108 Wallenstein
Eyes then turned to Christian’s own lands, with aspirations increas-
ing parallel to the military advance of 1627, first envisaging the con-
fiscation of his German duchy of Holstein, then adding the captured
Danish territories in Jutland, and finally seizing upon reports that the
Danish council were contemplating depriving him of the crown itself.^6
In a letter of January 1628 Wallenstein confided to Arnim that people
at court, including the emperor, had offered him the opportunity to
seek the Danish throne, ‘but I declined with thanks, as I would not be
able to maintain it’. He wondered whether the Danes might instead be
persuaded to choose the emperor as their king, while for his own part
he preferred to proceed with ‘the other’, that is Mecklenburg, as it was
more secure.^7
Money was desperately needed for the army, both to meet immedi-
ate needs and to pay off some of the accumulated debts, which in turn
was essential in order to obtain further loans, so that Wallenstein was
constantly pressing the court for action to improve funding. One result
was a more determined effort to enforce confiscations. In the latter
part of 1627 commissioners with sweeping powers were appointed for
the purpose in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, while the court itself
moved against Mecklenburg. In June of that year Tilly had protested to
Vienna about the hostile activities of the dukes, demanding that they
be given an official Imperial warning and an order to desist. Ferdinand’s
advisers then concluded that the dukes were ‘notorious rebels’, which in
their view justified the emperor in acting against them without formal
legal proceedings.^8 In September Imperialist forces took Mecklenburg
as they advanced towards Denmark, so that confiscation became a real
and immediate possibility. That left the problem of whether a buyer or
buyers able to finance so large a purchase could be found, a problem
which both then and later hampered the progress of smaller confisca-
tions in north Germany. Wallenstein resolved this difficulty by propos-
ing to take Mecklenburg himself.
The first report of his interest is in a letter from late October 1627,
but this also indicates that the subject had been raised before. So too
had the duchy of Sagan, a minor principality in Silesia belonging to
the emperor, which had been offered to Wallenstein.^9 About this he
hesitated, changed his mind, and finally accepted, but Mecklenburg he
wanted, and he was prepared if necessary to buy only a part although
he preferred to have it all, with the price to be offset against the emper-
or’s debts to him. Such a transfer was highly contentious politically, with
some of the Imperial councillors arguing that the hereditary dukes of
Mecklenburg could not be treated in the same way as minor noblemen,