'Yes. That is exactly right. Christ would always know what is best. We should not care about our raiment,' she said, and continued in her nudity.
Maude had a perfect memory, and after that she would quote those verses of Matthew whenever anyone objected to her lack of coverings. When I said that she had to look at these words in context, she wouldn't consider it. Christ had spoken, He could not possibly be mistaken, and that was that.
I began to understand the saying about how a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, and why the Church does not encourage laymen to read the Bible.
When I asked her to please not argue with the bishop about religion, she asked what a bishop was, and we were promptly into another long, one-sided conversation.
From the Diary of Conrad Stargard
JUNE 5, 1249
I spent the day preparing to invade a major part of the Holy Roman Empire. Ordering up six more battalions of infantry was the easy part. Harder was the fact that our infantry could not move efficiently without a railroad going where they wanted to go. You see, our equipment and tactics had all been designed with
Units like the Wolves could go anywhere fast, as much as four gross miles a day, but we only had a single company of them.
A platoon of men could pull their war cart six dozen miles a day when they were rolling on steel rails. With some men pulling and some men sleeping, they could go around the clock. Averaged out, they were much faster than the enemy's conventional cavalry.
Put the same platoon on a good conventional road, and the best they could do was about two dozen miles, since it took all of them, pulling hard, to move the heavy thing on a dirt surface. There was no possibility of rolling around the clock.
The existing roads from Lubusz to Brandenburg were not very good, and in some sections it was doubtful if a single platoon could make a war cart move at all!
We had to get our infantry into Brandenburg, and once there, we needed to give them some mobility.
Then, we not only had to take and to occupy Brandenburg — an area of about six thousand square miles — we had to bring it into our system, and fast!
If the conversion went quickly and smoothly, the bulk of the Slavic-speaking population would be eagerly on our side, and the former conquerors would be dispirited.
If we let the German-speaking minority have time to organize itself, we could see factional fighting and guerrilla warfare for many years.
Worse yet, in my old time line, Brandenburg had joined with Prussia to form the state that was the political basis of modern Germany and the cultural basis of the Nazi party. These were the people with the strutting jackboots, and the firm belief that all other peoples were subhuman,
Making Brandenburg a part of Poland meant bringing in our schools, with their general stores and their post offices. It meant bringing in our farming methods, our seeds, and our farm machinery. It meant bringing in our uniform measurement system, our monetary system, and our judicial system.
All of which involved a lot of travel and transport.
There was nothing for it but to build railroads. Lots of railroads. Quickly.
What I was planning was to be one of the fastest construction projects in army history. Everything else in the entire nation would be made subordinate to this single project. Every bit of materials and manpower, anything that could be of use, would be rushed to Lubusz. No matter what project had to be put on hold, no matter where else the materials were needed, no matter what the men would rather be doing, the new rail line to Brandenburg came first.
Our existing rail lines were placed defensively, on the east bank of the Odra. A pontoon bridge would be thrown across the river at Lubusz, which would stay in business until a real, masonry bridge could be finished, or until the thaw next spring took it out.
Surveyors were to be out in droves, preparing the way for hundreds of crews of construction workers. A forest of trees would be felled to clear the right-of-way, and were to be just as quickly ripsawed into railroad ties, bridge trusses, and siding platforms. Demolition teams would be blowing out tree stumps wholesale with gunpowder, followed by thousands of men who would be out with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows, leveling the roadbed.
Every horse and wagon we had taken from the invaders would be in use, as well as every additional bit of equipment we could get our hands on.
While all this intensive work was going on, the Eagles would keep their planes high above us, searching for any hostile move, and the Wolves would be patrolling our borders, sniffing out any enemy action.
We figured to lay three miles of track in the first week, and ten more miles of it on the day after. Once we got rolling, we hoped to be in Brandenburg in ten days, and two months later we would have a perimeter defensive road around the entire province.
Experienced Polish farmers who wanted more land would be recruited to move into every town and large village in Brandenburg, mostly on land once owned by the soldiers who had just tried to invade us. We would equip them with the best seeds, the newest machinery, and the new fertilizers. Once the locals' saw the kind of crops they brought in, they'd be lining up to get with our system.
A construction platoon would get to town, and in two days a schoolhouse would be completed. It would have a windmill that pumped water from a new tube well up to a cistern on the roof, indoor plumbing with hot water, and a septic system. This technology was far ahead of what the people in Brandenburg had ever seen, and it should impress them considerably.
Each of our schools had a general store that sold a wide variety of our products, at better prices than could be found locally, and a catalogue sales arrangement that could get you just about anything at half the price people were used to. Of course, everything was bought and sold with our own uniform currency, and in terms of our uniform measurement system.
Each school had a post office, something nobody in Germany ever saw before.
These commercial operations supported the school system, so much so that we sometimes had to work not to make a profit!
Since this would be army territory, taxes would be completely eliminated, except for those levied by the local government. The Christian Army supported itself by its own efforts, the schools were self-supporting, and the Church took care of itself.
Once we were completely set up, the only people the locals would have to deal with would be someone speaking something close to their own native language, and not in the foreign German tongue.
That was the program, anyway. We were pretty confident it would work. Especially since King Henryk had agreed to handle the political problems for us.
Six companies of infantry had left for Brandenburg the morning after the battle. They were marching with two weeks' worth of dried food on their backs, without their pikes or war carts, but they had been equipped with the new rifles, even if they weren't perfectly trained with them.
The king and I would head out in the morning with the Wolves. We figured to get to Brandenburg before noon.
Chapter Twenty-Four
From the Journal of Josip Sobieski
WRITTEN JANUARY 18, 1250, CONCERNING SEPTEMBER 18, 1249
