'I'm with Rebecca on this, Gunther.' He matched Achterhof's hard look with one of his own.
'And stop glaring at me. It's not my fault you insist on being stupid today. It's not Rebecca's fault, either.'
He spent a moment giving everyone at the table that same hard look.
'What is wrong with you people? This is not complicated. If we are seen to be responsible for the coming civil war, then we've probably lost it before it even starts.' He jabbed a finger at Matthias Strigel. 'You! You need to get out of Magdeburg sometime and travel around the country. You live in a hothouse here. Most of you do.'
Now he jabbed the finger at the Mecklenburger, Charlotte Kienitz. 'You too! Spend all your time when you're not here jabbering with your fellow revolutionaries in the taverns in Schwerin.'
Charlotte didn't like alcohol, as it happened. But it was true enough that she habituated the capital of Mecklenburg's radical gathering places whenever she went back home.
Ableidinger now swiveled his finger around the table, as if he were a gunner bringing a cannon to bear.
'That's the whole trouble!' he boomed. 'You spend too much time talking to people who already agree with you and not enough time-no time at all, in the case of some of you!-listening to people out there'-now the finger jabbed at the windows-'who don't see things the way you do.'
Looked at from one angle, there was something preposterous about Constantin Ableidinger lecturing other people on talking too much and not listening enough. But Rebecca was not about to chide him for it, under the circumstances.
The Franconian leader stood up and went to one of the windows that faced to the west. 'This is what will happen if you act too soon.' He stared through the glass for a moment. 'First, you give Wettin a lever to force the Hessians to support him-where, if we let him launch the attack, the landgravine will have the excuse she so clearly wants to keep Hesse-Kassel neutral.'
He half-turned, to bestow something very close to a sneer on Achterhof. 'You do understand, I hope, why we want Hesse-Kassel to remain neutral, Gunther? We have no chance at all of overthrowing the landgravine-if you don't believe me, ask her.'
He pointed to Liesel Hahn, a member of Parliament from Hesse-Kassel. Hahn had been looking distinctly unhappy so far in the meeting. Now she nodded her head several times.
'The truth is, she's pretty popular,' she said. 'Even more than her husband Wilhelm was.'
Achterhof looked like he was about to say something, but Constantin drive over him. The Franconian could out-boom just about anybody.
'The last thing we need is to have one of the most powerful provincial armies in the nation fighting on the side of Oxenstierna and Wettin. But it's not just Hesse-Kassel that's at stake! Some of the other western provinces are unsteady, and could go either way.'
He stepped away from the window and held up his thumb. 'Start with Brunswick, which borders on Magdeburg province. Lucky for us, Brunswick's ruler is off in Poland with Torstensson, besieging Poznan. Let's make sure he stays there, shall we? If he does what Torstensson is most likely to do-call down a plague on both houses-then Brunswick also remains neutral. That's good for us, because we have no more chance of taking power in Brunswick than we do in Hesse-Kassel.'
'What are you talking about?' demanded Albert Bugenhagen. The mayor of Hamburg rose to his own feet and pointed accusingly in the direction of Berlin. 'At least half the stinking noblemen-and just about all the Hochadel-from Brunswick and Westphalia are in Berlin right now, plotting with Oxenstierna.'
'And there are just as many from my province and the Upper Rhine,' said Anselm Keller. He was a member of Parliament from the Province of the Main.
Now, Constantin sneered openly. 'Who cares? The danger doesn't come from that pack of jackals.'
'Most of them can raise their own armies!' said Bugenhagen.
Ableidinger's sneer grew more expansive. ' 'Armies' is a bit grandiose, don't you think? Even the Hochadel among them can't raise more than a few hundred men-and you don't want to look too closely at them, either. A fair number of those 'armed retainers' are sixty years old and missing an arm or an eye. Admit it, Albert-against such as those, our stout CoC contingents will send them packing. Just as we did in Operation Kristallnacht.'
That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was close enough to the mark that Bugenhagen sat down without pursuing the argument. And while Keller's jaws were tight, he didn't contest the matter.
'The real military threat lies elsewhere,' continued Constantin. 'First and foremost, in the provincial armies- real armies, those are-that can be raised by the provincial rulers. Stop worrying about Freiherr Feckless and Reichsritter Holes-in-His-Boots. Start worrying about the Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel and the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Westphalia, instead.'
'They never made that Danish bastard a prince,' said Keller sullenly.
Rebecca wondered how long Constantin could keep that sneer on his face.
'Who didn't?' sneered Ableidinger. 'They didn't make him a prince because Gustav Adolf put his foot down. But what do you think are the odds that Oxenstierna won't hand him the title, if Frederick gets pissed at us and makes friendly noises toward Berlin?'
There was silence in the room. Ableidinger maintained the sneer right through it.
'Then there's the other serious threat,' he went on. 'Those are the town militias, especially the ones from the bigger towns. They won't fight in the countryside, but they'll keep their towns solid against us-'
'Not Hamburg!' protested its mayor.
'No, you're right. Not Hamburg. Not Luebeck or Frankfurt, either. But they'll hold Augsburg and Ulm, won't they? And probably Strassburg, too-and what's more important, they'll hold at least three-quarters of the smaller towns in every province except Magdeburg, the SoTF and Mecklenburg. All right, fine. Only two-thirds of the towns in the Oberpfalz. How parochial can you be, Albert? You think the world begins and ends in Hamburg?'
Rebecca decided to intervene before Ableidinger's abrasive manner set off a pointless eruption.
'I think we need to consider Constantin's points carefully,' she said. 'He's right that if there's a full-scale civil war most of the official militias will be arrayed against us-and that's especially true if they believe we are the ones who started the war. If they hold the towns against us and our CoC contingents have to face regular provincial armies in the field, we will lose. It is as simple as that.'
Achterhof scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. 'In effect, you're saying we've lost the war already.'
'She said a full-scale civil war, Gunther.' That came from Ulbrecht Riemann, who had been silent up until this point. He was a central figure in the Fourth of July Party in Westphalia, although he held no post in government.
'As opposed to what?' asked Keller.
Riemann shrugged. 'There are lots of different kinds of wars, Anselm. So why shouldn't there be different types of civil wars? The thing some of you don't seem to grasp is that Oxenstierna has to win this conflict outright. We don't. Why? Because we're winning every day as it is, day in and day out. Week by week, month by month, our cause advances and his cause retreats. That's why he's taking this opportunity, for all the risks involved. I don't know if he realizes it consciously or not, but on some level Oxenstierna-all those reactionary swine-have to sense they're losing.'
Achterhof was staring at him, practically cross-eyed. Rebecca had to stifle a smile.
Riemann was right, though, whether Achterhof understood his point or not. Her husband had said much the same thing to her, many times. He'd used different words, but the gist was the same.
The aristocracy and the city patricians needed formal power in order to maintain their control over the Germanies. The democratic movement didn't-although holding such power was certainly helpful. Its influence spread everywhere, every day, down a thousand channels. Schools, unions, insurance associations, all manner of co-operatives and granges. Steadily, if sometimes slowly, the strength of the reactionaries faded.
Constantin could see it also, probably because he came from Franconia. Achterhof and the other Magdeburg militants suffered from a perhaps inevitable myopia. Say rather, tunnel vision. Everything in the nation's capital was clear, crisp, sharp. Magdeburg was a place of factories and working-class apartments. Over here were the toiling masses, who constituted the city's great majority. Over there, in the palaces, were the class enemies.
There were not many of them, either. So why not just sweep them aside?
Franconia-still more so, Thuringia-was a very different place. The USE's most populous province had many
