Furthermore, the elector of Brandenburg was Gustav Adolf's brother-in-law. The emperor was influenced enough by his wife-more precisely, was reluctant enough to upset her-that while he would certainly depose George William he wouldn't strip his family of its political position. The elector would be forced into what amounted to house arrest, and his fifteen-year-old son Frederick William would become the new elector-or, more likely, the new duke. With the effective collapse of the Holy Roman Empire, the title of "Elector" was now meaningless. Until Frederick William reached his majority, of course, Brandenburg would actually be ruled by a regent appointed by the emperor. That might very well wind up being Sweden's own chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna.
In short, Brandenburg would probably wind up playing the same sort of role in the internal politics of the USE that Pomerania did and Mecklenburg used to play: a stronghold of the most conservative elements in the nation.
Saxony was quite different. Its capital city of Dresden was both older and more populous than Berlin. So was its other major city, Leipzig. Dresden was becoming an industrial center and Leipzig had long been commercially prominent-the Leipzig Trade Fair went back well into the middle ages.
The province was far more advanced culturally than Brandenburg, as well. Two of central Europe's major universities were located there: the University of Wittenberg, which produced the great theologians Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, and the even older University of Leipzig.
Most people who paid attention to political affairs thought the situation in Saxony would become very unsettled once Gustav Adolf conquered the province. No one doubted that he would dispossess John George and his family altogether and replace them with his own imperial administration. Nor did anyone doubt that the Committees of Correspondence would be pushing hard to establish the sort of republican structure for the province that already existed in Magdeburg and the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
That left the so-called "Province of Swabia" that had been provided for less than a year earlier by the Congress of Copenhagen. The province was to be created once the region was "fully pacified," with Margrave Georg Friedrich of Baden-Durlach already named as the administrator. But what would actually happen was anyone's guess. The largest single chunk of the projected Province of Swabia was Wurttemberg, which young duke Eberhard had willed to its population on his deathbed. Lawyers working for the Fourth of July Party were arguing that Wurttemberg should become its own republican province. Meanwhile, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-or "Bernhard, Grand Duke of the County of Burgundy," as he was now styling himself-still had an army nearby and made no secret of his desire to incorporate as much of Swabia as he could into the new independent realm he was busy creating. And just to throw another monkey wrench into the works, several of the cities and towns in the region were now making noises about "turning Swiss."
So, as of July of 1635, the United States of Europe had eleven provinces, with presumably two more to be added soon-or "returned," if you accepted Gustav Adolf's interpretation of the status of Saxony and Brandenburg-and at least one more to be added whenever the situation in Swabia settled down.
In addition, there were the seven imperial cities: Hamburg, Luebeck, Augsburg, Frankfurt am Main, Strassburg, Ulm-and Magdeburg itself. The city was simultaneously the national capital of the USE, the capital of the province of Magdeburg, and an imperial city in its own right. As such, its mayor was Otto Gericke.
It was all very complicated-and, if this latest news was accurate, was going to get still more complicated. Not to mention unsettled and upheaved.
"Is he out of his mind?" Ed demanded.
Chapter 12
Magdeburg
"Wilhelm, this course of action is very reckless." The Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel set down his glass of wine and leaned forward in his chair. That took a bit of effort, since Wilhelm V was a portly man and the armchair in Wilhelm Wettin's salon was plush and deep. "What could have possessed you to decide this?"
Standing behind her husband, with her hand on his shoulder, Amalie Elizabeth knew the argument was probably futile. Wilhelm had that stubborn, grumpy expression that she'd come to know all too well in the three days since she and her husband had returned to the capital. He seemed to have aged a year for every week in office, too.
She wondered what had happened to the charming, gracious, intelligent man who'd been a close friend and confidant of the ruling family of Hesse-Kassel for decades. Had a troll from legend abducted him and left an impostor in his place? This-this-pigheaded, sullen blockhead whom she could barely recognize.
That was just a fancy, though. She knew the real explanation was prosaic, and shied away from it simply because she hated to admit that even people as acute and perceptive as Wilhelm Wettin-as herself also, she imagined, in the wrong circumstances-could behave so foolishly.
It was a matter of poise. Wilhelm had been mentally off-balance and staggering for at least a year, ever since he smelled the scent of victory and began making shortsighted bargains and compromises in order to gain the support of everyone he could. Being fair, Amalie Elizabeth and her husband had initially inclined in that direction themselves. But once they recognized the danger involved, they'd tried to restrain Wilhelm.
To no avail, apparently. They were bystanders, to a degree, where he was the man at the very center of the maelstrom. What they'd been able to see-as would Wilhelm himself, had he retained his normally judicious temperament-was that the petty obsessions of the average aristocrat and the most prosperous burghers were driving the Crown Loyalist Party off a cliff. Their insistence on retaining all possible privileges was blinding them to the need to abandon many of them if they were to survive at all.
And blinding Wilhelm too-or, at least, putting so much pressure on him that he refused to look.
"If you have to throw these dogs a bone," her husband continued, "then make it the established church. But whatever you do, stay away from trying to impose a uniform solution upon the citizenship problem."
Wettin was sunk far back into his own chair, his hands gripping the armrests tightly. "I've already told you, I can't. Our coalition-which is what it is, never think otherwise-has too many factions which are adamant on both issues. And if they were willing to compromise, it'd be over the established church. They won't budge on citizenship."
It was all Amalie Elizabeth could do not to grind her teeth.
There were two central issues roiling the United States of Europe. It was their differences on these two points that had so sharply distinguished Wilhelm and his opponent Mike Stearns in the recent election.
The first was the matter of an established church. Basically, there were four possible positions:
The position of Stearns and his Fourth of July Party was simple: complete separation of church and state. They wanted no established church of any kind.
On the far opposite side of the political spectrum, some figures in the Crown Loyalist Party-a relatively small minority, thankfully-wanted a single established church for the entire nation. That would have to be Lutheranism, of course. One could hardly do otherwise, given that the emperor was a Lutheran.
Most members of the Crown Loyalist Party, however, took a more moderate stance. They agreed that an established church was a necessary basis for any stable polity, but they felt it would be impossible to impose a single church on the entire country. The USE simply had too many denominations, even leaving aside the issue of the Jews. Those moderate Crown Loyalists had no desire to repeat the century of instability caused by excluding the Calvinists from the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.