Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/445

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 437 field of research by Zibrt in his Bibliographia Ceske* Hist., and the very /considerable gleanings of Bitter von Srbik and others in the archives of Vienna (we trust still intact on this head) and other centres of inquiry including the Vatican and Eger, the locality of the ' Execution ' the total of primary and secondary sources assumes formidable dimensions. And we may accordingly here leave out of sight the literary treatment of the historical episode and its principal figure. This treatment, from (say) Glapthorne's Albertus Wallenstein onwards (as to the genesis of which tragedy Bitter von Srbik on Creizenach's, authority corrects H. Baft's statement) to Schiller, Grillparzer, and later writers, would, however, if only in view of Coleridge, well warrant a summary for English readers. We are unable to say what place in Wallenstein-literature ought to be assigned to Biccarda Buch's ' character-study ' (1915), which receives great praise both from H. Baff and from Bitter von Srbik as a masterly psychological analysis, not having as yet seen a copy of this par&icular production of a popular and evidently highly accomplished writer. The work before us is divided into three books, which stood severally in a different relation to the object proposed to himself by the author. The not to be compressed into an integral part of the narrative except by conveying a general judgement of the political situation at the time when the final catastrophe began to cast its first shadows over the relations between Wallenstein and the emperor. In other words, the intentions of the general from about the middle of the year 1633, when his negotations with Saxony began, and whence they were carried on up to the date of his death in an almost unbroken series, have to be defined in so far as they admit of definition, and the efforts of his adversaries, with their effects upon the emperor, have to be traced to their beginnings as a continu- ous sequence, as they may be from Count Schlick's mission to head- quarters (August 1633), or perhaps from the forgery of the supposed Heidersdorf peace proposals at a rather earlier date (June). The successive stages in this twofold preliminary inquiry occupy Bitter von Srbik's first book, which carries us down to the imperial patent of 24 January 1634, the failure of the arrest of Wallenstein, the merciless Patent of Proscription of 18 February, Wallenstein's (second) appeal to his troops (now only the remnant of them) at Pilsen, and his flight to Eger and his doom. From the first in the case of Wallenstein almost to the very last, and in the case of the emperor in his treatment of the deed after it had been done we recognize the crucial double cause of the doubtfulness surrounding the transactions here traced with the utmost minuteness and care the uncertainty in the actions of the general, and the hesitation in those of the emperor. Oxenstjerna, whose more or less epigrammatic judgements are not wont to be obscured by ambiguity, expressed himself to the effect that the shortcomings of Wallenstein were to be found not in his intentions, but in the accomplishment of them ; and the censure applies to Wallenstein's political pacificism as well as to his views on government in general. How far, one is inclined to ask at the outset, were his views as to the desirableness of a general peace after Liitzen in harmony with
 * Antecedents of the Catastrophe ' had necessarily to include a summary