Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/446

 438 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July those of Gundaker von Liechtenstein, who was at that time in favour of a course which he dared not even recommend to the emperor, but of which Trautmannsdorf would, it was hoped, take some note ? Of all the ' pacifications of resignation ' concluded in its day by the house of Austria, this would have been one of the strangest. On the other hand, the Emperor Ferdinand II was not only weak by nature, and in the last resort under the control of his confessors ; but (as Hitter von Srbik shows in a very interesting chapter) he, as a genuine Habsburger, stood under the influence of a theory of government which placed the interest of the state above all other considerations but that of the interests of religion as conceived by or interpreted to him. And it was thus that, in the condemna- tion of Wallenstein and the execution of it, the labor improbus of the emperor's counsellors carried the day, backed as they were by the influence of the emperor's heir, a prince of self-reliant judgement, and by that of the courageous Maximilian of Bavaria, and consistently supported by Spain and Rome when the die had been cast. The plan was made known to Onate even before the resolution had been taken and to Lamormain by Ferdinand II himself. Thus it came to the knowledge of Piccolomini, who was to play so decisive a part in its execution. It is known how he hesitated ; how the first attempt to make a prisoner of Wallenstein at Pilsen failed ; and how, by the Patent of Proscription already mentioned, Wallenstein was branded as a desperate traitor, his command transferred, awards promised, and the execution proper proclaimed. The second book of Bitter von Srbik's research contains a review of the process of that execution, based on authorities for the most part already known, but whose correlation to one another is here carefully examined. A new source is added in the Wahrhaffte Relation (the title is more or less generic) drawn up at Eger before the end of the month, and here shown to have been drafted by Gordon, the commander of the fortress of Eger and a member of the Scoto-Irish triad to whom the final arrangements had been entrusted, and to have been ' corrected ' by Piccolomini for the emperor's eye. It is doubtful whether this account was actually submitted to him ; for two ' relations ' had already reached Vienna, one brought by Leslie, an officer in the murdered Trgka's regiment, and the other a report specially dispatched by Butler, Piccolomini's right hand, as he may be called, through one of his own officers, Macdaniel. This latter is lost ; but Bitter von Srbik concludes it to have been the main basis of an Italian Breve et verace raguaqlio compiled at Vienna for the information of the emperor, under the editorship of Piccolomini, who was actually at Vienna from about the 9 to the 19 March 1634, and thus to possess a satisfactory claim to be designated by him Piccolomini' 's Infor- matio. For, though the actual compilation was entrusted by him to his confidential secretary Diodati, no one but himself had so close a knowledge of the immediate antecedents of the catastrophe, and to no other could it be of so much consequence to show how the injunction ' alive or dead ' had been carried out, and how he had met the responsibilities imposed upon him. And thus apart of course from the irresistible attraction of further details about the execution itself from the murderous banquet in