Wallenstein became the supreme commander of the armies of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and was a major figure of the Thirty Years' War.

Wallenstein was born in the Kingdom of Bohemia into a poor Czech Protestant noble family, affiliated with the Utraquist Hussites, a group of notable anti-German sentiment in some of its circles, and following the teachings of the early reformer Jan Hus.

A marriage in 1609 to the wealthy widow of a Bohemian landowner gave him access to considerable estates and wealth after her death at an early age in 1614.

Three years later, Wallenstein embarked on a career as a mercenary by raising forces for the Holy Roman Emperor in the Uskok War against the Republic of Venice.

Wallenstein fought for the Catholics in the Protestant Bohemian Revolt of 1618 and was awarded estates confiscated from the rebels after their defeat at White Mountain in 1620.

[2] An imperial generalissimo[3] by land, and Admiral of the Baltic Sea from 21 April 1628,[4] Wallenstein found himself released from service in 1630 after Ferdinand grew wary of his ambition.

[5] Several Protestant victories over Catholic armies induced Ferdinand to recall Wallenstein (Gollersdorf April 1632), who then defeated the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus at Alte Veste.

[11] In 1597, Albrecht was sent to the Protestant Latin school at Goldberg (now Złotoryja) in Silesia, where the then-German environment led him to hone his German language skills.

[12] On 29 August 1599, Wallenstein continued his education at the Protestant University of Altdorf near Nuremberg, Franconia, where he was often engaged in brawls and épée fights, leading to his imprisonment in the town prison.

[13] In February 1600,[10] Albrecht left Altdorf and travelled around the Holy Roman Empire, France and Italy,[14] where he studied at the universities of Bologna and Padua.

[10] Wallenstein then joined the army of the Emperor Rudolf II in Hungary, where, under the command of Giorgio Basta, he saw two years of armed service (1604–1606) in the Long Turkish War against the Ottoman Turks and Hungarian rebels.

[14] The contributory factor to his conversion may have been the Counter-Reformation policy of the Habsburgs that effectively barred Protestants from being appointed to higher offices at court in Bohemia and in Moravia, and the impressions he gathered in Catholic Italy.

[16] He used his wealth to win favour, offering and commanding 200 horses for Archduke Ferdinand of Styria for his war with Venice in 1617, thereby relieving the fortress of Gradisca from the Venetian siege.

The Thirty Years' War began in 1618 when the estates of Bohemia rebelled against Ferdinand of Styria and elected Frederick V of the Palatinate, the leader of the Protestant Union, as their new king.

Wallenstein equipped a regiment of cuirassiers and won great distinction under Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy in the wars against Ernst von Mansfeld and Gabriel Bethlen (both supporters of the Bohemian revolt) in Moravia.

[clarification needed][citation needed] In order to aid Ferdinand (elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1619) against the Northern Protestants and to produce a balance in the army of the Catholic League under Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, Wallenstein offered to raise a whole army for the imperial service following the bellum se ipsum alet principle, and received his final commission on 25 July 1625.

Wallenstein's successes as a military commander brought him fiscal credit, which in turn enabled him to receive loans to buy lands, many of them being the former estates of conquered Bohemian nobles.

[25][26] His army ravaged and burned down many Silesian towns and villages, including Prudnik, Głogówek, Żory, Pszczyna, Bytom, Rybnik, Koźle, and Strzelce Opolskie.

He then joined Tilly in the struggle against Christian IV of Denmark,[28] and afterwards gained as a reward the Duchies of Mecklenburg, whose hereditary dukes suffered expulsion for having helped the Danish king.

However, in 1628 he failed to capture Stralsund, which resisted the Capitulation of Franzburg and the subsequent siege with assistance of Danish, Scottish and Swedish troops, a blow that denied him access to the Baltic and the chance to challenge the naval power of the Scandinavian kingdoms and of the Netherlands.

[31] Over the course of the war Wallenstein's ambitions and the abuses of his forces had earned him a host of enemies, both Catholic and Protestant, princes and non-princes alike.

In November, the great Battle of Lützen was fought, in which Wallenstein was forced to retreat but, in the confused melee, Gustavus Adolphus was killed.

[36] Losing the support of his army, Wallenstein now realized the extent of his peril, and on 23 February with a company of some hundred men, he went from Plzeň to Cheb, hoping to meet the Swedes under Prince Bernard.

[32] To carry out the assassination, a regiment of dragoons under the command of an Irish colonel, Walter Butler[38] and the Scots colonels Walter Leslie and John Gordon[39] first attacked Wallenstein's trusted officers (Adam Trczka, Vilém Kinský, Christian von Ilow, and Henry Neumann), while they attended a feast at Cheb Castle, to which the officers had been invited by Gordon himself.

Geraldine cried out Vivat Ferdinandus Imperator ("Long live Emperor Ferdinand") with MacDonell responding with Et tota Domus Austriaca ("And the whole House of Austria").

By another account, as quoted in Peter H. Wilson's work on the Thirty Years' War,[41]: 540  the conspirators entered the room shouting "Who is a good Imperialist?".

[29] A few hours later, Devereux, together with a few companions, broke into the burgomaster's house at the main square where Wallenstein had been lodging, and kicked open the bedroom door.

[49][50] Shortly after Wallenstein's assassination, several plays, poems and newspapers appeared, as well as a large number of pamphlets describing his life and death.

The literary depiction largely corresponds to the historical facts with the only exception being the lovers – Ottavio Piccolomini's fictional son Max and Wallenstein's daughter Thekla.

The editor of the magazine Der Spiegel, Rudolf Augstein, judged Mann's work to be "a highly subjective representation that pretends to be objective".