A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FUHRER
Wallenstein : Soldier under Saturn. By Francis Watson. (Chatto and Windus. x5s.)
THE appearance of this masterly biography is well-timed. Each day sees a sharpening of the focus with which attention is directed to Czechoslovakia and the Sudeten minority, to the antithesis of Teuton and Slav, to the further possibilities of the Fiihrerprinzip in reshaping the destinies of a continent, until even the most insular of Englishmen have been moved to a profound interest in racial antipathies and aspirations that once seemed foreign and remote. Against surprise or disillusionment in these matters even an elementary knowledge of the European past may provide a preventive. Mr. Watson, while limiting himself to the historical aspect of his subject, has given us a brilliant study of the 'possibilities and limitations of leadership in a central Europe subjected to a process cf devastation comparable with that of the Ice Age. Here, for perhaps the first time in English, we have a vivid picture of what Germany and Bohemia experienced in the Thirty Years' War, a war unique in this respect, that it did not have a single one of the redeeming features commonly attributed to armed conflict, for it was fought on no coherent question of principle ; none of its battles decided anything very definite, and massacre and famine became endemic like disease. The Thirty Years' War never has had, and probably never will have, a great or even a readable historian, nor have the economic interpreters of history yet succeeded in showing that this war was influenced, either in its cause or progress, by those material factors which provide such an acceptable explanation of events. We are reduced to the belief that this, the meanest and most miserable of all wars, was a confused welter of racial and religious hatred. The view sounds old-fashioned, but readers of Mr. Watson's biography will see that there is good authority to support it.
From the welter only three men stand out clearly—Richelieu, the schemer ; Gustavus Adolphus, the idealist ; and Wallen- stein, the condottiere who believed in destiny. Of these, Wallenstein alone was " made " by the war. He had magnetic qualities of leadership. He was above all the prejudices of his time except astrology. He made war pay for itself, and'enriched himself with the profits ; he also made war professional and armies unsectarian, ending the old democracy of the Lands- knechts and preparing the way for the unified control and organisation of modern times. At first a godsend to a reactionary and impecunious emperor, he became an overpowerful and dangerous employee, dangerous because the hopes of Bohemia and possibly of Protestant Germany came to be centred in this, the most enigmatic of Czechs. Of the plots in which his name was used we shall probably never know the truth his career, while abounding in proofs of strategical insight, does not suggest that he indulged in clear-cut political vision, and the astrologers appear to have supplied him with little more than the approximate date of his death. When he received his dismissal by an appeal to his army and a challenge to his emperor, he let loose the enmity of the motley hosts who distrusted him not for what he had done, but for what he might do. " He had throivn down the gauntlet. Jesuits and Capuchins, Spaniards, Italians and Bavarians knocked their heads together in the rush in pick it up."
Wallenstein has been avoided by the modern biographer because the subject requires a knowledge not only of German but of Czech historical literature. Mr. Watson is well-equipped for his task, and his sources are much more extensive than the footnotes or even the bibliography would suggest. There is nothing impressionist here ; on the contrary, there is an intensiveness and- actuality in many of the sentences which suggests both intimate knowledge and restraint. The illustra- tions are all good and unhackneyed. But, though it is a good book, it is not an easy one. The detail is often too close-packed. The chapters have no titles such as might help the reader through the maze. Dates are few and far between, so that when a month is mentioned, one may not know what year is referred to, unless a careful count has been kept. The truth is that the technique of modern biography, while intended to spare the reader, may make a bigger demand on his attention than the old-fashioned book, with its chapter headings, foot-notes and dates. But the reader who perseveres will find it worth
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