Of Peace and Other Demons 179‘I long for peace as much as for my own salvation’, he told a Danish
representative at this time, ‘but nevertheless I am now making greater
preparations for war than I have ever done.’ This time, however, his
efforts were to be directed first and foremost against ‘those who spurn
the offer of peace negotiations and want yet more bloodshed’.^2
There was another reason for his desire for peace. At 49 Wallenstein
was past his prime by the standards of the time, and his health, never
good, was deteriorating rapidly. His gout, a progressive and debilitating
condition for which there was then no effective treatment, was steadily
crippling him. At Lützen he could still ride, if only for a time, but there-
after a coach or a horse-litter were his principal means of transport. He
had increasing difficulty in writing, sometimes unable even to sign his
name due to the pain in his finger joints, and he suffered from other
recurrent illnesses, given names such as Hungarian fever and perhaps
stemming from his early days as a soldier. Precisely what they were has
not been established but is in any case irrelevant. What is clear is that
he was constantly unwell and frequently more severely ill, a fact which
became common knowledge as 1633 progressed. Wallenstein knew it
best of all. The war had dragged on for almost fifteen years already, but
he could not command for many more. Even had it been winnable he
did not have time to win it, so peace became his priority, even his
obsession. Peace too for himself, freedom from the crushing burdens
of command which he had reluctantly resumed a year earlier. Peace
to enjoy for the little time remaining to him the lands and palaces of
his duchy, which, as his correspondence shows, were never far from
his thoughts even at the most hectic periods during his campaigns.
Mecklenburg was gone for as long as the Swedes held north Germany,
while Sagan, like the rest of Silesia, was threatened or actually occupied
by Arnim’s army, but he still had Friedland. Even that would go if the
Swedes and Saxons resumed their advance, allowing the Bohemian
exiles to return. There were many reasons to long for peace.
The twists and tangles of the ensuing contacts between the warring
parties, in most of which Wallenstein was the central figure, are not
easy to understand. Mann went so far as to claim that efforts to do so
have been in vain, as ‘a description of the last year of Wallenstein’s life
cannot be based upon pure reason’, because this ‘presupposes what did
not exist’. Fortunately this is too pessimistic a view. It may indeed be
difficult, as Mann argued, ‘to create reasoned order from what he said,
what his authorised, half-authorised, or completely unauthorised self-
proclaimed friends said that he said, or what they said of him’, but if
attention is focused upon what little Wallenstein himself can be shown