The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1886-06-09 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

WALLENSTEIN.  Wallenstein was now in the prime of life. He had acquired in former campaigns great experience in the raising and disciplining of troops. To his fame as a soldier he now added the prestige of  an enormous fortune. An mlceedingl3 rich old widow had fallen in love witt  him, and overcome by the philter she gave him, and not, it is to be presumed, by the love of her gold, he married her, Next came the confiscations of estates in Bohemia, and Wallenstein bought at absurdly low prices not fewer than sixty-seven estates. Ferdinand gave him in addition the Duchy of Friedland, containingnine towns, fifty-seven castles, and villages. After the king, he was the richest landed proprietor in Bohemia. Not content with these hoards, he sought to increase his goods by trading with the bankers, by lending to the court. and by imposing taxes on both friend and foe. But if his revenues were immense, amounting to many millions of florins annually, his expenditure was great. He lived surrounded by the pomp of an Eastern monarch. His table was sumptuous, and some hundred guests sat down at it daily. Six gates gave entrance to his palace, which still stands on the right bank of the Moldau, on the slope of the Hradschin at Prague. The pile is immense, and similar chateaux were erected on his numerous estates elsewhere. His chamberlains were twenty-four, and were selected from the noblest families in Bohemia. Sixty pages, in blue velvet dresses bordered with gold, waited on him. Fifty menat-arms kept guard, day and night, in his ante-chamber. A thousand persons formed the usual complement of his household. Upwards of a thousand horses filled the stalls of his stables, and fed from marble mangers. When he journeyed, ten trumpeters with silver bugles preceded the march; there followed a hundred carriages, laden with his servants and baggage; sixty carriages and fifty led horses conveyed his suite; and last of all, suitably escorted, came the chariot of the man who formed the centre of all this splendour. Wallenstein, although the champion of Rome, neither believed her creed, nor loved her clergy. He would admit no priest into his camp, wishing, doubtless, to be master there himself. He issued his orders in few but peremptory words, and exacted instant and blind obedience. The slightest infraction of discipline brought down swift and severe chastisement upon the person guilty of it. But though rigid in all matters of discipline, he winked at the grossest excesses of his troops outside the camp, and shut his ear to the oft-repeated complaints of .the pillagings and murders which they committed upon the peasantry. The most unbounded licence was tolerated in his camp, and only one thing was needed— implicit submission to his authority. He had a quick eye for talent, and never hesitated to draw from the crowd, and reward with promotion, those whom he thought fitted to serve him in a higher rank. He was a diligent student of the stars, and never undertook anything of moment without first trying to discover, with the help of an Italian astrologer whom he kept under his roof, whether the constellations promised success, or threatened disaster; to the project be was meditating. Like all who have been believers in the occult sciences, be was reserved, haughty, inscrutable, and whether in the saloons of his palace, or in his tent, there was a halo of mystery around him. No one shared his secrets, no one could read his thoughts; on his face there never came a smile; nor did mirth ever brighten the countenances of those who stood around him. In his palace no heavy footfall, no loud voices might be heard; all noises must be hushed; silence and awe must wait continually in that grand but gloomy chamber, where Wallenstein sat apart from his fellows, while the stars, as they traced their path in the firmament, were slowly working out the brilliant destinies which an eternal Fate had decreed for him. The masterpassions of his soul were pride and ambition; and if he served Rome it was because he judged that this was his road to those immense dignities and powers which he had been born to possess. He followed his star.—From 11u, (?/ Proteatantam for April.