Decline and Fall 201Maximilian was furious, the emperor was furious, even Eggenberg,
long one of Wallenstein’s principal supporters, was furious. The credit
gained from the success at Steinau vanished as quickly as it had come,
destroyed first by Wallenstein’s misjudgement over Regensburg, and
then by him moving against Bernhard but dashing the hopes this
raised at court by withdrawing without firing a shot. The prospect of his
removal from command was once more the talk of Vienna. Wallenstein
himself, Piccolomini wrote to Gallas on 2 December, ‘would like to con-
clude a peace in any way possible, because he has fallen under so much
suspicion at the court that he wonders if there may be some action from
there. The negotiations at Schweidnitz are more than ever on his mind,
and remembering them makes him severely depressed.’^4
The gathering storm
The need for winter quarters always exacerbated the problems caused
by the burdens of war. At the beginning of 1633 the proponents of
peace had pointed out the exhaustion of the Habsburg hereditary
lands, and by the end of that year the position was still worse, so that
the prospect of sustaining the army during the winter caused dismay
among the emperor’s councillors and despair among his subjects.
Wallenstein’s men were unwelcome in Bohemia, Moravia and Austria,
while Aldringer’s detachment was equally unwelcome in Bavaria when
it returned from campaigning with Feria. Even the princely courts,
including those of Maximilian and Wallenstein himself, were strapped
for cash and unable to pay their officials.^5 Some of Wallenstein’s senior
officers were also growing restive, as the prospects of profit from their
regiments depended largely on the spoils of war, but truces and long
marches without action brought only costs, in the form of illness, deser-
tion and death among the men who were their stock in trade.
Indications that Wallenstein intended to winter the army yet again
in the hereditary lands caused alarm in Vienna, and Questenberg was
despatched to meet him with something between a plea and an order to
look elsewhere. The suggested places, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Saxony and
Thuringia, were widely spread out and all in the hands of the enemy,
a point glossed over with the optimistic claim that the presence of
Imperialist forces in these areas would give hope to those worthy citizens
who remained loyal to the emperor. Questenberg’s instructions ended
on a stern note. He was to dissuade Wallenstein from going against
these express wishes of the emperor, as this would ‘diminish our high
authority, and could give rise to thoughts among foreign potentates