8 Wallenstein
In 1597 the fourteen-year-old Albrecht was sent off to a grammar
school at Goldberg (Zlotoryja), near Liegnitz (Legnica) in Silesia. This
was of the traditional type where Latin was the principal language,
and it drew its pupils from the sons of the German, Polish and Czech
nobility. The rest of the curriculum may be guessed at from that speci-
fied by Wallenstein when he founded his own school over 25 years
later: the German and Italian languages, arithmetic, riding, dancing
and playing the lute or another musical instrument. One document pre-
served from this period is Wallenstein’s own letter complaining to the
governor of the province about his treatment in the streets of the town –
name-calling, including the epithet ‘Calvinist scum’, stone-throwing
and other forms of hostility – perhaps because he was a Czech outsider
or because of religious differences. Goldberg nevertheless provides
another example of Wallenstein later recalling a period from his youth
with gratitude, which he demonstrated in a practical way by presenting
the former head of the school with his thanks and a handsome sum of
money when duties as the emperor’s commander-in-chief brought him
that way in 1626.^5
After two years at Goldberg Wallenstein moved on to the Nuremberg
academy at Altdorf, where he was registered in August 1599, shortly
before his sixteenth birthday. His stay at this college was short and tem-
pestuous; after four months the authorities were attempting to expel
him and he actually left two months later.^6 Much has been made of the
events of this period, perhaps because they are better documented than
the rest of Wallenstein’s youth, but they need to be put into perspective.
Students were then exclusively sons of the well-to-do, away from the
discipline of home or a tightly run school for the first time, adequately
provided with money and far more inclined to wenching, drinking and
brawling than to study. University towns were often riotous places –
perhaps why the Nuremberg city fathers had prudently moved their
academy some distance away to Altdorf – and like the English universi-
ties of Oxford and Cambridge most German seats of learning experi-
enced frequent disturbances in which violence and even murder were
not unusual. This was the case in Altdorf before Wallenstein arrived and
also after he left. That he seems in his brief stay to have encountered
more trouble than the average may as easily be attributed to his Czech
outsider status and to falling into bad company when still relatively
young as to any innate wildness of character.
The incident in which Wallenstein was most clearly personally culpa-
ble was a beating he gave his young German servant, a beating so severe
that it came to the attention of the authorities and led to proceedings