18 Wallenstein
Then in March 1614 his wife died, perhaps of the plague, leaving him
a childless widower less than five years after their wedding. The extent to
which a seventeenth-century marriage was more than a convenient per-
sonal and financial arrangement is very difficult to assess four hundred
years later, but in Wallenstein’s case certain details may be indicative.
Firstly there is mention neither of mistresses nor illegitimate children
in the records or in the attacks of his later enemies, although doubtless
there was plenty of opportunity in Vienna. Secondly, and most unusu-
ally for the time, he chose not to remarry for nine years despite being
highly eligible. Thirdly he not only gave his wife a funeral appropri-
ate to her standing but also founded a Carthusian monastery on his
Moravian estates in her memory and as her resting place. Moreover a
dozen years later, approaching the height of his power and fortune, he
established another Carthusian monastery at Gitschin (Jicˇin), the prin-
cipal city of his duchy of Friedland (Frýdlant), and he named her in the
foundation and had her coffin re-buried there.^26
At first Wallenstein’s life followed much the same pattern after his
wife’s death. At the time tensions were rising between the Protestant
majority in the Estates of the Bohemian lands and the pro-Habsburg
and mainly Catholic court party, with whom Wallenstein has been
identified although he seems to have played little active part in politics.
Nevertheless he remained in favour, at least in military matters, so that
when in the summer of 1615 the Estates agreed to raise defence forces
in response to threatening moves by the Turks and their ally Bethlen
Gabor, Prince of Transylvania, Wallenstein was appointed to command
the 3000 infantry. Although a quantity of weapons was procured this
turned out to be another paper army, but Wallenstein was also taken
seriously ill during that September. In the spring of 1616 he is reported
to have spent time in a house he had bought in Prague, and in that year
he also became a gentleman of the chamber to Archduke Maximilian
of Upper Austria, another brother of Matthias, who by that time was
chronically sick.^27
Gradisca
A startling break in this pattern occurred in April 1617, when Wallenstein
announced that he was setting out from Moravia with 200 cavalry-
men, recruited and equipped at his own expense, to assist Ferdinand,
Archduke of Styria, in his local and none too successful war against the
republic of Venice.^28 The details of this conflict, known as the Uzkok
war and which had already been going on for a year and a half, need not