The sheer horror of this concept caused a gloomy silence to descend on the conference room.
“You now have heard the essence of what I am proposing. Dr. Bienner has prepared a ‘position paper’ that I want each of you to read. We will reconvene tomorrow. Keep the desirability of a direct connection between your heads and your necks firmly in mind.”
Wilhelm Bienner had discovered bullet points and the Joy of the Executive Summary.
• Both the USE and Venice are seriously interested, for good sound economic and commercial reasons, in having a land bridge between them; while air transport is a boon, it will not dominate the exchange of goods and people for some decades. Tyrol’s entrance into the USE would meet this need (see projections, Appendices I–IV);
• Maximilian of Bavaria isn’t the most stable of next door neighbors to have just at this moment (see retrospective from mid-summer 1634 to the present, Appendix V);
• At a time when Tyrol could really use a strong archbishop in Salzburg, the Holy Spirit in its wisdom has chosen to give Us Paris von Lodron. Even if his publicists represent him as being “as cautious and wise as Pericles,” what that means for Us is that he’s huddling like a turtle in its shell; he may be expected to defend the territories of the archdiocese as strongly as he can, but it is not probable that he will assist Us if Maximilian gives Tyrol problems (see further analysis, Appendix VI);
• Our cousins in Vienna are preoccupied with setting up a new administrative structure for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They cannot ignore developments in Bohemia and the Balkans; Ferdinand feels he must support the Poles if Gustavus should be imprudent enough to push his eastern campaign that far next summer (see further analysis, Appendix VII);
• If the setting up of a USE “Province of Swabia” goes through as it was proposed at the Congress of Copenhagen the previous June, Tyrol will lose many of its current possessions that are scattered all the way through Swabia to the Rhine (see copy of the relevant portion of the proceedings, attached as Appendix VIII);
• If Tyrol comes in voluntarily as a unit, We can probably negotiate much more satisfactory terms.
Essentially, that was it. With footnotes, legal references, and supplements, the position paper ran to sixty-seven closely written pages. That was not counting the appendices.
Matt Trelli read the point about Salzburg and muttered, “Three cheers for the Paraclete.”
De Melon looked at the size of it, calculated the number of clerks who must have been pulled in to make copies for each council member, wondered why the chancery had not yet invested in a Vignelli duplicating machine, and muttered, “If there isn’t a leak before the regent is ready to make this public, I will be a very surprised man.”
Marcie commented, “That capitalization of “We” and “Us” and “Our” always gets to me-really gives me the shivers.”
“I seriously believe,” de Melon told the regency council, “that you can anticipate that the leadership of the USE will respond to such a proposal reasonably. Certainly, my experience with the SoTF officials in their handling of the surrender of Kronach last autumn left me persuaded of the essential rationality of the up-timers. Their provision of assistance to the city and fortress during the plague epidemic even left me persuaded of their essential good will. This was not a conviction that came to me easily.”
“The USE is not the only party of concern,” Chancellor Bienner pointed out. “There is also Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar to consider. The Breisgau. The Sundgau. The Swabian jurisdictional claims of his, ah, new and still developing principality overlap with those of Tyrol in some localities.”
“Our aim,” the regent said, “is to retain all Tyrolese possessions in Swabia as an inheritance for Our sons. Ferdinand Karl is six. Sigmund Franz is barely four. They are not old enough to speak for themselves. We must be tenacious on their behalf.”
She stood up.
Chancellor Bienner winced. He was learning that it was not a good sign when the regent stood up when she was at the head of a table.
“As I think about it,” Claudia said, “I believe that I have urgent reasons to visit Besancon, or, at least, to visit wherever Bernhard has his working headquarters at the moment. There is often much to be gained by a face-to-face meeting of the principal parties involved, rather than leaving discussions to ambassadors and envoys.”
There was no possible disadvantage associated with this project that her advisers left unexplored. Plague. Horn’s regiments. You Name It.
“We shall go,” the regent said. “We will do it. Let the matter be arranged with Bernhard. Let the matter be arranged with the people who fly the ‘Monster.’ Let it be done.”
Chapter Two
Schwarzach, January 1635
Once Friedrich von Kanoffski arrived from Freiburg im Breisgau, where he was locum tenens, the informal but closely associated group of Bernhard’s associates who called themselves Der Kloster because of their working headquarters at the “requisitioned” Abbey of Schwarzach, was complete. Once everyone else had extended to the Bohemian their congratulations and felicitations on the safe delivery the previous month of his wife Anna Jolantha Salome, nee Stump, the daughter of a Freiburg patrician, of a healthy son named Johann Balthasar, they got down to business on the general theme of “Well, what next?”
“You’re still officially in the employ of France,” Caldenbach said. “It may be the result of incredible bureaucratic inertia, but you are. In spite of everything that happened last spring, Richelieu is still sending money to Besancon.”
“Not much,” Rosen pointed out. “Not very regularly, either.”
“Insurance,” Bernhard said. “Louis XIII is very short on regiments at the moment. Richelieu will not formally break the contract as long as he can imagine even the most unlikely ‘just in case’ scenario in which he might need to call on me. In case you’re wondering, I have that directly from a plant on Mazarin’s staff. There’s no such scenario on the horizon.”
“At the moment,” Sydenham Poyntz added.
“Next.” Bernhard had little patience for meetings.
Johann Faulhaber, the engineer from Ulm who was supervising the military construction at the new national capitol in Besancon, presented a very satisfactory progress report.
Johann Ludwig von Erlach, a Swiss from Bern who was moving up very rapidly and showed every sign of becoming Bernhard’s lieutenant in general as well as lieutenant-general, had some things to say about management of the fortress at Breisach. If anyone else felt stirrings of envy when Bernhard named him as governor of the Alsatian territories as well, he didn’t say so. Erlach was a flamboyant man. Silver plate was not good enough for the general. His had to be gilded. He currently maintained three households simultaneously-one in his Swiss castle at Castelen, the second in Breisach itself, and the third in camp whenever he took to the field.
Johann Michael Moscherosch, poet and public relations man, outlined his latest campaigns with words, designed to lure a public he considered all-too-gullible into believing that their new ruler was also the cherry filling in their torte.
“I wish, though,” Moscherosch said, “that you would decide for once and all what you want to call yourself. There are only so many circumlocutions, euphemisms, and ways to dance on my tiptoes available.”
Von Rosen licked his lips. “Besancon is the capital, but the Franche Comte, the old County of Burgundy as distinct from the once-upon-a-time Duchy of Burgundy in the Netherlands, is only a county, after all. You are already a duke (not to mention that your older brothers are also dukes, with the exception of Wilhelm, who was a duke). Certainly, you will not demote yourself to become a a mere count, will you?” he asked a little anxiously.