1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [94]
Smuggling was even more of a national pastime for Spaniards than bull-fighting. How did the king imagine that it would be possible to keep out copies of Grantville’s texts on Spanish and Portuguese history, when smugglers routinely handled livestock? All the more so because there weren’t that many of those texts, and most of them were just a few pages excerpted from encyclopedias.
A few pages, alas, were more than enough to encourage Portuguese and Catalan rebels to persist in their nefarious activity. In that cursed world the Americans came from, Portugal and Catalonia had rebelled in 1640—not more than five years from now. And while the Catalan revolt failed in its purpose, it had been a very close thing. As it was, Spain lost much of the province to France.
Not surprisingly, the Catalan malcontents in this universe were simply being encouraged to try harder.
Fortunately, the king was distracted by other thoughts. Blessedly, by angry thoughts toward someone other than his chief minister. “It’s because of that fucking Borja, isn’t it?”
This was not safe terrain, certainly, but it was safer than the terrain they’d been treading on. “Yes, Your Majesty, I’m afraid so. Cardinal Borja’s…ah, papal adventure—”
“His adventure? Say better, his lunacy—no, his rampant vanity—better still, his plunge into Satanic pride!”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Well said! Whatever we call it, though, his actions have stirred up a great deal of unrest through Italy, including in our own possessions.”
“Indeed.” The king’s glare was still ferocious, but at least it now had a different focus. “Explain to me again, Gaspar, why I can’t have the bastard assassinated?”
“Ah, well… That would just compound the damage, I’m afraid. As I said before, Your Majesty, Borja’s precipitate action has simply left us with few options, and none of them very good. If we kill him—if anyone kills him—then there’s little doubt that Urban will take back the papacy. And he’s…ah…”
“Now bitterly hostile to us on the picayune grounds that we overthrew him and murdered several dozen of his bishops and cardinals, including his nephew Francesco.”
“Well. Yes.”
The king spent the next minute or so calling down a variety of divine ills and misfortunes on the person of Cardinal Gaspare de Borja y de Velasco. The tirade spilled over into outright blasphemy—not that even the boldest of Spain’s inquisitors would have said a word on the subject, with the king in his current mood. It was notable also that at no time did Philip IV refer to Borja by any title other than profane and profoundly vulgar ones. He certainly never used the man’s newly-minted title of “pope.”
When he finally wound down, most of his fury seemed to have been spent. It was replaced by a sort of sullen resignation that was not pleasant to deal with, but no longer really dangerous.
“The essence of the matter is that we have no resources to do anything significant about the heretics. The USE crumbles—the same swine who—ah! Never mind! It’s too aggravating to even think about! We just have to sit here, on our hands, and do nothing.”
Olivares decided to interpret that as the king’s summation rather than a question. That way he could avoid, once again, having to say “Yes, we can’t” where the king wanted to hear “No, we can.”
Brussels, capital of the Netherlands
The king in the Netherlands—Fernando I, as he now titled himself, being the founder of his new dynasty—looked around the conference table at his closest advisers.
“We’re all agreed, then? We will take no advantage of the current civil conflict in the USE. Beyond, of course, using it to apply more leverage in existing negotiations over trade matters and minor border disputes.”
They’d decided on that term toward the beginning of the conference. “Civil conflict,” as opposed to “civil war.” There were important connotations involved.
The advisers, in turn, all looked