246 Wallenstein
considerable prosperity, and in part to Wallenstein through the result-
ing rents and taxes, which he in turn recycled into financing his army.
Through a combination of good fortune in the course of the war and
Wallenstein’s deliberate protection Friedland also escaped most of the
burdens of campaigning and quartering within its boundaries, so that
the citizens had much to be grateful for. Physical evidence of prosperity
is to be found in the building works which Wallenstein commissioned
in little more than a decade, not only palaces and premises for himself
and his administration, but also religious foundations and churches, as
well as provision of schools, hospitals and orphanages well ahead of the
standards of the time.
As a landlord and ruler in Friedland Wallenstein was at the progres-
sive end of the contemporary range, both economically and in the wider
context. He was not, of course, a liberal in any later sense, and nor was
he unique in his day, but he certainly did not number among the many
harsh, grasping and incompetent rulers in the seventeenth-century
Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately many of those who acquired shares
of his property following his murder were exactly that, so that with
Friedland quickly dismembered its prosperity did not long survive him.
While it lasted, however, Mecklenburg and Sagan benefited too, as
Wallenstein immediately applied the same approach during his shorter
hold on these territories. Mecklenburg’s response to Gustavus Adolphus
may be seen as one testimonial to his efforts. Once he had established
himself in north Germany the Swedish king issued an appeal to the
Protestant citizens of the duchy to rise up against the tyrannical
Catholic usurper Wallenstein in favour of their old dukes and himself.
No-one did, despite the fact that Wallenstein had by then been dis-
missed at Regensburg and had no army or other substantial means of
coercion at his disposal.^12
In matters of religion Wallenstein has long been regarded as a model
of tolerance in an intolerant era, a position which his enemies attrib-
uted at best to insincerity in his own beliefs and at worst to atheism or
active hostility to the Catholic religion. Both views are exaggerations.
After his conversion as a young man Wallenstein remained a conven-
tional practising Catholic for the rest of his life, and his benefactions
to the church were generous although not out of keeping with expecta-
tions for one of his station and wealth. Early on he took part in, or at
least allowed, attempts to pressurise his Moravian tenants into convert-
ing to Catholicism, but later he made little more than token efforts to
implement Ferdinand’s Bohemian recatholicisation policy in Friedland.
In Mecklenburg, where he had no overlord, he made no effort at all,