214 Wallenstein
in Paris, tales which may have been a distorted echo of Kinsky’s vain
attempts to establish such a contact.^31
Piccolomini, highly ambitious and a field marshal at the age of 34,
had his eye on still higher things, including ultimately Wallenstein’s
command, together with any status and possessions he could gather
on the way. On 3 January 1634 he met Gallas and Colloredo on offi-
cial business in Silesia. Privately he reported to them that Wallenstein
had taken him into his confidence, as something of a favourite, and
told him of his intention to take the army across to the enemy.^32 The
general, he said, proposed to use the combined forces to attack the
emperor, and to capture not only the hereditary lands but also the other
Habsburg possessions in Germany and beyond, notably in Italy, Alsace,
Burgundy and the Low Countries. These territories would then be
distributed, partly to appease neighbouring powers, including France,
Poland, Savoy, the Papacy, and perhaps Venice, as well as granting
freedom to the Netherlands, and partly to reward Wallenstein’s loyal
supporters. The three officers themselves were included. Gallas was to
have the duchies of Glogau and Sagan, Colloredo the Italian province
of Friuli, and Piccolomini the duchy of Teschen and other lands in
Bohemia and Silesia. The king of France was to become King of the
Romans, and hence successor to the Imperial crown, while Wallenstein
himself would become king of Bohemia, and – according to another
report of Piccolomini’s claims – archduke of Austria too. There are many
such differences of detail in the contemporary accounts.^33 One version
says that Franz Albrecht was to have the electorate of Saxony, Bernard
of Weimar would take Bavaria, Arnim and Horn would become electors
of Mainz and Trier respectively, while Mecklenburg would go to Gallas,
Milan to Piccolomini, Moravia to Trcˇka, Teschen to Ilow, and so on.
Yet another gives Saxony to Bernhard, Brandenburg to Franz Albrecht,
and Pomerania to Arnim. No doubt the tale grew in the telling, but
even at its most basic level it would have been a gigantically ambitious
enterprise.
Elements of this story are familiar. Wallenstein was certainly prone to
talk and write loosely about what might be desirable – not of course the
same thing as his practical intentions – including in the earlier days a
campaign against the Turks and more recently the need to rid the Empire
of foreigners, notably the Swedes, the French and the Spanish. On the
other hand joining with the Swedes and French to turn the combined
armies on the emperor and drive him out to Spain was what Kinsky and
Tr c ˇka had been aiming at since 1631. That much Piccolomini might
have heard in Pilsen, although from separate sources, and it will not have