Eric Flint - 1636:The Saxon Uprising

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 after the Dreeson murder, especially combined with the events in Mecklenburg-"

The populace of that hardscrabble Baltic province had rebelled during the post-Dreeson Incident period, and driven out its aristocracy.

"-has made them over-confident of their own military strength. It is one thing to defeat the sort of disorganized or hastily organized para-military forces they encountered during Operation Kristallnacht. It is another thing entirely to confront regular military forces. Even leaving aside the Swedish army under Oxenstierna's direct control, there are a number of significant provincial forces which we can assume will support the chancellor's counter-revolution."

"Can you summarize?" asked Helene Gundelfinger.

"If I may," interjected Ed Piazza, looking at Rebecca. "I've just finished examining the question."

She nodded and leaned back, trying not to smile. She was quite sure that the president and vice-president of the SoTF were operating in tandem here and that Helene's question has been pre-arranged.

Piazza and Gundelfinger got along very well.

"Here's the way it stands, as best as I can figure." Ed rose from his chair and went over to the wall of the room facing the windows. Where portraits would normally be placed on such a wall in most townhouses of this size, hung instead a very large map of the United States of Europe.

There was a wand hanging from a hook next to the map. Ed picked it up and began pointing with it.

"As I said earlier, we have to assume that the SoTF and the Oberpfalz will be pre-occupied with Bavaria." He swung the tip of the wand northwest to indicate Hesse-Kassel. "And we figure that, for her own reasons, Amalie Elisabeth will keep her province neutral. That brings us to the heart of the opposition's strength, which today is in Brandenburg."

The wand now pointed to the northeastern province's capital, Berlin. "Oxenstierna has somewhere in the vicinity of twenty thousand Swedish troops here, just about as many men as Torstensson has in his two USE divisions facing Koniecpolski at Poznan. Those are professional soldiers, skilled and experienced, and will do whatever Chancellor Oxenstierna tells them to do."

He swept the wand back and forth across the entire country. "Some provinces with strong and moderate rulers like Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick will try to keep their reactionaries under control. Westphalia too, for somewhat different reasons. But even they won't succeed entirely. In provinces under direct Swedish control like Pomerania, the Main and the Upper Rhine, they won't try at all. In fact, you can be sure and certain that Oxenstierna will be doing all he can to whip them up, especially the Mecklenburg noblemen in exile."

"You're still talking in terms of paramilitary units, though, aren't you?" asked Anselm Keller. "Not much different, really, from the sort of forces the CoCs can put in the field."

"Yes…and no. I agree with Becky that the CoCs are overconfident because of their success with Kristallnacht. But there they were fighting only the most extreme anti-Semitic reactionaries. They made it a point not to attack-and the favor was returned in kind-what you might call the more standard sort of reactionaries. Local noblemen, town patricians, guild masters, the like. That meant that they didn't often come up against regular militias with experienced and seasoned leadership. When they do-which they most certainly will in the event of a full civil war-they're going to discover things are a lot tougher for them."

He paused for a moment, studying the map. "Still, if the war was simply fought between the CoCs and the sort of forces that provincial and local reactionaries could put in the field, I'd bet on the CoCs. Hands down, in fact. The CoCs possess a truly national organization with a national program, where the reactionaries are a sack of potatoes. A collection of inveterate squabblers with a thousand petty privileges to defend and twice that number of petty grievances to avenge. If the CoCs in one province get into trouble, CoC columns from elsewhere will come to their aid-as they did in Mecklenburg during Kristallnacht. Rarely will you see provincial reactionaries behaving likewise. There's simply no comparison in terms of leadership, especially on the national level. On the one side, you have people like Gretchen Richter, Spartacus, Achterhof. And on the other?"