A Wind Among Grass By Kim Mackey Lennart Torstensson glanced out the Palace window of his office.

Down below workmen were just beginning to survey the square for the new Hans Richter Monument. Less than a week had gone by since the battle of Wismar. So many changes. But one thing remained constant. War. Torstensson turned back to the officer in front of him. Henri, Duc de Rohan, had joined Gustavus Adolphus' forces in December 1632. Earlier in the year Richelieu had put pressure on the Venetian government to dismiss Rohan from his post as a general in the Venetian Army. As compensation Venice had appointed Rohan as an ambassador extraordinaire to the new Imperial court in Magdeburg. Soon after arriving Rohan had terminated his employment with the Venetians and enlisted in the Emperor's army. Fellow Huguenots from all over Europe had been attracted to enlist with Rohan, and Baner had praised his service in 1633 in the Upper Palatinate and along the Danube. But now he was needed elsewhere. "You understand Henri, that I can only offer you limited support in addition to your own troops for this mission. A battalion of Finnish cavalry and two batteries of howitzers, with gun crews. That's it. We're stretched very thin." The Duc de Rohan nodded his head and smiled. Rohan was a balding man with curly hair on the back of his head and a wide frown line etched between his eyebrows. His small mustache and narrow goatee were flecked with white. But his posture was ramrod straight and he exuded an undeniable charisma. "I understand General. Will the Finns have their hounds with them?" One technique used by the Finnish cavalry was to carry their hounds into battle and release them at the appropriate time. The hounds would run in front of the cavalry and leap on the enemy horses, biting their nostrils and disrupting the enemy formations so that they were unprepared for the shock of the charging Finns. Torstensson laughed. "Indeed they will, Henri, indeed they will." Henri nodded. "Then I am prepared to do as much as I can to disrupt Richelieu's forces in Trier and Lorraine. As you know, the French Army, even the entretenue regiments, require a constant supply of fresh recruits, especially outside the boundaries of France. They are like a bathtub with an open

drain. Without constant replenishment the bathtub will run empty." "And the etapes, the supply points," said Torstensson, "destruction of those will make it very difficult for France to support forces along the Rhine." "Assuredly," said Rohan. "Before you go, I am curious about one thing, Henri," said Torstensson. "Why did you join the Empire? Gustavus Adolphus has never mentioned it, even in private." The Duc de Rohan was silent for a long time. For a minute Torstensson cursed himself for having intruded onto a matter that the Duke clearly felt was very private. "Have you ever gone to Grantville, General? Have you ever read what was written about you in this other up-time universe?" Torstensson shook his head. He'd thought about it, but his duties had always kept him too busy to investigate such things himself. "When I came north to Magdeburg, I first spent several weeks in Grantville. Naturally I was curious about my own fate, as well as the fate of my fellow Huguenots. In the end, General, I died at some obscure battle. Alone, nothing more than a gentleman adventurer. Not a very glorious end. And later in the century the Edict of Nantes was revoked and tens of thousands of Huguenots were expelled from France." Rohan looked at Torstensson with a piercing glance. "I think I, and my co-religionists, deserve a better fate, don't you?" Torstensson nodded. Rohan rose abruptly. "I think it best if I return to my men General. My staff and I have much planning to do." Torstensson nodded again. As the Duke left he passed Mike Stearns entering the office and Rohan saluted the Prime Minister sharply. "Who was that Lennart?" asked Stearns. "Henri, Duc de Rohan. We are sending him on a mission to disrupt French supply lines in Trier and Lorraine. Hopefully that will keep the French armies off our backs for awhile." Mike smiled. "Duke of Rohan? The Riders of Rohan?" Torstensson nodded. I always did like that scene at Helm's Deep in Tolkien's Two Towers about the Riders of Rohan, thought Mike. How did it go? "They rode like a wind among grass," said Stearns softly. "Prime Minister?" Mike shook his head. "Just wishing the King of Rohan

good luck Lennart." "Duke of Rohan." "Whatever." *** Task Force Rohan began its campaign of disruption in spectacular fashion. On a dark and stormy night in late February 1634 Rohan's dismounted dragoons captured the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein across the Rhine River from the mouth of the Moselle. French forces gathered in Koblenz to retake the fortress but by the time they were ready Task Force Rohan had left, marching up the Rhine River and crossing at Bingen. Arcing back to the northwest, Task Force Rohan began destroying the French Army's etapes along the Moselle. In less than a month the Task Force was in Lorraine, attacking etapes, and capturing or killing the flow of recruits to the French Armies in both Trier and Lorraine. In late March the Task Force captured its richest prize near Toul: the montre, the monthly convoy of pack horses carrying the pay for the garrison of Nancy. Unfortunately for the French Army, the pay convoy of pack horses actually contained several montres of silver coin as the Bureau des finances had delayed sending earlier montres due to bad weather and lack of sufficient silver coin of the right weight. Marechal La Force, commander of the French Army in Lorraine, was not amused. Pointing out in a letter to Richelieu and Louis XIII that any French campaign into the USE was totally dependent on the security of the supply lines in Lorraine and Trier, he demanded, and got, additional reinforcements, including several elite petit vieux and vieux regiments. The governor of Nancy, Jean de Gallard de Bearn, comte de Brassac, who had refused to allow any of his artillery to be removed to meet the needs of La Force's field army, was replaced by one of Richelieu's intendants. Finally, in the middle of May, 1634, Task Force Rohan was brought to decisive battle near Luneville on the Meurthe River. Task Force Rohan had had two days to prepare the battlefield. They wasted none of it. *** Marechal La Force looked at the field fortifications in front of him with distaste. Three times he thought he had cornered Rohan, and three times he had allowed him to slip away by not focusing his forces for battle quickly enough.

But this time, he was ready. "Send out the parley party," he told his adjutant, "We can at least offer them a chance to surrender." On the other side of the battlefield the Duc de Rohan was exhorting his troops. Most of those remaining were Huguenots who had served with him during the Wars of Religion or along the Danube under Baner. To say that his men idolized him would be an understatement. To Huguenots throughout Europe Rohans exploits in Lorraine had given them new courage and a fresh pride in their confessional allegiances. As Rohan spoke to each battalion his officers distributed draughts of fighting potions to their men made from fresh spring mountain parsley or hemp seed oil. While each battalion received their own individual words from the Duke, he ended each speech the same way. "This day, we do not retreat. This day, we do not surrender. For Huguenot honor, For Huguenot pride, For Huguenot glory, this day...WE FIGHT!" As La Force's parley party approached, Rohan turned to his own adjutant. "I think, Michel, that it is time for song. The usual psalms, if you please, but let's end with that Welsh song with your new English lyrics. The men seem to like it. What was it called again?" "Men of Harlech, my Duke. Renamed to Men of Rohan, but with the same melody." Henri, Duc de Rohan, smiled. "Excellent!" Across the field, the Catholics of the French Army had already prepared for battle by celebrating the sacrament of Mass and confessing their sins. They listened in silence as the Huguenots sang French psalms and then German ones, including "Ein fest Burg is unser Gott" and "Es wollte uns Gott gnadig seyn", accompanied by trumpets. The last psalm was unusual, because it was in English, and bits and pieces of it drifted across the battlefield. "Men of Rohan stop your groaning, can't you hear those balls a-moaning? Mighty host resoundingMen of valor onto GloryRohan shall not yield." In another universe, the Welsh ghosts of the 2nd battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot from the battle of Rorke's Drift, Natal Province, 1879, were smiling. When Marechal La Force could finally see his returning envoys clearly his lips pressed themselves into a narrow angry line. The envoys had been stripped, bound, and rubbed with horse manure from head to toe. The message was clear: Task Force Rohan was prepared to fight to the death.

*** 18 times the French assaulted the Huguenot lines. 18 times they were repulsed. On the right the vieux Regiment Picardie attempted to flank the Task Force through a dense woods. But the Task Force was prepared and pre-set bundles of kindling were lit and the forest set on fire. Fewer than a hundred choking, soot-covered survivors of the Regiment emerged alive. On the left a cavalry charge turned to disaster as it found itself amid a host of camouflaged ditches and buried clay pots covered with a loose layer of soil. In other areas the fussnagel, caltrops, forced cavalry into pre-arranged lanes covered by the canister fire of Rohan's howitzers. On the 19th assault Henri, Duc de Rohan, fell, mortally wounded by a slim piece of bronze shrapnel when one of his two remaining howitzers burst from overuse. Under heavy pressure by the last of the French reserves, the petit vieux Regiment Rambures, the remains of the Task Force continued to fight stubbornly until they were completely surrounded. At the end, Rohan's body and a dozen bleeding officers were left to face the pikes. Offered a chance to surrender they refused, and then detonated the last of the Task Force's gunpowder, killing another hundred pikemen. When news of the battle reached the rebels in Lorraine along with the money from the pay convoy that Rohan had had spirited away from the battle at the last minute, the fractious nobles banded together, especially those in occupied Nancy. Thousands of fresh French troops had to be diverted to deal with the Lorrainers. In France, the outcome of the battle fostered darker, more unholy alliances. Decades later, a monument was built on the battlefield. Mike Stearns, in the twilight of his years, remembered the Tolkien quote he'd thought of upon seeing Rohan in Magdeburg and wrote to the Huguenot commission building the monument. The chairman of the commission was a Tolkien fan and decided to include the quote on the commemoration plaque. *** The Riders of Rohan For Huguenot honor, for Huguenot pride, for Huguenot glory This day we fought May 12, 1634 "Down from the gates they roared, over the causeway they swept, and they drove the hosts of Isengard as a wind among grass." Tolkien.