Some Achieve Greatness 77in due course did, run to establishing the force, but supporting it for
any significant period thereafter was beyond the means of any private
person, even one as rich as Wallenstein.^11 Nevertheless he needed an
army, not – as has often been said – to serve his own ambition, nor – as
some said at the time – because he hoped to make even more money
out of it, but because he believed that everything could be lost, for the
Habsburg cause and for himself, including all that he had so far gained,
if the emperor failed to arm in time. The council were reluctant, and his
only hope was to remove the financial obstacle by giving the impres-
sion that he could fund the undertaking himself. That would also give
him the command, but there is a distinction to be made between mere
ambition and Wallenstein’s belief that in a dangerous situation he could
do a better job than any of the available generals. Put simply, he pre-
ferred to take his security into his own hands. When the council even-
tually decided that the emperor did need an army they chose to accept
Wallenstein’s offer without dwelling too long on questions of financial
practicability. Both parties gambled on the fortunes of war coming up
with some kind of solution, and in the meantime they averted their
eyes from the problem.
Wallenstein’s eventual commission provided for reimbursement of all
his necessary expenditure, but no-one at the time had any real idea how
this was to be funded. What hopes they had were indicated by another
clause, which authorised the extraction of financial support from the
enemy territory which it was assumed would be conquered and occu-
pied. Half of the booty from defeated armies and captured cities was
also to be converted to cash and used to pay the troops, although the
officers and men could keep the other half.^12 Wallenstein, however,
wanted to go further than relying on ad hoc levies on occupied country.
Regular and systematic contributions, effectively war taxes, would have
to be drawn from the Habsburg lands and the Imperial free cities as well
as from enemy areas. This near-revolutionary proposal was only slowly,
reluctantly and partially accepted, but it was the basis of Wallenstein’s
future contributions system which funded the armies and sustained the
rest of the Thirty Years War. In the short term it was insufficient, as was
soon apparent, but this was passed over in the optimistic hope that the
war would be short and that the spoils of victory would soon be avail-
able to fill the gap.
Nevertheless the matter dragged on for many months, through winter
and spring into the early summer of 1625, months during which
Wallenstein fretted, lobbied, and wrote anxiously to Harrach, pointing
out that the emperor’s enemies were not idle and begging him to use