32 Wallenstein
title of king of Bohemia, headed west to Holland, Anhalt went north
and took refuge with the Scandinavian monarchs, and Thurn made his
way south, eventually to Constantinople, where he tried to persuade
the Turkish sultan to help the exiles to continue the war. Many lesser
participants also fled but numerous others remained, hoping through
their submission to receive mild treatment. Those who stayed under-
estimated Ferdinand as badly as those who had voted to confirm his
nomination as successor to the Bohemian throne, and indeed many
of them were the same individuals. Ferdinand had already shown his
hand earlier in 1620 by using – or abusing – the legal procedures of
the Empire in a move to place Frederick under the ban, making him
an outlaw and providing a cloak of respectability for the seizure of his
lands. As he showed at later stages in the Thirty Years War, Ferdinand
saw victory as an opportunity not for peace and reconciliation but for
driving home his advantage to the full.
The blow did not fall immediately in Bohemia. Instead Maximilian
promised the Estates to intercede for their lives – which he did not –
and then departed for home, leaving Liechtenstein as temporary
governor. Three months went by, and it was not until February 1621
that Liechtenstein, acting on orders from Vienna and assisted by Tilly,
Wallenstein and their troops, arrested all the members of the former
directorate of the revolt who remained within reach, as well as several
dozen other participants. They were put on trial for high treason, and
of the 40 who were convicted 27 were executed in front of Prague’s city
hall in a single morning in June, when troops from one of Wallenstein’s
regiments were responsible for order and security.^13 These killings were
accompanied by a wave of expropriations, with property seized not only
from those convicted but also from those who had died in arms against
Ferdinand, those who had fled, and many others who had been associ-
ated to a greater or lesser extent with the revolt. Some were fortunate
to have only a proportion of their lands confiscated, and others were
even more fortunate to be able to minimise or conceal their involve-
ment, often with the help of influential friends on the winning side.
Nevertheless vast areas of land passed into the control of the Imperial
treasury and became available for sale to purchasers deemed loyal to
the regime, in what constituted not only massive punishment but also
a concerted effort to break the economic and political power of the
landed Protestant nobility and gentry of Bohemia. And of course the
emperor desperately needed the money to meet the costs of the war.
Not that the war was by any means over, even temporarily. In the west
there were ominous signs that princes who had been unsympathetic to