1634: The Baltic War

Chapter 56

A field in Germany, just south of the village of Ahrensbok

The most peculiar thing, thought Thorsten Engler, was how magnificent a battle looked before it began. It was a gigantic theatrical spectacle, with a cast numbering all told something like fifty thousand men, complete with precision marching, musical accompaniment, pennants and banners flying, and horsemen galloping all over carrying messages from commanders to subordinates. Not even the wealthiest and most powerful emperor of ancient Persia could have afforded to put on such a spectacle for any purpose save the deadly one that confronted them today.

Standing on the ground next to him-keeping a certain distance from the horse-Eric Krenz planted his hands on his hips and whistled softly.

"And will you look at that? Too bad we're not artists, eh, fellows? We could stay back here the whole time and just paint the performance. Match deadly brushes against fearsome canvas."

The crew of the nearest volley gun smiled. "Not for the likes of us, Krenz," said the gunner, Olav Gjervan.

The volley gun battery had been positioned on a very slight rise on the southern side of the field, so they had a better view of the unfolding drama than most of the soldiers in either army. Gjervan pointed toward the center of the French army and said, "We'll be down there, soon enough, you watch. About all we'll be seeing are clouds of gunsmoke. What sort of stupid painting would that make?"

One of his mates grunted. That was Raymond Meincke, the crew's loader. "On the other hand, we'll have a better view of the real business. Guts spilled all over, rivers of blood, brains served up for the beetles."

Krenz made a face, but the two other crew members just responded with a little laugh. Meincke had a certain reputation. One of the up-time noncommissioned officers, Floyd Little, called him the regiment's "designated pessimist." His friend and fellow American sergeant John Dexter Ennis favored Mr. Doom and Gloom.

"Better make sure your ears are covered, Eric," said Gjervan, "seeing as how the helmets don't do it. Every crow in miles will have its eye on them."

The brought a much bigger laugh, even from Krenz himself. Eric had very big ears, it was just a fact. They were the frequent butt of rough humor, although usually along the lines of people wondering how a man with such big ears could somehow manage to not hear any order he found inconvenient.

Eric started to make a quip in response, but was cut off by the sound of a bugle. The USE's army had adopted that up-time version of a trumpet because it made a distinctive sound of its own, and one that couldn't be confused with the various horns being used by the enemy. For simpler commands, of course, they continued to use the fifes and drums that were common to most armies.

"Well, shit," said Krenz. "Looks like General Torstensson decided we'd make lousy artists. Here we go, boys."

That had been the order to advance. Thorsten turned his horse and began trotting down the line of the batteries' guns, making sure that every crew was following the signal. About halfway down he encountered Lieutenant Mark Reschly trotting his horse the other way, doing the same.

Since all the crews were going about their business properly, the two men took a moment to exchange a few words.

"I'm a little surprised the general's ordering an advance," said Thorsten. "I thought he'd have us keep this position." He made a little back-and-forth jerking motion with his head, indicating the surrounding terrain. "Here we've got the headwaters of the Trave anchoring our line on the right and the woods outside Ahrensbok on our left."

Mark smiled. "You'd make a good officer, Thorsten, as I've told you before. Sure you don't want a commission? I'm certain I can get you one. Ever since that mess crossing the Alster, Colonel Straley has had a very good opinion of you."

That had been a mess, when a hastily and poorly made bridge had collapsed. Thorsten had been able to get the men organized to deal with it quickly, though, and they'd only suffered two dead horses and one man crippled. But he didn't really consider the episode an indication of any special martial virtues on his part. It was just a job that needed to be done, and in truth he was a very good foreman. There was nothing more to it than that.

Personally, Engler thought the real reason their regiment's commander Len Straley had a good opinion of him had far more to do with a personal situation than anything involving the army. Stan Musial Wilson, an up-time army sergeant who was the son of one of Straley's close friends, had gotten very interested in a German woman he'd encountered during their stay in Hamburg. At Straley's diffident suggestion, Thorsten had wound becoming young Wilson's principal adviser in the matter, which seemed to be developing to everyone's satisfaction. He'd had a certain perspective on the situation, given that he'd faced it himself from the other way around.

"No, thank you, Lieutenant. It's as I've told you before. I'm only in the army for three years. After that, I plan to become a psychologist. Germany's first one, I think."

"As you wish," said Reschly. He pointed to the field ahead of them. It widened out dramatically less than thirty yards beyond, where the Trave-which was more of a creek, here, not the river it was down at Luebeck-made a sharp bend to the south. Once the USE army moved past that point, it would be entering a wide field instead of the narrow stretch of clear land where Torstensson had first had it take up position.

"Mind you, I'm just a lieutenant and not privy to the general's plans. But I'm quite certain he's gotten orders from the emperor to defeat the French here, not simply stand on the defensive. And to do that, he's got to get us some maneuvering room. Be nice, of course, if we could just stand where we are and let the French grind themselves up against us. But they're not that stupid, not even the duke of Angouleme."

Thorsten thought about it, for a moment, and then decided to play devil's advocate. Not out of any spirit of contrariness, but simply because he always found it very difficult not to ponder all sides of a problem once he got it into his head.

"Why not, Lieutenant? What I mean is, it doesn't matter whether the French are stupid or not. They're the ones-not us-who have to get somewhere. So why doesn't General Torstensson just stay on the defensive? If they try to move around us, we just move to block them. Sooner or later, they'd have to attack."

Reschly scratched his jaw. "Good point, in fact. I think the answer-though I'm not sure-is that the emperor wants this all done quickly. The sort of maneuvers and countermaneuvers you're talking about could take days, even as much as a week or two. And that brings up another problem, which is that we're getting low on supplies and the French have no supply lines at all. That means their army will have to start foraging almost immediately, and we'd probably have to follow suit soon enough, if the maneuvering took us very far from Luebeck. It'll still be some time before the TacRail units can catch up with us, even as fast as they work."

He cocked his head slightly, peering at Engler. "You're from a farm family, Sergeant Engler. You know better than most what 'foraging' really means."

Thorsten's jaws tightened a little. What it meant-at best-from a farmer's standpoint, was seeing his livestock and crops seized. Often enough, it also meant being killed and his womenfolk ravished. If they were lucky, the women would then be carried off as camp followers. If they weren't, their corpses would join those of their fathers and husbands and sons.

Farmers hated soldiers. It really didn't matter whose army they belonged to, even their own. Supposedly their own, rather-since from the standpoint of most farmers, as a rule, it hardly mattered. Let an army be badly beaten on a battlefield, and the survivors of the defeated side were likely to find themselves hunted if they couldn't reform their units. For a few miles, they'd be hunted down by the cavalry of the victors. Thereafter, by any farm villagers they ran across, who'd pursue them and murder them pitilessly.

"You see what I mean?" said Reschly. "The emperor plans to incorporate all of this area into the United States, even if he's never quite come out and said it in so many words. But you know it and I know it and probably even the local village idiots know it. So he'll not want the populace ravaged, and a quick decisive victory is the best way to make sure it doesn't happen."

Put that way, Thorsten could not only see the logic but he approved of it. The bugles blew again at the point, however, followed by the fifes and drums. He and Reschly fell silent for a while as they watched over the batteries' evolutions.

That went smoothly enough. The volunteer regiments of the new USE Army still didn't have much in the way of combat experience. But they'd been well trained, and trained for months-far more so than most armies of the day. So there were no major problems in simply carrying out a maneuver. How well they'd do once the fighting started, remained to be seen. But their morale was high and they were quite confident they'd do well. Thorsten thought so, himself.

A few minutes later, he asked Reschly another question. "They're putting us farther out on the flank than we usually go. Any idea why?"

In fact, the way Torstensson was ordering the formations, the three volley gun companies by now were almost at the very edge of his army's right flank. There were only a few units of skirmishers and a thin cavalry screen beyond them

Reschly sucked in a breath. His jaws weren't exactly clenched; but he had his teeth pressed together and his lips spread. It was an expression that was half-apprehensive and half-thoughtful.

"I'm guessing, Sergeant. But the way you break a big army on a battlefield is by tearing at their flanks with cavalry-and, unfortunately, we don't have enough cavalry for the purpose. We've got more than the French, but not enough. You really need to be able to hammer at them to manage it."

He closed his lips and blew the breath back out. "One of the problems, you know, with the way this army was created. We simply don't have enough mercenaries"-here he smiled almost gaily-"and we sure as hell don't have enough noblemen."

That was true enough too, once Thorsten thought about it. The regiments mainly drew their volunteers from the CoC strongholds. With some exceptions here and there, those were in the cities and big towns. Such recruits might have splendid morale and determination to fight, but it was just a fact that not too many of them were good horsemen. Not even most farmers were, really. Almost any man of the time had some familiarity with horses, including riding them. But there was a world of difference between being able to guide a stodgy cart-horse and being able to ride the sort of horses a cavalrymen needed, in the way they needed to be ridden, and using weapons at the same time.

Thorsten was rather unusual, that way. For whatever reason, he'd always had the knack with horses. Eric Krenz's attitude was on the opposite extreme, but the truth was that most soldiers in the regiments were a lot more like Krenz than they were like Engler.

Which meant-

He sucked in a breath of his own. "You think the general's going to use us up close, in a charge."

"Yes, I do," said Reschly. "And, yes, I know that's a real switch. We're mostly supposed to fend off cavalry, not substitute for them. But I'm pretty sure that's what Torstensson has in mind."

The French army had come to a halt, its commanders having apparently decided to stand on the defensive. Now, they seemed to be trying to get the big tercio-style formations on their left flank to wheel around and face the cavalry and volley gun regiments that Torstensson had kept moving farther and farther to the right.

It was still an incredible spectacle, but the sheer glory was fading from it rapidly. The tusked demon beneath was rising to the surface.

"They're not going to make it in time!" said Reschly, suddenly sounding excited and eager. He pointed at the French forces that were now less than half a mile away. "Look, they're too slow!"

He was right, Thorsten decided. Those bulky infantry formations were very hard to maneuver quickly. That was true even in a simple forward assault, much less the more difficult maneuver of trying to get them to square off to the flank. "Refuse the line," it was called. Gustav Adolf's Swedish army had managed to carry off the maneuver at Breitenfeld, thereby enabling them to fend off Tilly's assault long enough for the king of Sweden to bring his artillery to bear. But they'd been facing Tilly's slow-moving tercios, whereas a very large part of the training of the USE's new regiments had been designed to enable them to move quickly. As quickly, at least, as tightly formed infantry could.

Torstensson knew he was gambling, but he didn't think it a reckless one. From his position at the center of the USE army, he hadn't gotten as good a view of the ragged nature of the French left flank as a young lieutenant from the Moselle and a young sergeant from the Oberpfalz. But he hadn't needed it, either. He had far more experience at gauging battles than either Reschly or Engler-or a dozen of them put together, for that matter.

So, he'd keep the main body of the French army pinned with his infantry and artillery, and see if he could rout the enemy's left flank with a cavalry charge. More precisely, a charge of cavalrymen and the three volley gun companies he had in his force.

The only one of his subordinates who put up any sort of protest at all was Frank Jackson, and that wasn't so much of a protest as a cold-blooded observation.

"This is likely to get pretty rough on the volley gun crews, if the French don't break."

"Yes, it will," was Torstensson's reply. "But I haven't got enough cavalry for the purpose, and I think this maneuver will work because they'll be expecting regular light artillery. And if it comes down to it, I can afford to lose the volley guns, since the French have even less cavalry than I do."

Seeing the expression on Jackson's face, Torstensson gave him a thin smile. "Cold-blooded bastard, aren't I?"

After a moment, Frank shrugged. "The last war I was in was being run by a guy named Robert McNamara, who was even more cold-blooded than you are, General. The difference was, he didn't have a clue what he was doing."

Jean-Baptiste Budes, comte de Guebriant, wasn't giving any thought at all to the nature of the enemy's commanders. He was too busy cursing that of his own, under his breath. The evolution the French army was trying to carry out would have been difficult enough, under any conditions. Having as the commander of the left flank another one of Cardinal Richelieu's political appointments made it twice as hard. Jean-Baptiste didn't have any personal animus against Manasses de Pas, marquis de Feuquieres, whom he'd found in person to be a pleasant and convivial sort of fellow. But the marquis was far more suited temperamentally to the life of a courtier than a cavalryman. He was just plain sluggish-and they were in a situation where quick reflexes were critical. Those enemy cavalry and flying artillery units were coming at them rapidly, and in very good order.

"So much for an undisciplined rabble, eh?" said his adjutant sarcastically, as he drew up his horse.

Guebriant scowled. Normally, he enjoyed Captain Gosling's dour Norman sense of humor, but today it grated a little. "They're supposed to be professional soldiers, Guilherme! Look at them! It's like herding geese."

Guilherme Gosling made a little placating and apologetic gesture. "Sorry. My quip was intended for the enemy." The gesture turned into a finger, pointing at the German forces moving to outflank them.

"Oh." Jean-Baptiste winced. "Yes. As I recall, the phrase the esteemed duke of Angouleme used last week was 'a mere militia.' They don't look like it, though, do they? What news from Feuquieres?"

"He says he'll have the infantry units in place shortly."

Guebriant savored the term. It left a very acrid taste. " 'Shortly.' How marvelously imprecise."

His lieutenant shrugged. "He is trying to move them along, Comte. The problem isn't so much the marquis as, well…"

"He surrounded himself with a gaggle of adjutants, not one of whom could find his ass in broad daylight, on a battlefield. Yes, I know." Guebriant was scowling fiercely. "Fine fellows in a salon in Paris, though, I have no doubt."

But there was no time for that, either. Jean-Baptiste pointed at the enemy's flying artillery units. They had fallen slightly behind the first line of cavalry, instead of moving to the front as they should have been. That was the only sign he'd seen yet of the insufficient experience of the enemy army. It was always hard to get light artillery to develop the iron nerve it took to set up at the very fore of a battle line. No point in having them anywhere else, though, since they could hardly fire through their own ranks.

By now, several of Guebriant's lieutenants had gathered around. "Pull together as many of our cavalry units as you can. We'll charge at once, while the enemy's artillery is still out of position."

"They've got somebody competent in charge over there," commented Torstensson. He lowered his eyeglass. "So now we'll find out just how good those volley gunners are. Have the buglers give the order."

Eric Krenz's face had been pale already, as he sat on the lead horse of the battery wagon. Now, hearing the command for volley guns, forward, it got paler still. Thorsten Engler almost managed a laugh. Not quite-since he might very well be dead in a few minutes.

"I told you," he hissed at Krenz as he swept by him. "Flying artillery."

He took up his position at the head of the batteries along with Lieutenant Reschly. The young officer from the Moselle already had his saber in hand and wasn't waving it so much as he was flourishing the weapon. It was all very dramatic.

Further down the line, Thorsten caught a glimpse of Colonel Straley doing the same thing.

Thorsten drew his own saber, feeling both awkward and foolish. It wasn't the sword that bothered him-it was just another tool, that's all, for a different purpose-but the need to pose histrionically with the damn thing. He was a farmer, for the love of God!

Just before the bugles blew again, though, he steadied his nerves. He even laughed. Caroline had described to him, in one of her letters, the manner in which Princess Kristina had finagled their way onto the army base.

Volley guns, charge!

So what a farmer might have found difficult, the count of Narnia managed quite easily. He flourished his own saber as splendidly as anyone could ask for and shouted "Forward, fellows!" loudly enough to be easily heard by all the gun crews in the company, and several of the ones in the companies on either side. Best of all, although he hadn't noticed himself, that sudden and impromptu laugh had been almost as loud. Steadied the men very nicely, it did.

"Forward, I say!"