Heroes_Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen_A History of Hero Worship

by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

  In his darkened, silenced room overlooking the main square in Pilsen Wallenstein worked indefatigably, sending off messengers to the Protestant electors, still intent on making peace. And as he intrigued, others made him, willy-nilly, an actor in intrigues of their own. In the last weeks of his life he was simultaneously the ferocious warlord whom none dared affront and a helpless victim of others’ scheming. His rivals at the imperial court sought to entrap him into overt treachery so as to be rid of him. His allies among the Protestants were anxious to lure him into committing himself unequivocally to their cause. To Catholic imperialists and Protestant rebels alike Wallenstein was a prey whom they were trying to drive into a trap. A Saxon general wrote jubilantly to Arnim in January, “He [Wallenstein] is now so far in that he can no longer escape.”

  Among his officers the treacherous “loyalists” were, as events would reveal, in the majority. The three most prominent among them, the triumvirate who would encompass his proscription and death, were Aldringen, Gallas, and Piccolomini. Aldringen, who was far away in Bavaria, had shown himself a less than wholehearted supporter of his generalissimo when he had obeyed (as how could he not?) the emperor’s order to place his troops at the disposal of the cardinal infante. Already Wallenstein was unsure of him. But the other two, Gallas, who would replace him as commander in chief, and Piccolomini, on whose say-so he would be found guilty of the most heinous treason, were his most favored lieutenants. Piccolomini especially had been, since Holk died of bubonic plague, his preferred confidant. After his death it was said that Wallenstein had trusted Piccolomini “blinded by a conjunction in their stars.” In December Wallenstein promoted him to the rank of field marshal. But his magnanimity was not enough to earn gratitude or forestall betrayal.

  The faithful “traitors” served him hardly any better. A second, opposed triumvirate of the two Bohemians, Counts Trcka and Kinsky, and the Hungarian Christian von Ilow was to stand by him to the end, but it is arguable that without their machinations that end need never have come. Trcka and Kinsky, dreaming of an independent Bohemia and a Hapsburg-free empire, had been wooing the French, the Swedes, the Saxons with promises of Wallenstein’s readiness to lead a revolt, while wooing Wallenstein with promises of French, Swedish, and Saxon support should he do so. Perhaps he knew and approved everything they were doing, but time and time again his actions belied their claims of his readiness to switch sides.

  On receiving the emperor’s “definite decision” Wallenstein attempted to protect himself. He knew how insecure he was. One of the imperial councillors was at Pilsen. Wallenstein told him, “I see well enough with what a bandage you would blindfold me, but I shall tear it from my eyes. I observe the efforts that are being made to snatch the army from under my fingers.” But he no longer had the energy or the faith in his own authority that had once made him capable of intimidating an emperor and an empire alike. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who translated Schiller’s trilogy, saw his dominant characteristic as “weakness,” an analysis which would have astonished any seventeenth-century observer but which fits with what we know of his last, sad days. Francis Drake, on his final voyage, for the first time sought his officers’ advice. So Wallenstein, instead of returning the curt “non si puó” that would have been characteristic of him in more confident times, called all the senior officers with him at Pilsen to a council of war. The emperor’s orders were read out. Unanimously the officers agreed that it was impossible to execute them. Wallenstein wrote to his master, enclosing an account of their decision, and asking for the emperor’s approval.

  Ferdinand’s fear was mounting. He complained that “this business is never out of my thoughts. It rises with me in the morning and goes to bed with me at night and completely deprives me of rest.” Pamphlets denouncing Wallenstein were circulating in cities all over the empire. One of them warned the emperor that his general was vengeful, arrogant, ungodly, and stark raving mad and concluded: “Salvation lies but one way: Expel your commander … Thus speaks God through me, his angel. Perform it swiftly. Follow his counsel or perish.” On New Year’s Eve 1633 a Bavarian agent wrote to Maximilian to tell him that the emperor had at last resolved in secret to follow the angel’s advice and dismiss his generalissimo.

  Wallenstein was by now bedridden for all but a few hours each day and in unremitting pain. Ilow announced that no one might hope to see the duke unless he summoned them, and even those so privileged could not hope for a coherent discussion with him: he was in such agony that he “incessantly swore the most frightful curses.” One of his officers allowed into his presence on January 10 found the generalissimo incoherent, writhing in his bed and moaning, “Oh, peace! Oh, peace! Peace! Oh, peace!” He told a priest that “were he not afraid of Hell’s perpetual punishments he would swallow the most virulent poison so as finally to be released from all his misery.” The Minotaur was stricken. Yet this pathetic figure was still, in the imagination of his enemies, monstrously formidable. Even the emperor, nominally the most powerful man in Europe, hesitated, afraid to move against him. “Why this delay?” asked the Spanish ambassador in Vienna, Count Oñate. “A dagger or a pistol will remove him.” But Ferdinand had yet to nerve himself for murder.

  On January 3, Ottavio Piccolomini had a private meeting with Gallas and another “loyalist” general, Colloredo. According to the report he wrote shortly after Wallenstein’s death, Piccolomini revealed to his two colleagues that Wallenstein himself had told him that he intended to go over to the enemy, taking the imperial army with him. He had told Piccolomini, or so Piccolomini said, that he would capture the emperor, drive the Hapsburgs out of the empire, and divide up its territories among his adherents. Colloredo was shocked and furious. Wallenstein, he said, was a rascal who should be “swiftly strangled.” Gallas was equally shocked but hesitant. He couldn’t believe (and perhaps he was right not to) that Wallenstein would go so far. Within a week the Spanish ambassador had passed Piccolomini’s allegations on to the emperor. (Wallenstein had been outspokenly critical of Spain’s influence on the Empire’s affairs—the Spaniards were impatient for his fall.) Ferdinand’s New Year’s resolution to rid himself of Wallenstein suddenly acquired new urgency.

  While Wallenstein kept to his bed he was represented by Christian von Ilow. Eight years before Wallenstein had listed his reasons for disliking Ilow: “First he is a proud, puffed-up fellow. Secondly he enjoys stirring up intrigue among the commanders.” The duke’s feelings on this subject had altered, but Ilow’s capacity for intrigue remained. The role he played during the last two months of Wallenstein’s life was a crucial, and profoundly ambiguous, one. It is open to question whether he was loyally enacting his master’s will or whether (as Schiller believed) he was a schemer working, with Trcka, to maneuver Wallenstein into making some gesture which the emperor could never forgive, so that thenceforward Wallenstein would have no choice but to commit himself to rebellion.

  At the beginning of January Ilow summoned all forty-seven of the imperial army’s generals and colonels to Pilsen. By January 11 they had gathered in the town. That day Ilow entertained them all in his house and held forth to them about the Jesuits and Spaniards who, he said, had such undue influence over the emperor. He then broke it to them that Wallenstein, having given his all to the imperial cause only to be rewarded with ingratitude and slander, intended to resign his command. The announcement was greeted with an outcry of dismay and anger. Financial self-interest, as well as personal loyalty and the professional soldier’s furious rejection of the meddling of slippered courtiers, made them vehement for Wallenstein. Twice that afternoon a delegation of officers, each led by the inflammatory Ilow, invaded the generalissimo’s crepuscular private quarters to implore him to reconsider. On the second occasion, gracious but exhausted, Wallenstein agreed to remain at his post. Afterwards Ilow suggested that it would be fitting that the officers make a reciprocal gesture, vowing to commit themselves to the commander in chief’s service, just as he had so nobly and selflessly committed hi
mself to theirs. All of them agreed.

  The next evening Ilow held a banquet for all the assembled officers in the town hall. The generalissimo, in whose palace courtiers had once dared to speak only in whispers, kept to his room across the square within easy earshot of the long, rowdy party. There was music, a lot of wine, much shouting, many drunken, sentimental toasts, a great deal of furniture overturned and smashed. In the midst of the uproar a document was circulated. It was an oath of loyalty to Wallenstein for all to sign. It was a strange moment for such solemn business. Some hung back. (The arch-“loyalist” Piccolomini was later to claim that during this period he had approached at least eighteen officers to assure himself of their loyalty to the emperor—which might carry with it the corollary of disloyalty to the emperor’s generalissimo.) The atmosphere grew violent. One shouted that anyone who refused to add his name was a scoundrel, a second threatened to throw the first out of the window, a third drew his sword on the second. Trcka, also sword in hand, declared himself ready to kill anyone who opposed the general, whereupon Piccolomini involuntarily exclaimed, “Traitor!” (for was not the emperor himself by now Wallenstein’s opponent?), and then, as though to distract attention from this too-revealing exclamation, grabbed another officer and whirled him, madly capering, around the hall. Some signed but not all, and many of those who did scrawled their names so clumsily (perhaps because they were drunk, perhaps because they were sufficiently sober to foresee the danger the document represented) that they could not afterwards be identified.

  The oath was designed to commit the officers firmly to Wallenstein’s cause. The signatories—so Ilow argues in Schiller’s play, and so he probably thought in real life—no longer had the option of going to Vienna, should Wallenstein rebel, and assuring the emperor that they had had no part in the rebellion. Their own handwriting would give them the lie. And as for the officers, so perhaps for the commander. Schiller’s Ilow is a tempter, using the oath as a way of nerving Wallenstein to take the plunge into open rebellion. Certainly Ilow must have been able to foresee—it would not have been hard—how the oath-taking would look from Vienna. It could be taken to be the unequivocal gesture of defiance on Wallenstein’s part for which so many people on both sides were waiting. Wallenstein was entrapped by it, as securely as those he or his lieutenants sought to entrap.

  The following morning Wallenstein summoned all forty-seven of the officers to his rooms and received them, dressed and seated in an armchair. He had heard, he told them, that some among them were reluctant to sign the oath. That being so he could not continue in his office. “I would sooner be dead than see myself living so; I shall withdraw and nurse my health.” One of his furious rages seized him. He ranted about money, about the Spaniards, about the iniquities of those about the emperor. His tirade was furious, despairing. He recalled a time when “we had flooded the whole empire with our army, held all fortresses and passes.” If peace could not be made then, then when would it ever come? He said that his detractors at court were out to dishonor him, perhaps even to poison him. He raved on until, suddenly spent, he advised the officers to think again about the oath and with a nod dismissed them. Sheepish and hungover, the officers adjourned, drew up a petition begging the generalissimo to forgive them their drunkenness of the night before and then, every single one of them, signed the oath. The majority of those who thereby solemnly swore to defend and serve Wallenstein would shortly desert him. Six weeks later three of them were party to his death.

  Shortly after the events at Pilsen it was being said that the wording of the oath had changed between its being read aloud to the officers and their being required to sign, that the first draft contained a redeeming clause making the officers’ duty to serve Wallenstein conditional on Wallenstein’s continuing to serve the emperor. Given the number of the signatories and the fact that, however drunk they were at Ilow’s banquet, they all signed again on five separate copies the following day, it seems unlikely that anyone would have attempted, let alone got away with, such a deception. Count Oñate told another version of the story: the original draft had indeed contained such a clause but Wallenstein had edited it out. This may be disinformation designed as further evidence of Wallenstein’s disloyalty, but it sounds consonant with Wallenstein’s character. He had not wished that his coins should bear the slogan “The Lord is my protector;” no more did he wish his officers to swear loyalty to him only as his master’s servant. He was nobody’s protégé. He stood alone. At Pilsen, if Oñate’s version is correct, he refused to solicit his men’s loyalty in his official persona as the emperor’s lieutenant. He wanted their allegiance to be for him alone, “für mich.”

  It was his undoing. The Pilsen oath, apparently designed to ensure his security, rendered his downfall inevitable. The news of it, arriving in Vienna so soon after Piccolomini’s allegations, seemed to confirm them. If he was not bent on mutiny and rebellion, why ever should Wallenstein have needed such an assurance of his officers’ support? The emperor bestirred himself. To summon Wallenstein, the Satanic genius of the war, to explain and defend himself was a prospect too frightening to contemplate. He would be tried in absentia. A panel of three judges, all of them eminent councillors who had formerly been on affable terms with Wallenstein, were appointed to determine his guilt. Docilely they did so.

  He had always been aloof. His absences and hauteur, his refusal to participate in the life of the court and the state, had rendered him awesome. Now, so far from the capital, he loomed like a nightmare on the edge of the imperial world. Count Oñate, indefatigably fanning the hysteria, remarked to the Bavarian agent that as a captive Wallenstein would constitute a hideous danger to state security: it would be easier to kill him. Prince von Liechtenstein wrote a memorial to the emperor in which he said the same thing, but more guardedly, arguing that “extreme remedies are appropriate to extreme wickedness.” To his contemporaries Wallenstein was not just a military commander whose politics were unreliable. Danger and ruin attended him. Perils mounted, wrote Oñate, “with every day that this man is still allowed to live.”

  A proclamation was drafted, dated January 24 but not to be made public until Ferdinand and his councillors judged the moment safe, in which the emperor addressed all of his officers, absolving them from any duty of obedience towards Wallenstein, pardoning those who had been misled into subscribing to the oath at Pilsen, and appointing Count Gallas as acting commander in chief. At the same time, so Ferdinand’s confessor later revealed, “the Emperor furnished several of the loyalest—namely Gallas, Aldringen, Piccolomini, Colloredo—who pretended to be of Friedland’s party, with plenary authority to take prisoner the leading members of the conspiracy and if at all possible, to bring them to Vienna or else to slay them as convicted felons.” So, covertly and with no chance to defend himself, Wallenstein was sentenced to death.

  For nearly three weeks nothing happened. Two years earlier the French jurist Cardin le Bret had addressed the question of “whether obedience is due to commands which, although they seem unjust, have the welfare of the state as their constant object, as if the prince would command the killing of someone who was notoriously rebellious, factious and seditious.” Le Bret concluded with a quotation from Seneca: “Nécessitas omnem legem frangit”—necessity breaks every law. But the fact remained that such an execution was “unjust.” Aldringen, Piccolomini, and Gallas knew what was required of them, but they were all afraid to act. So, it seems, was the emperor, who continued to write graciously to Wallenstein for twenty days after he had authorized his murder, addressing him as “well-born beloved cousin.”

  Eventually Count Gallas broke the deadlock. On February 12 he left Pilsen, his coach and horses lent him by the unsuspecting Wallenstein, ostensibly to summon Aldringen and return with him. The next day Piccolomini also went. He told Wallenstein he was afraid that Aldringen might either suborn or imprison Gallas, and that he had better go after Gallas and bring him back. Wallenstein lent him, too, a coach. When in 1630 the news of his di
smissal was brought to Wallenstein at Memmingen observers were struck by his lack of surprise. Then the all-powerful commander was imagined to be as omniscient as he was omnipotent, served certainly by silent squadrons of spies on earth, and probably by the stars as well. But now, clearly, he was unaware of what was being prepared against him. One does not oblige deserters or one’s would-be assassins by providing them with transport.

  In Vienna rumor and panic were spreading. The emperor ordered that prayers should be said in all the churches for a happy outcome to an unspecified “matter of the first importance.” A fire near a munitions store terrified the populace. A suspect general was arrested, placed under a constant guard by fifty men, and accused of being under orders from Wallenstein to start fires at all four corners of the city. While Vienna burned, it was alleged, assassins hired by Wallenstein and already hiding in the city would have murdered the entire imperial family. On February 17 Aldringen arrived in the capital and was granted an audience with the emperor. What he said persuaded Ferdinand that the time had come at last to announce Wallenstein’s proscription. The next morning the imperial proclamation drafted more than three weeks before was finally made public. Copies were sent to all senior military officers and nailed up in public places. A new proclamation was drafted “letting it be heard how he [Wallenstein] would utterly exterminate Us and Our worshipful House” and denouncing “his perjured disloyalty and barbaric tyranny which before has never been heard of nor is to be found in the histories.” The Jesuits’ superior-general ordered “one thousand masses weekly for the safety of the Emperor and the happiness of the Empire.” As Alcibiades’ disgrace was inscribed on the stones of the Parthenon and proclaimed by all the priests in Athens, so from every pulpit in Vienna Wallenstein, for so long the sword and buckler of the Catholic Church, was declared not only a traitor but a fiend.