1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [25]
Foolish, because Austria couldn't intervene directly, in any event. Bohemia stood in the way, and Bohemia was allied to the USE. So, should Austria leap into the fray on the side of Saxony and Brandenburg, it would have only two options: Send an army against Wallenstein, which would reopen a war that Janos believed—and so did Emperor Ferdinand III himself, in his more honest moments—should be ended. Or, send Austrian forces on a long and roundabout march through Poland. That would require bypassing Silesia, which was now also in Wallenstein's possession. The end result would be to leave Austria largely defenseless should Wallenstein decide to reopen the war himself. Janos advocated peace with Bohemia, not because he trusted Wallenstein but because he didn't. A peace settlement would have the great virtue of directing Wallenstein's ambitions to the east instead of southward.
Such a risky gambit would also leave Austria open to attack from the Turk, which was something Drugeth feared quite a bit more than he feared an attack by Bohemia. The young sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Murad IV, was every bit as ambitious as Wallenstein but he commanded a far more powerful realm than Bohemia.
Finally, it would be shortsighted. Ferdinand's desire to intervene in the coming war was nothing more intelligent or sublime than the instinctive reaction of a dynast to the imminent destruction of two dynasties by a nation that bordered on an outright republic. What made Ferdinand's reaction particularly shortsighted was the fact that one of those dynasties—the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg—would become the most bitter enemies of the Habsburgs a century hence. That assumed, of course, that the history of this world followed that of the universe the Americans came from, which was now most unlikely.
Janos had spent hours discussing the history of that other universe with the emperor. Grantville's records concerning the Austrian empire had not been as extensive as their histories of England or even France. Still, the basic outlines were clear enough; certainly the two most salient facts, from the standpoint of a Habsburg:
Fact One. Although Austria would survive, as a small landlocked nation in central Europe, all vestiges of the empire would vanish.
Fact Two. So would the Habsburg dynasty, as a ruling family. That would be true of both branches of the family. Indeed, the Spanish branch would die out at the end of this century.
Again, it was highly unlikely that the course of history in this universe would follow that in the other. It couldn't, in fact, because in this world a third branch of the Habsburg had already come into existence in the Low Countries, something which had never happened in the universe Grantville came from.
Still, the patterns were clear. Unless the rulers of Austria carried through a profound transformation of their realm, they would not survive. And it was that task which ought to be at the forefront of Ferdinand's mind, not this atavistic desire to come to the rescue of dynasticism. On some level, Janos was certain that even Ferdinand himself knew as much.
But it was probably too much to expect that a scion of the continent's oldest and most powerful family would not suffer the occasional lapse. The thing to do now was to limit the damage until Ferdinand could come to his senses.
The best way to do that was to use Austria's oldest and most powerful enemy. "Point with alarm," was the American phrase, according to Noelle in one of her letters.
Janos got up from his chair and went over to the side table to refill his glass with wine. When he and Ferdinand met privately in this small salon the emperor used for such purposes, there were no servants present. That was a practice that Ferdinand had instituted at Drugeth's insistence.
"Beyond that, Ferdinand, I am concerned about the Turks." He lifted the bottle, offering to pour for the emperor.
Ferdinand shook his head, and gave him