248 Wallenstein
Wallenstein was also one of the first of a new breed of commander
who set out to fight a new kind of war. Henri, Duke of Rohan, a con-
temporary soldier and military theorist, observed that whereas in the
past generals had played the lion, in future they would play the fox,
which the British military expert Liddell Hart rather more fulsomely
expressed in calling Wallenstein ‘the supreme poker player of military
history’ and ‘a grand strategist playing for higher stakes than local mili-
tary success’. The old style had been to muster one’s forces and set out
to confront and force the enemy to battle. The new one was to combine
military and political strategy to outmanoeuvre the opponent, defeat-
ing him if necessary but above all forcing him to make peace without
achieving his original objectives. Wallenstein’s duel with Gustavus is a
prime example. Throughout 1632 Maximilian was pressing him to take
immediate and direct action against the Swedes, firstly by moving south
to face them before his new army was fully ready, secondly by attack-
ing them in their almost impregnable Nuremberg fortifications, thirdly
by pursuing them despite the weaknesses of his own army when they
eventually withdrew from Nuremberg, and finally by returning south
in the autumn when they again threatened Bavaria. Wallenstein did
the opposite. Rather than responding to the Swedish king’s thrusts he
applied pressure to his Saxon allies, thereby forcing him to make hasty
moves in insufficient strength, and as a result he twice caught him at
a serious disadvantage. Put simply, Wallenstein acted in a way which
forced Gustavus to react, rather than vice versa. As with the Danish
campaign earlier and as in the negotiations in Silesia a year later
Wallenstein’s objective throughout was not to achieve an impressive
battlefield victory, where the advantage gained would probably have
been temporary, but to force his opponents back north, deprive them
of their allies, and leave them little alternative but to make peace. His
strategy was neither generally understood nor appreciated at the court,
but a later military tribute came from Prince Eugène of Savoy, Austrian
commander-in-chief in the early 1700s and himself possessor of one of
the highest military reputations of the age, who described him as ‘the
great Wallenstein’.
The most durable part of the Wallenstein myth is that he was bound-
lessly ambitious, an opinion maintained even by those modern histori-
ans who otherwise exhibit a more balanced approach to earlier traditions.
The view is understandable among contemporaries who observed him
rise rapidly from obscurity to apparent pre-eminence, both militarily
and socially, particularly those who thought that they had cause
to fear the direction in which his ambitions were supposed to lead.