12 Wallenstein
too many offspring, had to look elsewhere. The church provided
opportunities for advancement only for the highest born, and politics
in any meaningful sense was also the preserve of the already wealthy.
Soldiering, although hazardous, offered prospects of betterment, and
many land-poor noblemen emerged as colonels in the Thirty Years War.
The remaining possibility was to find a place in some princely court,
and by being amenable and useful to progress gradually in the patron’s
favour in the hope of worthwhile rewards to follow.
Wallenstein’s early enlistment suggests that he might have been
inclined towards a military career, but employment was uncertain.
The wars on the Hungarian frontier were sporadic, and there were few
major wars elsewhere in central Europe in the early 1600s. True, fight-
ing continued between Spain and the rebel United Provinces in the
Netherlands, and there are indications that Wallenstein was actively
considering going there in 1607,^ but after almost forty years this had
become a stalemate and was heading towards the twelve-year truce
which was agreed in 1609.^14 However religion would not have been
an obstacle had inclination and opportunity been there, as few com-
manders applied this as a criterion in appointing their officers. Many
princely courts were not so liberal, although both Emperor Rudolf II
and his brother Archduke Matthias were notably pragmatic concerning
the religion of those who could be of service to them. In any case there
were princely courts enough of all the main religious persuasions in
the Bohemian lands, Austria and the Empire as a whole. Like prospec-
tive marriage, a specific opportunity might, in some eyes, have justified
a change of religion, but unlike marriage such appointments were not
for life and the risks in a conversion of convenience were commensu-
rately greater. In the end Wallenstein did put a foot on a lower rung of
a court ladder, but he never appears to have made any great effort to
progress further, suggesting that if he was indeed ambitious this was not
his preferred route. Marriage probably looked a better prospect, and so
it proved to be.
Hence it is far from obvious that turning Catholic would have served
the purposes of self-interested ambition. Moreover for Wallenstein it
meant joining the religious minority at home in Bohemia just as he had
made a start in the military and appeared to stand well in the favour
of the Protestant-dominated Estates. Taking a wider view, Protestantism
had made such great inroads into the Catholic world during the previous
century, particularly in central Europe, that it must have seemed very
doubtful whether conversion held out reliable hopes for personal career
advantage, even given that the Habsburg monarchy remained Catholic.