THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XI: THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS

Gerhard and Alois join the French military, with Liselotte and Hedwig in tow as camp followers. At first, the leader is skeptic (France is Catholic, even ruled by a cardinal!), but then he learns that France is on Sweden's side against the Habsburgs for reasons other than religious (Bourbon-Habsburg power play). Liselotte discovers that she is with child, while Hedwig and Alois doubt if Gerhard will give them permission to marry in a Catholic ceremony. Furthermore, being a born Spanish subject and hell-bent French hater, the dark-haired veteran gets a massive identity crisis.
In the French encampment, Gerhard and Alois are treated like legends, having known Gustavus Adolphus and his worthy opponents. A young lieutenant by the name of René Charles Devaux (who happens to have left his homelands in the Loire Valley and a fiancée, Yvonne, from another feudal dynasty in the same area: they're childhood friends), passionate about everything surrounding Gustavus Adolphus, is fascinated by the former marauders' exploits, having been told such true stories (Breitenfeld, the crossing of the Lech) by Gerhard beside the campfire. Though he finds it absurd that Swedish officers learn how to make lace... For him, needlework is feminine.
René Devaux would rather fight in the ongoing war that killed his father than study at a university as his mother Estelle and older sisters have planned. He wants also to show Yvonne that he is a grown man and able to defend himself. René, sixteen going on seventeen, is always accompanied by his older Basque sergeant, the scarred veteran Koldo Tellagorri, to whose warnings of caution he never listens, no matter how endangered his life might be...
Now, having finally come of age, new challenges and decisions await our leading cast: first, there's the betrothal issue with Hedwig and Alois. Then, Liselotte falls ill one autumn evening, after her eldest son Karl Hermann (named after her own late father) is born. She may heal if given to drink from a certain spring consecrated to the Virgin Mary, beside a Catholic shrine. Though Gerhard proves skeptical at first, he finally considers his loyalty to Sweden the lesser of the two evils (having got to fight for a Catholic nation, but against the Habsburgs) and saves his spouse's life with the sacred draught.
Soon, word spreads around France that both the Cardinal and the King (Richelieu and Louis XIII) are deceased, leaving a widowed Queen Anne in charge of the regency and her sucessor, Louis XIV, still a young child.
They also learn that Johan Banér, the Swedish general, has died of cirrhosis, due to his ethylic addiction, not far from Lützen, and that a once more free Torstensson is the new commander of the Swedish Army.
That winter, in the Loire Valley, a double wedding takes place in a local church: René and Yvonne, as well as Alois and Hedwig, right before Christmas. They are garrisoned in Yvonne's family estate, where they celebrate a French Catholic winter holiday.
In spring, the young lieutenant says farewell to his betrothed, and Hedwig starts to fear that she may be with child: she states she is "too young". 
The Royal French Army is on a winning streak: on the 19th of May 1643, they defeat the Castilian Habsburg tercios at Rocroi, on a slightly wooded plain in eastern France. It is a landslide victory, a Gallic Breitenfeld (the Habsburgs lose due to obsolete tactics and weaponry once more), eagles (Habsburg flags) are captured by the dozen, and so are prisoners, which are soon sent away up north. When the camp is scoured after the battle, the spoils of these Tercios are comparable to those captured at Breitenfeld. However, the sight of tercios has made Alois think of his comrades fallen on the plains near Leipzig, and he needs to get cheered up during the victory celebrations.
Sadly, René is shuttled back to the encampment, wounded in the right side, with a punctured lung. He is conveyed from the war front back to the chateau, where the surgeon is as skeptical of his recovery as another surgeon has been in Gerhard’s case and his young spouse tends to his wounds. The rest of the French officer class fears that he may die. And so do his good old sergeant and his lovely bride.
As the French beat up the Habsburgs on the front, René attempts to return into the fray by moonlight. He doesn't go too far: he is struck by searing pain and falls to the ground. Yvonne's maidservants discover his lifeless body in the garden, beneath a trellis of crimson roses. The young lady is about to give the instructions for his funeral, and the whole shire is in mourning, when Yvonne notices that the lieutenant's heart is still faintly beating, and he has slightly quivered. So, René has got to lay in bed some more. He sleeps soundly and drinks heartily, having learned his lesson. And he even starts to make some lace!
In winter, Alois and Gerhard show up once more with their unit, their wives and three children (Karl Hermann and Elsa, as well as Hedwig's so far only child Eleonora) to garrison at the young couple's place once more. Having dislocated his right shoulder when he collapsed beneath the trellis, the young Frenchman can't return to the war front a disabled officer, deciding to stay in his homeland with his spouse plus best friend.
On the other hand, Tellagorri, who lost his right hand at Rocroi, is determined to become Gerhard’s servant… after having told the Ringstettens a secret in private, a secret that they won’t tell anyone on behalf of the sergeant’s life: he was actually in unrequited love with his lieutenant, to whom he says farewell with a passionate kiss before joining the Ringstetten-Tarlenheim entourage.
Having heard Koldo explain that Queen Christina of Sweden, who has meanwhile come of age, is seeking peace... our heroes wonder what will happen next. Unlike René and Yvonne, they have nowhere to go, and more children for each year. Luckily, due to Cromwell's persecution of entertainers, a new kind of business is growing big in France...

THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA X: OLD FRIENDS, NEW FRENCH

Previously on the Ringstetten Saga:

In winter, Gerhard and Liselotte catch fish, trap hares, hunt crows with slingshots, and melt snow in a kettle to drink. Natasha dies while trying to protect her leader from a falling ice stalactite in a cave, getting impaled and asking the lieutenant to drink her blood if he can't wait until the snow-water du jour has cooled. It is disgusting, but Gerhard has no other choice. The bloodless carcass is subsequently used as bait for catching more crows and fish.

Meanwhile the same winter, in December 1633, during the Wallensteins' extravagant and outrageous Christmas revels, the Catholics lay siege to Friedland,  threatening to burn the chateau to the ground if the traitor Wallenstein does not surrender. The beleaguered duke flees abroad with his closest generals and officers, leaving the rest of the shire's residents, his wife and daughter among them, at the mercy of the Kaiser's men and their blazing flames. To make things worse, the garrison rises up in arms and sides with the Kaiser...

Luckily, Alois, who has regained his memories and witnessed a similar scene during the storming of Magdeburg (he couldn't save that seamstress and her daughter), conducts a daring plan to leave a burning Schloss Friedland with Isa and Thekla in tow, as the whole province is left to the mercy of the Kaiser's ranks. He succeeds, but they are captured by the Kaiser's men in the woods three days later, and all three are subsequently sent to a watchtower dungeon somewhere in the southern Rhineland. 
There, the lady and her daughter, broken down by excruciating torture on the rack, fall ill with high fever. Alois, the girl, and her mother survive, standing strong in face of privation. They manage to have the commandant send a letter of pardon, written by the maiden, to the Kaiser.
Then, weeks or maybe months later, Isabella and Thekla are surprisingly set free by order of the Kaiser himself, and they leave for a little chateau near Friedland, a gift from His Imperial Majesty (quite a consolation prize, after losing their father and husband).  
And then, winter changes into spring...

One day in the late spring of 1635, the prisoners suddenly hear loud and clear cannon shots: the Swedes are besieging their prison!

In the nearby woods, a familiar rag-tag band of raven-folk, dwindled to three people (a blond young man and two girls) are waiting for the outcome of this confrontation. Guess their names!

They are actually Gerhard, Liselotte and Hedwig von Ringstetten, if you haven't forgotten their plight. They have recently been informed that Wallenstein has been assassinated at the governor's in Eger by his own closest officers on imperial decree (the Kaiser sure knew what kind of person Albrecht was...), but Austria still has the upper hand: the third generalissimo, after Tilly and Wallenstein, is the Kaiser's eldest son and heir, Archduke Ferdinand: far younger, but still a whiz in the arts of war. Now the Swedish ranks are decimated and in really dire straits!
So Gerhard and Liselotte, and Hedwig too, witness the Swedish army recovering its lost potential when taking the infamous watchtower. Out of a dungeon, through a hole made by a cannonball, leaps a dark-haired and emaciated prisoner. He comes across the three marauders, then falls unconscious in Hedwig's arms. She recognizes him as her long-lost fiancé, Alois. Now the quartet is reunited once more!
All four live as outcasts on the spoils of war, on cakes and ale, on sekt and Rioja red, on marzipan and Cognac brandy, on golden and silver treasure, following the trail of victorious Johan Banér, until they spot a victorious army, with blue and golden flags, on the east bank of the Rhine. Upon approaching, they discover than the flag has lilies instead of crowns: these ranks are not Swedish!
Gerhard and Alois join the French military, with Liselotte and Hedwig in tow as camp followers. At first, the leader is skeptic (France is Catholic, even ruled by a cardinal!), but then he learns that France is on Sweden's side against the Habsburgs for reasons other than religious (Bourbon-Habsburg power play). Liselotte discovers that she is with child, while Hedwig and Alois doubt if Gerhard will give them permission to marry in a Catholic ceremony. Furthermore, being a born Spanish subject and hell-bent French hater, the dark-haired veteran gets a massive identity crisis.
In the French encampment, Gerhard and Alois are treated like legends, having known Gustavus Adolphus and his worthy opponents. A young lieutenant by the name of René Charles Devaux (who happens to have left his homelands in the Loire Valley and a fiancée, Yvonne, from another feudal dynasty in the same area: they're childhood friends), passionate about everything surrounding Gustavus Adolphus, is fascinated by the former marauders' exploits, having been told such true stories (Breitenfeld, the crossing of the Lech) by Gerhard beside the campfire.
Though he finds it absurd that Swedish officers learn how to make lace: For him, needlework is feminine.

René Devaux would rather fight in the ongoing war that killed his father than study at a university as his mother Estelle and older sisters have planned. He wants also to show Yvonne that he is a grown man and able to defend himself. René, sixteen going on seventeen, is always accompanied by his older Basque sergeant, the scarred veteran Koldo Tellagorri, to whose warnings of caution he never listens, no matter how endangered his life might be...