Go, Captain, Greet the Danish King 951627–28: Denmark and Stralsund
Wallenstein spent most of the winter in the palace he was having built
in Prague, but although at home and with his wife he was far from idle,
as the interlude amounted to little more than a shift of his headquarters
while the business of quartering, recruiting and re-equipping the army
went on. Come the spring, he had to seek approval for his campaign
plans for 1627, necessitating a trip to Vienna and a spell among his
detractors which Wallenstein viewed with undisguised gloom. Then, as
was often the case in times of particular stress, he fell ill. To what extent
psychological causes underlay these recurrent flare-ups of his gout can
only be a matter of speculation, but such illnesses are none the less real,
painful and incapacitating. He delayed his departure for three weeks,
and when he eventually set out he had travelled only a short distance
before a worsening of his condition confined him to a village inn for
almost a month, so that he eventually reached Vienna in a litter in late
April. There he remained in bed for a further month, able to receive
visitors although not to go out, despite which he managed to transact
his essential business. On 23 May, after a single brief audience with the
emperor, he left Vienna, and he never visited the city again.^26
The strategic situation at the beginning of 1627 looked very similar
to a year earlier. Christian of Denmark was rebuilding his army and
could be expected back in the field in Lower Saxony, where Tilly was
still stationed but with insufficient troops to confront him alone.
Mansfeld himself was gone but his army was likewise rebuilding in
Silesia, while Transylvania appeared to present the usual threat, as at
that stage Wallenstein could not know that Bethlen would not fight
again. The Dutch had pinned the Spanish down on land and estab-
lished clear superiority at sea, so that no help was to be expected from
that direction. On the more positive side France had internal problems
with a major Huguenot revolt, while England was not only unwilling to
commit further support to the war against the emperor but had instead
become actively involved in assisting the Protestant Huguenots against
France.
More than offsetting this limited good news, in Wallenstein’s view,
was the growing threat from Sweden.^27 Having declined to join the
anti-Habsburg coalition previously, Gustavus Adolphus had been happy
to leave the burden to Denmark while he pursued his own interests in
Poland. There he had been very successful, establishing control over
what are today the Baltic states and much of their hinterland, as well
as over most of the ports along the Polish coast. This was not only