Some Achieve Greatness 81recruit competent officers and soldiers to his armies irrespective of their
religion.
In this appointment process Wallenstein demonstrated at the outset
both one of his strengths and perhaps his most serious weakness as the
emperor’s general. Armies of the day were plagued by dilettante officers,
men with titles and contacts who were attracted by the status and
profit-making opportunities of a colonel’s commission, but who lacked
the ability, experience and commitment to discharge the responsibili-
ties effectively. Their approach spread to the ranks below them, creating
regiments which were ill-disciplined, unreliable in service, and more
interested in booty than duty. Wallenstein needed an efficient fighting
force and he was not prepared to be burdened with such men, a stance
which was quite correct from a purely military perspective. Moreover
he was determined to be master in his own house, choosing his men
in accordance with his own requirements rather than having officers
wished on him by elevated but non-military councillors or courtiers.
Gustavus Adolphus adopted the same approach, but he was both gen-
eral and king, with less need to consider the politics of the situation.
Wallenstein was no politician, and therein lay the problem.
Commanders-in-chief have always needed political support, and support
drawn as widely as possible, not just from the very top. In Habsburg
Austria that meant the emperor’s council, the Imperial war council,
and the Vienna court at large, whereas Wallenstein was inclined to see
himself as answerable to the emperor alone. Rejecting candidates for
commissions meant offending not only the individuals, but also those
who had supported them and who had expected their recommenda-
tions to count for something. Moreover surviving letters show that
Wallenstein’s reasons for refusing appointments, although generally
good, were sometimes very bluntly expressed, and while such corre-
spondence was intended to be private some of the gist doubtless became
known, particularly if he spoke as he wrote.^23 The disappointed and the
affronted had a common interest with the envious and the antagonistic
in seeing Wallenstein brought down, and this was the basis of the hos-
tile faction which started to form in Vienna, and which would become
increasingly significant as his career progressed.