64 Wallenstein
universe, which was soon to give way to the Copernican heliocentric
model.
Like the Ptolemaic system, astrology did not always match up well
with practical observation, and to the modern sceptic the half-truths
and outright errors demonstrate the falsity of the concept. The educated
seventeenth-century mind would have seen it differently. In classical
tradition the oracle at Delphi revealed the divine truth, but in a form
which was only too readily misunderstood by the human recipients.
The stars too doubtless had the truth within them, but human inter-
pretation, even at the highest level, was fallible. Hence one had to be
grateful for such insights and revelations as were achieved and not cavil
over the errors. There was, however, an important corollary to this.
Since one could not know in advance which were revelations and which
were errors one had to treat all predictions with caution, at best as indi-
cators as to where one should be careful and where one should look for
opportunities. Some people were of course less sophisticated than this
and inclined to uncritical credulity, while others were sceptical or hos-
tile, whether on religious or intellectual grounds. A balanced examina-
tion of the actual evidence which has survived suggests that Wallenstein
was probably somewhere in between, and as such very much a man of
his times. His wealth and position allowed him to indulge his interest
more than most, and his involvement in astrology is better documented
principally because Kepler, as a world-class scientist, kept very precise
records and a large proportion of his correspondence has survived.
How much does it matter? Most biographers who subscribe to the
traditional Schillerean picture of Wallenstein as obsessively and credu-
lously involved in astrology do not go so far as to say that it had a
significant effect on his practical decisions and actions, and some
specifically acknowledge that it did not. That leaves a problem of psy-
chological credibility. Rudolf II does appear to have had a blind faith
in astrology, but by most accounts he was also unstable, unreliable and
incompetent. Wallenstein was a shrewd operator, a brilliant organiser,
a successful general, and an all round man of action who knew how to
seize the moment when an opportunity presented itself. This is not easy
to square with the idea that he was also a star-struck fantast, but fortu-
nately we do not have to do so as the evidence does not support that
view. Schiller was entitled to build on the legends about Wallenstein’s
character for his dramatic purposes, just as he devised a romance
between Wallenstein’s daughter, in reality then a child, and the totally
invented son of Field Marshal Octavio Piccolomini. The historian needs
more positive confirmatory evidence before accepting an old tradition.