Wallenstein: His Life Narrated

"Wallenstein is one of the towering figures in the war. He comes from the lesser nobility, like a lot of the senior commanders, and he rises to prominence through being a general, especially an organizer of armies for the Holy Roman Emperor. So from 1625 he is the senior field commander of the main army in the Empire. Because the emperor can’t pay him and because he’s financing much of the mobilization of the army on his own personal credit, he’s rewarded with captured territory. He receives the Duchy of Mecklenburg, because the then-Dukes of Mecklenburg have backed the wrong side, and so they’re expropriated. This raises him to the senior ranks of the aristocracy in the Empire and incurs the suspicions of those who otherwise back the Emperor. They think, ‘Well, if the Emperor can do this what might he do to us?’ First, they engineer his dismissal. Then the imperial army suffers a major defeat and he’s recalled. After that, he’s increasingly perceived as a barrier to peace negotiations by part of the anti-imperial faction. That’s rather ironic, because personally he probably favoured a negotiated peace. “England is one of the major powers that is not directly involved Thirty Years War, but they actually send as many troops to the continent as the Swedes do.” But he’s unconventional in the sense that although he builds a lavish palace in Prague—which is now the Czech Senate—he doesn’t play the role of the courtier. He doesn’t really have a faction at court. He’s always away commanding the army and so a whispering campaign starts that he’s about to betray the Emperor. Ultimately, the Emperor sanctions his murder and he’s assassinated in the town of what’s now Cheb in Bohemia. It doesn’t, actually. That demonstrates, I think, that although much is changing during the war, the basic socio-political order remains intact. Wallenstein is conscious that he’s about to be removed and at the very last minute genuinely does try to defect and attempts to take the officer corps and soldiers with him. But they don’t follow. They know on which side their bread is buttered and they know that only the Emperor can grant rewards that would be considered legitimate, whereas Wallenstein is not, on his own, a legitimate player. He only derives legitimacy through his relationship to the Emperor. Once that’s gone, his soldiers know his days are numbered and his card is marked. There are a good number of Wallenstein biographies; I think there’s something like two and a half thousand books and articles written about him. He’s such a fascinating figure, with so many questions to ask. Was he a Czech nationalist? Was he a peacemaker? Was he the last of the great mercenary captains? He fits all of these different archetypes. He’s also interested in astrology. So there are a lot of interesting angles. Mann’s biography is very solid. He wasn’t a professional historian, but he did read everything and he also had advice from the best Czech historians at the time and corresponded with them. Mann provides a lot of detail, but it doesn’t weigh heavy. There are some passages that are a bit strange. In the German version, there is a passage where he imagines what Wallenstein might be dreaming, which is perhaps exhibiting his novelistic heritage a bit too much. Golo Mann was obsessed with Wallenstein. He played him in a school play. But this book is a very good attempt to try and provide a balanced picture of the man and his role in the Thirty Years War. Yes, it was a bestseller. The German edition of Wallenstein sold at least 100,000 copies. It was the basis of the most expensive West German TV production in the 20th centur y, a four-part series. It captured the public imagination. There have been a number of attempts to do it. Famously, there’s the film made in the 1970s called The Last Valley , starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif. It has everything: the plague, mercenaries and a witch burnt at the stake. But the problem is that the war is a drama on such a grand scale. There are so many characters that it’s very, very difficult to do and I haven’t seen anything that really brings it off."