120 Wallenstein
neutral or friendly territory had to be used protests, pleas, complaints
and criticism invariably followed, along with allegations of mismanage-
ment or malice on the part of the commander. Princes and landowners
led the outcry, horrified by the loss of revenues from their estates which
winter quartering would cause, and they bombarded the Imperial court
with their grievances over Wallenstein’s choices of location. Again,
however, military considerations usually left little real choice. Armies
had to winter close to where the end of campaigning had left them,
as marching them off somewhere else was rarely feasible. The hardships
of a long march cost many lives at the best of times, and the later in
the year the greater the death toll, with provisions and shelter from the
cold hard to find en route, while wounds and illnesses were even more
frequently fatal than in the summer.
Money was always a constraint, but as lack of funds from the Imperial
treasury meant relying on enforced contributions from the populace the
burden and limitations imposed on Wallenstein were greatly increased.
The sums required were too large to be raised by the initiatives of local
commanders, so that a systematic approach and an organisation to
match were necessary. That in itself consumed resources, as some form
of coercion was almost always required. A company of soldiers and
the threat of more was often enough to persuade the local mayor and
council to cooperate in collecting cash in defenceless country areas, but
even so the number of men who had to be allocated to these duties
quickly multiplied as large areas were brought under contribution. The
wealthier towns and cities could pay more but were less easily intimi-
dated, often requiring protracted negotiations and a significant military
presence to ensure that any agreement was subsequently honoured.
Not infrequently cities with walls simply closed their gates, leaving
the responsible commander the choice of undertaking costly and time-
consuming countermeasures or of moving elsewhere in search of an
easier target. Occasionally the situation escalated into a crisis, as at
Stralsund and Magdeburg, not only involving a major commitment of
troops but requiring Wallenstein’s personal intervention. As a matter of
routine he had to deal with a stream of complainants and petitioners
from places where contributions were being levied, as well as parallel
pleadings passed on from and endorsed by the Imperial court. The
need for money left little scope for favourable replies, at best a slightly
reduced assessment as part of the negotiation, but usually the answer
had to be no. Wallenstein’s characteristic response implicitly recognised
this reality, not a deterministic ‘no’ but a fatalistic ‘es kann nicht sein’ –
it cannot be.