Part II
Somewhere in London
1671
Winter
“Whose exact idea was it to choose the death-trap rendezvous?”
Gloucester looked up from his chair with a sort of hurt look in his eyes and drew his long travelling coat closer together – as if he drew comfort from its mouldy appearances.
“She did, O’Harry… and it isn’t a
death trap… it’s nicely secluded...”
His reply was cut short by the man leaning against the whitewashed colonnade. He too was clad in a heavy coat that reached his ankles, only just revealing a pair of dirty cavalry boots under the yellowish glow of a twin set of lanterns.
“It’s a god damned basement… and you don’t have to be old Warty himself to know that you don’t want to be fighting in a basement.”
The Englishman narrowed his, by the darkness of the cellar, blurred vision on the palavering Irishman.
“She didn’t pick a place to fight, Harry, she chose a spot to meet. An isolated spot, far away from Cavalier patrols.”
The third man, who until then, had been seated on the final step of the winding staircase leading up from the wine cellar suddenly sprung to his feet, quietly brandishing a long knife in the process. An unmistakably accent rolled of his lips in an even more stealthy way.
“That’s really great and all, but either that’s our ‘date’ coming down like a sack of potatoes or else we’ve got a bunch King’s Own who’re about to die for their country.”
Alarmed, both O’Harry and Gloucester moved to the pillars of the colonnade readying respectively a grimly looking carving knife and an ornate rapier whilst the third man took to the back of the basement.
They all heard the faint steps come nearer and nearer as someone moved down the stairs.
With a nod to the Irishman hiding behind the pillar opposite of himself, Gloucester, who until then had been waiting until the intruder was directly between the two of them, jumped forward and flung his hand around the surprisingly female features of the new-comer’s face, preventing her from screaming as O’Harry held his dagger to her throat, just to stress the point that even the slightest whimper would mean instant death.
When the only reaction their guest revealed was a rather annoyed look and an impatient shuffling of a pair of petit feet, they both withdrew back into the shadows mumbling excuses.
“O’Harry, My Lord Gloucester.” A sneer of indignation accompanied two very tense nods at their, now obscured, general directions as she acknowledged their presence. However, the sudden bout of indignation lingering on the fringes of her eyes soon made way for what the Duke feared would be an avalanche of rage once she noticed the third man.
“I thought we had agreed that there was to be no other present than ourselves at this meeting.” She said through gritted teeth, “I thought we made that
quite clear, Gloucester.”
“Milady, this is our Scottish connection… his name is…”
“I have no need for Scotsmen. Let alone uninvited Scotsmen,” the Lady interrupted. “We have to act and we have to act quickly. Old Charles is getting more and more paranoid of popish plots and now that the dairy-farmer German Kaiser has kicked the bucket, we face Gallic dominance throughout the continent. The Prince of Wales is attending Parisian services instead of the Holy Anglican Communion, by God! And you… you, my Lord Gloucester, have the nerve to bring around some cloaked Scotsman, who just as well might be reporting directly to Monck!”
She threw an angry finger in the Scot’s position. He just smiled at her instead and ever so slowly, came nearer her position between the Duke and the Irishman.
“Monck need not trouble your pretty head, Milady… he knows which way the wind is blowing.”
Now it was his turn to point a finger at her proud features.
“You know nothing of me, lass, but I could tell you of things you’d never heard of before... of things you’d never see. Like sun beams over the roof tops of Goa reflecting on the Indian Ocean.”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, Milady. Combat ships on fire off the Horn of Africa. I’ve watched the glow of a thousand muskets being fired at dawn along the misty currents of the St. Lawrence.” He took off his broad and worn hat, which until then had rendered his facial features covered in darkness, and looked her squarely in the eyes.
“There are three men in this room… one man for each of the three kingdoms. If your little enterprise is to be crowned with success…” he laughed courtly, but without pleasure and stuck his shoulders back in comical confusion “… I suggest you accustom yourself with my presence. Or else there’d most likely be fractions in the commonwealth of tomorrow. And these fractions would mean failure for our cause.”
O’Harry and Gloucester both looked at her with worry as she brooded deeply. She took a step to one side, and then to the other… wrapped her hands against the colonnade. And spoke.
“Then we have much to discuss… and very little time… you may be certain of Monck… I, on the other hand, am not.”
The Scot smiled in response.
***
The city of Treves was amongst the oldest within the German Empire and the seat of the pro-French elector, the Archbishop of Trier. It was hereto the electors gathered following the news of Karl Ludwig’s death.
When Karl Ludwig finally passed away after a prolonged illness most of the known world accepted the news with resignation as no pretender had dared to rise against Nicolas and his allies in the Palatinate, Rhine and Brandenburg. No prince within the Empire had had the guts to oppose the nomination of the French Huguenot as new emperor. However, it wasn’t as if there was a suitable opponent with enough monetary and political capital to fight the Protestants over the succession.
Spain was embroiled in a series of uprisings and skirmishes that later would evolve into full blown civil war between Carlos and Ana’s supporters whilst Maximillian in Vienna had great difficulty in even keeping his dynasty on the Austrian throne. Portugal, whose king had previously acted as a pretender to the imperial title, had also withdrawn from the race, making the Archbishop of Münster and the duke of Savoy the only Catholic princes concerned with forming an anti-Huguenot front.
As a consequence it came as no surprise that a majority of the imperial electors consisting of:
Rhine-Palatinate
Brandenburg
Saxony
Trier
…All declared their intention to vote in favour of the French king. The motives for this has already been touched somewhat, but since it’s paramount to the understanding of the election of 1671, let us refresh the reasons for each of the four pro-Huguenot electors:
A.
Brandenburg acted out of gratitude for having been granted free reins in the Baltic alongside Denmark-Norway. The Great Elector also hoped that by laying the foundation for a Bourbon imperial administration, he might be able to obtain the title of king of both his Brandenburg and Prussian possessions.
B.
Although not to the same degree as the example mentioned above, the Elector Palatinate was also held in a sort of state of gratitude towards Nicolas. The French had been instrumental in placing Frederick on the Bohemian throne and Huguenot garrisons still helped the Elector’s own men in keeping the peace in key cities such as Nuremberg and Prague. Thus the Prince-Elector Palatinate had practically little to no other alternative but to join forces with his benefactor.
C.
Saxony held a far less ambitious point of view towards the French hegemony. The government in Weimar simply believed that a strong power was needed to protect ‘German’ interests against Poles, Danes and Swedes now that the Habsburg and Gottorf emperors were no more.
D.
The most curious of all Nicolas’ supporters, and indeed maybe even the most vocal, was the Archbishop of Trier and Arch-Chancellor of Burgundy, Karl von der Leyen. He hoped that by pursuing a pro-French imperial agenda, his small duchy might just survive as an independent Catholic state even though it was crammed in on the flanks of Flanders and Luxembourg.
Whilst the imperial policy of Brandenburg resulted in the most noticeable events seen through a macro-historical perspective in the ensuring conflicts between herself and the northern powers, the agenda pursued by von der Leyen rendered the most concrete results as his domain was largely spared by the succeeding waves of debacle following the crescendo of Cosmopolitaine expansionism had worn out.
A late 16th century drawing showing the seven original prince-electors. On the left are the three ecclesiastical electors (left-right: Trier, Cologne, Mainz) and on the other side we wee the four worldly princes (left to right: Bohemia, Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg). The fourth elector was only added later during the reformation and is thus logically not depicted here.
Whilst the French allies manoeuvred the best they could on the currents of shifting imperial policy, the Government in the Louvre was not idle herself.
Understanding the potentiality of collaborating with some of the goals of the Protestant electors, Nicolas heartedly endorsed the course taken by both Brandenburg and Trier. To the French, a strong ally on the Baltic coast would be invaluable as a base for offensive spearheads deep into enemy territory if the Austrians ever were to resurge again. But by giving Berlin green light to expansionism in the periphery of both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, Nicolas also risked escalating latent animosity amongst the greater northern powers, however, that was a risk he was willing to take.
Yet one thing is to alienate powers with who you are on superficial cordial relations with, another is to upset the power balance between allies in your own proximity.
In an effort to strengthen his ties to Trier and his vassalage of Liege, Nicolas decided to intervene on the latter’s side when Flemish demands grew louder and louder for an annexation of the remaining land between the heartlands of Antwerp and their possession of Luxembourg. Following the (for the people of the Low Countries) disastrous result of the last Bourbon-Habsburg Warm, demands for territorial expansionism as a way to curb the growing stagnation of the economy grew louder and louder in the Flemish Estates General leading to a mobilisation of armed material which was completely useless in times of peace, but could have been made good use for during the actual action of the war.
This of course didn’t exactly please Paris one bit, so once the polite letters issued by the Conseil d’état had been ignored, Nicolas tasked marshal Vauban with the formation of two full corps on full war footing to be deployed as garrison forces in respectively the cities of Trier and Liege. Although unintentional he had thus more or less taken full control of the demesne of the former and forced the arch-bishop into a defensive pact on favourable terms.
Furthermore, Vauban orchestrated the organisation of different operational camps in the proximity of the Flemish border.
Not only had the coming emperor taken possession of Trier, he now also more or less dominated the Flemish Imperial Circle in all but name.
The Flemish Republic in early 1672 shown with French military districts surrounding it.
