130 Wallenstein
does it square with Questenberg’s own account, but it is interesting as
an example of the legends, particularly in connection with astrology,
which attached themselves to Wallenstein, and which became accepted
by virtue of constant repetition despite the lack of any supporting
evidence.
In truth Wallenstein’s reaction as reported by Questenberg is entirely
credible. Over the past year he had increasingly been obliged to
employ his army to pursue policies of which he disapproved, while at
the same time his repeated warnings about the danger from Gustavus
Adolphus were ignored. He was fully conversant with the complaints
and criticisms of his enemies, but he had been neither willing nor able
to defend himself effectively against them. On the one hand he lacked
the political skills required for successful in-fighting, while on the other
he believed, to judge from his correspondence, that his services should
have spoken for themselves, disdaining as a result to make regular
appearances at court in the undignified position of defendant and his
own advocate. Nor had he had the time to do so, constantly burdened
down as he had been with the massive workload of generalissimo and
paymaster of a vast army operating in widely separated theatres of war.
He suffered from persistent ill health, with stomach problems as well
as gout necessitating a three-week cure to take the waters at Karlsbad
(Karlovy Vary) en route to Memmingen, although the benefit must have
been doubtful as he continued to work throughout. Above all there was
the problem of money, the endless struggle to raise the cash needed
to keep the army functioning, which by mid-1630 had reached crisis
point. The net in which Wallenstein felt himself to be enmeshed was
largely financial.
The chief victim of the cash crunch was not Wallenstein himself
but his principal banker, Hans de Witte, who by 1630 was at the cen-
tre of large-scale international funding operations, which advanced
money to the Imperial army in exchange for the rights to the agreed
contributions from cities and territories of the Empire as they came in.
Wallenstein even depended on a monthly cash shipment from de Witte
to finance his headquarters and his personal outgoings.^15 The problem
was that agreeing contributions was one thing, collecting them quite
another, and the longer the war went on the more difficult it became for
Wallenstein’s officers in the field to enforce punctual payment of what
had been promised. Ready cash was drying up, and local officials could
not themselves lay hands on the necessary sums. Arrears mounted.
De Witte could not meet his commitments to his business partners and