CHAPTER XIII
ASSASSINATION OF WALLENSTEIN
(February 24, 1634)

IN a previous chapter we have seen how a King of England got rid of a contentious Archbishop of the Church of Rome by assassination when the latter stood in the way of his usurpation. In a similar manner, also by assassination, an Emperor of Germany freed himself from a general who had twice saved him from ruin, but who had grown too powerful for his security, and whose loyalty he (perhaps justly) mistrusted. Although nearly three hundred years have passed away since Wallenstein’s assassination at Eger, Bohemia, the most searching investigations of historians have been unable to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the certainty or extent of his treasonable intentions, although there are strong indications that they existed, and that the crown of Bohemia, as a sovereign state, was to be the price which he exacted for his treason.

The religious war, which had broken out between the Emperor of Germany, as representative of the Catholic Church, and the Protestant princes of North Germany in 1618, had been waged with great cruelty and varying success for several years. Neither party had won such decisive advantages that the end of the terrible struggle, which partook as much of the character of a civil war as of a religious war, could be predicted with any degree of certainty. The most unfortunate feature of this strife was that not only the different German princes were fighting against each other, but that also foreign princes, upon the invitation of the Germans, participated in the struggle and gave their support to either the Catholic or the Protestant side. The German princes themselves had formed two different alliances: the Catholics had formed the League, while the Protestants were members of the Protestant Union; and both parties had powerful armies in the field commanded by experienced and able generals, the Catholics by Tilly, the Protestants by Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick. The greatest of these generals was perhaps Tilly, but he was extremely cruel and vindictive, fully as much from religious hatred for the enemies of his church as from natural disposition. His conquest and pillage of Magdeburg has given to his name a deplorable immortality. The Emperor of Germany, Ferdinand the Second, was rather nominally than actually the war-lord of the Catholic party; for the Catholic League, which had placed the army in the field, had elected Maximilian of Bavaria as its supreme chief. Thus, while the Catholic armies were called the Imperialists, and while the victories which they achieved were supposed to redound to the Emperor’s glory, Ferdinand could not repress a feeling of humiliation at the thought that he owed these victories and the advantages which resulted from them more to the generosity and loyalty of the Catholic League than to his own power and resources. Once or twice Protestant soldiers had even threatened him in his own imperial palace, and he had owed his safety from capture or death only to the timely intervention of some Spanish and Croatian horsemen who dispersed the aggressors.

In November, 1620, Tilly had, at the head of a powerful army, won a decisive victory over the army of the Protestant Union by the battle of White Mountain; then, having restored Bohemia and Moravia to the rule of the Emperor, the victorious general quickly marched to the Palatinate, where the cause of the Protestants was at that time supreme. But he was defeated there by the Protestant army under Mansfeld and the Margrave of Baden; and at that time Protestantism might have been triumphantly established in western and northern Germany at least, had not the two victorious Protestant generals made the mistake of separating their armies,—a mistake which proved fatal to both of them. Tilly was not slow to see the advantage which he gained by this dismemberment of the army which had so signally defeated him at Wiesloch; he rallied his forces and defeated first the Margrave of Baden at Wimpfen, and shortly afterwards Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick at Höchst. Then the Protestant armies crossed the frontier of the Netherlands in the hope of receiving assistance from England.

In the meantime the German Emperor, emboldened by the successes of Tilly, strained every nerve to reëstablish Catholicism and stamp out Protestantism in the Empire. The excessive zeal which he displayed in accomplishing this purpose, and the terrible work of destruction which Tilly and his lieutenants were carrying on in all those districts of the Empire which were unfortunate enough to fall under their sway, were, however, the means of setting Protestantism on its feet again, of reviving the waning hopes of the German Protestant princes, and of arousing a powerful interest in their behalf among their neighbors. The most important accession which the cause of Protestantism had at that time was that of King Christian the Fourth of Denmark, who joined the Protestants with a large army and took supreme command in northern Germany.

Such were the conditions in Germany at the moment when the man who is the subject of this chapter appeared on the stage as principal actor in the terrible war of thirty years. This man, one of the most remarkable men of the seventeenth century, and one of the most eminent generals in German history was Wallenstein. For seven years he was the greatest man of the war, eclipsing the fame of Tilly himself, filling the minds of enemies and friends, and finally that of the Emperor himself, with vague fears and apprehensions of his treason and unbridled ambition. But in the flower of his age his life was cut short by the hands of assassins.

The Empire seemed to be hopelessly divided between Catholicism and Protestantism, and civil war with all its terrors and horrors laid waste its fairest provinces. The Emperor had lost much of his authority, while Maximilian of Bavaria, commander-in-chief of the armies of the Catholic League, wielded a power which was supreme wherever the so-called Imperialists held possession of country or town. It was a humiliating position for the Emperor, but he was utterly powerless to extricate himself from it. Suddenly a deliverer came to him in the person of Albert, Lord Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman, who had married the daughter of Count Harrach, the Emperor’s special favorite. He was immensely rich, and had won great military distinction in the Bohemian wars. It was this Lord Wallenstein who on a morning in June, 1625, presented himself before the Emperor Ferdinand of Germany with a proposition which, at first, appeared so extravagant and incredible to the Emperor himself and to his counsellors that they doubted the sanity or sincerity of the man who made it. But he insisted on the feasibility of his plan with so much eloquence and enthusiasm that they finally consented to it. Wallenstein proposed to the Emperor to enroll, entirely at his own personal expense, an army to fight for the cause of the Emperor and to protect his hereditary states, provided he should have the power to make that army at least fifty thousand strong, to appoint all the officers, and take supreme command himself, without being interfered with by other generals, no matter how highly stationed they might be. The immense wealth of Wallenstein guaranteed the financial success of the plan; moreover he received permission to make his army self-sustaining by pillage, marauding, and forced contributions in all those districts which it might temporarily occupy.

When the new plan and the appointment of Wallenstein to the command of a large army—larger than any other in the field—became known, the world, and especially Germany, was struck with amazement, and there were but few who believed that it could be carried out. But those who doubted did not know the tremendous energy, the boundless resources, and the towering ambition of the man. The plan was carried out to its fullest extent: within a few months a large and well-equipped army was ready to take the field, and Wallenstein, whose name was comparatively unknown in the history of war, suddenly assumed an importance which eclipsed that of the renowned generals of the Catholic League and of the Protestant Union. The suddenness of his elevation, the apparent mystery surrounding him, and the rumors of the royal rewards in store for him, made the imperialistic generals very jealous. It may be truthfully said that from the very moment Wallenstein took command of his army, he had not only to face the Protestant armies in the field, but also to guard against his Catholic rivals, who used their high connections at the imperial court to undermine his position and blacken his character in a most unscrupulous manner. The achievements of Wallenstein fully realized the high expectations of the Emperor. He displayed consummate generalship in the field, and had a magnetic power of attraction which caused his whole army, both officers and men, to idolize him. At the same time his army increased rapidly and wonderfully. It soon reached the one hundred thousand mark and still they were coming, while the armies of the League were decreasing at a fearful rate from camp diseases and the ravages of war. The Emperor made him Duke of Friedland, and “the Friedlanders” became soon a terror to friend and foe. In his march of victory, which extended from Hungary and Transylvania to the Baltic Sea, he swept the Protestant armies from the face of the earth. Where the Friedlanders had passed, no human dwelling, no human being remained to tell of the cruelty and devastation which had struck the country, and which fell with the same crushing weight on Catholics and Protestants. The army was to be self-sustaining and was therefore given full liberty of pillage and marauding wherever it went. Coming to the extreme north of Germany, he invaded Mecklenburg, whose dukes had furnished men and money to the King of Denmark in his campaign against the imperialists. The King of Denmark had after a decisive defeat left Germany and returned to his own kingdom, and on Wallenstein’s approach the Duke of Mecklenburg also hastily decamped and left his country to the mercy of the conqueror. Wallenstein took possession of it and was rewarded with the title of Duke of Mecklenburg and the rank of a sovereign prince of the Empire. The royal crown of Bohemia, which rumor and secret whisperings designated as the reward in store for him after the conclusion of peace, was now not so far off as on the day he took the command of his army. But the higher he rose, the greater became the envy and hatred of his rivals, especially of the sovereign princes whose countries and cities had suffered from the passing of his army.