1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [30]
Torstensson was looking embarrassed again. Given the nature of the man, that was not something that Mike found at all comforting. The truth was, he did have an excellent staff.
"Our own army," Mike continued, "—the USE army proper, I mean—officially numbers twenty-seven thousand men. Three divisions, each with a complement of nine thousand officers and enlisted soldiers. Of course, we suffer from desertion, illness and drunkenness too. But certainly not to the same extent as the Saxons. Many of our soldiers are volunteers enlisted by the CoCs, motivated by ideology rather than money. So I've been told by—your words, gentlemen, not mine—that same experienced and excellent staff, that we'll be able to bring at least twenty thousand men onto that battlefield. Probably more like twenty-two or even twenty-three thousand."
Knyphausen and the duke looked away. Torstensson cleared his throat. Mike pressed on relentlessly.
"Then, of course, we need to add the forces which Gustav Adolf will bring onto the field. Even allowing for the troops he'll leave stationed against Bernhard and the French in the Rhineland provinces and in the Oberpfalz against Bavaria, he should still be able to muster a Swedish army numbering around twenty thousand men. And that doesn't include the sizeable forces that some of the provincial rulers might bring. I was told by my experienced and capable staff—such a charming phrase, too bad I didn't coin it myself—that Wilhelm V of Hesse-Kassel will bring at least seven thousand additional men."
"Closer to eight, actually," said Torstensson. Again, he cleared his throat. "Michael . . ."
"The way I figure it, we'll have around fifty thousand men facing an army not much more than half that size. And that's not allowing for the difference in command. Myself excluded—and allowing for my experienced and capable staff—the quality of our commanding officers greatly exceeds that of the Saxons."
"Von Arnim's pretty good," said Knyphausen stoutly.
The plump duke sniffed. "He's not the Lion of the North. Nor is he Lennart, for that matter."
Torstensson had been holding his breath for the past few seconds. Now, he let it out in a rush. "Michael, enough! As you have obviously already deduced, the emperor will not be with us on the field. He and Wilhelm are marching instead into Brandenburg. The USE army will face the Saxons alone."
By now, Mike had figured out the truth. But he was tired of people dancing around it—starting with Gustav Adolf himself. He was damn well going to get someone to admit it out loud.
"In short, he proposes to divide his forces in order to fight two enemies simultaneously. A military error so basic and egregious—even a neophyte like me knows that much—that it is inconceivable that a general as demonstrably superb as Gustav Adolf would commit it—"
Brunswick-Lüneburg started to say something but Mike drove over it. "—unless he had what a suspicious soul would call ‘ulterior motives.'"
This time Torstensson tried to interrupt but Mike drove over him too. "And the only such motive a suspicious soul like me can discern is that Gustav Adolf is bound and determined to defeat Saxony and Brandenburg quickly enough to leave most of the campaigning season available for some other purpose. Such purpose, of course, being an invasion of Poland."
He paused, finally.
After a moment, Torstensson said: "Well. Yes. That is his plan." A bit hastily he added, "We have it on good authority that the Poles will be sending a contingent to join the Saxons. So you might say they will begin the hostilities themselves."
Mike chuckled, quite humorlessly. "Exactly how big a contingent are we talking about, Lennart?"
"Not . . . big."
The duke's chuckle, on the other hand, had some real humor in it. "To be precise, one small unit of hussars. But the commander is an Opalinski."
"In other words, a pretext." Mike gave Torstensson a level gaze. "I don't suppose there's any point in expressing my conviction that launching a major war against Poland