124 Wallenstein
Even so there were some real issues. For the Catholic electors one was
Wallenstein’s open opposition to the Edict of Restitution, which had
also turned Father Wilhelm Lamormaini, the emperor’s Jesuit confessor,
against him, while the burden of supporting his army was resented
much more widely.^2 Since the defeat of Christian of Denmark at Wolgast
in September 1628 there had been no enemy in the field against the
Empire, and thus arguably no need for an Imperial army, certainly not
one as large as Wallenstein’s. The wars between Gustavus Adolphus and
the king of Poland, between the Spanish and the Dutch, and between
Spain and France over Mantua, were none of them concerns of the
Empire, opponents contended, but the Empire was paying for involve-
ment through the contributions levied to support Wallenstein’s army,
as well as suffering from all the other problems of garrisoning, billeting
and a licentious soldiery outlined in the previous chapter. Protestants
raised the same objections to Tilly’s army, which had also been main-
tained at full strength in north Germany although it had done almost
nothing militarily in the two years since the end of the Danish campaign,
but for Maximilian and his colleagues that was not an issue.
The electors also had a deeper political concern. They and their fel-
low princes traditionally regarded themselves as the guardians of the
so-called ‘German liberties’, which in practice meant their own liberties
to rule their territories much as they pleased, with only the limited and
largely formal constraints exercised by the weak central institutions
of the Empire. This meant that the emperor had prestige and perhaps
influence but little real power. Wallenstein intended to change that, or
so it was reported in the colourful and imaginative analyses of his sup-
posed thinking which Maximilian had circulated to the other Catholic
electors following the Bruck conference in late 1626, and again in 1628.
Maximilian was an eager, not to mention credulous, recipient of this
alleged inside information, with its claim that the generalissimo planned
to use his vast number of soldiers to oppress the territories of the princes
both physically and financially, until the emperor, and behind him
Wallenstein himself, became the principal powers in the land.
The electors’ fears may have had some justification, but they were
misdirected. Wallenstein was no politician and not the man to con-
template such a grandiose and Machiavellian plan. According to
Khevenhüller his enemies claimed in 1627 that he had been heard to
speculate that it might be a good thing if the Empire were more like
the monarchies of Spain and France, but this is a far cry from establish-
ing that he actively intended or even considered it possible to bring
this about.^3 Ferdinand was another matter. While it is unlikely that he