Eric Flint - 1636: The Saxon Uprising (The 1632 Universe)

The Ring of Fire series:

1632 by Eric Flint

1633 by Eric Flint & David Weber

1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber

Ring of Fire ed. by Eric Flint

Ring of Fire II ed. by Eric Flint

1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

Grantville Gazette ed. by Eric Flint

Grantville Gazette II ed. by Eric Flint

1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce et al.

1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

Grantville Gazette III ed. by Eric Flint

Grantville Gazette IV ed. by Eric Flint

1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint

1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint

Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka

For a complete list of
Baen Books by Eric Flint,
please go to www.baen.com.

1636: THE SAXON UPRISING

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Eric Flint

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4391-3425-2

Cover art by Tom Kidd

Maps by Gorg Huff

First printing, April 2011

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

t/k

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

PROLOGUE

An idle king

November 1635

Berlin

Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand gazed down at the man who was simultaneously King of Sweden, Emperor of the United States of Europe, and High King of the Union of Kalmar. He was Gustav II Adolf, the pre-eminent monarch of Europe as the year 1635 came to a close.

The Habsburgs might dispute the claim. And if that powerful dynastic family could by some magic means recombine their splintered realms into the great empire ruled a century earlier by Charles V, they could probably made the claim stick. But the great Holy Roman Emperor was long gone. Today, it would take genuinely magical methods to reunite Spain and Austrianot to mention the newly emerged third branch of the dynasty in the Netherlands.

France was now weak, too. Gustav Adolfs general Lennart Torstensson had crushed the French at the battle of Ahrensbk a year and a half ago. Since then, Cardinal Richelieus control of France had grown steadily shakier. King Louis XIIIs younger brother Gaston, the duke of Orleansusually called Monsieur Gastonwas and always had been an inveterate schemer who hated Richelieu with a passion. In times past, the cardinal had easily out-maneuvered him. But the disaster to which Richelieu had led France in his ill-fated League of Ostends war against the United States of Europe had produced widespread dissatisfaction and unrest, especially among the nobility and the urban patrician class.

In short, Gustav Adolf ought to be basking in the most glorious sunlight of a life which had been filled with a great deal of glory since he was a teenage king. Instead, he was lying on a bed in a palace in one of the most wretched cities in the Germanies with his mind apparently gone.

Gustav Adolfs blue eyes stared up at Hand. Did he recognize his cousin? It was hard to say.

You certainly couldnt tell anything from his speech.

Bandits have knighted almost walrus, said the king of Sweden. Is there jewel?

It was very frustrating. Gustav Adolf didnt seem addle-pated, exactly. His words made no sense, but they werent pure gibberish, either. This last sentence, for instance, had clearly been a question, and beneath all of the meaningless sentences you could detect a still intact grammar.

But what was he saying? It was as if his vocabulary was completely jumbled.

Before he left Magdeburg for Berlin, Colonel Hand had spent several hours with the American Moorish doctor, James Nichols. By now, four and a half years after the Ring of Fire which had brought the Moor into this world along with the other Americans in Grantville, it was the generally accepted opinion throughout Europe that Nichols was the continents greatest living doctor. Probably even the worlds.

One might ask, therefore, why Hand had had to interview Nichols in Magdeburginstead of here in Berlin, at the bedside of Europes most powerful ruler and Nichols own sovereign. Or, perhaps even more to the point, why it was that Gustav Adolf had not been brought to Magdeburg with its superb medical facilities, instead of being kept in primitive Berlin.

Hed posed those questions directly, in fact. The answers had beeninteresting.

Ask your blessed chancellor, replied Nichols. His tone was blunt, to the point of being almost hostile. It was Axel Oxenstierna who insisted on keeping Gustav Adolf in Berlin. Just as it was he who insistedoh, sure, politely, but he had about a dozen goons with him to enforce the matterthat I leave Berlin and come back here, once I eliminated the risk of peritonitis.

What reasons did he give for his decisions?

Bullpucky and hogwash. Hand didnt know those particular Americanisms, but their general meaning was clear enough.

The bullpucky was that it was too risky to move the king to Magdeburg, Nichols continued. Thats nonsense because General Stearns had already transported Gustav Adolf by horse-litter to get him to Berlin in the first place. That took almost a week, in rough conditionswhich the king still managed to survive, didnt he? As opposed to spending another two days moving him to Magdeburg in a luxurious river barge.

The black doctor took a deep breath. An angry breath, you could even say.

As for the hogwash, its true that I told Oxenstierna that there wasnt much that could be done for the king. But much isnt nothing, and however much or little can be done for Gustav Adolf in his present condition, you can be damn sureto hell with false modestythat I can do it better than that bunch of quacks hes got up there in Berlin. For Christs sake, Colonel Hand, one of them is an outright astrologer! The jackass seriously thinks you can make diagnoses and prescriptions based on whether Mars is humping Venus or getting buggered by Jupiter while either Sagittarius or Pisces is making a porno movie about it.

Erik burst into laughter. He was not fond of astrologers himself. As one of Gustav Adolfs cousins, he had had close contact with many of Europes courts. True, he was the son of an illegitimate cousin, but the fact of his royal blood counted for a lot more in such high circles than the picayune matter of his mothers bastardy. Europes courts were full of bastards, literally as well as figuratively.

Those same royal courts were also full of credulous people, who gave their trust to the advice of astrologers and soothsayers. Not all of them were mere courtiers, either. To name just one instance the colonel was personally familiar with, the new king of Bohemia was positively addicted to astrology. This, despite the fact that in all other respects Wallenstein was an extremely shrewd and intelligent man.