Even if there was a story about Gustav wanting beer after arriving in Germany—rather than plundering, he paid passing farmers for the beer they had planned to brew to celebrate the harvest—it still could not change one fact.
The Thirty Years' War claimed the lives of a third of all Germans. Some died directly in the chaos of war, while others perished from plague and famine. In 1616, two years before the war broke out, the Elbe River in Poland suffered a drought not seen in five hundred years. Crop yields fell, and many people starved to death. People found a stone by the river, recorded the water level at the time, and carved an inscription into it: If you see me, you will weep.
Naturally, the king would not weep along with them. John II Casimir led the Polish into the war. At a time like that, continuing to brew alcohol with precious grain would certainly draw criticism. Yet beer was the only reliable source of water at the time. Monks often suffered from malnutrition, and beer was treated as a drink that could stave off hunger.
Georgiana walked through the ruins. It was clear that this had once been a very large monastery. The area where they had gotten out of the car just now had been burned the worst. Further toward the Seine, she could still see broken walls and crumbling remains. They had not been rebuilt like the convent she had seen earlier.
Now she could clearly see what traces of war looked like. Belgium, situated at Europe's "crossroads," had long been a battlefield for nations at war, and battlefields inevitably suffered all manner of destruction. Everything before her was proof of that.
Before setting out, she had read some history. She knew that in the