Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired good-humor throughout the horrible years which succeeded St. Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with the capacity to use all men’s judgments; without convictions, save in regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to assassinate Francis Alençon at the bidding of Henry III, but he attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of the noblest characters of the age, whose breast showed twelve scars received in his service—Agrippa D’Aubigné—because the honest soldier had refused to become his pimp, a service the king had implored upon his knees.
Beneath the mask of perpetual, careless good-humor, lurked the keenest eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will. Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate, apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognize a hero and chieftain in a king. The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis. This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness. When dispatch-writing, invisible Philips, star-gazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was a king left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious virgin who governed England.
Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him.
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND.
By FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER.
[Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein, a distinguished Austrian general, the most noted opponent of Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years’ War, born 1583, assassinated 1634. Wallenstein had already achieved the most brilliant rank among the Imperialist generals, except Tilly, when the defeat of the latter made the ambitious soldier, whose great wealth and unscrupulous daring had excited the jealousy of the Emperor Ferdinand, again a necessity to the Catholic cause. Wallenstein, who had raised and subsisted an immense army at his own expense at a time of pressing imperial need, had afterward been retired from command. When called again to the help of the imperial cause, Wallenstein dictated his own terms, which practically left Ferdinand a mere puppet in his hands. Though Gustavus Adolphus was victor at the battle of Lützen, it was at the cost of his own life, a result welcomed by the Catholic league as a great victory. Wallenstein reorganized his army, and was again ordered by the emperor to lay down his baton on the just suspicion that he was negotiating with the Swedes disloyally. His official removal was made known to his principal generals, and Wallenstein, deserted by a large portion of his troops, was assassinated by a conspiracy of his minor officers, who had become satisfied that it would be impracticable to secure his person alive, or to prevent his immediate junction with the advancing Swedes.]
Count Wallenstein, afterward Duke of Friedland, was an experienced officer, and the richest nobleman in Bohemia. From his earliest youth he had been in the service of the house of Austria, and several campaigns against the Turks, Venetians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Transylvanians had established his reputation. He was present as colonel at the battle of Prague, and afterward, as major-general, had defeated a Hungarian force in Moravia. The emperor’s gratitude was equal to his services, and a large share of the confiscated estates of the Bohemian insurgents was their reward. Possessed of immense property, excited by ambitious views, confident of his own good fortune, and still more encouraged by the existing state of circumstances, he offered, at his own expense and that of his friends, to raise and clothe an army for the emperor, and even undertook the cost of maintaining it if he were allowed to augment it to fifty thousand men.
The project was universally ridiculed as the chimerical offering of a visionary brain; but the offer was highly valuable, if its promises should be but partly fulfilled. Certain circles in Bohemia were assigned to him as depots, with authority to appoint his own officers. In a few months he had twenty thousand men under arms, with which, quitting the Austrian territories, he soon afterward appeared on the frontiers of Lower Saxony with thirty thousand. The emperor had lent this armament nothing but his name. The reputation of the general, the prospect of rapid promotion, and the hope of plunder, attracted to his standard adventurers from all quarters of Germany, and even sovereign princes, stimulated by the desire of glory or of gain, offered to raise regiments for the service of Austria.
The secret how Wallenstein had purposed to fulfill his extravagant designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count Mansfeld,[25] but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle that war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had subsisted their troops by contributions levied indiscriminately on friend and enemy; but this predatory life was attended with all the inconvenience and insecurity which accompany robbery. Like fugitive banditti, they were obliged to steal through exasperated and vigilant enemies; to roam from one end of Germany to another; to watch their opportunity with anxiety, and to abandon the most fertile territories whenever they were defended by a superior army. If Mansfeld and Duke Christian had done such great things in the face of these difficulties, what might not be expected if the obstacles were removed; when the army raised was numerous enough to overawe in itself the most powerful states of the empire; when the name of the emperor insured impunity to every outrage; and when, under the highest authority, and at the head of an overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued which these two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an untrained multitude?
Wallenstein was at the head of an army of nearly a hundred thousand men, who adored him, when the sentence of his dismissal arrived. Most of the officers were his creatures—with the common soldiers his hint was law. His ambition was boundless, his pride indomitable, his imperious spirit could not brook an injury unavenged. One moment would now precipitate him from the height of grandeur into the obscurity of a private station. To execute such a sentence upon such a delinquent seemed to require more address than it cost to obtain it from the judge. Accordingly, two of Wallenstein’s most intimate friends were selected as heralds of these evil tidings, and instructed to soften them as much as possible by flattering assurances of the continuance of the emperor’s favor.
Wallenstein had ascertained the purport of their message before the imperial ambassadors arrived. He had time to collect himself, and his countenance exhibited an external calmness while grief and rage were storming in his bosom. He had made up his mind to obey. The emperor’s decision had taken him by surprise before circumstances were ripe or his preparations complete for the bold measures he had contemplated. His extensive estates were scattered over Bohemia and Moravia, and by their confiscation the emperor might at once destroy the sinews of his power. He looked, therefore, to the future for revenge, and in this hope he was encouraged by the predictions of an Italian astrologer, who led his imperious spirit like a child in leading-strings. Seni had read in the stars that his master’s brilliant career was not yet ended, and that bright and glorious prospects still awaited him. It was, indeed, unnecessary to consult the stars to foretell that an enemy, Gustavus Adolphus, would ere long render indispensable the services of such a general as Wallenstein.