Assassination Is the Quickest Way 225while senior military functionaries and their staff made the number up
to around 200. Before dawn the following morning the general received
Colonel Beck, still detained at Pilsen, telling him that ‘I had peace in my
hand; now I have no further say in the matter, but God is just’. Beck was
later allowed to leave, together with Bavarian and Imperial representa-
tives still in Pilsen, and on Wallenstein’s orders they were provided with
a squad of musketeers to ensure their safety. At ten in the morning on
Wednesday 22 February Wallenstein and his remaining adherents, with
an escort of around 1300 men, mostly cavalry, set out for Eger.^10
The journey took three days, travelling slowly because of Wallenstein’s
condition, which confined him most of the time to a horse litter. His
health had continued to deteriorate. In early January he told his Spanish
visitor Quiroga that ‘he would gladly take the strongest poison in order
to be free once and for all of the pains he had to endure, were it not
that he had to fear hell and the devil’. The Saxon colonel Schlieff saw
Wallenstein on 19 February and later observed that he had looked like
a corpse. Beck reported that when Wallenstein summoned him earlier
at Pilsen he had only been able to sit for a short time, needing to go off
for an hour in a steam bath before he could continue the discussion.^11
The 50 miles to Eger must have seemed endless.
The first stop was at Mies (Strˇíbro), only fifteen miles from Pilsen, by
which time Butler and his 900 men had joined the escort. Butler was
in a quandary. He later confirmed to Gallas that he had received his
order not to obey Wallenstein, although without specifying when, and
while he had not been at the most recent Pilsen meeting he must have
had some idea of the situation. On the other hand Gallas’s authority
was based only on his own order, whereas Wallenstein’s was backed by
his long-standing position and reputation, so for the moment Butler
followed his instructions. Nevertheless his regiment was stationed at
the front of the column to make it more difficult to defect, and at
the overnight stops Butler was billeted in the castles, away from his
men outside. On the second night, at Plan (Planá), he secretly sent his
chaplain Patrick Taafe off with a message protesting his loyalty to the
emperor and asserting that he was only going to Eger under compul-
sion, which was successfully delivered to Piccolomini the following
day.^12 Wallenstein too sent out an envoy, Colonel Breuner, with accredi-
tations to the emperor, Eggenberg and Trauttmansdorff, to deliver yet
another message that he was ready to resign and retire into private life.
Breuner only reached Pilsen, where he was arrested by Giulio Diodati,
but his mission was reported to Vienna. The emperor wrote back to
Gallas (although unknown to him Wallenstein was by then dead) that