1635_ Cannon Law - Eric Flint [136]
Any more military help would have to come from the militias, and they were a weak reed at best. Many of those would be neither use nor ornament against formed troops. The rest would simply remain in their homes.
There would be no assistance from any of the few papal troops that remained stationed near Rome. By the time they mustered and marched, the Spanish would be here and about their business. It went without saying that everyone expected there would be a sack. The last one was only just past living memory. There were ways and means of hiding what one had, of that Barberini had no doubt, but by far the simplest method of avoiding the horrors of a soldiery unleashed on a town was to pile belongings on whatever could be found with wheels and leave. Or simply carry it. Barberini had seen one family, every member of which from the grandmother to the toddlers had been carrying a bundle, heading north into the Lazio countryside.
The general who had spoken earlier—whatever his name was—had been speaking while Barberini had thus been moping quietly to himself, and was winding up his rather gloomy presentation. Spain had sent perhaps as many as ten thousand troops from Naples, and there were five hundred professional soldiers in Rome to resist them. The remainder of Rome's defense was whatever the citizens managed through their own unaided efforts. And they were fleeing.
Rome's fortifications were, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. His Holiness had a program of construction in prospect, but very little of the work had been done. Indeed, the scaffolds around Castel Sant'Angelo would have to be brought down over night lest they provide the Spaniards with ready-made scaling ladders.
Chapter 31
Rome
Frank heard Benito coughing in the dawn mist as he trudged along the street to get a look back at the night's work. He'd seen Piero handing around the handrolled cigarettes that Harry Lefferts had made popular, and had thought about trying to issue a health warning. The tobacco that they got down-time was way, way stronger and harsher than Frank remembered from back up-time. When he'd thought about it, it had seemed hypocritical. He'd been thinking wistfully about having a smoke himself to calm his nerves and settle his stomach.
Just not of tobacco.
He reached the corner of the next block down from the Committee building, about the farthest away you could stand and actually see it, given how crooked the streets were in Rome. If the rumors were right, he was standing about where a Spanish soldier would when he first caught sight of it.
So, he thought, I've been marching all day. Maybe had to fight a couple of times getting here. Imagining being tired wasn't hard. He'd gotten an hour or so's nap in just now, and it hadn't done him any good at all. He'd been running himself ragged-assed since yesterday afternoon. Which meant the footsore and pissed-off part wasn't exactly tough to get into either.
Oh yeah, he thought, I'm a jock, too. He hunched forward a little and let his arms hang loose. Knuckles down, to drag on the floor. Enough method acting, he thought, and chuckled to himself.
Right now, the light was in his eyes. The sun wasn't over the roofline yet, but the sky was bright and the morning mist that had come up off the river hadn't burnt away yet. The diffuse and silvery light hurt his eyes and made details hard to pick out. Later on, there'd be early summer glare, and maybe smoke. And maybe we'll make sure there is smoke, he thought. Bound to be someone who can tend a smudge. Me, if no one else. Not that he'd ever thought that the gardening he'd picked