Richer Than All His Tribe 45death, particularly as no-one knew how long he might live or what
further upsets there might be in the uncertain political world in the
meantime. Wallenstein even sought to reach an accommodation with
the exiled Margareta, but this eventually came to nothing.^16
To round off this story, Liechtenstein purchased the entailed estates,
taking advantage of the dispensation which allowed Wallenstein to
sell them on Heinrich Georg’s behalf, and in 1623 Wallenstein himself
purchased his ward’s remaining share of the freely transferable Smirˇický
estates for the sum of 502,000 gulden, the whole of which was then
made over to the emperor as a loan.^17 This cleared up the title to the
lands and made future dealings legally simpler, while at the same time
converting Heinrich Georg’s fortune into cash, much of which was
secured on the emperor’s credit. Insofar as there was any risk in this
latter arrangement it was ultimately Wallenstein’s, as he was the estab-
lished sole heir.
Sums of money are very difficult to evaluate in this period, not only
because of the normal historical problem of making any equation with
modern values but particularly because of the doubt about precisely
which coinage is being referred to and what its value was at the relevant
moment. Thus gulden can be relatively sound ones, either before the
inflation or after the currency reform, or at various stages of debase-
ment in between, and they might also be dubious Bohemian gulden or
sounder ones from further afield, Rhine gulden for example. With this
caveat it may be noted that in among his Bohemian transactions of
1622–23 Wallenstein sold his Moravian properties for 348,000 gulden,
and that his claim for damage to them during the revolt was assessed
at 182,000 gulden, so that they were worth 530,000 gulden in total. If
it was rightly said that the Smirˇický properties were worth four to five
times as much, this would confirm their estimated value of two million
or more. Wallenstein’s share via his ward was thus worth around a mil-
lion, broadly confirmed by his own purchase of the transferable parts
for 502,000 and a report that Liechtenstein paid 433,000 for the entail.^18
Hence from the proceeds of his Moravian estates and the value of
his interest in the Smirˇický ones Wallenstein owned or controlled assets
worth one and a half million. Adding his profits from military contract-
ing and the minting consortium suggests a total of the order of two
million, and this is the background against which to examine his other
property purchases at this time.
The first of these were the estates of Friedland and Reichenberg, the
security upon which Wallenstein had lent 58,000 gulden to the emperor
in June 1621. A year later, confiscation completed, they were available