Of Peace and Other Demons 197during Wallenstein’s ever more frequent indispositions spoke and wrote
on his behalf, as he did to Franz Albrecht after the first 1633 meeting
with Arnim. Trcˇka, the link with the Bohemian exiles Rašin and Kinsky
in the manoeuvrings around Wallenstein in 1631 and 1633. Trcˇka, who
loved intrigue but lacked the wisdom to separate the realistic from the
fantastic in his schemes, or to judge the ends which they were to serve.
Trc ˇka it may have been who suggested to Arnim that Wallenstein might
be ready to change sides if assured of Swedish support, and Arnim may
have been willing to grant him sufficient credence to allow him to use
the story for his own ends in dealing with the Swedes.
Mention of Trcˇka provides a timely reminder that many of the
people involved in the contacts of 1633 had interests of their own to
pursue. Thurn and many other Bohemian exiles were serving in the
Swedish army, but most had no wish to replace Habsburg with Swedish
hegemony in their homeland, and in this they were closer to Trcˇka in
Wallenstein’s camp or Kinsky intriguing in Dresden than to the Swedish
leadership. Necessity had made Saxony and Brandenburg Swedish allies,
but although they had as little wish as the Bohemians to see the Swedes
establish an enduring presence in north Germany they did not share
the aims of the exiles in other respects. Arnim, despite serving Saxony,
had his own independent view of what was required, similar in sub-
stance to Wallenstein’s although his approach differed. The Swedes
themselves had few illusions about their allies, and they were concerned
primarily with their own military and political interests, to which those
allies were purely secondary. Consequently most of the participants had
both overt and covert objectives, and in the best diplomatic traditions
nothing they said or wrote can necessarily be taken at face value.
Suvanto’s 1977 study is useful in providing Oxenstierna’s perspec-
tive on these tangled negotiations.^34 This shows how even those at the
centre of events were dependent for their information on rumour and
hearsay gathered by diplomats and informers, and also how they set
out to manipulate such sources in order to confuse their enemies – and
posterity in the process. Thus Oxenstierna’s agents sought to undermine
Wallenstein’s peace proposals in Dresden and Berlin by representing
them as ruses, while characterising Wallenstein himself as mercurial
and untrustworthy. Similarly they put pressure on Arnim by insinuating
that he was too close to Wallenstein, and they endeavoured to under-
mine the generalissimo’s own position in Vienna by spreading rumours
about his putative contacts with France and his supposed interest in the
Bohemian crown. The exiles too put their own slant on the stories going
around, and it is worth noting that reports linking Wallenstein to the