Only the beginnings yet, at Besancon. Bernhard's official military headquarters were much farther to the northeast, at the Abbey of St. Peter and Paul at Schwarzach on the Rhine. Though by nature a very thrifty man, Bernhard had spent a great deal of money to acquire his own copies of the Encyclopedia Brittanica brought by the Americans through the Ring of Fire. He'd chosen that location, to the discomfiture of the Benedictine monks residing there, on the basis of his careful reading of some of Louis XIV's Rhineland campaigns in the 1680s. That world would now not happen, of course, but the logic of the choice of location remained. Schwarzach had a convenient set of large buildings and was not far from what had once become Fort Louis. What was now becoming Fort… Whatever, since it didn't have a name yet. But construction was well advanced.
However, Bernhard and his handful of intimate advisers-Der Kloster, they called themselves since they had settled at Schwarzach, "the cloister," only half-joking-had agreed that to do more to fortify Besancon at this point would create too much suspicion. Bernhard's civil administrative headquarters were already in the town's Hotel de Ville, true enough. Cardinal Richelieu had agreed that an army the size of Bernhard's needed a civil administration to support it, or the mercenary soldiers would start looting the inhabitants they were supposed to protect. But no one really expected any military action in Besancon, or anywhere near it. Why would any army come here? The town was prosperous but not wealthy, and it was tucked against the mountains. It was certainly not the most inaccessible place in Europe, but the terrain was difficult enough to deter any of the casual plundering expeditions that the war had spilled around itself like a dog shedding water.
"Any chance the cardinal will increase your commission, Your Grace?" asked Friedrich Kanoffski von Langendorff.
Bernhard turned his head to glance back at the Bohemian mercenary officer who was perhaps the most trusted adviser he had in the Cloister. "No," he said firmly, shaking his head. "I don't dare even ask any more. Richelieu's the canniest fox of the lot, you know. I think he's already starting to ask himself questions. We'll simply have to settle with our existing commission. Ten thousand foot and six thousand cavalry. Less than we'd like, of course, but we can live with it for the moment."
Kanoffski wasn't surprised. The closer they came to the spring, and what everyone expected to be a volcanic resumption of hostilities in the field against the Swede and his Germans, the more insistently Richelieu was calling on Bernhard to move his army farther north. Saxe-Weimar had been able to forestall him so far, pointing out quite reasonably that he had to keep an eye on the Swedish general Horn's forces in Swabia. Since that was, indeed, the specific task for which the cardinal had employed Bernhard and his mercenary army-and one which Bernhard had carried out quite satisfactorily for the past two years, keeping one of the Swede's most capable generals and his army pinned to the southwest and away from the main theater of the war-Richelieu had accepted the excuse. Thus far.
But Richelieu's intendants ran a very extensive and capable network of spies. They had no one in or near Bernhard's inner circles, the Cloister was quite certain of that, but they were hardly deaf or blind. By now, if nothing else, Richelieu would be wondering why Bernhard was keeping so many of his troops this far into the Franche-Comte instead of closer to the Rhine.
"Yes, we can live with it, Your Grace," Kanoffski said, "but let me take this occasion to make clear that I am a most unhappy soldier. More precisely, a most unhappy payroll officer."
A little smile came to Saxe-Weimar's face. "Don't tell me. You're going to desert."
They both chuckled, softly. Kanoffski could remember a time when the same remark would have triggered off one of Bernhard's rages, instead of a jest. The man was as notorious for abusing his officers as he was for his arrogance toward almost everyone. Kanoffski had gotten his share of that, in the beginning, and still got some today, from time to time. But he'd found that once Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar did let someone into his confidence, he could be as charming and witty-and generous-as he normally was not at all.
Granted, he was still not an easy man to work for, as a close subordinate. But Kanoffski was thick-skinned by temperament, and had had plenty of experience as a mercenary officer since he left Bohemia. He'd served under commanders every bit as arrogant and harsh as Bernhard-some, more so-but who had not one-tenth of the Saxe-Weimar duke's intelligence and ability. Bernhard was frugal without being stupidly stingy; he was a truly excellent administrator; bold in battle and shrewd on campaign. Overall, in Kanoffski's estimate, one of the very best commanders in all of Europe.
He was even, in his own way, a pious man. His ordinances for the conduct of chaplains in his mercenary army demonstrated both his concern for the spiritual well-being of his soldiery-and his usual canny sense of the abuses to which chaplains were prone. Well, not abuses, precisely. "Limitations" might be a better word. The ordinances made plain that although the chaplains, like Bernhard himself, were all Lutheran, they were to avoid doctrinal fine points in their sermons and stick to the basics, as the duke saw them. "Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil" worked well, right along with, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." The duke disapproved of blasphemy. That might be the only thing he had in common with his brother Ernst. Plus, they made it clear that any chaplain who wanted to collect his pay was going to provide spiritual consolation to every man in the regiment, no matter what his own official religion might be. Catholic or Calvinist, sectarian or heretic, a dying soldier was to be given words of comfort.
Kanoffski didn't think it was even hard to understand Bernhard's sometimes outrageous behavior. He was the youngest of four brothers. Four living brothers. Six other sons of his parents had died as infants or children, or been killed in the war-or, in one case, gone mad and committed suicide. That didn't count the one, William's twin, who had been stillborn. All four of the surviving brothers had inherited the duchy of Saxe-Weimar, and Bernhard quite obviously nursed a certain sense of grievance at not having gotten his just due. As the youngest of the four, he could never realistically expect enough of an income from the inheritance to live on it in the manner of a Hochadel.
So, from the moment he became his own agent as an adult, his consuming passion was to find a place for himself in the world, one that suited his sense of his own stature. Which was perhaps grandiose, but certainly not absurd. In Kanoffski's estimate-being in many ways, not so different a man himself-it was that ambition as much as any admiration for Gustav Adolf or commitment to the Protestant cause that had led Bernhard to seek his fame and fortune as a soldier under the Swedish king's banner.
But that lurking sense of grievance had exploded when Gustav Adolf, for all practical purposes, handed over Saxe-Weimar's lands to the American upstarts. The fact that Bernhard had not really lost very much from the decision, in cold-bloodedly calculated material terms, simply didn't matter. What mattered was that a man trying to gain in stature had just had what little he started with cut out from under him. The fact that the three older brothers had acquiesced in the outrage, arguing political and military necessity, had simply incensed Bernhard further.
He'd given his oath of allegiance to Gustav Adolf-and the treacherous Swede had repaid him with a stab in the back. And an insult, to rub salt into the wound. Not directly to the duke's face, of course, but various people-several of them-had made it their business to ensure that he heard what the king had said to Oxenstierna at Mainz. In the hearing of others.
No, no, no. In this, the dukes of Saxe-Weimar are proving to be as petty as any German noblemen. In their absence-protracted absence, let me remind you-the people of their principality have seen fit to organize themselves to survive the winter and the depredations of the war. What were they supposed to do, Axel? Starve quietly, lest the tranquility of the dukes be disturbed?