not in which
way to find either money or an army, Wallenstein offered to raise fifty
thousand men at his own expense, to pay their wages, supply them with
arms and all the munitions of war, and to call upon the emperor for no
pecuniary assistance whatever, if the emperor would allow him to retain
the plunder he could extort from the conquered. Upon this majestic scale
Wallenstein planned to act the part of a highwayman. Ferdinand's
necessities were so great that he gladly availed himself of this
infamous offer. Wallenstein made money by the bargain. Wherever he
marched he compelled the people to support his army, and to support it
luxuriously. The emperor had now constituted him admiral of the Baltic
fleet, and had conferred upon him the title of duke, with the splendid
duchy of Mecklenburg, and the principality of Sagan in Silesia. His
overbearing conduct and his enormous extortions--he having, in seven
years, wrested from the German princes more than four hundred million of
dollars--excited a general feeling of discontent, in which the powerful
Duke of Bavaria took the lead.

Envy is a stronger passion than political religion. Zealous as the Duke
of Bavaria had been in the cause of the papal church, he now forgot that
church in his zeal to abase an arrogant and insulting rival. Richelieu,
the prime minister of France, was eagerly watching for opportunities to
humiliate the house of Austria, and he, with alacrity, met the advances
of the Duke of Bavaria, and conspired with him to form a Catholic
league, to check the ambition of Wallenstein, and to arrest the enormous
strides of the emperor. With this object in view, a large number of the
most powerful Catholic princes met at Heidelberg, in March, 1629, and
passed resolutions soliciting Ferdinand to summon a diet of the German
empire to take into consideration the evils occasioned by the army of
Wallenstein, and to propose a remedy. The emperor had, in his arrogance,
commanded the princes of the various States in the departments of Suabia
and Franconia, to disband their troops. To this demand they returned the
bold and spirited reply,

"Till we have received an indemnification, or a pledge for the payment
of our expenses, we will neither disband a single soldier, nor
relinquish a foot of territory, ecclesiastical or secular, _demand it
who will_."

The emperor did not venture to disregard the request for him to summon a
diet. Indeed he was anxious, on his own account