Richer Than All His Tribe 41into a contract with the exchequer, took a risk on the problems of secur-
ing enough silver and the inflation of its price, delivered the agreed fee
and apparently quite legally made a lot of money over and above. As for
Wallenstein, it is unlikely that he played any part in setting up or run-
ning the consortium, or indeed delivered any significant political influ-
ence on its behalf. He was lucky to be in the right place at the right time,
and to have the right contacts, principally Liechtenstein, to be asked to
join. Nevertheless it was not, as has been claimed, a major source of
his wealth. A profit of around a quarter of a million gulden was a lot of
money, but as will be seen the sums involved in Wallenstein’s property
transactions at this time were an order of magnitude larger.
A man of property
There are three main strands in the complicated history of Wallenstein’s
property dealings in the early 1620s. Firstly he lent money to the
emperor secured on various lands which were liable to confiscation
following their owners’ participation in the Bohemian revolt. Secondly
he pursued and eventually acquired the larger part of the vast Smirˇický
family estates, by virtue of his claim as one of the best qualified pro-
spective heirs through his mother, who was born a Smirˇický. Thirdly he
engaged in a huge and frantic but logical programme of purchases, sales
and exchanges when the confiscated properties of former rebels were
put on the market. All three aspects were bound up with the punitive
policy adopted by the emperor, and with the latter’s desperate need to
raise money as fast as possible to pay some of his debts and continue
the war. The proceedings were legally dubious, but the responsibility for
that lay with Ferdinand, not Wallenstein.
The first three months after the battle of the White Mountain were
deceptively quiet in this respect, but with the arrests in February and the
mass execution in June 1621 Ferdinand’s approach became apparent.
Even so it was not until January 1622 that a special court was set up to
investigate those accused of complicity in the revolt, and to confiscate
the lands of those found guilty. Its president was Adam Waldstein, often
described as Wallenstein’s uncle although he may have been a more dis-
tant relative, and a long-standing holder of Bohemian offices who had
been an Imperial privy councillor while Wallenstein was still at school.
Those who had been executed, or had died in arms during the revolt,
or had fled the country, were automatically liable to full expropriation.
Others less seriously implicated forfeited only a proportion of their
property, the most fortunate as little as a fifth, but even in such cases