Chapter 32
Szatmár (Satu Mare)
A bit to her surprise, Gretchen and her wagon train arrived in Szatmár before Morris Roth and the main body of the Grand Army of the Sunrise. She knew she’d been making better time than he was, which wasn’t surprising given the difference between an army numbering in the thousands, mostly infantry, and a wagon train with only six wagons. The fact that everyone in her expedition who wasn’t riding in a wagon was on horseback made a difference also.
Still, from their last radio exchange a little over a week earlier, it had seemed they would arrive at roughly the same time. But they’d been traveling by different routes, neither of which had been scouted very thoroughly. The route taken by Gretchen and her wagon train had presented no significant problems. Perhaps the same hadn’t been true for Morris’ army.
It didn’t really matter. Shortly after they arrived in Szatmár, they were able to resume radio contact with Morris, so they knew they wouldn’t be on their own for very long. The main body of the Sunrise would arrive in Szatmár in four days.
And that didn’t matter very much, either. There was no large military force in the town. Szatmár was not located near the battle lines that were forming, so most of its troops had been summoned south to defend the capital. The garrison that remained was small—about twenty men, more of a police force than anything else—and they were not what anyone, including themselves, would consider an elite unit.
There were almost that many armed men (and several women, including Gretchen herself) in the wagon train. And there were other differences as well. Most of the men assigned to the wagon train as a guard force were CoC militants, at least half of them military veterans. Several had been personally selected by Gunther Achterhof in Magdeburg. Gretchen had been one of the central founders of the Committees of Correspondence and was undoubtedly the best known. She was famous (or notorious) across most of Europe. The CoCs were not about to take chances with her life.
Then there was the disparity in weapons. Szatmár’s garrison was armed with smoothbore muskets, many of which were still matchlocks and none of which were flintlocks. The best they had were snaphaunces, the predecessor of the flintlock. They might well have not even heard of percussion caps. They certainly didn’t have any.
In contrast, every one of Gretchen’s guards was equipped with the USE army’s new rifle, the Hockenjoss & Klott Model C, shortened to H&KC but usually called by the nickname of “Hocklott.” It was a .406 caliber breech-loading rifle and was probably the best rifle anywhere in the world, at least for the moment.
While on horseback, they were also armed with ZB-2 Santee pistols which they’d purchased in Bohemia on their way to Kassa.
Oh, yes—and they also had quite a few top-of-the-line grenades and even a small 2.5-inch mortar.
But what was probably most important was simply the difference between the men who would be involved in the event of an armed clash. The wagon train’s guards didn’t exactly exude savage belligerence and instant readiness to smite any and all foes, but…they came close enough that no one in Szatmár wanted to experiment with the possibility. Least of all the soldiers of the garrison.
Leaving all that aside, the current political status of Szatmár was in transition. It was part of the area that Prince Rákóczi had agreed to cede to Bohemia in exchange for an alliance.
As was true of many towns in the area, Szatmár was used to running its own affairs because it had changed hands so many times between various kingdoms over the centuries. The most recent overlord had been Transylvania, whose prince had taken advantage of the fuzziness surrounding the transfer of Royal Hungary (parts of it, anyway) from Habsburg to Bohemian hands. Rákóczi had sent in his own troops—most of whom had now been withdrawn to deal with the menace coming from Wallachia and Moldavia.
So, all remained tranquil. Gretchen tried to find whatever town authorities there might be to establish a modus vivendi, but her search proved fruitless. Word had already filtered into the area that it was going to be granted to Bohemia in exchange for Bohemian military support.
Transylvania was a more feudal region than the Germanies. Its power structure was complicated, though, because along with the feudal traditions there were also traditions produced by the principality’s ethnic composition. There was really no such thing, in this time period, as a “Transylvanian,” much less a “Romanian.” The single largest component of Transylvania’s population was of Hungarian origin—and they in turn were subdivided into groups. People of Hungarian extraction in the east were known as Székelys—the name derived from “frontier guards”—and were mostly Roman Catholics. Other Hungarians in Transylvania were as likely to be Calvinists as Catholics. But there was one sect of Székely Unitarians who had evolved in an unusual direction. They were known as Sabbatarians and, over time, had grown close to Judaism. (In their own opinion, at least. Most Jewish rabbis would not have agreed.)
They were being subjected to persecution now as “Judaizers,” although as yet the persecution was not severe.
The other large and powerful ethnic group in Transylvania were the so-called “Saxons,” who were of German origin. They were almost all Lutherans, and, like the Szeklers, had a martial tradition. They’d been brought in starting in the twelfth century as border guards defending Transylvania’s southeastern region. They also provided Transylvania with experienced miners and artisans of various kinds. These two ethnic groups in Transylvania were granted special recognition and each had a seat in the Transylvanian Diet along with the nobility.
Gretchen was able to make initial contact with a few leading figures in the Szekler and Saxon communities in Szatmár, but nothing much came out of her brief discussions. They were cordial but guarded in their responses.
As usual in Transylvania, everything was a linguistic mishmash. In the world of the future the Americans came from, Szatmár would become known as Satu Mare. But in the year 1637, most of its inhabitants used the Hungarian name of Szatmár, which was a shortening of the name Szatmárnémeti. Saxons, however, used the German variant of “Sathmar” and Jews used their own Yiddish variant of “Satmer.”
Gretchen didn’t speak Hungarian herself, but three of the people who came with her—two of the guards and one of the printers—were fluent in the language, so she was able to communicate with the Szeklers well enough. It was even easier with the Saxons. Despite the name, the ancestors of the Transylvanians of German origin came mostly from Franconia, and their dialect was easy for Gretchen to understand, just as hers was for them. In this time period, the German language was a constellation of closely related dialects, and people were accustomed to dealing with that.
Finding a place to establish themselves wasn’t straightforward, so Gretchen decided to wait until Morris Roth arrived. She thought they’d probably be continuing to move south anyway. Kolozsvár or the capital city of Gyulafehérvár seemed more suitable places for her and her expedition to set themselves up. Probably Kolozsvár. It was the largest city in Transylvania—larger than the capital—and had a more diverse population. There were large concentrations of Saxons and Szeklers and a sizeable number of Sabbatarians, all groups which Gretchen thought would be most receptive to the views of the Committees of Correspondence.
So, they’d be camping out for a few more days, which was no great hardship. It was one of the Saxon notables she spoke to who clarified where they should do so.
“Set yourselves up here,” he said, indicating the town square they were standing in.
“Won’t someone object?”
“Probably,” he replied, smiling. “But you can just ignore them. There are no authorities left in Szatmár. Everyone knows by now that it won’t be long before the Bohemians take over.”
He pointed across the Szamos River, which bisected the town. “But if you prefer, you can set up your camp in a large meadow over there. It’s just beyond the tree line.” His finger shifted, pointing further upriver. “You can’t see it from here, but there’s a good stone bridge about half a mile away. Be careful, though. There are rumors that the Moldavian Impalers, as they call themselves, are active in the area. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But they are quite vicious.”
“We’ll use the meadow,” Gretchen said.
After the Saxon left, Gretchen turned to the leader of her guard detachment, Werner Ruppel. “Let’s hope these Impalers are present. We’ll make an example of them.”
Ruppel nodded. “Even if they’re in the area, they won’t arrive for another day or two, most likely. We’ll set up a good and very obvious guard tonight and then appear to start slacking off.” He glanced up at the broad-brimmed hat shading her from the sun. “And take that thing off and let your hair loose. We want that famous blonde hair as visible as possible.”
Gretchen made a face but didn’t object. The truth was, at least in the USE and Silesia and parts of Bohemia—not to mention such places as Dresden and Amsterdam—her long and bright yellow hair was indeed famous. It even figured in a painting by Rubens. She doubted that was true here on the Transylvanian border, but…
It might be. Even if it wasn’t, it would certainly be visible by the light of a campfire. Having a young woman sitting in the middle of a camp was likely to lull the suspicions of any would-be assailant.
Almost by unconscious reflex, she reached under her vest to check that her 9mm pistol slid easily out of the shoulder holster.
Poor fools, them.
Fehérgyarmat
Morris had set up his temporary headquarters in an abandoned shop—a cobbler’s shop, from the looks of it—in the town of Fehérgyarmat, situated on the Szatmár Plain, which was part of the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. It had the official status of a market town, although it looked more like a village to Morris.
As was true of Szatmár, the political future of Fehérgyarmat was quite clear. It had originally been owned by the Báthori family and later became the property of succeeding Transylvanian princely families. But apparently the town’s inhabitants either hadn’t learned of the new alliance Prince Rákóczi had made with Bohemia, or didn’t believe the rumor, or were simply guided by the ancient wisdom put not your faith in princes, because by the time the Grand Army of the Sunrise entered Fehérgyarmat, it was completely deserted.
They wouldn’t be staying there more than a day, anyway, so Morris made no effort to find out where the population had fled to. They were probably huddled in the nearby woods.
Ellie Anderson strode into the headquarters with her usual lack of concern for military protocol. “Hey, Morris,” she said, “I just got a message from Eddie. Clear as crystal, too—they must have finally gotten the antenna set up in Kassa. He’s in the Jupiter you bought, and he estimates he’ll reach Szatmár in three days.”
Morris frowned. “Why so long? The distance between Kassa and Szatmár—as the crow flies, not the way we’re doing it—isn’t more than a hundred miles. In a Jupiter, he can do that in one hop in two hours.”
“He says he needs to go back to Prague to escort Tuva and her Dvorak out here.” She shrugged. “Why that would take three days, I don’t know, and he didn’t tell me. Prague’s not more than five hundred miles flying distance from here.”
Morris managed not to wince. He knew why it was going to take Eddie that long. In his flight to Kassa, he’d been carrying a very heavy cargo, so he hadn’t been able to carry any passengers or other freight. In fact, he probably had to remove all the seats from the plane except the two he and his copilot used. For what he had to do now—set up refueling stops that were closely enough spaced that a Dvorak could make it all the way to Transylvania—at least a couple of days would be needed.
The reason for Morris’ anxiety was that the cargo was heavy because it was gold and silver coins—ducats and thalers, to be precise—that he needed to pay his soldiers. The guard unit he’d left behind in Kassa was one he trusted, true. Still…that would be a lot of temptation.
“Any word from Brigadier Higgins?”
Ellie shook her head. “No, nothing. And why the formality? For Christ’s sake, Morris, you’ve known Jeff Higgins since he was a toddler.”
He didn’t bother to explain. Ellie Anderson had as little understanding—not to mention lack of interest—of the logic of military protocol as a salamander did of the far side of the moon.
Mátészalka
The reason Ellie hadn’t heard anything from Jeff was because he was preoccupied with cursing himself for being a dimwit and overseeing the task of getting his First Regiment across the Krasna River. The route he’d chosen to take was a few miles further west than the one Morris had been using for his forces. It skirted the town of Mátészalka, which was a benefit. The problem was that it turned out they were skirting the river on the wrong bank—and there were no bridges in the area.
The Krasna wasn’t a big river. In West Virginia, it would probably have been labeled a creek. The width ranged from twenty to thirty feet, and it wasn’t more than a few feet deep. A ten-year-old child could have waded across it in less than a minute.
The problem was that a sizable military force found crossing any body of water a challenge, unless a bridge could be found or built. Ten-year-old kids don’t have to get anything across a river except themselves. Jeff’s First Regiment had to get volley guns across—not to mention supply wagons and, worst of all, artillery.
The artillery was on the modest size. Outside of the mortars, just a dozen four-pound cannons. But between the barrel, the carriage, and the limber, even that small a piece weighed about a ton. Getting a ton of an awkwardly designed (for this purpose) weapon across even a river as small as the Krasna was not easy, to say the least, much less a dozen of them.
The volley guns were much lighter, but they were still no piece of cake. And while the mortars were officially capable of being “carried by hand,” that meant carried across reasonably dry and level ground—not across slippery stones covered in three or four feet of water.
They’d get it done, to be sure. Most likely, no one would be killed or even badly injured. But it was still a royal pain in the ass and more than enough to keep Jeff from even thinking about sending any radio messages.