198 Wallenstein
Swedes and the French all involve Bohemian intermediaries who were
themselves the source of most of the surviving information. Against this
background it becomes easier to see how even the more fantastic stories
about Wallenstein could gain credence in some quarters. ‘The first casu-
alty when war comes is truth’, said an American senator in 1917, and
his remark would have been equally valid three hundred years earlier.