1634: The Bavarian Crisis

Chapter 39

Peregrinatores Suspiciosi

Munich, Bavaria

Munchen. Unlike many German cities, it was not named for a castle, nor a mountain. Monacum, the town of the monk. Leopold Cavriani paused long enough for Marc to take a good look.

Munich was impressive, even compared to Nurnberg. Over the past couple of years, Marc had become accustomed to measuring every other town and city by the standard of Nurnberg-its population of forty thousand people, its churches, its civic buildings, its guild halls, its music. Jacob Durre was, passionately, a Nurnberg local patriot. He had managed to share part of his love of his adopted city with Marc. From his perspective, one of the greatest blessings that the coming of Grantville had brought to the Germanies was that in this world, the battle of the Alte Veste had not resulted in the deaths of about two-thirds of the population of that city and the equally harsh devastation of a wide swath of the hinterland around it.

The capital of Bavaria wasn't as large, of course. Its population was less than half that of Nurnberg, probably not much over eighteen or nineteen thousand, if you counted only the citizens and their households. In Munich, though, a person would have to add the people living at the court and the far larger numbers of clergy. And, of course, the beggars. Duke Maximilian had issued a strict ordinance regulating the poor just a few years previously. Still, though, even with those, it was only about half as big as Nurnberg.

According to his father, if life was fair, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria ought to be just as grateful to Grantville as Jacob Durre was. Even the very general descriptions of Gustav Adolf's 1632 campaigns in Bavaria that were in the history books that came back in time made it clear that the Swedes had devastated the duchy in that other world. In this world, after the Alte Veste, with the exception of leaving Baner in the Upper Palatinate and Horn in Swabia, the Swedes had withdrawn to the north. Bavaria was still, in this summer of 1634, except for Ingolstadt, essentially untouched by the war's destruction, its great abbeys and convents intact and its castles unburned.

Maximilian was prepared for war, though. Munich's fortifications were impressive. Marc had been expecting the church towers. He had seen the old view of the city, from about seventy five years before, in a book about the cities of the world, while he was in Nurnberg. That book proclaimed that Munich excelled and out-dazzled all the other seats of German princes in its "elegant cleanliness." Since then, around and outside the old medieval walls, smooth curtain walls in a sort of irregular egg-shape, the dukes of Bavaria had constructed another set of modern walls with every imaginable innovation. The arrow-shaped extrusions almost looked like they were weapons themselves. Marc was hoping that he would have time to get a good look at them.

They were coming in on the Augsburger Strasse, from the southwest. Leopold had cut directly south from Neuburg until they intersected it. He said that arriving from that direction would attract less attention than coming from the northwest on the Nurnberger Strasse, since entering there led visitors directly past the Residenz itself, where security would certainly be highest. The view lacked the drama of Nurnberg, where the old medieval fortress stood high above the rest of the city. The walls were impressive enough without it.

Leopold had been giving considerable thought to where they should stay. Cavriani Freres de Geneve did not have a factor conveniently located in this most Catholic of Catholic cities. The first question was "inside or outside the walls?" Either had its advantages and disadvantages. If they stayed outside the walls, they would not be trapped within the city when the gates closed at night. That would give them somewhat more flexibility. Also, because of the wedding, lodgings inside the city would be hard to find, as well as expensive. While Marc looked at Munich's walls, his father looked at the parking area where the baggage-wagons for the duke's guests had been collected. He looked even more closely at the constant stream of servants going back and forth through the gates to the wagons.

It was that, finally, that decided him. He would not have begrudged the money that an inn inside the walls would have cost, but staying outside would work better. They would be in a camp in which, basically, almost nobody knew anybody else, so no one would be in a position to watch them doing something they "shouldn't" or keeping a routine that they "oughtn't." He turned his horse toward the baggage wagons; Marc followed. Renting a place to stake their horses and put out their pallets at night took less than a half hour.

Marc was still feeling a little deprived. At the very least, he thought, they should have needed to sneak around, peeking into dungeons and making secret signals, until they found the damsels in distress whom they had come to rescue. Well, not damsels, precisely. At any rate, until they found Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson. Instead, the newspaper had announced the duke's decision that they would be interned in the house of the English Ladies. It had even conveniently provided the name of the street on which the house was to be found.

His father said that the first order of business was to become familiar with the city and its streets, before they went anywhere near that house. Munich wasn't all that large. An energetic man could walk across it, north to south or east to west, in fifteen minutes. The bridge across the multiple channels of the Isar River was on the east, opposite to where they had entered the city through the Neuhauser Gate, leading from the Salzburger Strasse past the Jesuit collegium.

They were being tourists, though, like a couple of thousand other people who were wandering around the city this morning, so they hadn't taken the short route. They had first passed the old palace, built by Duke Maximilian's grandfather Albert, as they came in. Leopold said, quite seriously, "We are very fortunate. Through certain informal connections, my factor in Pfaffenhofen was able to obtain tickets for us to view the late Duke Albert's collection of antiquities tomorrow afternoon. It is too bad that Duke Maximilian does not permit public access to his own collections. They are said to be very extensive-tapestries, jewels, paintings. Unlike France, where the royal palaces are virtually open to the public and the king's own bedchamber may be viewed by the curious when he is not in residence, the duke keeps his own apartments and chapel very private. Even the court nobility have only limited access, and that by invitation only."

They crossed over to the south side of the collegium and walked along the main street through the "Beautiful Tower." They looped around the Frauenkirche with its two round-topped towers. It was almost in the center of town, facing onto the Schrannenplatz. St. Peter's church, der Alte Peter, was on a line with it. Marc had never seen a city with quite so many churches and monasteries. Back on the main street, they walked northeast through the chief marketplace, past the parliament house where the Bavarian Estates met, and the city hall.

"The Estates," Leopold commented, "have frequently not been happy with the cost of all this ducal splendor. In 1571, the ducal household was up to more than eight hundred and fifty people. Just Duke Wilhelm's investment in music, Orlando di Lasso, Andrea Gabrieli, sixty-odd singers and instrumentalists, plus a boys' chorus, was incredibly expensive. The extravagance of it all was why, in 1597, the Estates compelled Duke Wilhelm to abdicate in favor of his son. A lot of Duke Maximilian's efforts during the first years of his rule went to getting a grip on the financial situation. Even now, though, when the total number of court personnel is smaller, most of it comprises the duke's own household: the hunt, the stables, the cellar, the kitchens, the bodyguards; painters, sculptors, craftsmen, tailors. Duke Maximilian's 'strictest economy' has only reduced the court personnel to about seven hundred and seventy. Less than a fourth are engaged in the administration of the duchy, from the highest member of the privy council down to the most junior clerk. And, of course, Duke Albrecht has his own household, with his own major domo and steward. As will the new duchess."

It was fairly easy, most of the time, to guess which of the people in the street were residents of Munich and which were visitors. Munich women wore hats with high crowns and the ubiquitous aprons, many of them colored. The men wore the same style of hat.

Duke Maximilian's officials attempted to enforce the 1626 sumptuary ordinance regulating "unnecessary and superfluous costliness" in the clothing worn by his subjects, the Kleiderordnung, quite strictly in this, his capital city. Woe to the farmer who had his wife's shoes sewn on a last or the ordinary workman who expended his money on a pair of knit stockings with satin garters! The ordinance divided the duke's subjects into classes and prescribed the acceptable clothing for each, the man and his family alike: farmers, day laborers, menial civil servants, and common soldiers; ordinary citizens of a town and artisans; merchants and civil servants of higher rank, such as court clerks; patrician families in the cities; knights and the lower nobility; lawyers and university professors; counts and barons.

Leopold's factor in Neuburg had a copy of the pamphlet. He and Marc were wearing clothing entirely suitable for a merchant of modest means and his son, without satin trimming. The lace on their collars was carefully narrower than a joint on the middle finger, but not in the Munich local style. They were, after all, here as foreign tourists.

"If Duke Maximilian had been born English," Leopold commented softly, "he would have made an excellent Puritan. I have read a commentary by a visitor from Holland, written already twenty-five years ago, in which he stated that the members of the duke's court were 'all temperate, strict in morals and upright; every vice is banned at this court; the prince hates drunkards, rascals, and idlers; everything is directed to virtue, temperance, and piety.' It is a pity, in a way, that he is Catholic. He would make a much better Calvinist than the late Stadtholder Maurice of Nassau ever did." More loudly, he commented, "Tomorrow is Thursday. We should be sure to observe the weekly religious procession of all the court officials."

They didn't go all the way to the Isar Gate. Rather, after viewing the city hall, they turned north. Much of the northern portion of the city was taken up by the Residenz and the pleasure garden associated with it. They stopped and looked at the more-than-life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary that had been installed in a niche on the facade of the Residenz in 1616.

They stood quietly. Any observer would have assumed, respectfully as well, although nothing could have been more alien to Genevan Calvinists. Mary crowned as Mother of God, standing on the sickle of the new moon, a scepter in her left hand, the Christ Child held on her right arm. The child raised his hand as if to bless everyone who entered the city from the nearby Schwabinger gate. A perpetual flame burned beneath the image.

There was a Latin inscription: Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sub quo secure laetique degimus. Leopold told Marc to translate. There was never any point to getting out of practice with a language once one had gone to the trouble of learning it.

Marc looked at it again and said, a little hesitantly, "'We flee to your protection' or, maybe better, 'we place ourselves under your guidance. That's the first half. Then, 'beneath which we live safely and happily' or, maybe, 'beneath which we exist securely and joyfully'. Then, at the bottom, ' Patrona Boiariae '. That's 'patroness of Bavaria.'"

"Not bad. It seems as though your teachers earned their money." Leopold paused, considering the implications of Bavarian Mariology for European politics. "Shall we move on?" They walked as far as the Wurtzer Gate, then turned to make a circuit of the inner walls. By the time they finished, Marc was urging that it was time to stop at a streetside grill and get some sausages on buns for lunch. Or something for lunch. He was starving.

They spent some time observing the house of the English Ladies on Paradise Street.

"Why," Marc asked, "couldn't we disguise ourselves as delivery men, like those two?" He gestured at the back alley, where Benno and Korbinian were once more in dispute.

"Why?" Leopold asked. "Because at least one of them, I would presume, is a spy for the Inquisition. Which makes it probable that the other one is a spy for someone else. Possibly the duke; possibly some party in the city whose interests do not run entirely parallel to those of the duke. Who? I could not say yet. Possibly the Jesuits have placed an observer to keep an eye on the other people observing the good ladies. In any case, people would notice if the faces of the deliverymen changed, even in a week in which the local world is turned as nearly upside-down as this one."

"Then," Marc asked, "what do we do?"

"I think," Leopold answered, "that tomorrow I should walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell. I should explain that since we were traveling to Munich in any case, we were asked to bring them some letters that had been forwarded from Perugia to Constance."

This was quite true. In a way. The letters had indeed been passing through Constance on their way to Munich at the point when they were subjected to a small detour in the best interests of Cavriani Freres. Also, the letters, if anyone had inspected his luggage and confiscated them at an earlier stage in the trip, were not only genuine, but also quite harmless. The postal clerk had checked.