Designed to Fail by Virginia DeMarce

Author:Virginia DeMarce [DeMarce, Virginia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sort2
ISBN: 9781953034403
Google: oYEdzgEACAAJ
Amazon: B08Q5VYF27
Goodreads: 56316595
Publisher: 1632, Inc.
Published: 2020-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Berlin, Province of Brandenburg

January 1636

Oxenstierna ordered the arrest and imprisonment of Wilhelm Wettin, Crown Loyalist prime minister of the USE, formerly one of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar and consequently a citizen of the State of Thuringia-Franconia.

That last bit had sort of slipped the mind of Oxenstierna and his more fanatical supporters.

Jürg Behr agreed heartily with the action and took the opportunity of dropping a few chosen words about Thedinghausen and the less than energetic, enthusiastic, support that the governor of Westphalia was bringing to the cause of Restoring Things to the Way They Should Be.

He had concluded that "restoration" was a lovely word. He liked "restitution," too, for that matter, given its financial implications, but it had been unfortunately rather polluted for use in northern Germany by Ferdinand II’s unfortunate edict of 1629.

Magdeburg

January 1636

Mathias Strigel, governor of Magdeburg Province and one of the prominent leaders of the Fourth of July Party, agreed with Rebecca Abrabanel that by arresting Wettin, Oxenstierna had lost the principle of being the legally legitimate government—handed the FoJP a belated Christmas present, a propaganda banquet on a porcelain plate. "He’ll lose the support of most of the provincial governors. Hesse, for sure; Brunswick, too."

"Westphalia?"

Helene Gundelfinger from the SoTF was counting on her fingers. "Yes, Westphalia."

"But … "

"Westphalia has a Danish prince as its administrator, governor, official head of state, even if he’s not yet 'Prince of Westphalia.' His brother is betrothed to Princess Kristina, in line to succeed Gustav Adolf, as things stand. Even if Frederik doesn’t like Ulrik much—and we don’t know that he doesn’t like Ulrik, though he’s pretty much bound to resent him a bit—it is not probable that he would do something as much to the disadvantage of his own family as support this coup."

Rebecca returned to her original thought. "It’s a bad mistake, a major blunder. Oxenstierna has given up the main thing that historically, counterrevolutions had working for them. He’s given up the principle of legitimacy."

"Back home," Helene was counting backwards on her fingers, "there are a lot of people, up-timers and down-timers both, who are spitting mad about the way he’s treating Wilhelm Wettin. Who’s a hometown boy, in a way. It’s not going to make him popular with the rest of the high nobility anywhere else in Germany, either."

"Why the hell not?"

"If he can do it to a duke of Saxe-Weimar and get away with it, and they do still see Wilhelm as a duke of Saxe-Weimar even if he renounced his title—his wife didn’t renounce hers, remember—then he can do it to them."

Hesse came out neutral, as predicted. Amalie Elisabeth influenced Brunswick in the same direction, which was not a surprise.

The administration of the Province of Westphalia maintained a stony silence. Frederik fully agreed with the landgravine as to the lack of legitimacy of Oxenstierna’s actions. Not that it took much to get him to view Oxenstierna from the angle described as schief.

Frederik did not interfere in any way when the province’s city officials, newspaper editorials, or private individuals expressed their opinions out loud.

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