"When, then?" asked Gassion. "The sooner the better, from a political standpoint."
Turenne smiled thinly. "Don't tell me. The duke of Julich-Berg is getting nervous."
Lefebvre laughed. " 'Nervous' is hardly the word. By now, he's like a cat on a hot tin roof."
Several of the officers grinned. Oddly enough, given their fierce French patriotism, Turenne's new elite cavalry force had adopted American idiom with equally fierce enthusiasm. Perhaps it was their way of thumbing their collective nose at the French military establishment which most of them had come to detest as much as their commander did.
Turenne rubbed his jaw. Ideally, he'd prefer to wait a few more days before launching his expedition. The great danger he faced, from a purely military standpoint, was that if he moved prematurely Torstensson would still have a large enough army at Hamburg to send a sizeable force down to meet him. Better to wait until he was sure Torstensson had started marching toward Luebeck.
But… perfection was a more unobtainable goal in war than it was anywhere else in life. And whatever sarcastic remarks anyone might make about Wolfgang Wilhelm, the duke who ruled the area, it remained a political necessity to keep him from severing his ties with France altogether.
Turenne couldn't blame the duke, really. For even the boldest prince, having five thousand foreign troops quartered in or near his capital city was a very uncertain proposition. Wolfgang Wilhelm had only agreed under a certain amount of duress-and had then insisted that Turenne's force remain as inconspicuous as possible and pass through his lands with the utmost speed.
"Inconspicuous" was an absurd term, of course, applied to five thousand armed men and their horses. The fact that Turenne's officers had only set up an unofficial headquarters in the city fooled exactly no one. Certainly not the innkeeper, as happy as he might be to get the flood of business-and he'd surely have been talking to his relations and friends, over the past few days. So would the farmers outside the city, on whose land most of Turenne's troops were camped. They'd be well-compensated, to be sure-which simply meant they had the money to provide them with idle time in which to gossip.
So. Turenne agreed with Gassion. It was best to leave the city as soon as possible, and just hope that the speed of their attack-and Gassion's diversion-would keep the enemy off balance.
"We'll leave tomorrow morning," he said. "At first light."
Seeing a few frowns around the table, the marshal grinned. "Excuse me. 'Crack of dawn,' I should have said."
The siege lines of the Spanish army in the Low Countries, outside the walls of Amsterdam
"And this is definite?" the cardinal-infante asked, looking down at the message he'd been handed. "No chance of error?"
Miguel de Manrique considered the question, for a moment, before answering. "I don't think so, Your Highness. Not in this instance, anyway. The couriers who sent this report were stationed several miles downstream from Hamburg. They've seen the ironclads for themselves, after-"
"After having passed through the city. Yes, I understand." Don Fernando carefully folded the message, being meticulous simply for the sake of giving himself time to make the decision.
The decision, he knew, in substance if not in form. In all likelihood, at least. There was still a possibility that problems of one sort or another-mechanical, perhaps, or inclement weather, or both-might stymie or at least delay Admiral Simpson. But it would be foolish to depend on such happenstances. Judging from the report, the American admiral's flotilla had passed through Hamburg's formidable fortifications with no significant casualties. Even the three timberclads that accompanied the four ironclads had come through largely unscathed. Whatever casualties they'd suffered had apparently been minor.
The cardinal-infante was fairly certain that the French were planning to ambush the flotilla at the mouth of the Elbe. But he would be very surprised if that came to much. No, if Simpson could get through Hamburg that easily, there was nothing in the way of hostile action that was likely to stop him until he reached the Baltic. The Kattegat, for sure.
Having finished his precise folding of the message, Don Fernando tucked it away and took a few slow steps to reach the top of the berm that gave him a good view of Amsterdam. Manrique remained below, allowing his commander some distance to ruminate in peace.
Once into the Baltic, Simpson might bombard Copenhagen, but Don Fernando thought it far more likely that he'd press on to Luebeck Bay and attack the big Danish and French fleet stationed there. If he could drive them off-and assuming, which the prince thought it would be wise to do-that Gustav Adolf had sent orders to Stockholm for the Swedish navy to sally…
They'd have transports, too, bringing fresh troops from Sweden.
For a moment, silently, Don Fernando cursed the fact that his artisans had not yet been able to develop a radio capability of their own. They might have, if he'd ordered them to start soon enough. But until recently, he'd accepted the common assumption that radio operations required the sort of huge towers the enemy had erected in Grantville and Magdeburg. Or, later, the cables they'd attached to existing towers in Amsterdam and Antwerp, which had provided him with a radio connection to Antwerp and to Magdeburg. He had seen no need to do more than have a few of his artisans tinker with radio, thereafter, since building such structures would require many months and a tremendous diversion of resources. Instead of placing a major priority on developing radio, he'd simply had a few of his artisans fiddling with the problem.
Only a month ago had it dawned on him that the up-timers might not necessarily need great high antennas for radio communication. There were clues aplenty in the up-time books, once he looked at the problem seriously. He then realized, finally, that the diplomatic responses he'd been getting from Rebecca Abrabanel were too rapid. Even granting that she'd been given a great deal of leeway as an envoy, being the wife of the enemy prime minister, she was making decisions that were just that little bit too important, just that little bit too quickly.
Which meant the towers were probably a ruse of war. Don Fernando wasn't positive, but he had come to the tentative conclusion that the up-timers had other methods of using radio, that were neither as cumbersome nor as visible. And, if true, that meant they were able to coordinate their actions far better than the League of Ostend's armies and navies, even leaving aside their advantage of possessing interior lines.
He stared at the walls of Amsterdam, but they were really just a blur. His thoughts were focused inward.
So… If he was right, one of the principle axioms of the League of Ostend's military calculations was a mirage. Richelieu and Christian IV-probably Charles, as well, but it hardly mattered what that dolt thought about anything-had been certain that Gustav Adolf's strategy would come to naught in the end, defeated by the simple realities of war, since it so obviously depended on bringing together four major and widely scattered forces in precise and proper sequence: his own army at Luebeck, Torstensson's army that was now being repositioned at Hamburg, Simpson's flotilla, and the Swedish fleet at Stockholm.
Impossible, on the face of it. The Swedish king had grown arrogant and overconfident from his past success. His elaborate plans would come to pieces, each of the separate forces arriving whenever they did-if they did at all-and being defeated in detail.
But what if all four of those forces were in constant touch using radio? What then?
Suddenly, Amsterdam came into focus again. The city that was right in front of him, as it had been for the many months of the siege.
Almost half a year, that siege had lasted, far longer than Don Fernando had foreseen in the heady days right after he seized Haarlem and began his rapid reconquest of most of the rebellious Dutch provinces. Half a year-and it would require at least another half a year to take the city, if he could do it at all. And that assumed-not likely!-that if Gustav Adolf was victorious in northern Germany he would not continue onward to come to the aid of his ally the prince of Orange.