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Chapter 20


Truthfully, though—the fight against the Bavarians was getting intense, but the intensity was nowhere near Amberg. After the fall of Ingolstadt to Bavaria in January, the headlines had proclaimed:


TREACHERY!


in block letters. Somehow, that hadn’t been the headline when Colonel Cratz von Scharffenstein, the Bavarian commander, had turned it over to Banér the year before. But, as Keith Pilcher said, these things tended to depend on your point of view. Or whose ox was being gored.


Colonel Engels of Danube Regiment, Wife, and Infant Daughter Murdered by Perfidious

Bavarians!


1st Battalion’s Italian Mercenaries Defected to the Bavarians!


Traitorous, unfaithful, untrustworthy, insidious. The headlines started running short on synonyms. Disloyalty, disaffection, infidelity. Deceptive, devious, two-faced, shifty. Within a week, they were out of anything with a passing resemblance to a synonym and had to start reusing words they had already employed.

Paolo and Carlo were a bit concerned about the frequency with which the headlines emphasized Italian mercenaries. Sebastian and the other reporters probably didn’t mean to spread incendiary propaganda, but…

Every bit of propaganda issued by von Dalberg’s organization in the Upper Palatinate emphasized two things. First, that this salvation had been sent to the citizens of the Upper Palatinate by an up-timer named Edward Piazza. Second, that the specified up-timer was a staunch leader of the Fourth of July Party.

“You guys might remember to add,” Paolo said to his journalistic acquaintances, “that Herr Piazza is Italian.” He figured that it couldn’t hurt and sent a short petition in the direction of Dame Fortuna.

Who was not an approved Catholic saint, but it never hurt to take precautions.

He also invested in metal shutters with padlocks for the doors and windows of the shed, just in case, and sent the cook and housekeeper (with pay) to visit their families until things calmed down. Followed by asking Jozef Rickel to have a few words with his CoC friends, just in case. He and Carlo didn’t live above the shop (the not-a-shed being but one story high) nor behind the shop (the not-a-shed having room only for the showroom and a small storage area), but most of the families along the block did, which he found worrisome.

It was hard to predict what local rowdies might decide to do if the words Italian mercenaries burrowed themselves too far into their heads like some mental tapeworm. Definitely heads; brains would be stretching the point.

Two days later, about dusk, he had Jozef Rickel move the machines from the not-a-shed to their house, leaving empty boxes of various shapes on the tables in the showroom.

It started shortly after dark, with a few people gathered in the street across from the shop.

The few attracted several more.

It was probably more than an hour before the first person in the group gathered the nerve to throw something.

It took less than five minutes for someone else to do the same.

The missiles weren’t improvised on the spot. Not most of them. Yes, there were a few loose cobblestones; in the next morning’s light, a person could see where they had been pried out of the walkway. The broken bricks didn’t come from nearby. Neither did the pieces of coal, nor the bits of scrap metal, the waste from the forges.

The shutters and padlocks held; the window frame on the right did not. The headline in the Loyalty proclaimed:


Unidentified Vandals Damage Amberg Store


“Jacob,” Stentzel Grube protested, “that makes it sound like they drew on it with chalk, or threw cow pies, or something. Why not say that they smashed the boxes that they thought were demo machines to bits with crowbars? That they splintered the tables when they realized the boxes were empty? Smeared soot all over the whitewashed walls?”

“I’m not the one who writes the headlines.”

Stentzel didn’t write the headlines, either, but the Current Tidings featured:


Unwarranted Attack on Vignelli Business Machines Distribution Center: How Will Tyrol Respond?


And in the Amberg Global News, after a considerable amount of nagging by Sebastian Kellermeister:


Thugs Destroy Local Business! CoC Breaks Anti-Italian Riot Before Watch Shows Up!


The city watch defended the slow pace of its response to the “minor” riot by saying that the two sales representatives for Vignelli Business Machines were, after all, not citizens of Amberg; therefore, technically, the watch owed them no duty of Schutz und Schirm.

“Why, then?” Sebastian Kellermeister asked, “If you believe that they are due no protection from you, if you believe that you have no legal obligation to defend them against attackers, why then did you eventually bother to turn out at all?”

“We were keeping an eye on it. Once the crowd got large enough that it seemed likely some of the violence might spill over and damage other businesses, especially those nearby where the owner and his family live on the premises, we really had no choice other than to intervene, even if it meant protecting those freeloaders as well. The fire marshal also wanted it broken up before someone got an idea to start setting things on fire before throwing them at the building. Or into it, after they got inside. Also, once the CoC showed up, the violence might have spread.”

“Why do you classify them as freeloaders? They own property. They pay taxes.”

“But they don’t assume their share of the burdens involved in maintaining a community. They aren’t citizens of the town.”

Paolo hired a carpenter to replace the window frame and a crew of day laborers to clean up. Jozef brought the inventory back. Carlo opened the next morning as if nothing had happened.

***

By the end of the month, aside from the five thousand or so unfortunates who had been trapped in Ingolstadt and remained at the mercy, or lack of mercy, of the Bavarian garrison, the provincial population north of the Danube, which comprised, basically, according to the census that Duke Ernst had taken the previous summer, about one hundred eighty thousand of the quarter of a million inhabitants of the province as a whole, were being spared another episode of the ravages of war while mining, manufacturing, and exporting large quantities of iron and iron products. Another thirty thousand or so of them in and immediately around Regensburg were making money hand over fist—largely in the form of promissory notes at the moment, but the State of Thuringia-Franconia had developed an excellent reputation when it came to redeeming promissory notes. The path of the march of the 2nd Battalion and the following Bavarians from Ingolstadt to Regensburg showed devastation, with no hope of improvement until spring, but most of the residents had found refuge. Somewhere.

Paolo and Carlo didn’t have anything to report to anyone that those who paid their retainers couldn’t read in the newspapers for themselves. Demand for their services was down.

Sales were good, fortunately, so their overall income was holding steady.

Yes, that was fortunate, Paolo thought. Very fortunate, now that they had a mortgage.

Less fortunately, the shop was outgrowing the not-a-shed premises in which it was located. Worse, several owners of neighboring businesses dropped comments that, given the riot, Vignelli Business Machines might be considered an attractive nuisance that would be better off elsewhere. But they were tied down by a five-year lease.

Werner von Dalberg, who still did not hold a government position, still had to earn a living. He negotiated a sub-lease for the shed on their behalf, pointing out to the lawyer representing the other party that the security precautions installed by Herr Fucilla had significantly increased its value, wherefore a rent increase was quite justified; he also located a new lease for a larger and more substantial shop that offered, even if it was not on the market square and did not have a direct view, at least a glimpse of the signature arches on the front of the Amberg Rathaus if one stood on the corner. Which meant that it was close enough to premises owned by several members of the city council that the watch was not likely to ignore any future disturbances.

There were living quarters above it, which Paolo and Carlo did not need.

The Fourth of July Party in the Oberpfalz had expanded its operations to the point that it did need something in the way of headquarters other than von Dalberg’s own skimpy two rooms. He rented the space. Which meant that the CoC was very unlikely to ignore potential future disturbances.

There was no doubt whatsoever that the Amberg CoC had become a much more disciplined and better-trained entity during the past months. Since the episode with Westerstetten, the Würzburg cadre, having taken note that von Dalberg had a true talent for attracting and inspiring enthusiastic recruits, but no experience whatsoever in paramilitary matters, had taken the provincial organization in the Upper Palatinate in hand.

After his first face-to-face meeting with von Dalberg, the head of the Würzburg CoC, who had a devout wife and rather liked Pastor Meyfarth himself, sat in church the following Sunday, listening to the choir render a hymn that the fellow up in Magdeburg, Gerhardt was his name, had written, or would have written, or something, and thinking that Werner von Dalberg showed no more prospect of being able to manage a militant resistance movement in the face of vicious tyranny than the lamb that, according to the soloist, was going “uncomplaining forth” to be sacrificed for the sins of the world. With luck, he wouldn’t need to. Without luck, someone else would have to step in.

Dame Fortuna did not always appear in her Latin guise.


February 1636


“My father is staying in Saxony.” Jacob Grube stood up. “Staying to try to protect the property, as much as he can. But he sent my mother to safety.” He smiled thinly. “She arrived this morning; has already rented rooms from my tanner friend. She has expectations of her son, so I’ll have to leave early this evening. I won’t be dropping out of the Stammtisch, exactly, but I won’t be around as much as usual, either. Probably not for a few months.” He sighed. “She’s made up her mind that I’m old enough to court a wife.”

“We’re fortunate that the Saxon uprising has stayed in Saxony, for the most part. Nothing more than a few random raids across the border in the north; the Jaeger are handling them without too much trouble. The civil war around Berlin, in the north, didn’t really get this far south, either,” Sebastian Kellermeister said. “Now that we hear…”

The headlines read:


The Emperor’s Miraculous Recovery! Provincial Day of Thanksgiving Proclaimed!


Axel Oxenstierna Dead in Berlin!


There were those who thought that the imperial administrator of the province had no business proclaiming a province-wide day of Thanksgiving (for the emperor’s recovery, naturally; in no way for Oxenstierna’s death; any pastor, priest, or elder who mentioned that unfortunate situation in his sermon or homily would regret it!) and announcing that every single religious denomination to be found within the province’s now-tolerant boundaries would participate in the celebrations. Or else!

More thought it than said it. Most of those who said it belonged to the CoCs.

Hans Friedrich Fuchs, in the name of the provincial Estates, not only endorsed the proclamation but gave several extensive interviews, not only to the Loyalty (though he gave Jacob Ranke the first one) but subsequently to the opposition papers. In his opinion, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” was perhaps the most meaningful statement in the New Testament. Caesar had his instructions from God; the duty of a Christian subject was to let him get on with carrying them out, without interfering or criticizing.

“Yes, Saint Paul says in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians that the toe is as important to the body as the head,” he paraphrased, “but he also says that they have different jobs to do. The governor is the head of our provincial household; just as a man is the divinely appointed head of his family, the sun to his wife’s reflecting moon…”

It was just as well that he was nowhere around when Lena Leitsingerin expressed her opinion of that idea. Her brother Erdmann had finished his apprenticeship. Instead of moving on to become a journeyman, he had moved to Magdeburg. Lena was stepping into his shoes as the resident radical.

At Vignelli Business Machines, Carlo opened his lunch sack and made a face. Goat jerky. Well, fresh lamb wouldn’t be affordable for another month or so. Rice. He still didn’t like it, but Domicilla had a way of fixing it with curry that made it at least tolerable. Better than the alternative. At this season, at the Golden Lion, Frau Mechthilde’s patrons would be getting bean soup. If they were lucky, she would throw in some salt pork and an elderly onion. There was one thing to be said for dried beans: if the storage crock was sealed tight and locked the vermin out, they kept well all winter. By March, that was the most attractive aspect of any food for most people.


April 1636


By April, the headline writers were being put to the test to come up with at least minor variations on the theme of:


Latest on the Conflict in Bavaria!


The newspapers were full of the names of Michael Stearns, Tom Simpson, Jeff Higgins, and Heinrich Schmidt, who, along with the rarely mentioned anonymous troops they commanded, had taken the fight to the Bavarians and were gracious enough to be conducting the ravages of war on Bavarian soil for the time being. “Heiliger Sankt Florian,” von Dalberg hummed under his breath. “Verschon’ mein Haus, zünd’ and’re an!

Spare my house, Saint Florian! Burn up someone else’s.

The sentiment wasn’t limited to south German peasants petitioning the saint in charge of house fires.

He had run across Keith Pilcher at the Vignelli store. Pilcher’s comment was NIMBY. Not in my back yard.

So, up-time also. Perhaps a universal human inclination.

The news that most interested the residents of the Upper Palatinate, by and large, was that Duke Maximilian had pulled most of his troops out of Ingolstadt on the assumption that Mike Stearns would take the Third Division directly toward Munich. The USE dropped leaflets promising amnesty to those of the occupiers who had not been party to the January betrayal. Those who had been party to the betrayal started to desert; basically, they were all gone before Heinrich Schmidt arrived with SoTF National Guard units to occupy the city and its fortress, once again, for the USE.



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