Previously on The Ringstetten Saga:
Cue Hedwig realizing that she's fallen for Alois (together, they do look like Othello and Desdemona)!
So, when winter changes into spring and the Swedes have designed to march further south into Bavaria, the blond and blue-eyed handmaid leaves her employment in the Queen's household to become a camp follower.
In the meantime, old Count Tilly has recovered from his wounds, but only from those of the flesh.
Having said his prayers at Our Lady's of Altötting, he has promised the Virgin that he will defeat the leader of the heretics, whom he secretly admires.
And, being informed that the Swedes are encroaching against his own liege's electorate, he decides to break all the bridges across the Lech (across whitewater rapids, when the glaciers thaw in springtime) and set up, on the right bank, an encampment for himself, his liege Maximilian I, and his closest generals: Pappenheim, Altringer et consortes. The wooden planks from the bridges are re-used for the palisade, while the woods shelter the Catholic headquarters. In late March, right before April Fools' Day, the Protestants show up and encamp on the left bank, across the Leaguers. And Gustavus ironically laughs across the rapids: "We have nothing to fear! What? Are you afraid of crossing this stream!? Shall we, after having crossed the Oder, the Rhine and the Danube, stop before this rill!?""
Wood is being gathered from farmhouses on the western/left bank of the Lech, where the Swedes are encamped. Branches of trees are also being cut in the woods and orchards of the same area. Those branches, along with heaps of sun-dried rushes and ferns, are heaped together in a bonfire near the Swedish palisade. It can't be a campfire: they have already got one, and this bonfire is larger as well as outside the palisade! As Tilly watches the Swedes through his spyglass, he realizes that something is going on across the rapids...
Later on, a suspiciously red-haired and freckled young Leaguesman with a long pole is seen trying to wade across the Lech. It happens to be April Fools' Day. He tricks the Catholic sentries into informing him where he can find a ford and how deep it is by wading into the rapids stark naked, which they do, with the excuse that he wants to ensure that the Swedes don't find it first. Both the Leaguer and the pole-carrying trickster wade into the ice-cold white waters, and the latter observes how deep his "rescuer" has waded.
As the pretend Leaguer turns his back on the Catholics and enters the Swedish encampment, gun after gun is fired at him, but to no avail. The trickster is revealed to be one of Gerhard's men, a Saxon (from Weissenfels) former Leipzig University Law student, called Kurtius and referred to as Kunz (he joined the Saxon Army upon the fall of Leipzig, and the Swedish ranks after the battle of Breitenfeld), who is rewarded with an ensigncy, filling the vacant slot Rainer’s untimely death left in the Ringstetten Company.
The next day at dusk, after singing "Do Not Despair", the Swedes light the bonfire, which they had previously covered in tar and brandy. A new bridge is erected, behind the smokescreen, by Finns with the wood from the farms (clever one, Gustavus!), as the Swedish cannons are fired at the League's headquarters. The guns on the eastern/right bank soon answer. Catholic units led by Altringer and Pappenheim try to refrain the Swedes from crossing, but many of the the Leaguers fall, and they are forced to retrocede. Altringer is nearly shot dead (he survives), taking General von Tarlenheim with him, then having this great officer (Liselotte's father) fall unconscious off the bridge and into the rapids, along with a dozen slain Catholics... while Pappenheim is once more severely wounded. And then, Tilly himself (desperate after his first defeat at Breitenfeld and the subsequent fall of Leipzig) springs to action, saying what may be his last Hail Mary, crossing himself, and leading his own regiment of Wallonian veterans sword and flag (a Catholic League flag, since he lost the regiment's at Breitenfeld) in hand. In the ensuing chaos, he is shot in the right thigh, just above the knee, and, as he drops the flag, he falls unconscious and bleeding, with a broken leg, off his steed. The Catholics retreat, their wounded generalissimo carried into safety in a litter into the Elector's own carriage (where he comes to), sternly pursued by the Swedes, who have captured the flag.
As for Alois and Gerhard, the dark-haired soldier saves the lieutenant's life on the bridge, and he is soon to be promoted to sergeant.
The now orphaned Liselotte has become a ward of the Swedish Crown.
"If I were the Count of Tilly, even though a cannonball had torn my chin away, I would never leave so good a position!" Gustavus exclaims, tankard to his lips, in the empty right bank League holdfast now occupied by the victorious Protestants.
A couple of weeks later, the Swedes are digging trenches and laying siege to Ingolstadt, where a febrile and suffering Jean de Tilly is breathing his last in the guardhouse guest-room, racked with pain and twitches, his hands trembling and his brow glowing with fever, the whole frame gradually paralyzed throughout his system. That fatal gunshot wound has infected him with lockjaw (tetanus), leaving the old count more rigid for each day, until he will finally die of suffocation within the fortnight. Yet, when the siege has only lasted a few days and the Swedish cannons begin to peal, as he loses his first hopes for life, Jean 't Serclaës, steeling a trembling hand, is still able to write a letter inquiring for the personal surgeon of the King of Sweden, whose skill is surely more advanced, to come up to the commandant's residence and tend to his wounds. The letter is given to Count Friedrich zu Solms to smuggle it past the ramparts and into the Swedish camp, and then handed over to the Swedish colonel Claus von Sperreuter, who, in turn, hands the message over to his liege lord, whom the colonel asks what to do. Within a few seconds of quick reading, His Majesty quickly sends his own surgeon to the commandant's guest-room.
Though the Swedish ruler is younger and injured himself (A cannon from the ramparts has shot down the horse he was riding in both hind legs, giving Gustavus but a few slight bruises as the white Persian mare fell upon him and making him tell the gunner: "This fruit ain't ripe yet!" The mare, by the way, has been put out of her misery by the encampment vet), he has kept his promise, sending his own personal surgeon to tend to the ailing enemy general, whose right femur is revealed to have been completely shattered, and who, in the meantime, as Gustavus is shot down by said cannonball, is breathing his last. As the countless shards of bone are removed one by one from his tainted flesh, the Count of Tilly bravely stands the pain, not even uttering a single whimper, used to injuries as he always has been.
Like I wrote in a later poem:
Ablaze with fever, seized with searing pain,
the old commander now contends with death.
Though he's been wounded many times before,
he can't resist: there is no hope for life.
Tears are shed by both officers and men
as the surgeon, a blond, rosy young gent,
tells them their leader is about to die.
And then he bursts into warm tears himself,
and turns his steps towards the Swedish camp:
he is the surgeon to the King of Swedes,
by his liege to the hold of Ingolstadt
sent, to tend to the wounded Count Tilly.
Gustavus seizes the physician tight,
and decides to mourn such a worthy foe,
while, on his deathbed, in the locked hold,
the elderly commander shuts his eyes,
as blue as the Bavarian skies above,
and, pale as his hair, ceases then to breathe,
lulled into rest for all eternity.
Here, the death of the Catholic generalissimo is most accurately described: he is haunted by his many war crimes and confronted with the consequences of his "well-intended" massacres (through the meaning of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector).
As his life unfolds before his eyes, we find out about his childhood: a happy story of two brothers sparring with wooden swords that takes an unexpected turn. It starts in a château on a plain where lindens grow, over sixty years before his demise...
In the late sixteenth century, the Count and Countess of Tilly, Martin and Dorothée 't Serclaës, lived at their château in southern Wallonia, in the shire of Tilly ("Lindenshire", from the French tilleul), with the two children they had had there, two boys called Jacques and Jean, the former mrore active and the latter more reserved. Though they were devout Catholics, they couldn't bear the cruelties of the Inquisition in nearby Flanders and the rest of the Low Countries. So they wrote letters to their liege lord King Philip II of Spain, and to the governor of their province, the Duke of Alba, also known as the Iron Duke, pleading to dissolve the Holy Office, or at least to lighten its punishments.
How high the longing for liberty was
surging in the Netherland nation, and with how fierce a glow hatred of
the Spanish tyrants was consuming the hearts of the people.
But everyone would also have heard
of the atrocities that threatened the provinces.
Even furious foes of Spain desired to see a
power which could be relied upon at the head of the community, even
though it were a tool of the abhorred King. The danger was so terrible
that it could not fail to alarm and summon to the common defence every
individual, no matter to what party he might belong; for the unpaid
Spanish regiments, with unbridled violence, rioting and seeking booty,
capable of every crime, every shameful deed, obedient only to their own
savage impulses, were already entering Brabant.
Now many a Spanish partisan also hoped for deliverance from the Prince of
Orange, but he took advantage of the favour of circumstances in behalf of
the great cause of liberty. Soon the "Spanish" party in the Low Countries heard that
all the heads of the royalist party who were at the helm of government
had been captured, that province after province had revolted, and would
no longer bow to the despot. Philip of Croy, Duke of Aerschot, had been
appointed military governor of Brabant.
Since they were members of the landed gentry and not courtiers, the lord and lady of Château Tilly believed they were safe from the wrath of the Crown. However, the arrival of the Iron Duke's soldiers at their very garden gate startled them one stormy day. They brought the lord's and lady's official sentence to exile. Countess Dorothée pleaded to save her life and that of her husband in exchange for their beloved children. And thus, both ten-year-old Jean and slightly older Jacques were spirited away to the Jesuit college of Châtelet. The Society of Jesus lectured them to defend Catholicism, as the only true faith, against its enemies. When Jacques had come of age, he joined the Spanish tercios of the Iron Duke in the war against the Flemish and Dutch Protestant freedom fighters. His younger brother Jean, who had previously intended to become a priest in the Jesuit order, read Jacques's letters and that their parents were safe and back at the ancestral château, and thus, deciding to fight for a good cause, he received a sword and breastplate of Spanish steel and a green doublet from his brother, casting the black robe aside, but keeping the rosary close to his heart. Jacques welcomed him into the tercios, and they fought the Insurrection of Orange together.
Though his despisal of strong drink and female company had given Jean ‘t Serclaës the reputation of a curmudgeon ever since he enlisted, he stayed true to his duty, scorning material rewards as he served generations of Habsburgs in the Low Countries, Lorraine, Hungary, and the crownlands and vassal states of the German Realm.
At 40, during a repression in Hungary, then Colonel Jean de Tilly met one Ensign Albrecht von Waldstein, from the Kingdom of Bohemia, aged barely twenty. This clever young officer with raven hair and piercing black eyes is the one who caused his downfall, and he's always been a rival to the Walloon. Now Albrecht is Gustavus's age, he has risen the highest an officer can through the ranks, and his surname is Wallenstein... Tilly thinks that, after all, he is old-fashioned and Wallenstein would make a better leader.
The old veteran has learned at Breitenfeld that he was meant to fall and to lose to a younger, more open-minded opponent. And that act of kindness provided by Gustavus makes him reflect on the Swedish ruler's character contrasted with his own. He tells the surgeon: "Your liege is truly a noble knight!"
Jean 't Serclaës is no longer confused as he had been since the Swedish ranks had tarnished his reputation.
”I hope for you, my Lord. Do not confuse me for eternity", he had said, before returning to the battlefield, that spring of 1632, at his favourite shrine. That day when he also said that prayer in the same shrine by the linden. The prayer about his impending death.
Upon recovering from his wounds earlier on in springtime, a broken Count of Tilly visited the shrine of Our Lady of Altötting, the chapel with the Virgin on his regiment's flag, and, his eyes fixed on the lindenwood Madonna, his knees bent and his rapier lowered before her, he said a prayer to the one he loves: "Grant me, when the darkest hour of separation comes, that on Bavarian ground the sun will shine for the last time upon me!"
Though Jean 't Serclaës de Tilly, withstanding the excruciating pain like only he can, has completely lost self-confidence and he feels that the end is near, he keeps on advising Elector Maximilian: "Hold Regensburg, and if it should fall, flee abroad! Hold Regensburg! Regensburg!" Then, the old Walloon makes an effort and kisses his rosary, his hand drops holding it, he shuts his eyes and stops breathing, as his rapier, that hangs from the wall, falls to the ground. The clank of Spanish steel in utter darkness, among the tears and sobs of his officers, is the last impression he receives in seventy-three long years.
The little he has got is bequeathed to his heir, his eldest (born middle) nephew Werner, who is one of his closest generals, whom he blessed by taking his hand, and to his generals, a brokenhearted Pappenheim included. The calm general has never hurt the feelings his closest lieutenant, who owes him his career, by telling Gottfried about what the latter has brought: Jean de Tilly valued his own glory less than that of his younger and more fiery second-in-command. Tears are shed by all of his officers: from Anholt, Lindeloo, Witzleben, Ruepp, and all the other old friends, the silver-haired Walloons, to the Count of Pappenheim and the Elector of Bavaria, to young Werner the heir himself... Everyone in the sickroom receives, one by one, the dying veteran's blessing.
The Swedes do show their emotions at the funeral, as the Requiem and Dies irae are chanted, when the deceased generalissimo is to be conveyed to his favourite chapel of Altötting: the church on the Tillyan regiment's flag. The prayer he made to the Virgin Mary to die in Bavaria has come true, and the shrine which will be his eternal resting place is located in the same electorate. The old warrior will forever stay by the miracle-working lindenwood Madonna to which he had always prayed and whom he had always trusted.
Even Gustavus himself is shedding tears: "Alas! The honorable old Tilly is no more!"
The inscription on his leaden coffin, with a glass lid for his embalmed features to be seen, will read (in Latin): IN ETERNAL MEMORY HE WAS RIGHTEOUS; HE DID NOT FEAR AN EVIL REPUTATION.
After sparing Ingolstadt due to the old enemy leader's death and giving the garrison the skin of the white mare, the Protestant army then captures Regensburg, the Elector flees subsequently abroad, and soon the whole Electorate of Bavaria, its capital and all, is at the Swedes' feet, and Austria before them.
The Kaiser has no other choice than playing a wild card: a younger and more open-minded, but dangerously wealthy and clever commander. Guess his surname!
