491 



WALLENSTEIN. 



WALLENSTEIN. 



492 



with which credulous contemporaries or later generations have 

 disfigured the memory of the most lofty genius of his time. Argoli 

 told him that he would be a great man. Wallenstein believed it. He 

 always believed in astrology, and in later years the astrologer Seni was 

 one of his principal councillors. 



Anxious to signalise himself by military deeds, Waldstein left Italy 

 and went to Hungary, where the imperial armies were fighting against 

 the Turks. At the siege of Gran he was amongst the foremost 

 Btorrners, and his commander in-chief, General Basta, appointed him 

 captain on the walls of the conquered fortress. After the peace of 

 Sitvatorok, in 1606, Waldstein returned to Bohemia, and married an 

 aged but wealthy widow, Lucretia Nikessin, baronessjof Landeck, who 

 died in 1614, and left him fourteen large estates in Moravia. During 

 his marriage, and till 1617 Waldstein devoted himself exclusively to 

 the management of his estates ; he proved an excellent farmer ; he 

 increased his wealth by economy ; and he deposited large sums in the 

 banking-houses of the Fugger and Welser, at Augsburg, who were 

 then the richest merchants in Europe. In 1617 he raised a body of 

 200 dragoons, with which he assisted the Archduke Ferdinand of 

 Austria, duke of Styria, who was at war with the Venetians ; he saved 

 the fortress of Gradisca, which was hard pressed by the Venetians ; 

 and by paying his soldiers well, and keeping open table, he became the 

 idol of the Styrian army. In a short tiuie he saw himself at the head 

 of several thousand men, and after the campaign was finished, towards 

 the end of 1617, to the advantage of the Archduke Ferdinand, the 

 Emperor Matthias made him bis chamberlain and colonel in his armies, 

 and soon afterwards created him count. Immediately afterwards he 

 married Isabella Catherine, the daughter of Count Harrach, who was 

 the favourite of the emperor, who on this occasion conferred upon 

 Waldstein the dignity of a count of the Holy Roman Empire. The 

 states of Moravia appointed him commander of the Moravian militia ; 

 and at the outbreak of the war between the Bohemians and the 

 esnperor, the Bohemians offered him an independent command in 

 their armies. The Protestant members of the family of Waldstein 

 were partly among the anti-imperial or Bohemian party ; but Albrecht, 

 less from religious than from political motives, refused to make com- 

 mon cause with the Bohemians, in consequence of which the Moravian 

 states deprived him of his command of the militia, and confiscated his 

 estates. Waldstein saved the military chest of Moravia, a considerable 

 sum, which he put into the hands of the trustees of the emperor, who, 

 to reward him for his services, appointed him quartermaster-general of 

 the imperial army, which, in concert with the troops of Maximilian, 

 duke of Bavaria, was to take the field against Frederic V., count 

 palatine, who had been chosen king by the Bohemians. The counts 

 Mansfeld and Thurn having advanced as far as the neighbourhood of 

 Vienna, and attacked the imperial general Boucquoi, near Teyn (10th 

 of June 1619), Waldstein hastened to the assistance of Boucquoi, 

 defeated the enemy, and thus saved the emperor from being made a 

 captive in his own capital. In the battle on the Weisse Berg, near 

 Prague (Sth of November 1620), the cavalry of Waldstein signalised 

 themselves by their impetuous charges, but Waldstein was not present 

 at the battle, being obliged by his commission as quartermaster-general 

 to procure the necessary supplies for the imperial army. It seems 

 that, the resources of the emperor being exhausted, Waldstein gave 

 large sums for the support of his master, for which however he got 

 an ample indemnification. After the overthrow of King Frederic of 

 Bohemia, the estates of his adherents were confiscated, and the greater 

 part were either sold by the emperor Ferdinand II., or given as 

 rewards to his faithful servants ; on many occasions also Ferdinand 

 used to combine generosity and interest by selling them ,at a low 

 price. The reward of Waldstein was the lordship of Friedlaud, 

 worth about 600,000 gulden, for which he paid 150,000 gulden; and 

 he bought more than sixty other lordships and estates, the value of 

 which was estimated, at a very low rate, at 7,290,228 gulden, of which 

 however Waldstein only paid a part, his sacrifices and services being 

 taken into account. As the value of money was then at least three 

 times greater than it is now, the amount of the property acquired by 

 Waldstein in consequence of the Bohemian war was at least 24,000,000 

 gulden (3,000,OOOZ.) according to the present value of money, to which 

 must be added the value of his personal estate. 



Waldstein was neither intoxicated by his triumph nor by his wealth. 

 In 1621 he took the field against Betlen Gabor, the prince of Transyl- 

 vania, who stood on the frontiers of Germany, and was going to effect 

 a junction with John George, markgrave of Brandenburg-Jiigerndorf, 

 who was encamped near Jagerndorf, in the south-east corner of the 

 then province of Silesia. Waldstein successively defeated both his 

 adversaries, prevented their junction, and forced Betlen Gabor to sue 

 for peace, which was granted on condition that he should give up his 

 claim to the crown of Hungary, which he did. During the two 

 ensuing yeai'S Waldstein was principally occupied with the manage- 

 ment of his estates. But Betlen Gabor having again taken up arias 

 against the emperor, Waldstein hastened to Hungary, and arrived 

 just in time to save the imperial army under the Marquis of Caraffa, 

 who was besieged in his camp at Going, on the frontiers of Moravia, 

 by the prince of Transylvania, Count Thurn, and John George of 

 Erandenburg-Jagerndorf. As a reward for his victory, the emperor, 

 towards the close of 1623, conferred upon him the title of prince, and 

 in the following year, 1624, created him duke of Friedland and prince 



of the Holy Roman Empire, an act which caused much jealousy 

 among the other princes of the empire. In 1627 Wallenstein bought 

 the sequestrated duchy of Sachan in Silesia for 150,800 gulden, which 

 was a little more than one-fourth of its value ; and although he had 

 acquired it as a free estate, he preferred to take it as a fief from the 

 emperor, who invested him with it in 1628. 



The declaration of war of the Union of Lower Saxony, headed by 

 Christian IV., king of Denmark, put the emperor into great embar- 

 rassment. His army was partly disbanded, and with his remaining 

 troops he was unable to open the campaign, notwithstanding the assist- 

 ance of the army of the Ligue, commanded by Tilly : his finances 

 were exhausted. Waldstein offered to raise an army of 40,000 men. 

 He proposed to raise this force with his own funds, but he said, when 

 once in the field, the army would subsist and be paid by ransacking 

 those hostile provinces through which he should lead them. After long 

 hesitation the emperor agreed to the proposition, and in two months 

 Waldstein was at the head of 28,000 men with whom he marched 

 towards the Lower Elbe. The renown of his military skill, his wealth, 

 and his unbounded liberality towards the soldiers, was so great, that 

 men flocked to his camp from all parts of Europe. Germans, French- 

 men, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Walloons, Creates, Poles, Hungarians, and 

 Cossaks, formed an army of very heterogeneous elements, but the 

 iron hand of their commander kneaded them into a well-united mass. 

 His co-operation with Tilly, his victories over Mausfeld, his parallel 

 march with this general towards Moravia, where Mansfeld and Betleu 

 Gabor projected to join their armies, and the glorious result of this 

 campaign for the imperialists, belong to the history of the ' Thirty 

 Years' War.' The campaign was begun and finished in 1626. Wald- 

 stein lost 20,000 men by disease and fatigue, but in the beginning of 

 1627 he was again at the head of 50,000 men. His second campaign 

 from Silesia to Denmark, and his junction with Tilly on the Lower 

 Elbe, likewise belong to the general history of the war. We shall 

 only allude to the rapidity of his marches and the irresistible force of 

 his advances. On the 1st of August 1627, he was at Troppau, which 

 he left for Sagan, where he stayed till the 19th for the purpose of 

 making the necessary preparations for the memorable campaign which 

 he was going to undertake. His army was iucumhered by a heavy 

 ordnance carried on clumsy carriages, by many women and children, 

 by a host of servants and grooms of every description, and he had to 

 cross a broad eandy tract where provisions were scarce, and where the 

 roads were in their natural state. The towns were occupied by Danish 

 garrisons. Yet once put in motion by the power of his genius, this 

 heavy body advanced with irresistible rapidity. On the 21st of August 

 Waldstein was at Cottbus ; on the 27th at Havelberg; and on the iiOth 

 he took Domitz in Mecklenburg, after having performed a march of 

 250 miles in eight days, through a miserable country a march which 

 it would be difficult to perform for a modern army unincumbeved by 

 heavy ordnance and moving on excellent roads. On the 27th of Sep- 

 tember, his lieutenant, Count Schlick, defeated the Danes near Aalborg 

 in Jutland, and King Christian saved the remnant of his army by 

 flying to his ships and escaping to the Danish islands. Waldstein 

 hastened to the Belt, and it is said that, being unable to cross this 

 channel for want of ships, in a fit of anger he ordered the sea to be 

 bombarded with red-hot bullets. 



The Danish war was finished by the peace of Liibeck (12th of May 

 1629). Waldstein's reward were the duchies of Mecklenburg, with 

 which he was invested by the emperor on the 16th of June 1629, after 

 the Dukes Adolphus Frederick and John Albrecht had been dispos- 

 sessed of them, for felony, by an imperial degree in 1628. Waldstein 

 choose Wismar, the best port for a navy on the southern coast of the 

 Baltic, for his residence, and obtained from the emperor the title of 

 Admiral of the Baltic and the Oceanic Sea (the German Sea), for 

 which ignorant historians have charged him with childish vanity. His 

 plan was to form a navy with the assistance of the Hanseatic towns, 

 and to prevent Gustavus Adolphus, the king of Sweden, from choosing 

 Germany for the theatre of his ambition. From the beginning of the 

 Danish war Waldstein had penetrated the secret views of that king. 

 " Bitt," wrote he to his lieutenant Arnim, " der Herr hab fleissig Auf- 

 sicht auf den Schweden, denn er ist ein gefiihrlicher Gast " ("I beg you, 

 sir, to observe well the Swede, for he is a dangerous fellow "). " Dem 

 Gustav Adolph soil man keineu Glauben schenken, denn manniglich 

 sagt dass er die Leute gern bei der Nase herumfiihrt " (" You must 

 not trust Gustavus Adolphus, for every man says that he likes to lead 

 the people by the nose"). "Den Schweden will ich gern zum Freunde 

 haben, aber dass er nicht zu machtig ist, denn amor et dominium non 

 patitur socium" (" I should wish to have the Swede for my friend, but 

 that he should not be too strong, for love and power cannot agree "). 

 At a moment when his funds were much exhausted, he ordered 35,000 

 dollars to be raised immediately, which he intended to give as a reward 

 to a " certain merchant who was to do something in Sweden." It has 

 been pretended that Waldstein had formed the plan of murdering 

 Gustavus Adolphus, but there are no grounds for this accusation, and 

 it appears that the merchant had proposed to burn the Swedish fleet 

 in Karlskrona. The plan was not put into execution. During the 

 siege of Stralsund, Waldstein cried out that he would have the town 

 if it were fastened to the sky with iron chains ; but he was compelled 

 to abandon the siege. 



No sooner was Waldstein, invested with Mecklenburg, than hh 



