1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [128]
"Whether by good fortune or good intelligence, Koniecpolski was able to trap Hesse-Kassel and his army against the Warta. Which," Mike continued grimly, "was already overflowing its banks and had them pretty well mired."
He took a deep breath. "They got hammered badly. Torstensson's assessment is that they'll be out of the campaign altogether for at least a week. Torstensson thinks Koniecpolski will now try to come south, maneuvering around Gustav Adolf in order to attack one of the USE divisions. Meanwhile, von Thurn's column—that's about half the Swedish army, don't forget—is on the wrong side of the Warta. There's no way they'll be able to cross the river and come into the fight until the river ebbs and they can get their engineers to build some bridges."
One of the colonels frowned. That was Albert Zingre, a Swiss mercenary who commanded the 1st Brigade's Freiheit Regiment.
"Excuse me, General, but if Koniecpolski has come south, then he's left Gorzów undefended. Why not simply take the city and use its bridges? There are two of them, I believe."
Mike shook his head. "Von Thurn did take the city—only to discover that Polish engineers had destroyed the bridges two hours earlier."
The more he heard, the more Jeff was getting worried. What all this added up to was that the Polish grand hetman had launched his campaign as soon as the weather turned sour, which indicated superb planning on his part. Within less than two days, he'd then either destroyed or put out of action two-thirds of Gustav Adolf's own forces. And now, apparently, he was trying to move around what was left of the Swedish army in order to attack the USE Army. He was probably aiming for the most northerly of that army's three columns, Knyphausen's First Division. And if he caught the division before it got reinforced, he'd have a three-to-one or possibly even a four-to-one numerical superiority.
That assumed Koniecpolski had managed to keep his entire army concentrated, but Jeff figured that was a pretty safe bet given the man's track record thus far. What the grand hetman was doing was taking advantage of his enemy's dispersed formations in order to defeat them in detail.
The scheme wouldn't have worked in good weather, of course, since Gustav Adolf would have gotten wind of what Koniecpolski was up to almost at once. He'd had every available plane in the air force keeping up continuous reconnaissance in daylight hours since the campaign began. In retrospect, it was obvious that this was the reason Koniecpolski had been retreating before Gustav Adolf's advancing forces without putting up a major fight. He'd simply left garrisons in the major towns to delay his enemy and buy time in the hope that the weather would change—which, at this time of year, wasn't unlikely at all.
Jesus H. Christ. It was one thing to read about "great captains of war," it was another thing entirely to have to face one of the damn monsters.
All this time, without realizing it consciously, Jeff had been reassured by the fact that he had one of the great captains on his side: Gustav Adolf. But even the greatest generals—maybe especially the greatest generals—could get too ambitious.
Remember Napoleon?
Jeff was pretty sure Gustav Adolf had been guilty of that. Instead of mounting a slower and more deliberate campaign, keeping his forces together instead of dividing them into half a dozen separated columns, he'd relied too much on his advantages and had underestimated his opponent.
"That's the situation, gentlemen," Mike said. "Torstensson is with the Second Division and he's bringing it up to reinforce Knyphausen. In the meantime, he's ordered Knyphausen to stand his ground and prepare for a battle. Gustav Adolf, of course, is moving his units south to join Knyphausen also."
Mike glanced at the windows along the upper walls. The tavern was in a half-basement, not a full basement.