144 Wallenstein
set them to building their own encampments or digging latrines, and
there were chaplains, field surgeons and even whoremasters to attend
to other needs. Not least, there were specialist military policemen to
manage discipline in army camps which often rivalled the larger cities
of the day in population, as wives, children, soldiers’ boys, servants and
other camp followers usually brought up the total to something like
double the actual number of enlisted men.
How it was all achieved cannot be related in detail, even were the
details known, but the letters Wallenstein wrote and received in these
few months ran into thousands.^4 Among other things he did was
to establish a new general staff structure, with an appropriate range
of largely new ranks for the senior officers required. Among their
names were some already familiar and others newly prominent which
became well known later. Collalto was dead, but his deputies in the
Italian campaign were there, Aldringer, who had held the bridge at
Dessau, and Gallas, who was a little later to become Wallenstein’s
second-in-command and eventually his successor. Newer men, and
apparently closer to Wallenstein himself, were Baron Christian Ilow, a
Brandenburger who had progressed rapidly from colonel to the higher
ranks in the Imperial army, and Holk, the Dane who commanded the
garrison at Stralsund but switched to Imperial service after Denmark’s
defeat. Both appealed to Wallenstein because they were efficient, capa-
ble, reliable and down to earth. There was enough for them all to do,
but Wallenstein’s three months had extended to five before he consid-
ered his new army ready for serious action.
As that time slipped by the court at Vienna exhibited increasing
anxiety. By February Eggenberg himself was writing plaintively to
Wallenstein that ‘should Your Grace have decided irrevocably to resign
after these three months it would be the death of me, as in that case
I can clearly envisage our total ruin’.^5 Not, it seems, that he gave them
any additional cause beyond his original stipulation, and relevant
passages in his correspondence shifted progressively from stressing
the temporary nature of his appointment to making references to the
forthcoming campaign. Nevertheless there was considerable relief when
at the end of March 1632, having ignored earlier hints and approaches,
Wallenstein agreed once more to meet Eggenberg. In mid-April both
travelled to Göllersdorf, halfway between Znaim and Vienna, where
they settled the substance of the matter in a relatively short time, leav-
ing the details to be resolved with the assistance of the ailing minis-
ter’s factotum, Bishop Antonius of Vienna.^6 The whole procedure was
reminiscent of the meeting at Bruck in 1626, and once again a secret