The Spoils of War

[Lady_Mornington]

(Please note that this is a semi-closed thread for Subo and myself. In case you are interested in joining, do so by PM)

Maikäfer flige
Vater ist im Kriege
Mutter ist im Pommerland
Pommerland is abgebrannt​

The rhyme was heard over the din of the campsite and even though the voices of the children reciting it were jolly enough, the meaning of it made Johanna shrudder. The mayflies were indeed buzzing around, Father had gone to the war and Pommerania was a man-made desert.

She looked across the fire where she boiled water for the supper. Father was sitting across from her, cleaning the cumbersome mechanism of his matchlock musket and smoking his pipe. Sitting next to him was her brother Heinrich who tried to act as self-assured as Father did. Johanna knew his mind well enough to see that he desperatly wanted to emulate the way he carried himself.

The war seemed to have lasted forever, Johanna could scarecely recall a time when the armies had not marched back and forth across the German states. She and Heinrich had grown up in the camps, they had watched the soldiers readying themselves for battle, seen the injured having their limbs cut of by the surgeons and the dead being heaped unceremoniously into shallow graves. She had been there when Mother had succumed to the fever that had claimed their two siblings, and she had buried her as Father had been too drunk to be able to go about the task.

It was a year ago and ever since that day Father hadn't touched alcohol. He was a good man, but trapped in an evil world. If she tried she could recall a time when they did not live like vagabonds. Father had been a blacksmith and an important man in the small village in Pommerania. He had raised them to rever the Emperor and love the Church, and even though he could be strict at times there had been no menace to him. That was all in the past. The war had changed everything, Father had joined the army to fight the heretics of Bohemia, and he had marched ever since the first shot was fired in the Battle of the White Mountain. There had been little else for Mother to do but to join him, taking with her the then eight year old Johanna and seven year old Heinrich. They had marched when he had done and bled just as much as he'd done. She had watched how Mother had carried his musket when he grew tired and when Heinrich was old enough to join Father in the ranks, Johanna had carried his much in the same fashion.

Now they were outside the village of Breitenfeld in Saxony, who's rebel Prince Johan George had joined forces with Gustavus Adolphus. The Priests that accompanied the army, and even Father had expressed the notion that they were indeed the forces of evil having taken human forms to strike down the one true Church. Heinrich had been quick to second that argument. It never paid to argue with them, repeating the words of Count Pappenheim, saying that the Protestant Armies were in league with Hell itself. This was examplified with the expression that Death and the Devil rode with the Swedish army.

In the privacy of her own head Johanna had a rather different approach to the whole issue. It wasn't about religion, there were enough Protestants on the side of the Emperor as there were Catholics on the side of Gustavus Adolphus. It was about power, Father had hinted as much in a discussion with one of his friends one night when he thought she'd been asleep. Nonethless, the war was being thought under the banners of Catholicism and Protestantism and even though Johanna didn't believe it to be as simple as that she was usually too tired to argue.

She looked up at Father who had finished cleaning his musket and gave her a smile as he reached for the bowl of soup that she had made for supper. She poured another one for her brother before helping herself to one and then dutifully closed her eyes as Father said grace. They ate in silence, savouring the meagre meal. Around them the every day life of the camp took place. The army was a city, comprising almost a hundred thousand people. Johanna was reasonably skilled when it came to maths but even she couldn't imagine just how many people that was.

"You look troubled Liebling?" Father had addressed her.

"Not really, I was just thinking that I need to darn your shirt and make sure that there is enough food for tomorrow as well. I haven't had time to bake bread today."

Father had chuckled and then pointed at her with the crude spoon. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about food. Tomorrow Father Tilly will bloody the noses of the Saxons and the Swedes and by tomorrow night we will be feasting on all the goods that the Elector of Saxony and the King of Sweden has hoarded in their baggage trains. If you're good I'll bring you back his crown for you wouldn't that be nice?"

Johanna smiled wearily, it was always like this, a lot of idle talk about how simple the coming battle would be and how easily the enemy would be scattered in face of the mighty Imperial Army. Still Father Tilly had never lost a battle and his reputation counted for a lot. Surely he wouldn't fail his God and his Emperor tomorrow.

"Just be careful, both of you."

She knew that the boost that Father had made was there to reassure her. Johanna knew him well enough to see when he was troubled. He nodded and the look they exchanged promised that he would look out for himself as well as for her brother.

They marched away just as dawn broke, converging in platoons and companies until the whole army was gathered. Johanna must have seen it a thousand times and it had lost some of it's appeal by now. She went to seek out some of the other women, and as the day wore on she busied herself with the chores that needed doing. She could hear the sound of the cannons in the distance and she prayed that Father and Heinrich would not be harmed.

It was not until late afternoon when she understood that there was something fundamentally wrong. The rumour began to spread through the camp:

Father Tilly had been defeated,

A number of the more wealthy inhabitants of the camp had already begun to load their possesions and move away but for the vast majority there was little else to do but to wait. Johanna did not belive the rumours to be true and decided to see for herself. She had grown immune to much of the talk that went about the camp and trusted only her own judgement these days.

Johanna walked briskly, keeping well to the side of the dirt-track that constituted the main road, her apprehension rising as she met more and more soldiers hurrying in the opposite direction.

It was true then.

Father Tilly had been defeated and that would mean that the camp would be fair game to the ravages of the victorious army. She knew she ought to return to the relative security of the other women of her Father's company, but something spurred her on. In deference to what she had heard of and even witnessed, Johanna grabbed a handful of dirt which she smeared liberally across her face and hair. Not that it would matter, but at least she wouldn't stand out as an obvious target.

Carefully making her way towards the battlefield, her eyes on the ground as she moved in opposite direction from the stream of fleeing men and horses. There was gunfire in the distance and as she pushed her way through the throng of people she saw a group of horsemen. They were riding confidently, the standard held high and bearing the legend of a red lion holding a crossbow on a golden field.

Protestants.

Johanna kept her eyes to the ground, trying to make herself inconspicious as she moved in their direction. It was stupid, she knew that but she also knew that she had to find Father and her brother. Passing the riders and thinking she'd avoided the worst danger when she suddenly found herself being snatched up by one of them, and unceremoniously thrown across the pommel of his saddle.

"So what've got here then lads?"

She didn't recongnise the language but the act was obvious enough. Johanna felt herself freeze as the rider grabbed her by the hair and forced her to look at him.

"Hello liebling. Give us a kiss will you"

The man spoke in heavily fractured German as he leered toothlessly at her.

"Cornet! That's quite enough!"

Before her captor could make good on his intentions another rider, the officer most likely intervened.

"Now put the young lady down and behave like a gentleman"

She glanced up as she was pushed from the saddle to look at her saviour. He was in his thirties, with long dark hair hanging down on either side of his face and with a small moustache. Like his companions he was wearing the breastplate of the cavalry but instead of a helmet a plumed broad-brimmed hat. He bowed his head to her and spoke, his German less accented than that of the cornet.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience Fraulein, but you ought not be here at all. Dangerous place a battlefield."

He smiled mirthlessly. "I'm Captain William Montrose"

 

[Subo97]

to the victors belong the spoils

Crows. Always there were crows. Murder after murder of crows following the armies waiting for the feast. Sooner or later the men would spill blood and entrails and the crows would feast, would engorge themselves on the remnants of battle.

It had been a good day for crows outside Breitenfield. The men of Adolphus and Tilly had littered the fields of Saxony with shredded and dismembered bodies. Three times William Montrose had watched the Papists lunge at the army’s flanks and three times his hussars had driven them back. Adolphus’s linear tactics had won out and when the Catholics broke Montrose’s hussars ran them down, strewing the German countryside with the bones of what had once been a mighty army.

With Tilly’s army scattered and beaten, their camps, their wagons, their supplies and their women were open for the Protestant troops to plunder. It was part of their pay and their earned right. Without loot and pillage, the greatest army in Europe would be just too damned expensive. They were getting close. William Montrose and his men had to divert themselves less and less to running down fugitive soldiers and ran across more and more women and wagons.

The first small camp they had come upon was already in the hands of William’s fellow Scot, John Hepburn. Drunken soldiers had already crucified a priest on one of the wagon wheels and, having broken open a cask of wine, were rapidly getting drunk as they waited their turn at some captured women. One of them lay splayed on a wagon tailgate as men took their turns with her. She had already stopped screaming. Other women sobbed, men laughed and above it all the crows cawed.

William Montrose was after richer loot. Farther back there would be bakeries, blacksmiths, coopers and repair shops, loot that would enrich his men for years and impoverish the enemy for just as long. And who knew, maybe they might liberate a golden crucifix or two from the Papist treasury. One of his men, though, became impatient and scooped up a young woman. She squirmed helplessly until Montrose ordered the man to let her go.

William moved his horse closer to the girl, shielding her from his troops. He took off his hat and gave the girl a slight bow, a courtly gesture on a carnage covered field. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Fraulein, but you ought not be here at all. Dangerous place, a battlefield.” Looking down at her, he saw the girl was as pretty as she was young, probably would not last the hour where she found herself. This one, he thought, should not be one for the crows. “I’m Captain William Montrose,” he said and saw nothing but fear in her eyes.

 

[Lady_Mornington]

Johanna Metzger

Johanna met the gaze of the officer, unwilling to flinch even when faced with the cold stare of his.

"That is the nature of war Mein Herr. I'm looking for my father and brother. They stood in the tercios of Father Tilly's and I was..."

She felt her voice breaking, fearing that the worst had befallen her kinsmen. Cursing herself as she felt tears burn at the corners of her eyes and averting her gaze from the officer mounted on the magnificent steed.

To her surprise one of the men under Montrose's command actually leaned down to give her a pat on the shoulder. He rode a horse of less stature than Montrose did and his scruffy appearance made him stand out from the dapper captain.

"Ach lass, if your da' was in the tercios then they're surely feasting in Paradise, or perhaps Hell by now. King Gustav's cannon had a right field day with them. Say what you like about them Swedes but they sure know how to use musket and cannon alike. It was..."

"That's quite enough!"

Montrose interrrupted sharply and turned to Johanna again, seeing the tears streaming down her face he dismounted and took her hands in his.

"I'm sorry about your loss lass, that's as much as I can say right now. But even though it would be proper to mourn your dead we have more pressing matters at hand. I need to find a suitable place to billet King Gustav's army and perhaps you can help me."

With that he mounted his steed again and gave her a long look. Knowing that her future was dependent on how she next acted Johanna nodded and took his outstretched hand, getting up in the saddle in front of him.

They rode in silence, stopping only when Montrose's men wanted to have a look at something that caught their interest. Thus the ride took longer than it had for Johanna to walk. By the time they reached what was left of the camp, the Scots were ladled with loot and not a little intoxicated from the wine they had snatched from the baggage train.

"What's your name my dear?" Montrose had clasped his hand around Johanna's slender waist, but it struck her that the gesture was not one that bespoke lust. Rather it was the gentle embrace of a man careful that his ward would not fall from the saddle.

"My name is Johanna, Mein Herr"

She spoke quietly, knowing that her future was now dependent on the man sitting behind her on the war horse.

 

[Subo97]

William Montrose, foraging

One major difference between the victors and the losers of any battle is in their treatment of possessions. The defeated divest themselves of almost anything heavier than a shirt in their haste to flee, while the victors engorge themselves with the detritus of war to the point of gluttony. How much better, Montrose thought, to keep their army lean and mean, to hound the papists out of Europe, and to complete the Reformation of the true church by destroying the corrupt church of Rome once and for all. But his men filled themselves with stolen food and wine, getting slower by the hour. He had forbidden rape and had seen none, but he was no fool. No doubt some of his men were slipping away to indulge themselves in sins of the flesh. Taking other men’s goods and possessing their women was a way to complete the dominance they had achieved on the battlefield.

Get off your high horse, Montrose laughed at himself. He carried his own detritus and her name was apparently Johanna. She’d be raped and dead by now, he kept telling himself, if he had not carried her away. Still there was the problem of what to do with her. Perhaps they could find some of her people at the camp, if they survived. From the girl’s weeping words, it sounded as though he and his hussars had run over them hours ago.


Where and when would it be safe to drop her off? Was there anywhere this side of the Scottish Highlands that was safe for a woman these days, Catholic or Protestant. Even among his own troops she was probably not safe outside his sight or the sound of his voice. So William Montrose had a tiger by the tail, or at least sitting on his saddle. Keeping one arm around her waist to make sure she was not tossed when his horse shied, Montrose led his men into the enemy camp. Much of it was abandoned, the camp followers fleeing with the remnants of their army. They would rally, he knew. No matter how great the victory, there was still work to be done.

“Put up a perimeter,” he yelled at his men, “Protect what’s yours or you’ll lose it. That large tent over there,” he pointed with his free arm, “That’s to be my headquarters. Build some sinks down by that stream, half our men will be shitting their brains out by morning if all this bad papist wine is any indication.” He picked the girl up and slid her to the ground. “Do you see any of yours about?” he asked the girl. She shook her head, looking around. Montrose sighed. “Can you cook, girl?” he asked.

“I kept my father and brother fed,” she answered.

“Well then, cook us some supper and maybe it’ll safe after that for you to go.” He was not convinced but it was best to give the girl some hope. “Forage up some food,” he said to the man behind him, “and give it to the girl….then you can get drunk, and not before.”

 

[Lady_Mornington]

Johanna Metzger

Johanna felt even more forlorn as Herr Hauptmann Montrose left her outside the tent. She had grown more reconciled with the fact that Father and Heinrich most likely were dead by now, even though there was a slight chance that they had been taken prisoner.

Numbing her mind by kindling the fire, unsure as to what kind of food that the Scots, she thought they were Scotsmen, would bring her and generally keeping out of anyone's way as she busied herself. Strange as it may seem, she did feel abandoned when Herr Hauptmann Montrose had gone inside the tent to attend to his official duties, and it irked her. After all the man was an enemy of the Emperor and the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation. But then again, had not Herr Hauptmann Montrose stopped the man under his command from taking her as a prize.

it didn't make sense to Johanna, she was of course a beliver and as such she knew that God surely would have been on the side of the Catholics, but apparently the heretic Swedes had won the battle. She had understood, from what the more outspoken man under Montrose's command, McKay, had told her that the Saxons under the Elector John George had fled the field as soon as the Tercios had begun to move but that the Swedes had reformed their lines and that even the feared Count Gottfried von Pappenheim and his Black Cuirassiers had been forced to yield to the Swedish cavalry.

Perhaps it was true what Heinrich had spoken, Death and the Devil rode on the side of King Gustavus Adolphus and even with the aid of the Holy Virgin it would be an almost Herculean feat to defeat them. The notion was derived from two fo the cavalry commanders of the Protestant army, Count Åke Tott, who's name pronounced in German sounded slightly like Todt meaning Death, and Maximilian Teufel, who's surname meant Devil.

It was supersticious a notion but perhaps true, as well as the legends of the Lion from the Far North who would come to the aid of the true believers in their time of need. Johanna did not know Gustavus Adolphus, truth to be told she knew nothing of the man nor the kingdom he ruled until the Swedes had landed in Pommerania and declared that they would free the subjects of the Emperor from the yoke of oppression.

She was interrupted in her reveries by the sound of hooves and the arrival of a group of men. It was clear that they were important, given the size of the escort and especially one of them stood out. He was in his late thirties or early forties. Hair worn long and a thin moustach according to the fashion. Even though he radiated power there was a soft touch to his features and when he saw Johanna he even brought his hand to the brim of his hat in a greeting.

"Do tell me is Captain Montrose anywhere to be found"

His German was word perfect and Johanna would not have suspected that he was anything else but a countryman had it not been for a slight inflexion that bespoke a more Baltic origin.

"Yes my lord. Do you want me to fetch him?"

"Please do my dear girl and do tell him that General Torstensson sends his compliments"

So this was Count Lennart Torstensson then. Johanna had heard of him, being mentioned with equal disgust and respect. The man had revolutionised the Swedish army under the command of King Gustav Adolf, and now he served as the commander of the artillery. Johanna made a reverence before sneaking into the tent where Montrose was pouring over some documents.

"I'm sorry to disturb you Mein Herr Hauptmann Montrose but Herr General Torstensson wishes to see you"

Montrose stood up and with the slightest of nods and left to see his commanding general. The exchange between the two was short but seemingly very friendly and with a handshake, General Torstensson left the camp.

Moving closer to Montrose as she remained standing outside the tent seemingly pondering this or that.

"I'm sorry to disturb you Mein Herr Hauptmann but the food will be ready shortly."

Looking at his white shirt she noticed that it was in need of a darning and suddenly feeling the tears well up again. Her sewing kit had been left with the camp and by now it was probably gone. It was a silly thing to cry for but she couldn't help herself as she felt the sobs rake her body.

 

[Subo97]

William Montrose

"I'm sorry to disturb you Mein Herr Hauptmann Montrose but Herr General Torstensson wishes to see you"

Without speaking Montrose arose and stepped out of the tent. General Torstensson remained mounted as William walked over to him. Lennart Torstensson, the former page turned general, seemed pleased and none the worse for wear after the battle. Still, the smell of black powder clung to his group like herring to a fishmonger.

“Captain Montrose,” the general started the conversation, “It’s good to see you unscathed at the end of the day.”

“Thank you, Herr General,” Montrose replied after his salute. “God’s blessings were on us today.”

“God’s blessings and good tactics,” Torstensson continued. “You did the Emperor a service today. He does so like to see the Catholics scurry. You repelled their charges quite nicely.”

“Your cannons helped convince them scurrying was a wise choice.”

“Ja,” Torstensson barked cheerfully, “And cannoneers stand steadier when they’re well protected. Still, all in all it was a most sanguine afternoon…..sanguine and profitable. Saxony is ours for the time being.” He leaned forward in the saddle, loked around to ascertain they were alone, and spoke softly. “things are about to get more profitable, especially if certain negotiations bear fruit.” Seeing William’s eyebrows raise in a question he continued, “Victory always brings allies, Captain Hauptmann.” He paused for a moment. “Speaking of allies, we are about to receive some new recruits. King Adolphus is going to make an offer to some of the vanquished to join us. Considering the alternative, I think most will. There’ll be a few martyrs, Catholics are big on those, but we’ll get most. The king will make the offer tomorrow morning on that small plain to the west.” He waved his hat to the distance, “I’d like your hussars lined up on the east side. There’s nothing like cavalry to enhance recruitment. Be there at dawn.”

“Yes, Lord General,” Montrose replied. “We’ll be there.”

“Good,” Torstensson finished, shaking the Captain’s hand and replacing his hat on his head, “The soner it’s done, the sooner we can gather our bounty and chase Tilly down.”

After watching the general ride off, Montrose turned and made his way back to his tent. The young Catholic girl, what was her name, Johanna met him.

"I'm sorry to disturb you Mein Herr Hauptmann but the food will be ready shortly."

Montrose nodded but the girl stared at him a moment and burst into tears. William Montrose had seen much horror since leaving Scotland, and too much before that if truth were to be told, but thankfully he had not seen enough to leave him untouched by a woman’s tears.

“Stop it, lass,” he pleaded. She looked so alone and miserable, no different than the thousands of women he’d seen in worse states over the last few years. Still, she was right there and had a name. “Listen lass, er Johanna, I have a morsel of hope for you. Maybe a forlorn one, but hope none the less.” She looked up at him, half pleading, half hating if he read her right. “We’ll be giving some prisoners the chance to join us in the morning. You can ride in the commissary wagon and see if any of them are your people. . . . if not, well, then we’ll see. In the meantime, cry less and show me what’s to eat.” The girl nodded and stepped into the tent. Montrose watched her, noticing the way her hips swayed underneath her grimy dress. It’s just bloodlust, he told himself, following her into the tent, nothing more. In the distance, the crows cawed at the setting sun.