IV.
1 January 1577 – 1 January 1578
1 January 1577 – 1 January 1578
The Norse people had flung themselves far and wide in their period of expansion in the late 800s to early 1000s. Norse names still predominated in places like Scotland and Brittany. And the ruling classes in Northern Europe all spoke one or another of a Norse language. In Northeastern Europe, the Norse had essentially formed a small ruling class over an assortment of Baltic, Finnic and Slavic tribes.
The homelands of the Northern European peoples—the Swedes, the Norwegians and the Danes—had been united into the single kingdom of Östergötland, or East Geatland, under the auspices of the noble Sture family. The formal name for this kingdom, and the name which the kingdom used for itself in its own legal literature and propaganda, was the Union of Norrköping, which city served as the capital of this kingdom.
The other two Norse-ruled states, though, were ‘Sweden’ and Garderike.
The Kingdom of ‘Sweden’—so called because historically the seat of its honour had been in Svealand before its forcible incorporation into the Union of Norrköping—lay primarily on the Pruthenian Baltic coast. The Swedes formed only a small upper-crust ruling class there, however: its subjects were primarily Eastern Germans, Prussian Balts, Pomeranian Slavs, Polabian Slavs (Sorbs), several enclaves of Baltic Greeks and Baltic Frenchmen, and several smaller enclaves of Ashkenazi Jews.
A similar case held true in Garderike. Although the court language and culture in Garderike was similarly ‘Swedish’, the Norse presence in Garderike was confined only to a handful of cities—Holmgard, Aldeigja, Jarisleifsborg and Tyrveshafn, with smaller enclaves of noble Swedes in Rostofa and Surdal. The populace of Garderike was primarily made up of East Slavs—Rus’—in the southeast; of Finns and Karelians in the northwest; and of inland Estonians, like the Čudové, in the southwest.
‘I haven’t forgotten our promise, you know,’ Artemie told Otakar.
‘Oh?’
‘You introduced me to Naďa,’ Artemie said. ‘I wanted to do something good for you in return.’
Artemie stepped back outside the military tent and came back less than a minute later with a young woman in tow. She was of the Čuď extraction, clearly—her rosy-fair skin and round face, topped by a sheaf of gold hair, readily attested to her being a local. Otakar stood and bowed to her politely; she courtesied in response.
‘Otakar,’ Artemie told him, ‘allow me to introduce you to Meelike Paijkull.’
‘How do you do, Miss Paijkull?’
Meelike made a soft-spoken, polite answer, and Artemie took Otakar aside. ‘I met her at the Orthodox temple hereabouts; she was praying quite piously. I noticed she had no kerchief, and no ring on her finger. You see she is quite polite, well-born, soft-spoken. And I also know what your tastes are like.’
Otakar returned a look to Meelike. She was indeed well inside his enfilade, so to speak. Blonde hair, rosy cheeks, a quite generous figure, a modest bearing…
‘I thank you, Artemie. Thank you very dearly!’
‘Well, she’s all yours, my friend,’ Artemie winked. ‘You two be good, mind.’
~~~
Meelike was enchanting. Otakar enjoyed spending time with the Estonian woman, who was not only mild and calm and sweet of temper, but also knowledgeable—she spoke enough of the local Slavic tongue to make herself easily understood to Otakar, and was able to get her meaning across effectively even when linguistic difficulties arose—and learned. She understood Holy Scripture, and was able to put forward decided and well-considered opinions on literature, on poetry, even on physics and mathematics. Otakar was well and truly taken with Meelike, and she received his attentions with pleasure—but Otakar was decorous and jealous of Meelike’s honour, and did not importune her with requests too weighty upon her virtue or her person.
Still, that didn’t stop them from dining together, dancing together, going for walks together, going to church together—in short, spending all manner of private moments in each other’s company where the two of them could converse upon topics intimate to themselves. It was after one such dinner at camp when Moravian Crown Prince excused himself from the table, and Meelike did likewise not long afterward. There was some understanding laughter from the table, but no suspicion of anything untoward.
Meelike, however, did not trace Otakar’s steps directly, but instead went into his tent—which at the present had no other occupant but herself. She went over to his desk, and saw there a letter which he was composing home to his mother and father and younger sisters. If she had cared to read this, she might have seen herself described in glowing terms fit to make her blush, but she leafed past this to the sheets of paper underneath.
There, she found descriptions of Moravia’s war plans in Garderike, as well as previous letters that Otakar had received from home. She also discovered maps that showed the routes that Moravia’s armies had taken across the Rus’ lands to get to Garderike, its occupations of Galician lands, the current positions of its armies. Quickly, she took a blank sheet of paper, and the ready ink and quill, and began to jot down notes from several of these documents onto it. Then she took this paper, folded it neatly several times, and then placed it under the collar of her gown, within her cleavage. It was crucial that this document not be discovered by her present hosts. Still, her presence would be missed soon enough. She needed to get back to Otakar, and come up with a plausible excuse as to not being able to find him, before they went back into dinner.
~~~
Near Brassel, where one of the Garderikean armies was camped, a young Swedish musketeer arrived on horseback, dismounted and was given admission into the camp, and presented a privy missive to a sharp, young tow-headed Estonian officer with a neatly-clipped moustache.
‘Thank you, Björn,’ said the Estonian. ‘Your assistance is, as usual, invaluable.’
The Garderikean Swede snapped a sharp salute and retired to his duties, while the Estonian officer unfolded the paper and read, a small smile of satisfaction creeping over his face.
‘Sweetheart back home?’ asked Lieutenant Magnusson next to him.
‘Hardly,’ said the Estonian officer. ‘Still, my younger sister keeps me… well-informed. Goodness me, she’s gotten quite close to the Prince! Look here—there’s a route here that is unused by the Moravian supply lines… and it leads all the way up to Olomouc. She’s even sketched out a map there for us. Bless Meelike. She might well have made my whole career with this intelligence… and saved our arses in this wretched war!’
‘Your orders, Captain Paijkull?’ asked Magnusson.
‘What else?’ Paijkull answered. ‘We march on Olomouc.’
The Garderikean army showed up in the Morava Valley in January 1577. By the time they arrived on the outskirts of Olomouc, the Estonian officer Joosip Paijkull had received a battlefield commission to the rank of general, and was leading the armies of Garderike in a broad assault on the walls. The interior of Moravia having been emptied of troops, the enemy had managed to penetrate all of their defences, including those which had been sent to relieve Brassel.
Kráľ Tomáš went to the walls together with the elderly Hubert Kozár, and hurriedly issued the order to recall the First Army from the frontlines to mount a relief of Olomouc. The First Army having been apprised of the situation, they selected from among their ranks an officer for a similar battlefield commission—this one being Ruslav z Rožmberka.
Ruslav z Rožmberka arrayed his troops against Joosip Paijkull on the approach to the North Bridge that passed through Týneček and Chválkovice. He noted at once that the Garderikeans had about twice as many pieces of cannon as he did, and the strength in infantry to defend them effectively. Naturally: Paijkull had prepared for a siege! What he did not have at his disposal were large numbers of mobile troops to field—cavalry. Still, somewhere around four thousand guns were nothing to sneeze at. As a result, Ruslav used the terrain to his advantage.
The Moravians weren’t going to break the Garderikean siege formations with enfilading fire—not with only two thousand cannon to their four thousand. So Ruslav used the old Johanit tactics of erecting mobile barricades with whatever he had to hand—spare planks, fallen timber, old carts—and setting up the houfnice behind them from the high ground to the west of Týneček. The cavalry would break into two and approach from either side of these hills—one through the village, and one from the side of the river by Černovír, hopefully catching the besiegers in a pincer.
Thunder rolled over the Morava Valley and plumes of smoke trailed into the grey sky. Snow erupted in plumes where the balls struck. The infantry began to advance on each side across the field, exchanging musket fire over embankments and across snowbound hedgerows. Then came the Moravian cavalry charge.
Owing to the snows, the horses were slowed a bit once they came off the main roads—but the charges were still effective. The cannon were not able to reorient themselves in time to avoid the flanking action; many of them were destroyed and some were captured. The infantry held off better, but having to deal with enemies on three sides threw them into confusion.
In the end, Joosip Paijkull had to beat a retreat. But not before he had instilled terror into the hearts of the residents of Olomouc, that for a second time in two hundred years the walls of Olomouc might well have been breached.
~~~
Ruslav z Rožmberka was left to give pursuit to the retreating Gardarikeans, while the inner Zhromaždenie was left with the task of figuring out how on earth such a massive breach of military intelligence could have happened in the first place. Paijkull could not have penetrated this far into Moravia of his own knowledge without alerting Moravian troops or auxiliaries along the resupply routes. He had to have gotten help from inside. But who in the court would be that disloyal?
Some eyes were cast at Rožmberka’s kinsman Vladimír—not only a Roman Catholic coreligionist of the Gardarikean royals, but also massively disgruntled at having been ousted from his position as military adviser and still knowledgeable about the inner workings of Moravia’s armies. Yet the elder Rožmberka readily agreed to a search and investigation of his belongings and property and recent movements—which, despite a tailor-fine thoroughness, turned up nothing.
Investigators then turned to the armies themselves. One commander was able to find the route across Galicia that the Garderikeans had used between Holmgard and Brassel. This route led unfortunately back to the camps of the Second Army. The implications were troubling to the Kráľ. The two ranking officers in the Second Army, the ones who had enough knowledge to have kept Paijkull that well-informed, were the son of the late Matej Štefaník… and the Crown Prince.
‘Môj Kráľ,’ spoke Hubert Kozár, ‘I have some interesting news from the west—and a potential opportunity.’
‘Is this really the time, Kozár?’ asked Tomáš irritably. At the moment, he really didn’t want to think he’d been deceived in the character of his own son.
‘With respect, vaše Veličenstvo,’ Kozár reminded the king, ‘there is no time like the present. The question of our border defences against East Francia, despite the current war—nay, because of it—should not be neglected.’
‘Alright,’ grumped Tomáš. ‘Go on, then.’
Hubert Kozár cleared his throat. ‘The town of Zhořelec, on the other side of the present border with East Francia, has long had cultural ties with the Moravian Kingdom, as I believe you know, dating back to the times of King Pravoslav. Suffice it to say, the Sorbs of Zhořelec, observing your dealings with Drježdźany, have come to the unsurprising conclusion that your rule is preferable to the misrule they suffer at the hands of the nemcy. Now, given the vast array of valid historical claims that Moravia has to that land, we could press the issue now, while East Francia is still distracted with wars to the north of us.’
Tomáš hesitated, glaring at his kancelár.
‘I need hardly remind vase Veličenstvo,’ Hubert Kozár pressed gently, ‘of the need to fortify the western border. We now have a willing partner in that regard, in the commons of Zhořelec.’
Tomáš gave his grudging assent. ‘But we do not act upon it,’ he said, ‘until we have dealt with another security matter, a trifle more pressing.’
‘Understood, urodzený Pán,’ said the kancelár.
~~~
The spread of the printing press was continuing apace across Europe. Pomerania had now embraced the technology, with its Greek- and Polish-language presses beginning to print a sizeable volume of literature. And the Kingdom of (West) Francia had recently opened a book-market of an international scope, to which Moravian printers had surprisingly been invited to bring their wares. Of particular interest to the French printers were the copies of the Latin manuscript Animadversiones de occasu ossium, a medical text of considerable value that had been authored by a Norman Frenchwoman and queen-consort of considerable importance to Moravian history.
The Moravian First Army pushed the Garderikeans, firmly and finally, out of Brassel. And when the missive to the Second Army was delivered concerning the investigation into the breach of military intelligence, it did not take Otakar or Artemie long to figure out the source. Meelike Paijkull attempted to flee, but she was shot dead by one of the camp watch.
‘I trusted her,’ Otakar said bitterly. ‘I am to blame.’
‘No more so than I am,’ Artemie assured him. ‘She had me utterly fooled as well.’
Otakar took the news of Meelike’s perfidy quite ill, refusing to eat for a full week after the discovery was made. It had hurt not to be valued by women in Olomouc such as Imriška Múdra. It hurt that much more to have been used and betrayed, in such a treacherous way, by someone he’d trusted, liked… and even grown to love a bit. Artemie at first tried to comfort Otakar, and indeed to apologise to his friend for his oversight and his mistake about Meelike’s character—but he quickly ascertained that Otakar wished to be left alone.
The war wound to a close. Galicia was forced to give up the central Polish holdings of Krakov and Chenciny to Moravia, as well as pay an exorbitant sum for the prosecution of the war. Not long after that, Galicia concluded its peace with Great Rus’, which involved relinquishing the Podolie as well as the Vlach-speaking territories of Yassy, Bukovina and Vasiluj. The Second Army made its way home, but it was not in a mood of triumph.
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