78 Wallenstein
his influence to hasten a decision.^13 In April he was informed privately
that he was to be appointed to command whatever forces might be
required in Germany, although this was only advance notice, not an
actual commitment to raising an army. In mid-May the emperor wrote
to Maximilian to tell him that he was intending to bring the existing
Imperial forces up to strength and to recruit a new army of 21,000 men
under Wallenstein’s command. This, said Ferdinand, was a response
to Maximilian’s own urging that he should raise troops, but he took
the opportunity to state firmly that these and their new commander
were to operate with, rather than under, Maximilian and his League
army should an attack from the north require a joint campaign.^14 For
Maximilian this was a case of the good news and the bad news, and it
was the beginning of his nine years of hostility towards Wallenstein.
Even then the decision was not finalised until a meeting in mid-June,
at which it was at last confirmed that Wallenstein was to begin recruit-
ment, now of 24,000 men. It was the end of that month by the time
the ‘Instruction’ which confirmed his appointment as general of all the
Imperial armies which were to serve in Germany was signed, a promo-
tion which the emperor matched a fortnight beforehand by raising
Friedland to a duchy.^15 Both moves were significant. Armies at this time
were normally commanded by lieutenant-generals, rulers maintain-
ing the fiction that they themselves were the supreme commanders.
For Wallenstein the elevated military rank of full general was comple-
mented by his new title of duke, giving him a social status the equal
of anyone in his armies, among whose officers there were a number of
counts as well as several who were themselves dukes.^16 From that time
onwards Wallenstein was commonly known to contemporaries by his
title, Friedland.
An important question which prolonged the deliberations was the size
of the army to be raised. One of the best-known stories about Wallenstein
is that he supposedly claimed paradoxically that he could support an
army of 50,000 men but not one of 20,000, because only the larger
force would be able to hold enough territory in submission to finance
and feed itself by the extraction of contributions from the populace.^17
This is apocryphal, but he was certainly seeking a much larger number
of troops than the council were initially prepared to sanction. In this
their outlook was partly traditional – the emperor had never had such a
large army – and partly financial, whereas Wallenstein’s reasoning was
based on straightforward military logic. Armies were getting bigger. In
1623 Bethlen Gabor reportedly had over 40,000 men, and Wallenstein
had learned at first hand what happened to heavily outnumbered units,