Ferdinand
Was Informed Of The Ambitious Designs Of His General, And At Length
Determined That Wallenstein Should Die.
He despatched one of his
generals, Gallas, to the commander-in-chief, with a mandate
depriving him of his dignity of generalissimo, and nominating Gallas
as his successor.
Surprised before his plans were ripe, and
deserted by many on whose support he had relied, Wallenstein retired
hastily upon Egra. During a banquet in the castle, three of his
generals who remained faithful to their leader were murdered in the
dead of night. Roused by the noise, Wallenstein leapt from his bed,
and encountered three soldiers who had been hired to despatch him.
Speechless with astonishment and indignation, he stretched forth his
arms, and receiving in his breast the stroke of a halbert, fell dead
without a groan, in the fifty-first year of his age.
The following anecdote, curiously illustrative of the state of
affairs in Wallenstein's camp, is related by Schiller in his History
of the Thirty Years' War, a work containing a full account of the
life and actions of this extraordinary man. "The extortions of
Wallenstein's soldiers from the peasants had at one period reached
such a pitch, that severe penalties were denounced against all
marauders; and every soldier who should be convicted of theft was
threatened with a halter. Shortly afterwards, it chanced that
Wallenstein himself met a soldier straying in the field, whom he
caused to be seized, as having violated the law, and condemned to
the gallows without a trial, by his usual word of doom:
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