Eric Flint: 1634: The Ram Rebellion

“Ever read much about peasant rebellions?” asked Scott, almost idly.

Unable to speak, Johnnie just shook his head.

“Well, I did.” Blackwell pulled out a small notepad and gestured with it to the burning castle. “This is pretty much SOP. Burn down the nobleman’s castle-making damn sure to eliminate all the tax and other records-and kill him and his entire family. Women, children, babies and all. Don’t leave a single one of them alive, who can inherit. If somebody does, it’ll have to be a cousin. Somebody who doesn’t really know much about the area or the people in it.”

Johnnie F.’s stomach heaved, but he managed to fight it down.

Scott started writing in the notepad. “Okay, scratch Mitwitz,” he said. “I have a feeling this is going to make my job a lot easier. You watch, Johnnie. Once the word spreads, you’ll see most of the other Freiherren pulling in their horns. Right quick.”

He chuckled harshly. “Some of them’ll probably come racing into Wuerzburg and Bamberg, to put themselves and their families under our protection. Which we’ll be glad to give them, of course. But we won’t lift a finger to stop the farmers from torching their abandoned castles. As far as I’m concerned-speaking as a military man-the only good Schloss is a dead Schloss.”

Then, glancing over at Johnnie F., he shook his head. “Yeah, it’s ugly as all hell. On the other hand, when it’s over and done, I don’t expect the casualties to come to more than a few hundred people. You know how many people these stinking worthless knights and nobles massacred a century ago, when they put down the last big farmers’ rebellion?”

“Somewhere around a hundred thousand, people say.”

“Yeah. The number might be exaggerated, of course. But even it is, so what? Call it fifty thousand. That’s still a slaughter about two orders of magnitude greater than anything the ram will do.”

Blackwell’s tone of voice was cold. He pointed with the notepad to the small corpse in the distance. “Do you think the knights gave any more mercy to farmers’ kids? Dream on.”

Johnnie F. didn’t argue the matter. He agreed with Scott, in the abstract. He just didn’t, personally, have the stomach for it.

Looking away from the corpse, his eyes came to the boy’s killer. The big Jaeger had his up-time rifle slung back over his shoulder, and was returning Johnnie’s gaze with a level stare of his own.

It was not a threatening stare. But there was no give in it, at all. Not a trace of an apology in those eyes.

“Maybe this will end it, once and for all,” Johnnie F. said. Hoping.

“That’s what I figure. Let’s go. One Schloss down, and good riddance.”

Franconia, July, 1634

Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach looked at his chancellor. Dr. Lenz hoped that he wasn’t about to kill the messenger.

“Intolerable,” Bimbach said. “The idea that this upstart ‘State of Thuringia-Franconia’ as it calls itself made no attempt whatsoever to protect the castle at Mitwitz is an outrage.”

Lenz cleared his throat. “The Freiherr there,” he felt obliged to say, “is allied with you. Is actively in arms against their administration.”

He was fudging the tenses, here. But given Bimbach’s furious mood, Dr. Lenz thought it would be unwise to dwell on the fact that the Freiherr at Mitwitz was no longer an ally and was certainly no longer actively in arms. The Freiherr was, in fact, a corpse. More precisely, several pieces of a corpse.

“Nonetheless,” Fuchs von Bimbach orated, “the castle itself is a symbol of duly constituted legal authority. Which, basically, they simply gave over to these peasant hordes. Made no effort at all to turn them away from it. It appears from this report that their so-called ‘military administrator’ actually observed the destruction. Took notes on it, even.”

He got up from his chair and paced around the table. “This is simply more than we can tolerate. There has to be a way to bring these up-timers to their heels. And the ram along with them, since they are tolerating its depredations. Openly tolerating them. Some way to bring down both at once, Lenz! Both at once!”

Chapter 14:

“Call Off The Ram, Or They Die”

Bamberg, late July, 1634

“Herr Meyfarth.” He looked up from the pedestal desk at which he was preparing the Sunday sermon.

“Herr Meyfarth.” The knock at his door was repeated; from the voice, it was his landlady.

“Yes, yes. I’m coming.” He tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. It was one of the worst things about him, he knew. When he was working, he hated to be interrupted. Yet the nature of the work of a parish pastor was that it was full of interruptions.

“Someone is here to speak with you.”

“Thank you,” he said absentmindedly. “I’m coming now.” He wiped his pen, but left the book open.

He did not recognize the men, but they appeared to know him. Scarcely surprising in itself; a pastor was naturally noticed when he went through the streets. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. What is it?”

“If you could come? A difficult birth.”

He did not recall that any of those women who had been attending his sermons was expecting a child right now. Possibly, always possibly, someone from one of the families who had fallen away under persecution and were ashamed to come back. In any case, an innocent child in need of baptism.

“Just let me get my case.” He hurried back up the stairs for the small case in which he kept his manual and small bible, the host and wine for the mother, just in case; a little vial of water.

* * *

“Frau Thornton.”

Emma looked up. The woman standing at the other side of the booth counter looked very upset.

“Please, excuse me many times. I am the landlady for Herr Pastor Meyfarth. I know that your husband is his friend. This is true, isn’t it?”

“Why, yes. Willard is out of town this week, though. Can I help you?”

“Men came for the Herr Pastor, yesterday. To bring comfort to a difficult birth, they said. They did not give their names. He went with them, naturally. But he has not returned.”

“Couldn’t members of his church help you more than I can?”

The woman looked even more distressed. “I have already been to them. They know of no one who would have had need of him, no one expecting a child. We have checked with the two families they know of who expect God to bless them soon with the gift of a child. Both mothers are well; neither sent for the pastor. No one knows.”

“Why come to me?”

“It is said that you know the ram.”

Emma smiled. So much for discretion. Gathering up the literature she had on display, she packed it into the tightly woven basket at the rear of the booth; then picked up the basket and put it on top of the three-legged stool on which she sat when no inquirer was there. Just in case of rain; it should stay dry until she got back.

Drat, she had missed a couple. Rather than open the balky catch on the basket again, she dropped them into the big pocket on her work apron. It was a Grantville Home Center special; the pockets were big, and the motto was an attention-getter when she worked the booth.

“Come with me, please.”

* * *

Constantin Ableidinger sighed. He had had men from the ram watching them for so long. There had been, as far as they could tell, no attempts against them. With everything else that was going on, he needed every reliable, trained man he had at his side. He called the Jaeger back, to be in other places, to do other things.

Now, both Herr Meyfarth and Frau Thornton, gone. And a note on his desk.

Call off the ram, or they die.

As if he could call off the ram, now! What kind of fools could these men be, to think that anyone, even the ram himself, with a word or gesture, could call back a flood? Find the men who were in Bamberg last spring. Where would they be, now? Thousands in the field. Start asking. Where were they, the Jaeger who had guarded them?