AT THE PEACE

By Bernard M Brodsky

Chaos and disruption mark the end of The Thirty Years War. Peace promises to be as challenging. An ambitious, though conflicted Catholic bishop, an aristocratic Protestant colonel, and a Jewish physician meet through a violent incident that joins them in a dangerous journey to seek refuge and destiny. It is a novel of adventure, romance and friendship set in a turbulent time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781665753418

Bernard M Brodsky

Bernard M. Brodsky, attorney, educated at Middlebury, The New School, SUNY Buffalo School of Law, received an LLM in International and Comparative Law from Georgetown, is a former Department of Justice Trial Attorney, Far East Counsel to a Fortune 50 company, and Counsel to a Federal Banking Agency.

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Copyright © 2023 Bernard M Brodsky.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-5340-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5341-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023922246

Archway Publishing rev. date: 12/05/2023

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

For Barbara, with love and gratitude

PROLOGUE

From 1618 to 1648 many parts of Europe were engaged in wars that came to be known as The Thirty Years War. Belligerents fought different enemies in different places, joining for convenience or necessity, allied or pitted against each other for reasons of religion, dynastic succession, selection of the Holy Roman Emperor, and competition between Hapsburg and Bourbon.

Violence occurred from the periphery, between Spain and the Low Countries–a story of Dutch resistance to Spanish domination–to the center, where Ferdinand of Austria struggled for the imperial crown in Germany and the kingship of Bohemia, as he furthered the objectives of the Counter-Reformation.

Such activities attracted the participation of the colossus of the north, Sweden, its smaller neighbor Denmark, and dukedoms, cities, states, landowning prelates and minor nobility. Eventually, the conflagration roiled every sector of European society.

Armies were either professional and loyal to a political entity, prince, or religion or mercenaries, fighting only for the rewards of war.

Warring was conducted in fits and starts in one part or another of Germany, in Austria, France, often in Bohemia, and occasionally in Italy, from north to the Baltic and West to Holland.

When financing failed, the combatants licked their wounds and slowly starved, awaiting the next infusion of resources to allow them to march again under whatever banner paid them. Eventually Protestants served Catholic masters, and Catholics, Protestants. If a whit of conscience troubled them, they spent a few scruples and converted.

Devastation wrought by advances in weaponry brought greater suffering, as lancing by a blade yielded to pulverizing from rifle and cannon, obliterating organs on contact.

As the warring lacked a reliable basis to pay, feed and equip the troops, plunder sustained the long duration, along with wanton destruction of both urban and rural habitats.

In the absence of sanitary practices, plague and disease raged, followed by torrential rains and glacial conditions causing failed harvests.

People everywhere were caught in this maelstrom for the better part of their lives. Expectations were illusory, reversals of fortune common, survival a gift.

Eventually, after decades of disruption, an agreement was reached in Hamburg in December 1641, indicating interest in a peace process. Yet, so much hostility existed among the parties that Munster was selected for Catholic delegates to meet, and Osnabruck for the Protestants, with mediators shuttling between the locations.

The process faltered repeatedly and hostilities continued during the negotiations, tempting the parties to stall to capitalize upon gains on the battlefield.

Critical issues went unresolved. The most troublesome was the demobilization of a population under arms. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were suddenly without means or skills to sustain themselves. Thus, while peace was memorialized and imprimaturs stamped on meticulously inscribed documents, the pathways to the future were uncertain and unknown.

CHAPTER 1

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Bamberg, near Nuremburg, July 1648

T HE HORSE WAS TIRED. IT was afternoon on a cloudless July day and the horse had been carrying his master since sunrise without complaint. This was an achievement even for a Belgian workhorse, because the man was as large for a human as the horse was for a horse. Together they were an awesome sight, the man a burly ursine creature atop a burly equine creature.

Seeing the first signs of a town, the horse expressed his solitary complaint, a soulful whinny, to which Bishop Anton Schmidt responded by patting him gently on his neck. I know I’m not easy to carry, he said, as he slipped from the saddle relieving the horse of its burden.

Even garbed as a belted Franciscan friar to discourage robbers, one could see it was an unnecessary precaution, as the robes failed to disguise the size and strength of the man wearing them. Besides, if you looked you would see the large sword carried among the supplies on the packhorse in tow.

In fact, Anton did not look like any familiar figure in the church, neither Franciscan nor bishop. His face added to the puzzle, with features that were pleasing: large round blue eyes, prominent cheek bones, thick lips and a broad jaw. If only those features were viewed, they would accord with his size, and identify him as a man from some peasant family, but when other features were added to the mix, refinements as they were, including an unmistakable hauteur in his bearing, his appearance perplexed.

Nonetheless, he was a bishop in this German town for a very specific purpose; and the next morning, the authorizing documents from the Aulic Council and the Vatican in hand, he would attend to this purpose before proceeding to Frankfurt.

This was not his first visit to Bamberg, an Upper Franconian town in Bavaria, situated near the conjunction of the Regnitz and Main rivers, and constructed across an expanse of seven hills.

As he oriented himself, his eyes sought the four towers of the grand Bamberg Cathedral, a place that had brought him great pleasure when he first visited as a young priest, serving as part of the retinue of his mentor.

He stood there with his eyes on the towers, then on the edifice itself. It was an immense structure, bold and intimidating, yet welcoming through any of the four curved portals, three accessible regularly, the fourth only on special occasions.

He remembered his feelings of security and peacefulness as he entered and made his way through the nave, light streaming through the stained-glass windows, balancing the solemnity of the dark gray stone walls. He recalled pausing midway at the organ, enchanted by the exhilarating sounds engulfing him. His spirits lifted and he was filled with gratitude at being in this splendid cathedral; he kneeled and prayed to celebrate the experience. He would have given anything to repeat that experience, but this visit to Bamberg would not be pleasant at all.

Immediately upon passing through the city wall encircling Bamberg stood an inn and stables, and standing in front, snaring the first opportunity to earn a coin, was the innkeeper, eyeing Anton warily.

Franciscans were not known for the gold in their pockets. Had Anton approached uniformed as a bishop, the innkeeper would have sped to his side, regaling him with the comforts of his establishment.

Instead, the innkeeper remained in place, waiting for Anton to approach. Little effort needed to be expended for a friar, when he could even be a mendicant seeking something for nothing. Yes? the innkeeper said brusquely. The man was neither very big nor noticeably small. Rather he was suitably sized to maintain order in a rowdy establishment and to get the necessary work out of lazy servants.

Closing the distance between them, Anton let his horse crowd the space. Your services.

And what would they be?

Whatever you provide for other travelers. Care for my horse, a place to sleep and a meal. It’s for one night. Now tell me your charge.

The innkeeper stared at Anton and made a shrewd guess that he was not a friar and maybe not a religious at all, so he quoted a price excessive for a friar, less so for a merchant, and trivial for a guest with means.

Anton nodded in agreement, and handed the lead to the stable boy, waiting for his cue to take the horses. Before he did, Anton took a saddlebag with some of his possessions and pulled his sword from its place.

I am Bishop Anton Schmidt, he said, introducing himself. Now show me where I can rest. He let the innkeeper lead the way.

The innkeeper was pleased that his suspicions about the identity of his guest were correct. Despite his humble robes the man could well afford the charge for the night. The innkeeper was also curious, as he had never had anyone of that rank stay without flunkeys hovering, eager to impress everyone with the importance of their prelate; nor had he ever seen a sword-carrying priest. Did he have business in Bamberg or was he just passing through? Normally the proprietor’s impulses would be to gossip, flying all over town chattering about this mysterious visitor, seeking to discover whether anyone had heard anything; but with this stranger he would mind his own business and not invite anybody’s interest in whatever placed Bishop Anton in Bamberg for a night.

CHAPTER 2

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N EAR THE CATHEDRAL, BUT SEPARATE from it, and even closer to the river, was Anton’s destination. Designated as the Malefactor’s House, it contained a torture chamber, a jail, and a hall filled with long tables and chairs where judges confronted suspects. There was also a chapel.

The place was used to hold and try mostly women, accused, and inevitably thereafter, convicted of being witches. On occasion men were held as well.

The transition from being an upstanding citizen to a confessed witch was a brutal and agonizing passage to an inconceivably more brutal end. The particular applications used to obtain a confession depended on the suspect’s deluded belief that protestations of innocence would protect against an unjust conviction.

Preliminary devices were thumbscrews, and Spanish boots, attached by affixing the semicircular metal or wooden plates embedded with spikes around the shin, then adjusting the lever to tighten the boot to increase the pain.

Select one leg or, if defiance was anticipated, apply the boots to both legs simultaneously. If the flesh was pierced and the bones cracked and there was no confession, the suspect graduated to the rack and was stretched until the joints dislocated and the accused conceded everything to end the unendurable pain.

Even the river was worked into the regimen, whereby the accused was placed in restraints in a chair suspended over the water and then, in the absence of confession, submerged to drown or rarely, miraculously emerging alive to be declared innocent.

Following the activities of the scribe and the mark of the accused, the guilty one, having confessed to sleeping with the devil, practicing witchcraft, and causing all manner of meteorological disorders from snow in the summer to torrential rains and crop failure, was scheduled to be garroted and burned at the stake in front of friends, neighbors and family.

Witch-hunting was an abomination, and Anton had already, early in his tenure, been sanctioned for his view on the subject. He knew that the Church had sponsored the activity in conjunction with the development of the Inquisition. He knew that hundreds, maybe thousands, throughout Europe had been executed. But as time passed the Church reduced its participation in this nefarious activity, then reached a tipping point when it wished to completely disassociate itself from witch-hunting. Inexcusably belatedly, as far as Anton was concerned, the Church decided to forbid the practice, finally wiping the ashes of those burned at the stake off its hands and rewriting its history with a fair measure of amnesia.

Thus reentered Anton, first tainted by his views, now redeemed for them. Who would more earnestly, and zealously travel to the most flagrant site of witch-hunting and confront the perpetrator of these evil acts, than a fierce critic of the practice?

Besides, few other bishops had the courage or inclination to do the job, so the unpleasant task fell to him and he embraced it, as the issue had been a profound source of conflict and challenge to his beliefs as a Christian and a member of the clergy.

In Bamberg the man responsible for these activities was a Suffragan bishop named Friedrich Förner, who had skillfully organized the trials, enlisting the aid of some who benefited when property confiscated from the victims reverted to the bishop, his friends and associates.

Onlookers and witnesses were already assembled near where stakes were securely embedded in the ground, so that even if those tied to them struggled, the stakes would hold them upright until both victim and wood were consumed by fire.

Anton arrived as people gathered, standing close enough to see the faces as they suffered, but far enough away so they would not feel the heat. Here were spouses and family members, children in tow.

Anton secured the horses and waited for Bishop Förner to appear. Soon a carriage arrived at the entrance to the house and Friedrich Förner disembarked and immediately placed himself between his armed guards.

There he paused to receive the gestures of respect from the crowd. All was reassuringly familiar except for the presence of Anton, who had changed his friar’s robes for those of a bishop of superior ecclesiastical rank.

The presence of this strange bishop was disruptive. The onlookers glanced from one bishop to the other, wondering what Bishop Förner would do, as he glared at Anton, now walking towards him.

The two bishops stared at each other, as Förner’s guards moved a step towards Anton to stop his advancing.

Anton was content to maintain distance. In fact, he preferred it. As a large man with a deep bass voice, no one would have trouble hearing what he was about to say.

Bishop Förner, I am Bishop Anton Schmidt. He paused, then continued, I represent the Aulic Council and the Vatican. He paused again, so everyone listening would understand that he spoke for the highest authority in the church. I am here to deliver two different mandates: one from the Council in Vienna, and the other from the Vatican. Then pausing almost imperceptibly to heighten expectation for his next words, he said, All witch trials are terminated. Those in custody are to be released immediately, and all confiscated property is to be restored.

While Förner stood stunned one of his guards reacted, moving towards Anton. It was a mistake, as Anton grabbed the man, one hand on his crotch, the other on the back of the man’s neck, and effortlessly heaved him face down into a fresh pile of horse manure.

Watching the fate of the first guard, the others waited in place for Bishop Anton to continue or Bishop Förner to respond.

A second instruction from His Holiness suspends you as a bishop. From this moment on, you will continue to practice your vows and fulfil your office as a priest, with no more or less authority than possessed by any parish priest.

This cannot be, Förner protested, his face reddening with shame and anger, shaking his finger at Anton. You can’t do this to me. This is mine. I built it, he sputtered, staring in disbelief that he was about to lose the Malefactor’s House. I will go to the prince. I will go to Rome.

Paying no attention to Förner’s words, Anton drew a dagger from his robes and approached the first of the women fastened to the stake. Before Förner could utter another word, Anton cut the cords binding her.

The woman was so weak from torture and incarceration that she collapsed into his arms as he sought out her family to take her into their care.

As he did, he addressed the crowd, Cut these other two down and take care of them. Then he turned to Förner, who remained stupefied. Dismissively he said, Go Father, to Rome or wherever you choose, but leave here while you can. See how these people look at you, now that you no longer can torture and rob them. I’m going into this place of evil to see if I can rid the place of the sins you’ve committed. But first, I must deconsecrate the chapel. He turned to the crowd. I’ll need help with that. We’ll remove everything we identify with our Christian faith, as we pray. Two of you come along, he commanded, pointing to two men standing closest, and then entered the house as they followed.

One step into the building and the stench overwhelmed him. Letting his eyes adjust to the diminished light as he oriented himself, Anton could make out the design and at least guess what the different spaces were used for. A stone staircase to his left descended to where he expected to find the incarcerated, and the place used for torture.

Across a large entryway stretching deeper away from him was another staircase ascending to the chapel and trial halls. Incense from the upper floor dampened the smell from the lower level.

Prompted by the sound of human suffering below, he descended the stairs. The sounds came from two separate passageways, one to his left the other to his right.

To his right in a space almost entirely devoid of light, sounds of weeping, whimpering and groaning could be heard. These people, he presumed, had already been tortured, and were now left alone to suffer their pain and fear in darkness.

To his left came screams of excruciating pain, reporting unbearable insults to the body, testing the limits of what could be endured without losing consciousness.

Even before he turned the corner to enter the space, he could feel the heat from a forge and detect the smell of burning coals. Several sharp shrieks pieced his ears, signaling urgency.

Anton moved to the center of the entrance, and was confronted with the sight of a man stripped to the