Oxenstierna. So far as Tom was concerned, every murder, every mutilation, every rape, every act of arson and every theft committed by Bavarian soldiers could be laid at the feet of that bastard.
Not that he was giving Maximilian or his commanding officers a pass, either. There was no excuse for the conduct of their troops. The mayhem being inflicted on USE civilians went far beyond the occasional atrocities and excesses that were an inevitable feature of war. These soldiers hadn’t simply been set loose, they’d obviously been given the green light to run wild by Bavaria’s leaders.
Why? Tom wondered. Even in narrowly military terms, the policy made little sense to him. The Bavarians were not nomadic raiders, who simply intended to return to the steppes with their booty. Duke Maximilian planned to seize the Oberpfalz-as much of it as he could grab, at least-in in order to use its assets. So what was the point of ravaging the area? Of all those assets, the human resources were far and away the most valuable. Leaving aside the people being killed, there was now a flood of refugees heading north, east and west. There were close to a thousand such people being shepherded ahead of them by his own troops.
He hadn’t been able to spare much time-no time at all, really-for the needs of those people. Fortunately, Johann Heinrich Bocler had taken charge of that task. Some initial prodding from Bonnie Weaver had been necessary, because Bocler didn’t think of himself as an “authority.” Partly that was his youth, partly that was his modest origins; but mostly, Tom suspected, it was just the man’s personality. The provincial administrator’s secretary was one of those people whose natural relationship to the world’s affairs was that of an observer more than a participant.
That didn’t necessarily mean such people were incompetent, however, whenever they set their minds to a practical task. Often they were not, and in some cases that same detachment made them very good at such work. They were more objective about the decision that needed to be made, and less prone to letting their own aspirations and ambitions influence them unduly.
How good would Bocler be at such an assignment? Tom had no idea. But he was pretty sure they’d know within a day or two. This column of people moving down the Danube might be going slowly, but so did a pressure cooker.
By the time they made camp for the night, Bonnie had already come to a conclusion on that subject. Once again, pudgy little Johann Heinrich Bocler was proving to be a man of greater substance than he looked.
True, he fussed a lot. Unflappable under pressure, steady at all times…well, no. He tended to get agitated, he talked a lot, and he dithered back and forth before coming to a decision. But he always did come to a decision, and he didn’t dither for long. And insofar as the fussing and talking was concerned, that might well be an asset under these conditions. He was dealing with large numbers of frightened, uncertain and often confused people. His willingness to talk with them, once his authority was established, probably helped to calm them down.
Even in the seventeenth century, Germans tended to be a law-abiding folk. They were not particularly orderly, though-Bonnie had never seen a trace of the automatic obedience ascribed to Germans in the folk mythology of her own universe-and they were quite willing to argue with the powers-that-be. At the drop of a hat, in fact. But that those powers existed legitimately was not something they disputed. They just felt keenly that they had a right to be consulted before they were commanded to do something, and they were always sensitive to issues of fairness.
Bocler’s authority derived from his status as the personal secretary of Christian I of Pfalz-Birkenfeld- Bischweiler, the imperially-appointed administrator of the Oberpfalz. The fact that he’d served in the same post for the previous administrator bolstered his status also. Ernst of Saxe-Weimar had been a popular figure in the province. “A fair-minded man,” was a phrase you heard often when people spoke of him.
Bocler had that sense of fairness also. Perhaps that was his detachment at work, but Bonnie couldn’t do more than guess at that. She still barely knew the man, although working with him in such close proximity and under such severe conditions was drastically speeding up a process that would normally have taken months, given his reserved nature. By late morning, at his invitation, she’d started calling him Heinz. That nickname was not used by many people who knew the secretary.
Heinz would have been a disaster as a politician. Glad-handing, back-slapping-the thought of him kissing babies was downright hysterical-these were not his skills, to put it mildly. But he was conscientious and he listened to people. So, with few exceptions, his decisions were accepted with good grace, even by people who had wanted a different one.
Those were usually people who just wanted to rest for a while, something that Heinz never allowed them to do until the army itself halted the march and began making camp. Then, Heinz chivvied his charges relentlessly, insisting that they had to help the soldiers set up the camp. Not until that was done-yes, that included digging latrines; of course it did! — would he allow the civilians to finally rest.
But he’d been chivvying the cooks and sutlers just as relentlessly, so when the time finally came when labors could cease, there was food ready-and he saw to it that it was fairly distributed. He did not eat himself until he was sure that everyone else had been fed.
He was quite a guy, actually, in his own sort of way. Bonnie realized he was growing on her. And was surprised again.
Captain von Haslang was in a much fouler mood than the American woman two miles downstream, whom he’d never met and whose name he didn’t even know. The day’s pursuit-by now he was using the term derisively- had been a disaster from daybreak to sundown.
The retreating force was doing a very good job of destroying everything behind them. (So much, if further evidence was needed, for the absurd notion that Major Simpson was a fumbling novice.) In some places, where the conditions were suitable, they’d felled trees across the road. And not one bridge spanning the occasional smaller streams that entered the Danube was left intact.
Worst of all, the enemy hadn’t simply destroyed the bridges. The first one that Colonel von Schnetter’s soldiers had come across had seemed in fine shape-until they crossed over it and discovered it had been mined. Eight men were killed in the explosion and twice as many badly wounded.
Thereafter, the enemy had simply brought down the bridges, figuring that the surprise wouldn’t work twice. But they left other mines hidden alongside the road. Given the hurried manner in which the mines had been designed and laid, the Bavarian troops spotted and disarmed all but one of them before any damage was done. The single mine they missed had been set well to the side and only injured one man when it went off, and him not badly.
But that didn’t really matter, because the mines were doing the critical task for the enemy-they were drastically slowing down the pursuers.
The pursuing infantry, that was to say. If the cavalry had been doing their job properly, they’d have been constantly harassing the enemy-which would have accomplished the same task of delaying the opponent’s movements. All other things being equal, a mostly-infantry force should be able to overtake an enemy that was primarily made up of artillery units.
And why wasn’t the cavalry doing its job? Because its donkey of a commander, Colonel Johann von Troiberz, had sent his men all over the countryside-everywhere, it seemed, except in the vicinity of the retreating Danube Regiment.
“Foraging,” he claimed. And stubbornly kept claiming, no matter how angrily Colonel von Schnetter demanded that he bring the cavalry units back into the pursuit. The claim was either a lie-nothing but a fig leaf for looting-or, which might even be worse, an attempt to cover up gross negligence or outright corruption.
It was true enough that cavalry-infantry too, for that matter-needed to forage from the countryside if they undertook a long march that outstripped the ability of the supply train to keep up. But that should not be necessary on the very first day. Any experienced cavalry unit with even half-competent officers had enough sense to load their mounts with ten to fifteen pounds of hay and a bit of oats or bran.
It was conceivable that von Troiberz was that much of a bungler. The officers he surrounded himself with were not much if any better. But von Haslang was almost certain that the real reason von Troiberz’s cavalry had set out with no supplies for their horses was because their commander-probably in cabal with his top subordinates-had sold those supplies on the black market.
Whatever the explanation, von Schnetter and von Haslang were pursuing a well-led enemy with nothing more than infantry companies. Even if they did manage to catch up with them, the ensuing battle would be ferocious. Without cavalry to threaten and tear at the enemy’s flanks, they’d be forced to launch frontal assaults in the face of
