In vain the minister entreated him to moderate his demands, which, if granted, would deprive the Emperor of all authority over his own troops and make him absolutely dependent on his general.  The value placed on his services had been too plainly manifested to prevent him dictating the price at which they were to be purchased.  If the pressure of circumstances compelled the Emperor to grant these demands, it was more than a mere feeling of haughtiness and desire of revenge which induced the duke to make them.  His plans of rebellion were formed, to their success; every one of the conditions for which Wallenstein stipulated in this treaty with the court was indispensable.  Those plans required that the Emperor should be deprived of all authority in Germany and be placed at the mercy of his general; and this object would be attained the moment Ferdinand subscribed to the required conditions.  The use which Wallenstein intended to make of his army (widely different indeed from that for which it was intrusted to him) brooked not of a divided power and still less of an authority superior to his own.  To be the sole master of the will of his troops, he must also be the sole master of their destinies; insensibly to supplant his sovereign and to transfer permanently to his own person the rights of sovereignty, which were only lent to him for a time by a higher authority, he must cautiously keep the latter out of the view of the army.  Hence his obstinate refusal to allow any prince of the house of Austria to be present with the army.  The liberty of free disposal of all the conquered and confiscated estates in the Empire would also afford him fearful means of purchasing dependents and instruments of his plans, and of acting the dictator in Germany more absolutely than ever any Emperor did in time of peace.  By the right to use any of the Austrian provinces as a place of refuge, in case of need, he had full power to hold the Emperor a prisoner by means of his own forces and within his own dominions, to exhaust the strength and resources of these countries, and to undermine the power of Austria in its very foundation.

Whatever might be the issue, he had equally secured his own advantage by the conditions he had extorted from the Emperor.  If circumstances proved favorable to his daring project, this treaty with the Emperor facilitated its execution; if, on the contrary, the course of things ran counter to it, it would at least afford him a brilliant compensation for the failure of his plans.  But how could he consider an agreement valid which was extorted from his sovereign and based upon treason?  How could he hope to bind the Emperor by a written agreement, in the face of a law which condemned to death every one who should have the presumption to impose conditions upon him?  But this criminal was the most indispensable man in the Empire, and Ferdinand, well practised in dissimulation, granted him for the present all he required.