56 Wallenstein
referred back to it regularly, comparing events as they occurred with
those in the forecasts, there is no actual evidence to support this. In
one of the most recent biographies Polišenský and Kollmann declared
that the horoscope made such an impression on Wallenstein that ‘he
decided to live in accordance with it’, which Diwald echoed in observ-
ing that Wallenstein ‘made every effort to keep slavishly to it, obsessed
with making it come true’. Hence, Diwald added, ‘he always had the
horoscope readily available by him’, while Watson went so far as to
describe him ‘thumbing the leaves of what had become his gospel’, but
these are merely fanciful speculations.^7
What we do know is that in late 1624 Wallenstein wrote to Taxis, who
was by that time a lieutenant-colonel and governor of Wallenstein’s
Friedland estates, and Taxis in turn wrote to Kepler asking him to review
the 1608 horoscope. To facilitate this Wallenstein returned the original
manuscript, upon which he had made marginal notes of where certain
forecast things had happened, but earlier or later than predicted. These
notes are the basis for the assumption that he had kept the horoscope
to hand as the years went by, but Wallenstein’s letter indicates that
they were made specifically for Kepler’s information and presumably
on a single occasion in 1624, as in one of them he recorded not only
the date of his first marriage but also of his wife’s death and of his own
second marriage in June 1623. The notes were only five in number, and
Wallenstein ignored those predicted events which had not occurred at
all to focus on his marriage and on illnesses which he had developed,
but not in the forecast years, and he added that he was neither sick nor
given a military command in 1611 but that these things did happen
in 1615.^8 Wallenstein also asked Taxis to put a number of additional
questions to Kepler, and it is worth quoting the relevant passage from
his letter in full:
Eight days ago I sent you the nativity which Kepler wrote for me
thirteen years ago [sic], but because he has placed some things too
early and some too late I have set down in the margin when they
happened to me. You must seek an opinion from him, but more
detailed than was previously the case. If possible I would also like to
hear from him what fortune or misfortune I may have each year; also
whether or not I will continue in the war, and whether I will have
my estates and eventually die in my homeland or abroad. Several
mathematicians [i.e. astrologers] agree about that and say that I will
live outside my fatherland and also die there, while most say that
I will die of apoplexy, and I would like to have his comments on this.