The Fault Is Not in Our Stars 61That said, it is nevertheless true that Wallenstein maintained an inter-
est in astrology in later life. In May 1628 he had an indirect approach
from Kepler, who was in financial difficulties and uncomfortable as a
Protestant amid the zeal of Counter-Reformation Prague, so Wallenstein
arranged for him to move to his own duchy of Sagan, which remained
his home for the rest of his life.^19 Astrology, however, was very much
secondary in Kepler’s work, far more important being his standing as
the foremost mathematician and astronomer of the age. Wallenstein
had in mind founding a university, for which Kepler’s prestige would
have been valuable, and he also provided facilities for astronomical
observation at his palaces in Gitschin and Prague. By that stage in his
career he had become not only Imperial generalissimo but a grandee of
the Empire, and he was setting out to live as the age believed a great
prince should live, including following the example of Emperor Rudolf II
as a patron of the sciences.
So far as is known Wallenstein never had his own horoscope cast
again, but from time to time he enquired about others. In the 1625
revision Kepler had drawn attention to adverse relationships between
the general’s nativity and those of the emperor and his son, the king
of Hungary, and in 1629 Wallenstein wrote to him with specific refer-
ence to the latter, who had by then become a potential threat to his
supreme military command. He enquired at the same time about the
king of Denmark, recently but not necessarily finally defeated, and
the king of Spain, who was a Habsburg ally but not always a friend to
Wallenstein. He also employed a Mecklenburg doctor and astrologer to
cast the horoscopes of Gustavus Adolphus and the king of Poland, but
how much significance he attributed to them is another matter, as in a
letter to a senior officer he mentioned the commission but commented
‘not that too much rests upon it’.^20 It may be that Wallenstein regarded
horoscopes as a form of additional intelligence, not to be taken at face
value, but to be considered along with other indicators as to what an
enemy might have in mind, noting that even Kepler still allowed that
the stars could indicate inclinations, tendencies and the interplay of
personalities, even if not forecasting actual events.
In 1631, a year after Kepler’s death, Wallenstein took a young Italian
mathematician, astronomer and astrologer named Senno (often referred
to as Seni) into his service. Whereas the eminent Kepler had been given
his own establishment at Sagan, however, Senno merely became part
of Wallenstein’s entourage, most of which travelled with his headquar-
ters, so that he was in Eger at the time of the general’s assassination,
following which he was arrested. Although he has had a bad press,