The ram rebellioneric Flint with Virginia DeMarce

Chapter 10: "Just a truce in a little corner of it" Würzburg, late March, 1634"I think they've harnessed it," Scott said to the morning briefing. "This Common Sense guy, using Meyfarth and the Thorntons. If they haven't accomplished miracles, then at least near-miracles. I'm not going to try to tell you how deeply it has all sunk in, or how widely. They've had, what, a few months? On top of grievances and grudges that have been building for years. But the stuff is all over the place. It's being read, and sung, repeated in this guy's speeches, talked about. They've made us a harness.""So now," Scott said, "we get to ride the ram.""Speaking of which . . ." Johnnie F. tossed a newspaper on the table. It was one of the ones printed in Franconia. "Have you seen `Brillo's Little Red Rider'? They've got Princess Kristina riding Brillo in that one. You've all got to read it.""Later," Steve said firmly. "Right now, we need to deal with the petition that the knights and lords have sent to Gustavus Adolphus. This is what I've gotten back from Ed and Arnold in Grantville. And from Mike Stearns.""They're different?""Mike's language is considerably more colorful, and . . .""And?" Scott asked.Steve sighed. "We have an intervention from Margrave Christian of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Diplomatic, at the moment. Very diplomatic. Just asks us to consider the difficulty in which our policies are placing the Protestant nobility of Franconia. Doesn't say anything about a military action, not even obliquely. Dr. Lenz, however, the agent representing the Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach, claims that the margrave is prepared to undertake an invasion of Franconia in support of the petitioners."David Petrini interrupted. "Of course, they're trying to take advantage of the fact that Gustav Adolf himself is very busy in the north dealing with the League of Ostend, so they presume that they're really appealing to Oxenstierna. Who, in his heart, believes that the nobles really should rule.""Aren't they forgetting," Anita asked, "that he's all the way up in Stockholm and unless someone radios the petition to him, he isn't going to get it very soon?""Unless it's really meant for Wilhelm Wettin—a stick he can use against Mike," Steve answered."Oh, holy shit!" Scott said. "I go out of town for a few days and all hell breaks loose!""Brandenburg-Bayreuth?" Johnnie F. asked. "I'd just heard it called Bayreuth before. Brandenburg, I know, turned into Prussia later on. But what are the Hohenzollerns doing down here?""The Hohenzollerns started `down here,'" Weckherlin answered. "These men, now, Margrave Christian in Bayreuth and his nephews in Ansbach, are a cadet line of the family represented by Margrave George Wilhelm up in Berlin, who is a brother of Gustavus Adolphus' wife. The Hohenzollern family though, back in the middle ages, began here. As the Burggrafen in Nürnberg, holding the big castle there for the Holy Roman Emperors. Acquisitive bunch, overall."He hesitated a moment; then, added: "This is perhaps more serious than you may assume. By themselves, the knights and small lords will have a difficult time getting organized. They will not hesitate to become violent, but the violence is likely to be disjointed. For a fact, it seems to me, the farmers are much better organized. Better led, too, from what I can determine.""Who's leading the knights?" Scott asked. "This von Bimbach character?"Weckherlin waggled his hand. "To a degree, yes; to a degree, not. He is certainly the most prominent figure. But he is not really very popular among the knights. His arrogance and overbearing manner is not something which only the farmers resent. And the nickname of `Pestilenz' is applied to his agent by knights as often as it is by farmers and townsmen.""But you're saying it could still get serious?" asked Steve."If the Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth chooses to intervene, yes," replied Weckherlin, nodding. "Very serious. He is not a small lord, and his geographic position makes him important to Gustavus Adolphus. The emperor can ignore a pack of unruly knights. He cannot ignore Margrave Christian." Kulmbach, Bayreuth, late March, 1634Margrave Christian of Brandenburg-Bayreuth was at the Plassenburg, in Kulmbach. He had moved his official residence to Bayreuth in 1625, but when he needed to think, he still went back to the Plassenburg. He had left Marie and the children in Bayreuth; they were safer there, right now.He hated war and all that war meant. When he was a child, his tutors had shown him what Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades had done to Bayreuth and the rest of Franconia with his feuds. Not just told him; that madman had died less than thirty years before his own birth. His tutors had been able to show him the scars on the land, the burned villages never rebuilt, the ancient churches sacrificed upon the altar of ambition and greed.For as long as possible, he had strived to keep this new war out of his lands. For years, he had succeeded. His brother, Margrave Joachim Ernst of Brandenburg-Ansbach, had died in 1625 after a career that involved helping to organize the Protestant Union in 1608, helping to dissolve the Protestant Union, and finally going into imperial service. Christian had become regent for his nephews, Friedrich and Albrecht.He had tried so hard to keep Bayreuth out of the war. So what if the more belligerent called it hesitancy, passiveness, a "wait and see" policy. Harsher things, some of them: vacillation, pusillanimity, cowardice. For years, though, while the rest of Franconia was burned and stripped, he kept foreign soldiers out of his lands. Away from his subjects.In 1631, it had become impossible. The bishop of Bamberg, Johann Georg II Fuchs von Dornheim, had been the hardest to deal with, right next door, threatening, declaring that he had to clarify his stance and make a final decision, either for the emperor and the Catholics or for the Protestants, for the Swede who had taken over the leadership of the Protestant cause in Germany.Even then, he would rather not have done so. But the terms in which Fuchs von Dornheim had put it had made his decision inescapable. He could not abandon the Protestant cause. He and Friedrich had allied with Gustavus Adolphus. Friedrich was in the north now, with the Swedish army.His people had taken the consequences, just as he had known they would. Bayreuth had suffered severely under the imperial forces. He had read the reports, report after report. In this village, a farmer thought that he had recognized his stolen horse in the nearby camp of some imperial soldiers. He had gone, with some of his fellow villagers, to demand it back. The soldiers had hanged every adult man in the village. In that village . . .He had tried to keep Ansbach out of the war, too. Not so easy when the mother of his nephews was an aunt of Wilhelm V of Hesse-Kassel and the older boy itched to get into battle. Ansbach had suffered like Bayreuth.He had sent people to Grantville to learn what they could from the notorious books and encyclopedias from that future universe. In that world, his nephew Friedrich had been killed in September of 1634, this very year, in a terrible battle at Noerdlingen that shattered Germany's Protestants. Albrecht, the younger, had lived to rule Ansbach. Probably because he was still too young to fight in that battle.In 1634, after Noerdlingen, Ferdinand II had deposed them from their principalities, entrusting the government to an imperial commission. A year later, Ferdinand's son had negotiated a peace, called the Peace of Prague, and restored them. From then until 1648, the armies of both sides had passed back and forth through his lands.He had sponsored services of joy and thanksgiving in all the churches of Bayreuth when the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. He had tried to heal the wounds of war. The terrible wounds of war. He had not succeeded. It had been a century before Bayreuth began to recover.He looked at the small piece of paper, the notes that his agent had made in Grantville. All that another world had remembered of him. So little for a long life. For a life that had lasted almost three-quarters of a century. He had built a new building for the Latin school in Bayreuth. He had abolished the laws that forbade peasants to marry or learn a trade without the permission of the lord whose serfs they had once been, or from whom they leased their lands.He had forbidden the smoking of tobacco.Almost, he smiled. He hated tobacco. The smell, the grime, everything associated with it. He would still forbid the smoking of tobacco, for all the good it would do. Mankind was afflicted by original sin; determined to drive itself into hell.As was clearly demonstrated by the present petition that the Protestant nobility of Franconia had sent to Gustavus Adolphus. And which Fuchs von Bimbach was pressing him to support. Bamberg, early April, 1634Meyfarth shook his head. "I am no longer a diplomat, Herr Salatto. Nor a functionary of the secular arm. I am now a pastor. Even more, I am afraid that you are trying to recruit me because I am a Lutheran pastor and the margrave is a Lutheran prince. You want me to manipulate his religious scruples, genuine religious scruples, real enough religious scruples, to the advantage of the State of Thuringia-Franconia."Steve Salatto looked at his former chief of staff. He had used up all his arguments. After everyone he had sent to Bamberg had failed, he had come himself.Meyfarth continued. "This is something that I cannot do."Steve nodded. This was it, then. Meyfarth simply refused to come back to work for the Franconian administration, even temporarily; would not serve as emissary to Margrave Christian. Even though he was the only person available who might really understand what the margrave was thinking. He rose."Please," Anita said. "Please." She handed Meyfarth a letter. "Please read this. Then listen to us. Please."Meyfarth read, slowly. Nothing that he expected. The first was a letter from the gracious lady to her daughters in Grantville. A simple letter. She had told him before, when he was in Würzburg, that the hardest thing that she had ever done in her life was to leave her daughters Emily, then four, and Mary Carla, then two, in Grantville with her parents when she and Steve agreed to take this assignment. Now they would be how old? It had been eighteen months since they all, Meyfarth too, came from Grantville to Würzburg in October of 1632, shortly after the Battle of Alte Veste. Still small children. So a simple letter.What had she said to him then? "It would be different, if I hadn't come here to work. If I could be with them here, they way Tania and Lynelle are with their kids. But the hours we keep, into the office at dawn and reading by a candle until we are exhausted. I wouldn't see them here, either, so it was really a choice of having them grow up there, with family, or here, with a governess. Not much of a choice, really."Another letter. "Dear Mom." To her mother, then. "I understand, Mom. Really, I do. We waited to have the girls, and that means that since we were older parents, you and Dad are older grandparents. I can understand how they exhaust you, especially after you've managed the day care center at the plant all day. You're right. Since Dominique is taking some time off anyway after the baby, it makes more sense for her to take them. Don't feel bad about it. I know that everyone is doing the best he can. She can. I understand. I love you all."Meyfarth looked up.Anita's eyes were full of tears. "All right, maybe it is blackmail. But if you won't go talk to him as a diplomat, then please go and talk to him because you're a pastor. Not a Catholic priest, but a pastor. Because we've got to have some kind of a breakthrough, Herr Meyfarth. For our girls. And for all the rest of the children. My girls are going to live with Dominique and Marcus; by the time we see them again, they won't know us. It was different, somehow, when they were with my parents. Even little children can tell Grandma and Grandpa from Mom and Dad. But now, for every real purpose, Dominique will be their mommy, Marcus will be their daddy, little Mark will be their baby brother, and . . . and I'll be Auntie Anita who lives a long way away and they haven't seen her for so long that they're shy with her."She put her head down on the table and started to sob. Steve put his hands on her shoulders.Finally she lifted her head up. "This isn't a good time or place to tell you, Steve. There isn't any good time or place to tell you. Not the way things have been going this spring, since the election. I'm pregnant, again. I'm sure, now. New Year's Day, I guess." She started to cry again; then forced herself to stop."Please, Herr Meyfarth. As a pastor. Help us make enough of a peace that we can bring our children to Franconia. Just that much. I'm not asking for eternal peace in the whole world. Just a truce in a little corner of it. Please."Chapter 11: "Brillo, four feet or not, is a creature of free will" Bayreuth, mid-April, 1634Margrave Christian appeared to be interested in discussing modern literature. If that was where he wanted to start, Meyfarth was quite willing to let him guide the conversation. Particularly since Weckherlin had come with him to Bayreuth. Eventually, they would get to the point. These things could not be forced.The margrave and Weckherlin were deep into a discussion of one of Weckherlin's sonnets. "To Germany." Not, Meyfarth thought, really a bad place to start.Break the yoke beneath which you are bound.Not a bad first line, if one was really discussing peasants who had defied their lords and what should be done about it. No, not bad at all. Perhaps Margrave Christian had something to contribute to a resolution of this current problem. 
O Germany, wake up; grasp your courage again,
the usage of your ancient heart. Resist the madness
which has overcome you and, through you, freedom
itself.* * *Usage? Was that right in English. Customs, perhaps? The exact word was often hard to find. Germany. Teutschland. A concept of the humanists, not of the politicians. Could Germany do anything? No. Could the Germans, the dozens of varieties of them, do something? Perhaps.
Now punish the tyranny which has utterly shamed you,
finally wipe out the fire that is consuming you,
not with your own sweat, but with the foul blood
flowing from the wounds of your enemy and false
brothers. Meyfarth shuddered. He did not share Weckherlin's vision in this. If this was carried through, it would only prolong the war.
Relying upon God, follow the princes
whom His right hand will, if you desire it, preserve,
to the consolation of the faithful and the wreck of the
faithless. His just hand, perhaps, rather than His right hand? Gerecht, in a way, could mean either.
So abandon all fear; do not let the time slip by
and God will reveal to all the world that the enemy's
treachery and pride are nothing but shame and disgrace.
Meineid. Perjury, perhaps, rather than treachery? But no, Weckherlin's poem was well known, but for the ram's purposes, it was worse than useless. Patriotic gore. Meyfarth examined his fingernails while the margrave and Weckherlin talked. "The uptimers call it `sheep stealing,'" Meyfarth said. "You have heard, I am sure, that many different religious groups share the same town."Margrave Christian nodded."They have worked out rules—not laws, but informal understandings, generally shared—that permit them to live in harmony, most of the time. One of these prohibits `sheep stealing.' One minister is not to raid the flock of another, taking away his members. A kind of `live and let live.' I am not sure, myself, how it works. It is not, certainly, a universal principle. It is not uncommon, when a man and a woman of two different of these `denominations' marry, for one to change."Margrave Christian cocked his head inquiringly. "There are no laws about whether it is the man or woman who changes? There are no laws requiring one of them to change, or prohibiting it?""No. It is regarded as a purely personal decision. One often leading to family dissension, to be sure, but still personal. And sometimes leading to odd results. The Catholic priest now has a member of his flock, such a convert, whose given name actually is `Calvin.'"Weckherlin snorted his beer up his nose, spraying it on the table; Meyfarth pounded on his back, a little anxiously. "What," the margrave asked, "does this religious `sheep stealing' have to do with the oaths that the uptimers are accepting from the Franconians who are subjects of the imperial knights and petty lords, first to the constitution of the New United States and now to their State of Thuringia-Franconia?"Meyfarth looked a little uncomfortable. "Partly, I think, it was a joke when we started talking about it. The term `flock.' The peasants' use of the ram, Brillo they call him, as their emblem." He paused. "Have you read the Brillo material that I obtained for you, Your Grace? The uptime Brillo, not the broadsides written in Franconia?"It was Weckherlin who answered. "With great interest. Remarkable really. An entirely new set of fables such as the ones Aesop collected, developing before our very eyes."Margrave Christian smiled. "I very much enjoyed the newest one I've seen. The Three Brillo Rams Gruff, it's called."Into the silence that followed, he added: "That one that mentioned railroads. I would be very interested in discussing railroads with someone from Grantville.""Anse Hatfield," Weckherlin suggested. "The man who was commander in Suhl during the, ah, incident there. Or, perhaps, Captain Pitre herself? I'll see to it."Margrave Christian nodded his thanks. Meyfarth continued with the topic he'd been discussing. "We thought about it. Decided to do it. Steal some sheep. Not, at first, in Franconia. Originally, as in Coburg, only those who were currently without a shepherd. To make them citizens, not subjects.""According to the petition," Margrave Christian said, "it would appear that Herr Salatto and his subordinates have gone far beyond that.""I still say that the administration in Franconia has not rustled the sheep, not poached them, not stolen them from their owners. Unlike sheep with four feet, men do have free will. In secular matters," Meyfarth said precisely, "if not in regard to the salvation of their souls, which is of course entirely dependent upon divine grace."Weckherlin laughed. "It would appear that this Brillo, four feet or not, is a creature of free will.""Which is, of course, why the uptimers like him so well. They believe greatly in free will. Often, I suspect, more strongly than they believe in God. So. The followers of the ram made the right of all Franconians to vote in the election one of their Twelve Points. It was their initiative, to which the administration only responded.""You are arguing, then," Margrave Christian said, "that the issue is, properly, not one between the nobility of Franconia and the USE's administration there, but between the nobility of Franconia and their subjects, who first proposed the action that has become a point of contention."Neither Meyfarth nor Weckherlin had thought of this approach. They were, however, more than willing to listen to the margrave's idea. A face-saving diplomatic out was a face-saving diplomatic out, no matter who thought of it first."Which would mean . . ." The margrave was starting to speculate in the subjunctive. "Would mean that it would not really be a matter in which the emperor should intervene directly, much less something that anyone could rightly interpret as providing sufficient grounds for changing the administration . . . Local, merely local, between each of two hundred minor lords and his subjects."He smiled. "Not something that I should be expected to do anything about, either.""No," Weckherlin agreed, "not at all."Meyfarth nodded solemnly."But possibly," Margrave Christian continued, "something that might be applicable in Bayreuth if . . ." "I don't think," Weckherlin said, "that you were authorized to say those things.""I was asked," Meyfarth answered, "to see if things could be so arranged that a small truce will ensue in Franconia in our time. I am carrying the margrave's declaration that he will remain neutral in the dispute between the lords and knights of Franconia and its administration. I do not see that I could have been expected to obtain more than that.""You are also carrying," Weckherlin pointed out, "knowledge of something that neither of us should know.""Ah. Then we do not know it. Or will soon have forgotten it.""If neither of us knows it, then how will the ram find out?""Somehow, the ram will learn. In Franconia, now, the ram soon knows everything. It is unlikely that he will miss this. Margrave Christian, I am sure, will somehow let it be known that he would be willing to accept oaths of allegiance from sheep belonging to the flocks of the imperial knights and petty lords whose lands lie within Bayreuth and Ansbach. And that he would be willing to grant a substantial number of the Twelve Points if the ram proved cooperative in the project of mediatizing the lower nobility. Should such a project occur, of course.""Surely, the good Lutheran margrave would never be guilty of stealing sheep," Weckherlin said."Perish the very thought," Meyfarth answered. "No more than the good Lutheran dukes of your Wuerttemberg were, once upon a time."For several minutes, Weckherlin did not reply. Then he asked, "What does the margrave intend to do with these oaths? If he should accept them?""Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, Herr Weckherlin. Tomorrow will have troubles of its own. Perhaps we should also ask what the farmers intend to do with them." Bamberg, mid-April, 1634."Good morning, Stew," Janie Kacere said. "Sit down and chat.""No time." He leaned one elbow on her pedestal desk. "The boss arrived in town yesterday evening late.""I didn't know that Johnnie F. was due.""He wasn't. I didn't have any notice. He came in with Noelle Murphy trailing along after him. Or maybe he was trailing along with Noelle. Who knows? She was in town a month ago, but went back to Würzburg for a while."Janie whistled. "Did she ride in `with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes?'"" `She shall have music wherever she goes'?" Stew asked, raising his eyebrows."More on the line of, `She shall cause trouble wherever she goes.' Have you ever noticed that when our little special envoy turns up, even if she does smile and call herself a junior envoyette, things start to pop?""Hadn't, really." Stew leaned back. "But now that you mention it . . . yeah.""Darn right. Every time Little Miss Muffet sits her tush down on a tuffet, something happens to it. Firecrackers fizzle when faced with her mere presence.""Mother Goose on your mind this morning?" Stew chewed on the splinter he was using as a toothpick."I was baby-sitting for Stacey O'Brien's kids last night. Tom's out on patrol somewhere, doing his thing, and Stacey had a meeting of some kind at Else Kronacher's. League of Women Voters, I think.""Doing his thing," Stew echoed her.Janie looked up at the elaborate ceiling. She put her right hand over her heart while her face assumed the vacuous expression of a Baroque cherub. "We keep reciting that the administration's policy toward the Ram Rebellion is hands-off. Repeat after me, `The citizens of Franconia must exercise self-determination' while Tom's out there giving adult education lessons in the safe handling of explosives to `citizens' who've been hand-picked by Walt Miller and Matt Trelli. Pardon me, please, while some butter doesn't melt in my mouth."