and Oxenstierna has the entire Swedish army.'
Ableidinger grunted. 'What's left of it. Koniecpolski hammered them pretty badly at Lake Bledno, from all accounts I've heard.'
' 'Hammered' is not the right word. He bloodied them, yes. But it was the Poles who quit the field, not the Swedes. That army is still intact and functional and it outnumbers-it certainly outpowers-any other army which will become active in a civil war except the USE army itself. Which Oxenstierna, no fool, has dispersed and sent entirely out of the nation.'
There was silence for a moment. Then Strigel leaned back in his chair and said: 'There is your own provincial force, Ed. The SoTF's National Guard is probably the most powerful of the provincial armies.'
Piazza nodded. 'Except for possibly Hesse-Kassel's, in time past. But today, with Wilhelm V dead and many of his troops still with Oxenstierna in Berlin-'
'Not for long, I think,' said Liesel Hahn, an MP from Hesse-Kassel. 'The landgravine is furious with Wettin and the chancellor. They won't be able to stop her if she orders her soldiers home, which we think she will.'
'Why do you think that?' asked Charlotte Kienitz. 'I would hardly think Amalie Elisabeth is now taking us into her confidence.'
'You might be surprised before much longer, Charlotte,' interjected Rebecca. 'I've received no fewer than three letters from her over the past two weeks. None of them contain much substance, but the tone is quite friendly. I believe she is determined to keep as many of Hesse-Kassel's bridges intact and unburned as possible.'
'Might I speak with you about those letters after the meeting, Rebecca?' asked Hahn. 'That's…quite an interesting development.'
'Yes, certainly.'
Charlotte shook her head, as if to shake off some confusion. 'If you didn't already know about the letters, Liesel, why did you think Hesse-Kassel's widow would be recalling her troops?'
Hahn smiled. 'I've met her several times, you know. She's actually quite nice in personal encounters. But she's still a Hochadel and has their innate attitudes. It barely registers on her that servants are within hearing range when she discusses her affairs with her counselors and advisers. Several of those servants report to the CoC regularly, and they pass the information on to us.'
Piazza had been listening to the exchange with keen interest. Now he spoke up again. 'Even if Amalie Elisabeth brings all her troops back, I doubt very much she'll be using them to intervene in any nation-wide civil war.'
'I deduce the same thing from her letters,' agreed Rebecca. 'Not that she speaks of such matters directly, of course. Still, given her well-known attitudes in the past and her current friendliness toward to us-well, that's a bit too strong; call it cordiality, rather-I think we can safely assume that Hesse-Kassel will keep to itself in the event a civil war breaks out.'
She looked at Hahn. 'And so long as she does, Liesel, I would strongly advise our people there to keep the peace with her.'
Hahn nodded several times, very rapidly. That was not so much timidity on her part as a simple recognition of reality. The hold of Hesse-Kassel's traditional rulers was still very strong, in part because they had been careful to make compromises and accommodations whenever necessary. You couldn't call them 'absolute monarchs,' since the Hesse-Kassel Estates maintained formal and legal-and especially financial-limits on the landgrave's authority in the province. The Estates had deposed Wilhelm V's father, in fact, because of his inveterate spendthrift habits. Still, the power of the landgraves was far greater than anything Americans thought of when they used the term 'constitutional monarchy.' By that term, up-timers meant British practices of the late nineteenth or twentieth centuries, where Hesse-Kassel had a much greater resemblance to the Britain of the seventeenth century.
In practice, however, while he had been alive Wilhelm V had ruled with a light hand and there was every sign that his widow would continue the practice. Freedom of religion was tacitly accepted and, within limits, so was freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The freedom to assemble was even partially allowed. The landgravine would certainly suppress any large open demonstrations against her, but she made no attempt to prevent political groups and parties like the FoJP from holding regular and publicized meetings.
Of course, those freedoms were enshrined in the USE's constitution, albeit with caveats. But the degree to which they were actually permitted in any given province was primarily determined by the balance of political power there.
Rebecca looked back to Piazza. 'I interrupted you. My apologies.'
Ed waved his hand in a small gesture, dismissing the matter. There hadn't really been much danger that Hesse-Kassel's party members would go off half-cocked, but it never hurt to make sure.
'The point I was working my way around to was that while I think it's true that the SoTF's provincial military is the most powerful such force in the USE today, I also think it's mostly irrelevant to the equation when it comes to a possible civil war.'
The young mayor of Hamburg looked surprised. 'Why is that?'
Before Piazza could answer, Werner von Dalberg did it for him. 'Bavaria,' he said tersely.
Von Dalberg was the FoJP's central leader in the Oberpfalz-or the Upper Palatinate, as it was known in English. His expression was grim. 'Gustav Adolf pulled Baner and his army out of the Oberpfalz in order to send him to stabilize Saxony. Well, and good, so long as the emperor himself was still alert and functional. After the beating Baner gave them last year-the man's a swine and a brute, but he's also a very capable general-there wasn't much chance that the Bavarians would start anything again soon. Duke Maximilian has a lot of wounds to lick.'
He shook his head. 'But with Gustav Adolf incapacitated, and if a civil war breaks out, I think it's quite likely that Maximilian will attack the Oberpfalz again. And all we have to resist them is a single regiment under the command of Colonel Simpson-he's the admiral's son-and some artillery units.' He glanced at Piazza. 'If Maximilian does invade, we'll have to call on the State of Thuringia-Franconia to send troops to drive him back.'
'Which we'll have to do for a lot of reasons,' Piazza chimed in, 'and defeating the Bavarian army will require just about everything we've got.'
The president of the SoTF looked around the table. 'The point being, ladies and gentlemen, that if Oxenstierna does launch a civil war, you're on your own as far as military forces go. I doubt very much if I'll be able to do more than hold my own province solid and defend the Oberpfalz.'
Von Dalberg smiled. 'On the positive side, the Oberpfalz is already leaning toward us. Rest assured that if the Bavarians attack because the Swedes pulled out their troops and Mr. Piazza comes to the rescue, the prospects for our party thereafter will be splendid. Assuming we've survived the civil war, of course.'
A little laugh went around the table. There wasn't much humor in it, though. The implications if the SoTF's army was neutralized by the Bavarians were…
Not good. The Fourth of July Party also controlled Magdeburg province, but its military forces were quite small. The dominance of the Committees of Correspondence in that province, especially in the capital, meant that there was no real need for a powerful provincial military to maintain order. Magdeburg province was quite homogenous, too, both in social as well as geographical terms. In that respect, it was quite unlike the sprawling SoTF, with its variegated terrain and social mosaic.
Given that reality, those CoC activists in the province inclined to join the military volunteered for the USE's national army. On a per capita basis, Magdeburg province provided a larger percentage of the USE army's enlisted ranks that any other province in the nation.
The relationship between the Fourth of July Party and the Committees of Correspondence was complex, and varied some from one region to another. Taken as a whole, the relationship was quite close. Almost unanimously, CoC members voted for the FoJP candidates in any election except in those few places where they ran candidates of their own. In return, once elected to office FoJP politicians were generally supportive of those programs and initiatives desired by the CoCs of their area.
But there were always some frictions, also. As a very rough rule of thumb, CoC activists tended to view their FoJP counterparts as shaky-kneed moderates prone to excessive compromise, and FoJP members looked upon the CoCs as being often impractical and unrealistic firebrands.
Both views were stereotypes, but like many stereotypes they contained some kernels of truth.
'The thing that worries me the most,' said Rebecca, 'is that the CoC success in crushing the anti-Semites
