1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [163]
War in the seventeenth century was a thing of marches and counter-marches and, most of all, sieges. Sieges big and small. Sieges of cities, sieges of towns. Sometimes, sieges of villages or even hamlets.
A furious assault launched across open fields? At any time, much less February in the middle of a snowstorm?
It just wasn’t done. Too imprudent—and being prudent was in the nature of a mercenary. There was nothing at stake except pay, after all.
But the soldiers in the ranks of the Third Division didn’t think that way, and they had a commander who didn’t think that way either. Stearns’ inexperience was now actually working in his favor, just as it was working in favor of his entire division.
Because they were veterans, by now, even if they still didn’t think of themselves that way. Many of them—more than half, probably—had fought at Ahrensbök. The greatest battle on the continent since Breitenfeld.
Stearns himself hadn’t been on the field that day. But even in the time since he’d taken command of the division, the Third had fought the battles of Zwenkau and Zielona Góra. And while they hadn’t fought at Lake Bledno, that was only because the Poles had withdrawn from the field before they arrived. They would have fought—and not one man in the division doubted for a moment that they would have whipped them, too. Piss on the famous Grand Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski. Just another bum to be beaten senseless.
Just as, tomorrow, they were going to piss on the famous Johan Banér and beat his army senseless.
The soldiers of the Third Division were full of confidence. Confidence in themselves, confidence in their weapons and equipment, confidence in their officers; perhaps most of all, confidence in their commander. They’d been in more battles than most soldiers of the day, and they’d won every one of them. They knew everything they needed to know in order to win a battle—and hadn’t been soldiers long enough to learn all of the ways an army could fail and usually did fail.
Colonel Duerr was in a splendid mood, actually. If he survived another day—no way to be sure of that, of course—he’d be looking back on it fondly for the rest of his life. Great victories came rarely to a soldier, even one like him whose career had now spanned three decades.
After night fell, Mike spent the better part of three hours moving among his men, visiting each unit around its campfires. He had nothing particularly intelligent to say, but the soldiers didn’t need a speech, much less a lecture. They just needed to see their commander, see that he knew what they would all be doing come dawn—most of all, see that he was completely confident that they could do it.
Jeff Higgins spent less than two hours at the same task. First, because he only had a regiment’s worth of men to deal with. Secondly, because unlike Mike Stearns he wasn’t comfortable striding around the stage. Any stage.
He didn’t really need to do it anyway. No regiment in the division had higher morale this night than the Hangman. They were ready to go at Banér’s throat. Many of the standard bearers weren’t even planning to carry the regiment’s colors into battle the next day. They’d made jury-rigged substitutes, straw figures supposed to be Banér hanging from a gibbet. They’d carry the gibbets themselves into the fight, with their straw Swedish generals blowing in the wind along with the snow.
Thorsten Engler spent even less time at the task. No more than forty-five minutes. First, because he only had two hundred men under his command instead of a thousand. Secondly, because the morale of flying artillery units was a bit eccentric. The volley gun crews