Not on the battlefield, though. Whatever else aggravated professional officers about the enlisted ranks of the USE army, their willingness and ability to fight was not one of them.
After a moment, Jeff decided that Schuster wasn't being motivated by resentment. He really was just strapped for men.
"Uh… Sir. You know I don't have much actual battlefield experience-infantry battles, I mean, if you want somebody to blow up a warship I'm your man-and none at all commanding more than a squad. I'm not sure…"
"You'll do fine, Captain Higgins. The 12th is a good battalion with good companies. And the commander of your regiment is Colonel Friedrich Eichelberger, who is a superb officer."
"But…"
Schuster shook his head firmly. "The decision is made, Captain. I discussed the matter with General Stearns himself, and he concurred in my decision. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the officers of your battalion immediately. The campaign is already underway. We should reach the Saxon border within four days, possibly even three." He cleared his throat. "Whatever might be their other failings, our soldiers march quite well."
It took Jeff until sundown to find his battalion. Somehow or other, it had managed to get shuffled out of its officially allotted place in the marching order.
At least the battalion was ahead of place, not behind. Apparently they were eager-beavers instead of shirkers. Under most circumstances, Jeff would have thought that a positive trait. Under these…?he wasn't sure. Bad enough some idiot brigadier had placed a twenty-three-year-old captain with an oddball military resume in charge of a whole battalion, after consulting with a top commander who apparently had the IQ of a turnip. (At a rough count, he'd silently cursed Mike Stearns at least five hundred times that afternoon.) To add to his misery, it seemed that his new battalion was full of vim and vigor and would have absurdly unrealistic expectations of their new commanding officer.
His fears proved too great and too little.
Too great, in that the 12th Battalion turned out to be a veritable CoC hotbed. Every noncommissioned officer, it seemed, as well as half the grunts, were hardcore activists from Magdeburg.
Given that Jeff was married to the woman who was generally viewed as the quintessence of the CoC spirit, his appointment as the battalion's new commander was very highly regarded by the enlisted men.
And that was the bad news too, of course. "Absurdly unrealistic expectations" was putting it mildly.
Chapter 9
After Jeff left, Gretchen didn't spend more than half an hour moping around and feeling sorry for herself. She'd inherited her grandmother's stoic disposition and hardheaded attitude toward life's travails.
Besides, there were the children to be settled down. There weren't as many as Gretchen had handled when she was a camp follower. Baldy and Martha had stayed behind in Grantville, which left only four of her foster children in addition to her own two sons Willi and Joseph. But all four of them were now entering their teen years and were almost the same age-Karl Blume, the oldest, was fourteen; Christian Georg, the youngest, was twelve. The other two, both born in 1622, were thirteen.
So, they were rambunctious. On the other hand, Gretchen was Gretchen. It didn't take her more than half an hour to set them all about various household chores, obediently if not exactly happily.
The problems would come later, once the little devils figured out that the apartment building was as much in the way of a CoC headquarters-national headquarters, at that, with Gretchen in residence-as it was a private dwelling. They'd handle that knowledge each according to his or her own temperament. Otto and Maria Susanna, charmers both, would sweet-talk the various residents into taking on at least some of their tasks; Karl, the most independent, would be ingenious in evading his responsibilities; the very youngest, Christian Georg, would sulk long and mightily.
Gretchen would have none of it, though, sweet-talk and scheme and sulk though they might. She'd never heard the old saw "idle hands are the devil's workshop." That was an English saying that probably originated with Chaucer. Many Americans knew it, especially the more religious ones. But none of them happened to have used the expression in front of her.
Had she heard it, though, she would have agreed immediately and vigorously.
Which brought her to the next problem at hand. The children now dispatched for the moment, Gretchen turned and gazed upon that problem.
Who, for her part, gazed back at Gretchen from her seat on one of the benches scattered about the side walls of the vestibule. The young woman was modestly dressed-enough, even, to minimize a bosom almost as impressive as Gretchen's own-and had her hands clasped demurely in her lap. She was the very picture of an unassuming person. From the style of shoes she was wearing, a town-dweller rather than someone from rural parts. But clearly a commoner, nonetheless.
The last part was true. The girl, who went by the nickname of Tata, was indeed a town-dweller. Her father owned a tavern in Mainz.
Everything else was illusory. Or would be soon enough. Gretchen would see to it herself, if need be.
But she didn't think she'd need to do anything. Tata's story was already spreading through the ranks of the CoCs, all across the Germanies, even though the critical events involved had happened less than two months earlier.
Such is the power of a splendid legend. The CoCs had found their Esther.
A legend it was, too, if Tata herself was to be believed.
"Eberhard came up with the idea all by himself," she insisted. "Not that I didn't think it was a clever move for something so spur-of-the moment, when he told me. But there wasn't time for a lot of deep discussion. He was going to die. Not in minutes, but certainly within hours."
The "he" in question had been Duke Eberhard, the young ruler of Wurttemberg, who'd been killed in Schorndorf while driving out the Bavarian mercenaries who'd occupied the city.
That was the bare bones of the tale. It got quite a bit less heroic when you added the meat to the bones. The mercenaries had not been driven out in the course of a valiantly fought siege, but by pure luck. An accident in a cook shop had started a fire during high winds which soon spread the flames through the whole town. The duke had been mortally injured in the course of helping a stubborn pastor trying to save valuables from his burning church.
But none of those pedestrian details mattered, because of what had come next. Duke Eberhard's two brothers had already died in the war, so he'd been the sole heir-and, on his deathbed, he'd bequeathed the duchy to its entire population.
Noblemen had relinquished their titles before, to be sure. The new prime minister of the USE, Wilhelm Wettin, was one of them. He'd given up his title as one of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar in order to make himself eligible to serve as prime minister. But Eberhard had been the first and so far the only nobleman who'd relinquished his entire realm-and given it to the people who'd previously been his subjects, to boot.
It hadn't taken the story more than two weeks to spread all across the USE. So was born the legend of the Good Duke-or, often, the Three Good Dukes, giving credit to Eberhard's younger brothers who had also died in the struggle. So too was born the legend of the young tavern-keeper's daughter whom the duke had loved, that selfsame love presumably being the motive for his righteous deed.