Eric Flint: 1635:The Dreeson Incident

He swiveled his head and gave Francisco a fierce, hawkish look. "And you want to know how it was done? Forget all that vague twaddle about changes in so-called 'social consciousness.' Yeah, sure-those changes did happen and they were both real and important. But it's what lay beneath them and anchored them solidly that really counted-and that was as crude and simple as it gets."

He transferred the hawk glare to the river. "There was a time in America when you could lynch a black man with impunity. And then the time came when if you did so, you would get your ass handed to you. Often enough, by a black man wearing a badge and carrying a gun."

His smile managed to be wry and savage at the same time. "It's amazing, Francisco, how quickly 'deeply ingrained attitudes' will change-when the consequences of not changing are so immediate and obvious and detrimental to your health and well-being. Oh, yeah. It's really amazing how fast that can happen."

The CoC columns which marched up and down the great rivers of the western provinces for several weeks shooting and hanging anti-Semites and witch-hunters, and burning down their homes and shops if they fled, did not really care whether anyone liked or disliked Jews or believed or did not believe that witches were real. That was a private and individual matter, by itself.

What they did care about was forging a modern nation. And that meant all medieval and barbaric public behavior- especially if it was done by the classes of people who provided most of their own support-was now at an end. A complete and total end. There would be no compromises, no bargaining, no dickering.

The murder of an old gentile had been the last straw. The Dreeson Incident was going to be the end of it.

It was over. Period.

Start a pogrom, you die. Burn a witch, you die. Accept and yield to the demands of a modern nation or be buried in the rubble of its medieval past. That is the only choice we give you.

Often enough in the past-the Fettmilch revolt in Frankfurt had not been not particularly exceptional-the mobs who carried out pogroms against a town's ghetto were also hostile to the town's patricians. Yet that brought little or no comfort to those same patricians, as they watched, day after day, while the CoC columns established a new law and a new authority in their towns on the Rhine and the Main.

Today, they posed no threat, true. You could even, if you squinted really hard, fool yourself into thinking they were protecting you.

But this did not bode well for the future. Especially if-some of the more far-sighted began rethinking their plans-the Crown Loyalists were reckless enough, now that they were in power, to try to force through all the provisions in their program.

As for Vincent Weitz, he made his escape from the State of Thuringia-Franconia and headed for Bavaria, only to be caught up in the CoC's sweep of the Oberpfalz. He and a dozen or so of his followers and associates tried to find refuge in Nurnberg, the independent city-state completely surrounded by USE territory. But the authorities in Nurnberg wanted no part of the madness. They denied Weitz and his people entry into the city.

In the end, they died at a crossroads just north of Amberg, hunted down by a detachment from a CoC column.

Weitz was no coward, so it was a fierce little battle. But a short one, also. Afterward, Weitz and his men were shoved into a shallow mass grave in a nearby meadow.

By then, he'd been identified. But there was no marker placed over the grave, and never would be. By the time the bones started weathering through, many decades later, the local village legends would place him and his men as a lost unit of mercenaries from a much earlier period. It was an understandable confusion. The weapons in the possession of Weitz and his men at the end had been quite antique.

When it was all over, and the peculiarly-named affair-why "crystal night"? it made no sense-had entered Germany's history books, Gretchen and Achterhof and Spartacus summoned all the CoC columns into the capital city.

They came, some twenty thousand combatants by then, and paraded in an orderly manner right through the city. The CoC even set up a reviewing stand in front of the parliament, on Hans Richter Square.

Prime Minister Wilhelm Wettin and the entire leadership of the Crown Loyalist Party found reasons to be absent from Magdeburg that day. But Princess Kristina-over-riding the advice of all of her ladies-in-waiting except Caroline Platzer-chose to accept Gretchen's offer to join her on the reviewing stand.

It was hard to know if the child really understood all the political subtleties involved in the heir to the imperial throne accepting that invitation. It was quite possible, though, that she did-well enough, at least. Kristina was almost frighteningly precocious.

But, perhaps there was nothing more involved than the emotional enthusiasm of an eight-year-old girl who knew that those thousands who marched past the stand would be very friendly and would return her cheery waves with roars of applause and appreciation.

(Which, indeed, they did. Another great large stick to shove up the rumps of the Crown Loyalists.)

General Torstensson came to watch also. For understandable political reasons, however, he felt it would be unwise to watch the parade from the reviewing stand. So he satisfied himself with a good view from the steps of the palace.

"Nicely done," he commented to one of his aides. "They don't march as well as real soldiers, of course. But it's still quite impressive."

He glanced back at the parliament building. "I do hope Wettin and his people have learned some prudence from all this."

The aide was a Swede, like Torstensson. So, like his commander, he felt a certain detachment from all this messy German business.

"I wouldn't count on it, General. I really wouldn't."

Grantville

"Weren't the fireworks that the Farbenwerke put on great?" Denise was reliving every minute of the celebration. "Where did they get so many so fast? There were only three days between when the Jenkinses announced Ron and Missy's engagement in the paper and the picnic up at Lothlorien."

Minnie shook her head. "It wasn't fast. Lutz Fischer in seventh grade is the son of the facilities manager there. He says the union had figured for months that this would be coming up, so they bought a case every time they had a chance and had them stashed away in advance."

"I think it's exciting," Denise said. "Especially that maybe they're engaged, sort of, because we taught Missy and Pam to ride, so we had something to do with it. They wouldn't have kissed each other up at Lothlorien that afternoon if Missy hadn't been on your hog and given Ron a lift."

Minnie nodded. "Yeah. But I sure can't tell what she sees in him." Having thus defined romance as a priori irrelevant to this betrothal, she reconsidered the matter from a practical perspective. "And coming from the kind of family she has, she doesn't need to marry him for money, either."

She was, however, willing to grant that a groom was a prerequisite for putting on a wedding. Ever since the announcement of the engagement, she had been spending her spare time in Mrs. Johnson's home economics room, reading a dozen or so tattered copies of up-time bridal magazines that had found a final resting place there. "I bet Missy's mom is going to insist on a big wedding, whether Missy wants one or not. Or her grandmas will. If so, do you suppose she might ask us to be bridesmaids because we helped things along?"

Denise shook her head. "She'll probably ask her cousins. Or someone she was in the same class with at school. Brides almost always do. Vanessa Jones, that's the daughter of the Reverends Jones, asked Caroline and Ceci. When Mary Kat Riddle got married last winter, her brother's wife was the matron of honor and she didn't have any other attendants at all. Gerry will probably get to be best man, though, if the rest of Ron's folks haven't come back from Italy by the time they get married."