As soon as Gustavus Adolphus had learned of Wallenstein’s invasion of Saxony he turned round, and in forced marches hurried also to Saxony in order to protect that unfortunate country from the ravages of the Friedlanders. The Elector of Saxony, while secretly favoring the German Emperor, had appealed to the King of Sweden for protection, and Gustavus Adolphus had granted his request. He marched so rapidly that Wallenstein, when informed of his approach, at first refused to believe the truth of the report, but nevertheless prepared to give him a warm reception. Having sent, a few days before, his most renowned cavalry general, Pappenheim, in another direction, he now sent messengers after him to recall him. The two great captains met at Lützen on the sixth of November. A terrible battle ensued, in which Gustavus Adolphus was killed. But Wallenstein was defeated; at least he left the battle-field in the possession of the enemy and retreated to Bohemia.
This retrograde movement and his retreat from the battle-field were unfavorably commented on at Vienna and declared unnecessary. Insinuations of treason were again whispered into the Emperor’s ear, and his suspicion was aroused to such a degree that Wallenstein’s removal from the army was resolved upon, although this intention was kept secret for a while. The Emperor surrounded himself with Spanish soldiers to be safe from an attack of the Friedlanders. He also succeeded by bribes and promises in estranging a number of Wallenstein’s prominent lieutenants from him and in securing them for his own service. To some extent Wallenstein was kept informed of these secret steps of the Emperor, and he tried to counteract them and to protect himself. He renewed his negotiations with the Swedes and the Protestant princes, who had found in Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, a worthy successor of King Gustavus Adolphus as a military leader; and it is said that an agreement had been made by the two leaders of the opposing armies that Wallenstein’s forces should join the Protestant army, and that they jointly should impose conditions of peace upon the Emperor. It goes without saying that a sovereignty for Wallenstein—most likely that of Bohemia—was included in the terms of peace.
Before this agreement could be carried out, events occurred which not only precipitated the downfall, but cut short the life of the over-ambitious military chieftain. It was of the greatest importance to Wallenstein to find out how far he would be able to rely on his army commanders and on their regiments in carrying out his treasonable projects. He first revealed these to three of them,—Terzky, Kinsky, and Illo,—the first two related to him by marriage, and the last an avowed and bitter enemy of the Emperor, who had refused to raise him to the rank of count. It was Illo who undertook to find out how the generals and colonels would feel and act; he called them together one evening and very cautiously proceeded to inflame their minds against the Emperor and glorify the services of Wallenstein, who, he said, was the only one who could have saved the Emperor from ruin, and who was now to be sacrificed again to the envy and jealousy of his enemies. This announcement caused loud protests and great indignation among those present. “But,” concluded Illo, “the Duke is not willing to undergo this new humiliation, which is a shameful reward for his long and glorious services; no, he will not wait until it pleases the Emperor to kick him out, but he will go voluntarily and resign his command; but what pains him deeply is the thought that, in doing so, he must leave his devoted friends and comrades, and cannot reward them as he intended.” It may well be thought that these remarks kindled revolt in the hearts of the soldiers, and that they swore they would not let the Duke leave the army. The next morning they sent a delegation to their commander-in-chief, imploring him to desist from his intention of leaving the army, and assuring him that they would stand by him, no matter what might happen. It was only when a second delegation of the highest and most popular officers waited upon him, that the Duke gave way to their entreaties and promised to remain at the head of the army. But he attached one condition to this promise: he exacted from all the commanders a written pledge that they would all, jointly and singly, stand by him as their chief, and would consider his removal from the command of the army a public calamity. They all agreed to this condition, and a paper embodying this declaration was gotten up to be signed by all of them.
Illo took it upon himself to secure all the signatures, and in order to make short work of it, invited the commanders to an evening party at his headquarters, where he read the paper to them; but, in order to preclude all suspicion in the minds of the signers, Wallenstein had inserted a clause which bound the signers to the agreement only as long as Wallenstein used the army in the service of the Emperor. After Illo had read the paper containing the saving clause, he dexterously withdrew it and substituted for it another copy without the clause, and unknowingly the commanders signed it. Moreover, most of them were half or entirely intoxicated and could not have discovered the deception; but one or two had remained sober, and when they read the paper again before signing it, they found that it was different from the one which had been read to them. They indignantly charged Illo with having practised a fraud on them, and the company broke up in confusion and anger. This half-failure seems to have opened Wallenstein’s eyes to the real situation in which he found himself. Many of his commanders were too devoted Catholics to make common cause with the enemies of their Church, and while they were willing to stand by Wallenstein to the last as the defender of their faith, they refused to follow him into the Protestant camp and as a deserter from the Emperor’s service. It also opened the Emperor’s eyes to the necessity of prompt action, unless he would permit Wallenstein to concoct some plan by which he might lead the whole army into the camp of the Protestants. He therefore secretly commissioned General Gallas, one of Wallenstein’s subordinates, to take command of the army as soon as the time had come for openly deposing the Duke of Friedland. It was a game of duplicity and deception on both sides. The Emperor tried to cheat Wallenstein out of his command and reward, and Wallenstein tried to cheat the Emperor out of the army.
Until then Wallenstein had been at Pilsen; but after the demonstration of the commanders, he deemed it advisable for his own plans and interests to transfer his headquarters to the strongly fortified city of Eger, which was commanded by Gordon, whom he considered one of his most reliable friends. The larger part of the army remained at Pilsen, while Wallenstein himself, escorted by a number of picked regiments under the command of his most trusted lieutenants, went to Eger. But there he was to meet his doom. The thunderclouds of imperial wrath had been gathering more and more threateningly above his head. Wallenstein saw them not and feared them not. Had not the stars prophesied his coming elevation? Even when the Emperor published a proclamation, which was secretly distributed in the army, declaring him a rebel and offering a reward for his surrender, dead or alive, he would not believe it; he laughed at it when it was shown him. Under ordinary circumstances he would have had the courage to treat any imperial edict with contempt, for with his army his name was a much greater power and authority than that of the Emperor; but a complication had arisen which in the minds of his soldiers paralyzed his efforts and reëstablished the Emperor’s supremacy. This complication was the increasing strength of the Protestant armies. The Duke’s army, lawless, cruel, and violating every rule of morality, was nevertheless composed of men who stood in slavish fear of the Church and of the priest, and as soon as Wallenstein turned against these two, the soldiers turned against him. They were willing to follow him to death in a Catholic cause, when death would open to them the gates of Paradise, but they refused to follow him to death when death would deliver them to the everlasting torments of hell.
With this invisible moral power the great commander had not reckoned. Among the very men whom he had picked out as his escort to Eger were his murderers. And they did not wait long, for fear that others might anticipate them in their bloody work, and capture not only the imperial reward, but also the benedictions of the Church. These men were Gordon, the commander of the Eger garrison, and Leslie (both Scotchmen), Deveroux and Butler (both Irishmen). They had always been enthusiastic friends and admirers of Wallenstein, but they were also fanatical Catholics, and when they had to choose between their commander and the Church, their devotion to the latter prevailed. Deveroux was the leading spirit in the plot. He had received private instructions from Gallas and Piccolomini and won over the others. They also secured the assistance of a number of soldiers in their regiments, and solemnly pledged themselves to surrender Wallenstein’s person, dead or alive, to Gallas, who was to take command of the imperial army. But in order to prevent interference with their dark design, Gordon, the commander of the garrison, invited them all to the citadel for an evening entertainment. At this entertainment, while eating supper, Illo, Terzky, Kinsky and Newman, were murdered. It was on a Saturday evening, February 25, 1634, the day after they had arrived with Wallenstein at Eger. Wallenstein himself was not present. He had retired early that night, after having once more consulted the stars with his Italian astrologer, who discovered unfavorable signs in the constellations. But it seems Wallenstein paid no attention to these warnings, and fell soundly asleep soon afterwards. Toward midnight, or perhaps shortly after midnight, he was aroused from his sleep by a loud noise. Coming from the citadel, where Wallenstein’s lieutenants had been slain, Butler, with a number of his dragoons, and Deveroux, with a number of his halberdiers, marched up to Wallenstein’s residence. Since both Butler and Deveroux were well known to the guards in the hall, they were immediately admitted, but when they reached the anteroom to the Duke’s apartments, the sentinel wanted to stop them. He was cut down, not, however, before he had called for help, and cried out: “Murderers! Rebels!” It was this tumult that aroused Wallenstein. He jumped out of bed and hurried to the window to ask the sentinel posted at the entrance what was the matter. At that moment the door leading to the anteroom was burst open, and Deveroux, a halberd in his hands, and followed by half a dozen of his men, entered the bedroom, where he found himself face to face with Wallenstein. “Are you the scoundrel,” said he, “who wants to rob his Imperial Majesty of his crown? You must die now!” And without having given any answer, Wallenstein received a stab of the halberd which lacerated the intestines and caused almost immediate death. Like Cæsar, he might have exclaimed, “Et tu, Brute!” for he had always especially befriended and distinguished this man Deveroux, who had come to him poor and friendless, and who owed to him everything. One of the halberdiers wished to throw Wallenstein’s corpse out of the window, but Deveroux would not permit it; he rolled the body up in a table cover and had it transported to the citadel, where the Duke’s murdered friends were lying in the yard, waiting for their burial. Wallenstein’s body was placed by their side. It was then resolved to send the bodies of the dead generals to one of Illo’s country-seats, which was in the neighborhood. In placing them in their coffins, it was found that Wallenstein’s coffin was too small, and in order to force him into it his legs had to be broken.
Thus died one of the most remarkable men of the seventeenth century,—the greatest of the German generals of the terrible Thirty Years’ War. As a strategist, he may not have been fully the equal of Gustavus Adolphus, but he had a magnetic power over his men which even that great commander did not possess, and which would have made him invincible, had not superstition and religious awe counteracted it. The German Emperor, hearing of his assassination, appeared to be overwhelmed with grief, and ordered three thousand masses to be read for the salvation of his soul; but he tried in vain to deceive the world by this hypocritical sorrow for a murder which he had planned and for which he rewarded the assassins. To this very day the treason of Wallenstein remains shrouded in doubt; and very likely it will remain forever an unsolved problem.