Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/444

436 REVIEWS OF BOOKS July Wallenstein's Ende, Ursachen, Verlauf und Folgen der Katastrophe auf Grund neuer Quellen untersucht und dargestelU. Von HEINRICH RITTER VON SRBIK. (Vienna : Seidel, 1920.) OUR notice of Ritter von Srbik's monograph has been accidentably some- what delayed ; but we should be sorry to have omitted to recognize the value of a research confronted by an almost unparalleled array of diffi- culties and carried out with unexceptionable insight. For it is insight, rather than impartiality in the ordinary sense of the word, which is needed in a conclusive inquiry into a subject of so much complexity, and calling, at almost every stage, for an appreciation of the conflicting points of view which have affected, where they have not actually decided, contemporary and later judgement of events and characters. And it is to this gift, which no less a historian than Ranke may be said to have been the first to apply to the treatment of the story of Wallenstein as a whole, that Ritter von Srbik, who has had the advantage of additional information, acquired by indefatigable study of his theme, may fairly lay claim. Thus, unless in parti- cular directions conscientiously noted by him, there seems little necessity for expecting a supplementary revision of his conclusions on the issues to which he has given his main attention, and which bear upon the catastrophe closing Wallenstein's second period of supreme military command. Of the notable essay on the ' Downfall of Wallenstein ' which the foremost living authority on the history of the Thirty Years' War, Professor Moriz Ritter, contributed in 1906 to the Historische Zeitschrift, the opening portion was rightly devoted to an inquiry into the powers conferred on the generalis- simus (this term, though constantly employed, seems never to have been a strictly official one) at the time of his second appointment (1632), inasmuch as on the nature and extent of those powers must largely depend our judgement as to his subsequent relations with the emperor. Ritter von Srbik's inquiry really starts with Liitzen and thus covers the second and third parts of Ritter's essay, Wallenstein's political negotiations and aims from that date onwards, and the counter-action of the emperor and his counsellors which ended in the catastrophe, and thus, with the addition of a discussion of its more immediate consequences, the work before us possesses a unity of its own. But it necessarily involved a reference to ' Wallenstein-literatrure ' as a whole, and the extraordinary magnitude and fullness of this field of research constituted the first and most obvious of the difficulties of his task. In a note to the very first page of his introduction, Ritter von Srbik refers the reader to Helene Raff's admirable survey (in the Deutsche Rundschau of August 1916), a perusal of which we venture to recommend to all interested, whether as historical or as literary students, in the subject of 'Wallenstein Literature, Old and New'. From this it appears that when Georg Schmid and Viktor Loewe accomplished their many years' task of cataloguing the literature in question for the Mittheilungen des Vereins fur Geschichte der Deutschen in Bohmen, their bibliography had extended beyond its 2,500th number. If to such a result are added the large body of materials printed in the Fontes Rerum Austriacarum by Hallwich to mention him only by name among recent German authorities in this