the papers in the process.”

“I take it that you have other job prospects.”

“Not currently, but I will. Somewhere out there is a Crown Loyalist who will be delighted to employ an upstanding young man who has been so unjustly treated by the rabid, slavering, maddened radicals.”

“That’s Byzantine.”

“More contemporary than the Byzantines, I believe. It’s worthy of Machiavelli, but was Paolo Fucilla, one of the sales representatives for Vignelli Business Machines, who suggested the solution to me. Perhaps he got it from one of the up-time textbooks on business management. He has purchased several of the reprints and reads them with delight.”

***

During a slow day at the shop, Paolo and Carlo were doing a bit of desultory cleaning and polishing with oiled rags while contemplating various other aspects of being what Ranke, in the widely distributed political column he had written during the campaign, had analyzed as outsiders as compared to insiders, in the light of citizenship.

Not citizenship in the light of some philosophical abstraction about the distinction between citizen and subject. That was the topic of considerable recent discussion because of Mr. Thomas Hobbes’ influential assertion that the two concepts were identical. It scarcely needed to be said that the Committees of Correspondence did not agree.

For Paolo and Carlo, it was obvious that the two were not the same. One of these things was manifestly not like the other. The election that put Werner von Dalberg into office had come and gone. They had not voted, because they were subjects of His Most Catholic Majesty, Philip IV, king of Spain. Still. Nor had they voted for anyone in the city council elections, because they did not have citizen status in Amberg.

Should that be changed?

“There’s Biblical precedent.” Carlo dropped his rag into a bucket, sat down, reached under the table, and tossed one of the brown paper sacks across to the other man. Lunch time.

Domicilla packed a good cold lunch. He’d rather have a warm meal at mid-day, but that was one of the disadvantages of not living on the premises. It wasn’t worth walking to the house and then back to the shop in bad weather. “Saint Paul wasn’t born in Rome, or even in Italia, but he got a pretty good deal out of being a Roman citizen, a couple of times.”

Paolo opened his sack and nibbled thoughtfully on a narrow stick of sliced bell pepper. Peppers had turned out to do well in the local greenhouses; they were available year-round. As were mushrooms, finally.

Carlo waited him out; sometimes Paolo couldn’t be hurried.

Paolo’s thinking finally turned into speech. “Render unto Caesar. Fuchs talked about that a lot during the campaign. Should we be rendering more duties to Gustav Adolf than has been the case thus far? To the governor? To the city? If we changed our citizenship, would it really change our nationality? We would still be Italians living in Germany. We can’t change where we were born; that’s already happened.”

“You’re losing focus on the real question. What’s in it for us?”

“The watch might come, if we needed them.”

“Even if it would be a good idea to change our status, could we now?” Carlo asked.

That turned out to be a question with some interesting implications. And no obvious answer.

The traditional way by which an outsider became an insider in a German city was to buy in—demonstrate sufficient financial resources to show that one would contribute to the tax rolls rather than becoming a drain on them; then be accepted by the city council.

But…

What was citizenship, precisely, now that it seemed to have become a federal matter?

Back when Michael Stearns was the prime minister (as compared to the present day, when he was commanding armies), for the election of 1635, he had more or less arbitrarily declared a standard taken from the constitution of the other United States, the one that had existed up-time.


All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State or Province wherein they reside. No State or Province shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State or Province deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


That remained the position of the Fourth of July Party, enthusiastically endorsed by the Committees of Correspondence. The Crown Loyalists, under Wilhelm Wettin, had not managed to reverse it nor to impose uniform, highly restrictive, nationwide standards for citizenship as the reactionaries had wished. Herr Piazza was now the prime minister, so, presumably, it remained in force. For the election of 1636, voting rights extended right down to serfs if they were born or naturalized in the USE.

The interesting words were “or naturalized.”

The USE constitution contained no clause in regard to eligibility for naturalization, much less defining naturalization procedures, any more than the constitution of the United States of America had done.

So far, the Lords and Commons had not seen fit to develop a naturalization policy at the federal level. No policy, much less actual procedures.

Neither Duke Ernst nor Count Christian had issued such a policy on the provincial level in the name of Emperor Gustav Adolf. No policy, much less actual procedures.

In the past, frantic two months since the election, von Dalberg had issued no pertinent statement, much less regulations. The provincial legislature wasn’t likely to address the matter until several more things happened—such as drafting and adopting a provincial constitution, reconstituting the people elected to the Estates in 1636 as members of whatever revised legislative system such a constitution might establish, and dealing with a myriad of issues more immediately pressing than the legal status of two Italian sales representatives for Vignelli Business Machines resident in Amberg.

Whatever the situation might be, however—there was no clarity.

If a man bought into citizenship in Amberg, did it make him a citizen of the Province of the Upper Palatinate by default? Much less, of the USE by default?

Two days later. “It’s a moot question.” Paolo picked up his glass of good Italian red wine. “The Amberg city council has decided to play it safe by not accepting any new applications for citizenship until such time as there are clear guidelines.”

Upon a bit of further investigation, it appeared that the Regensburg city council had come to the same cautious conclusion.

In the Oberpfalz, the majority of the Crown Loyalists—Fuchs had addressed the issue during the campaign—felt that the province should establish its own criteria for citizenship. That group was following the lead of the regent of Hesse-Kassel. However, there was no federal law allowing each province to do that, so this wish remained stuck at the level of a talking point during the campaign and became essentially irrelevant after the Fourth of July Party’s victory.

In any case, they had been talking about “citizenship” of “adult permanent residents” in the context of who would hold the right to vote.

Naturalizations had not come up.

Of the various states and provinces of the USE, only the SoTF (on the basis of established precedent) and Magdeburg (on the basis of gleeful innovation) were naturalizing new citizens in the absence of a federal policy. Even in Mecklenburg, another FoJP stronghold, the practical situation amounted to a rather ruthless, CoC-backed, insistence that towns, villages, rural districts, and any miscellaneous jurisdiction that didn’t fall into any of those categories had to admit as a citizen with full local rights anyone born within the current boundaries of the USE or currently naturalized within the USE who moved in from elsewhere in the province or elsewhere in the nation.

So, Paolo and Carlo concluded, if they had accepted the offer of New United States citizenship back in Grantville in 1633, they would have been transferred to State of Thuringia-Franconia and automatically brought into the United States of Europe as citizens. But they didn’t. They hadn’t.

Really, even now, they were not entirely certain that they would, if the option existed. Because they were, after all, subjects of…(see above). The conversation went around like a carousel.

But they couldn’t be the only persons in this situation.

“Is there even a route for aliens to petition for naturalization?”

“If there isn’t any, there should be.”

“Would von Dalberg know?”

“Well, we can ask him, I assume; after all, he’s our attorney, even if he is the governor of the province now.”

“Is he still our attorney?”

“He hasn’t sent a notice that he isn’t.”

“Not that we would commit ourselves to doing it, of course. But it’s always nice to have an option. Just in case. The recent news from Naples has been a little…odd.”

“In the worst case, I suppose, if everything goes sideways, we could go back to Grantville and see if the option is still open there.”

***

“Governor von Dalberg.”

“Yes, Richius.”

“Two sales representatives from Vignelli Business Machines in Bolzano—that’s Tyrol—want an appointment with you.

“I know them. What’s it about?”

“Definition of naturalization procedures.”

“Shouldn’t they have received USE citizenship when Tyrol joined? I knew they came here from the SoTF, but just assumed that since they came as factors for Vignelli…”

“They don’t have citizenship in Tyrol, as far as I have been able to determine. They don’t claim to.”

“Eventually,” von Dalberg told them. “Eventually, we’ll get around to it.”

He told himself that he should have run for a seat in the Estates rather than for governor, become the Landmarschall (the elected legislature, however forward-looking, was holding tenaciously to the traditional terminology in this matter of the formal designation of its chairperson), and stuck Fuchs with all these endless interviews. Perhaps, then, he could have gotten something done.



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