110 Wallenstein
he played the part once in full possession, employing the relevant titles
and forms of address, living in the appropriate style, issuing coinage
bearing his own head and motto, and generally behaving in the way
expected of a ruling prince.
That point is worth noting. Such behaviour was indeed expected and
was the norm for the times. In an age when sumptuary laws carefully
graded the apparel of the citizenry even of minor towns Wallenstein
would have seemed decidedly odd had he not acted like a great lord.
Historians have frequently drawn attention to the grand manner in
which he lived and travelled, quoting contemporary descriptions to
support an implicitly critical stance. This, however, is a modern atti-
tude, as the seventeenth century was more inclined to admire than to
censure ostentation. In 1600 Maximilian of Bavaria took 1200 horse-
men with him to escort his sister to her wedding to Ferdinand, who
was then only a junior scion of the House of Habsburg, and by the time
they arrived the cavalcade had grown to 3000.^11 In Wallenstein’s case
his retinue was often also the travelling headquarters of Europe’s larg-
est army. Any contemporary disapproval is likely to have been directed
not so much at the display itself as at the fact that a minor Bohemian
nobleman had risen so far as to warrant it, an exaltation which many
regarded as running against the natural order of things. This is perhaps
also a clue to Wallenstein’s attitude, that of the parvenu ever sensitive
to real or imagined slights and seeking to compensate by climbing still
higher up the social scale. Mecklenburg may have been welcome to
him from that point of view, although it inevitably also fed the hostil-
ity of his enemies, but Wallenstein was never the man to be deterred
by that.
In the autumn of 1627 there was one other reason why Mecklenburg
may have seemed particularly well suited to Wallenstein’s ambitions.
His wife was pregnant and he was hoping for a son to add to their
daughter Maria Elizabeth. A male heir was central to the aspirations of
a man of wealth, lands and titles, giving a sense of enduring purpose to
the accumulation of all three. A boy, Albrecht Carl, was indeed born at
Gitschin on 22 November 1627, to the great joy of the family, but the
baby was premature and lived less than two months. Worse still, it was
evident that Duchess Isabella could have no more children, so that the
prospect of an heir was both fulfilled and dashed within a few short
weeks. Such personal tragedies were by no means uncommon, although
no less bitter for that, but life had to go on. Wallenstein returned to
work, resigned himself to the situation, and in due course appointed his
cousin and brother-in-law Max as his heir.^12