Decline and Fall 219efforts. He met Oñate first, and then on 18 February he was received by
Ferdinand. Imperial orders to army commanders followed on the same
day, confirming Gallas’s earlier ones, and messengers were despatched
to allied princes both within and outside the Empire informing them of
the situation, much to Maximilian’s pleasure and relief.^45
Ferdinand then issued a proclamation, also dated 18 February and
known as the patent of proscription, publicising Wallenstein’s alleged
plans and announcing his dismissal.^46 Unlike the decree of 24 January
this makes no mention of pardon for those who signed the Pilsen oath,
no longer a matter of some officers having ‘gone rather far and done
more than they legally should have’, but now described as ‘a most dan-
gerous and far-reaching conspiracy against us and our esteemed House’.
Regarding Wallenstein himself the first decree had made no accusa-
tions, citing only ‘highly important and urgent reasons’ for making a
change in the command. In contrast the proclamation refers to ‘definite
information concerning his designs to drive us and our esteemed House
out of our hereditary kingdom, lands and people, and to take our crown
and sceptre for himself’, which is described as ‘an unheard-of faithless
breach of oath and barbaric tyranny for which there are no parallels in
history’. Despite this hyperbole, however, careful reading shows that
Wallenstein was accused only of harbouring intentions, not of having
actually taken any action. Although by implication he was branded as a
traitor there was no formal statement to that effect, nor was he placed
under the ban of the Empire, and there was likewise no mention of
or authority for anyone to arrest him, let alone kill him. Nor was the
document sent to Pilsen.
One other matter was not overlooked. Oñate had been the first,
so far as the records show, to mention what many others may safely
be assumed to have had in mind. At the end of January he had told
Piccolomini’s confidential factotum Fabio Diodati that there would
soon be money enough in the Imperial coffers, the proceeds of the
confiscation of the vast Wallenstein and Trcˇka estates. On the same
day as the proscription was published, while Wallenstein still lived
and no attempt had yet been made to arrest him, the emperor gave
orders for the immediate despatch of troops to seize his and Trcˇka’s
possessions.^47 Evidently he was not expecting them to be brought to
trial. It was Ferdinand’s favourite financial device, now his standard
procedure, to pay his debts by sequestering the assets of anyone who
could conveniently be classified as a rebel. The veil of legality covering
this near-naked expropriation was thin in Bohemia, thinner still in
the Palatinate and Mecklenburg, and was now reduced to a three-man