Steve Salatto would have liked to hang them all from the nearest tree. Friends as well as foes. However, he had Anita back safe; baby Diana, too. She had fuzzy hair.
The commander of the regiment that Gustavus Adolphus had sent down to Franconia had offered to blast von Bimbach's castle into rubble and eradicate the whole family. Steve had thanked him kindly, but said that it wouldn't be necessary.
It wasn't. Margrave Christian had already taken care of the "blasting into rubble" bit and had escheated the Freiherr's Bayreuth estates to himself. The Freiherr's relatives had run off to Saxony. As for the lands in Bamberg, Steve told Cliff Priest just to occupy the administration building—it wasn't a fortified castle—and told Vince Marcantonio to escheat the estates to the SoTF and have Stewart Hawker and his folks arrange some equitable lease arrangements for von Bimbach's tenants and submit them for approval.
"As for the final disposition of the individuals involved, leave it up to the courts." It hurt to say it, when he would have liked to squash the Freiherr like a cockroach, but he managed.
Scott Blackwell had some difficulty in getting the mercenary commander to swallow those orders. But he managed, too.
Ed Piazza and Arnold Bellamy looked at Steve's final—or, if not final, at least most recent—report on Franconia.
" `Sorry about all the publicity'!" Ed exploded. "Sorry about it? It's some of the best we've had all year!"
"Professional civil servants don't see things quite the same way you do," Arnold said apologetically. "They're temperamentally inclined to work behind the scenes. And it was his wife who had a baby in the presence of a couple of thousand spectators. I can understand how he feels. I would have been very embarrassed if Natalie had ever done such a thing."
He pointed to the rest of the papers on Ed's desk. "You'll find a draft of our proposal to Congress enclosed. In brief, our recommendation is that the SoTF Congress just scoop up all of the little Reichsritterschaften and petty lordships in Franconia and incorporate them. Not confiscate the property from the owners, mind you; just end their jurisdictional authority over their so-called subjects who are now our citizens. The people in general voted for incorporation. If you want to, I suppose, we could do an individual referendum in each of them, but I don't think it's necessary."
Ed looked up. "Will the Congress go for that? Especially the House of Lords?"
Arnold nodded. "I think so. Most of the lower house of the Congress consists of commoners who have been angry at these petty lordships for centuries. And the larger rulers in the House of Lords, the counts and such, have been annoyed by them for just as long. It's one of the few topics on which the commoners and upper nobility are in harmonious agreement. Both of them think that the quasi-independent lower nobility are big pests and a plague on the landscape. It goes right back to the days when the Swabian League went on a campaign to wipe out as many of the robber barons as it could lay hands on. That's more than a century ago. Plus, it also fits well into the national project of abolishing internal tolls and tariffs. I think it will be safe to present it. Especially if you go on to the next item."
Ed read on.
"If the SoTF congress agrees to this, just incorporating them as we propose without any further fuss and feathers, then Margrave Christian of Bayreuth, upon behalf of himself and his nephews, will petition for admission into the State of Thuringia-Franconia on the same terms as the other of its counties and with a seat for each of the principalities in the SoTF House of Lords. The only special point he will be making is that he wants the approval of Congress to do unto the Reichsritter and petty lords who have enclaves within his and his nephews' territories just what we are proposing to do unto them in Würzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda."
Ed frowned. "Does the margrave actually mean this?"
"I think so. Informally, apparently, he has already taken oaths of allegiance from a lot of their subjects. Backed up by the ram. Given the geography of Franconia, he'll be a lot stronger if he can manage that. He'll have us as a buffer between him and Gustavus Adolphus when the crowd of the dispossessed start spewing petitions and lawsuits like a volcano. For that matter, he will have our military to back up his if they go into revolt. Not that that's very likely, given what happened to Mitwitz and von Bimbach. Apparently, he's willing to accept being, for all practical purposes, a constitutional monarch within Bayreuth County, Thuringia-Franconia, as a reasonable trade-off."
"Is Gustavus Adolphus going to like it? The arrangement he made with Mike, whatever it was, didn't include having us swallow his allies." Ed was sure of that.
"The king, ah, emperor, can't do much about it. Margrave Christian is volunteering. His politics are local; his main interest has always been keeping the war out of Bayreuth. Right now, he sees us as his best bet for doing that. No guarantees that he would continue his allegiance if we fall flat on our faces at some future date, of course. But for right now, I think, our honorable captain general will just have to live with it."
"I'll put the best face on it that I can. Mike should love it, even if he has to keep his own face poker-stiff. Next?"
"All right. Steve's final point. The Nürnberg city council is increasingly worried about the quasi-independent status of Nürnberg as an imperial city and an independent state within the USE, separate from Thuringia-Franconia."
Ed raised his eyebrows. "Do they have reason to be?"
Arnold looked at him. "Not right now. After all, Rhode Island managed to survive. It will depend, in the long run, if they're good enough politicians to hang on. If they aren't . . ."
"Speaking of politicians, what's Big Bad Brillo doing at the moment?"
Arnold smiled. It was a rather thin smile. "Running for Congress. He was thrown out of law school, you know. What else is left for him, when he isn't organizing a revolution?"
"I still don't like capital punishment," Mike Stearns said softly, in a tone of voice that was more thoughtful than accusatory. He was standing at the window of the USE prime minister's office, looking out over the Elbe river, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Yes, Michael, I know you don't," came Francisco Nasi's voice from behind him. "But—be honest—that's not so much a moral or religious stance on your part, as it is a matter of . . . I'm not sure what to call it. Class antagonism, perhaps."
Mike considered his words. "I guess that's fair enough. The one thing I always noticed, back in the uptime U.S. of A, starting from when I was a teenager, is that you never saw a rich man on Death Row. Never. Didn't even see 'em serving life sentences that often. So I concluded by the time I was twenty that, once you stripped away all the bullshit, the death penalty was just another way for rich people to kill poor people—and I figured they already had enough ways to do that."
"You can hardly object to this one, then."
Mike turned away from the window and sat back down at his desk. "Well, sure, there's that savage and primitive part of me that's practically howling with glee. Especially since they hung Dr. Lenz along with von Bimbach. Yes, sir. Too bad they didn't shove one of Pestilenz's pamphlets down his throat—the one he wrote about Becky, I mean—before they yanked open the trapdoor."
For a flashing instant, a very fierce grin came and went on his face. Among the many reports that had come to Magdeburg after the Ram Rebellion—as it was now universally being called, across Europe—had been the results of the thorough investigation the authorities of the State of Thuringia-Franconia had made of Dr. Lenz's papers. One of things that had been discovered was that Lenz had been the author of the notorious political pamphlet Pestis Pontifica, Pestis Judaica, that had circulated widely in Franconia in the course of 1633. Included in the pamphlet's anti-Semitic and anti-NUS rantings had been some very vile accusations leveled at Mike's wife Rebecca, involving grotesque sexual acts between her and Cardinal Richelieu.
Nasi matched the grin "Indeed. Of course, he was not the only such pamphleteer. And, unfortunately, there was no direct reference in his papers to whichever uptimer fed him the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So that's still to be determined, if it ever is. Nonetheless. He's dead. Along with von Bimbach. And both of them as a result of scrupulously legal—if very quick—judicial proceedings."
"Sure was quick," Mike drawled. "But I imagine the SoTF authorities in charge saw no point in dawdling. Bad idea, that would have been. Might have stirred up the ram again. Speaking of which . . ."
He leaned forward, sifting through the papers. "Remind me. I know it's in here somewhere. Your assessment of Constantin Ableidinger's election chances."
"The details hardly matter." For a moment, Nasi's face held a peculiar expression. Longing, you might call it. Mike had seen it several times before. The first time after he'd explained to Francisco the uptime methods of polling voters. Alas, the preconditions for that didn't exist in the seventeenth century. Not yet, at least.
Mike was just as glad, actually. He thought it was a lot more interesting to have to use your brains. But it wasn't surprising that Francisco, who doubled as his unofficial political adviser as well as his chief of intelligence, didn't see things the same way.
Nasi sighed, and the look faded from his face. "Never mind the details," he repeated. "Constantin Ableidinger's chances for election range from `guaranteed' to `landslide victory.' Probably the latter."
Mike grunted. "Good. Better news, really—much better, in the long run—than His Bimboship and Pestilenz hanging from the neck. I'll be looking forward to meeting him, when he comes to Magdeburg."
Nasi cocked his head a little. "Ah . . . Michael. The general elections for the United States of Europe won't be held until next year. Ableidinger is running for one of the new Franconian seats in the congress of the SoTF. He'll be in Grantville, not Magdeburg."
Mike's grin, this time, stayed on his face. "Don't be silly. A man that smart? It's called `stepping stone,' Francisco. You watch. He'll run in the nationwide election, come next year. And he'll win handily, I bet. I'm expecting Wilhelm Wettin's party to win in the USE as a whole, but I'll be very surprised if Thuringia—and now Franconia, too—doesn't remain one of our bastions."
He rose to his feet and went back to the window. "That means Ableidinger will be here, sometime next year. Like I said, I'm looking forward to meeting him."
Without turning around to see, he added: "You aren't rolling your eyes, I trust?"
"I was thinking about it," Nasi admitted. "The thought of you . . . and Ableidinger . . . A bit frightening, actually."
"Oh, don't be silly. I'll sure we'll get along just fine."
"Yes. As I said. A bit frightening."
Mike laughed. "One thing more. Send Ableidinger a letter asking him to have a tailor take his measurements. He'll need a proper suit, now, and I doubt very much if he owns one. I also doubt if he's got much in the way of money. Leading a revolution's not generally a well-paying proposition."
He swiveled his head, and laughed again. Now, Nasi was rolling his eyes.
"Don't tell me," Francisco stated.
"Of course I'm going to tell you. We'll have the suit made here, by my own tailor, and send it to him with my compliments. Best tailor in Magdeburg, probably the whole USE. Make sure you pay for it out of my personal account, though. I wouldn't want any accusations of pilfering official funds for partisan purposes."
Nasi was still staring at the ceiling. "God forbid."
"The ceiling's not that interesting."
"Only because you have—so far—failed to have it plastered with one of those grotesque political paintings."
But he did lower his gaze. "I will say that being in your service is never dull. `A bit frightening' just went to `a bit more frightening.'"
"You're being silly, again. But enough on that. Does Noelle Murphy have some free time? I'd like her to come up here again, as soon as possible."
"Now you're scaring me to death."