In 1633, Kaiser Ferdinand II. ordered his Generalissimus Albrecht v. Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, to reconquer Regensburg (Ratisbon) which had fallen to the Swedes. Instead of complying with his monarch`s order, Wallenstein entered negotiations with the enemies to which he, by virtue of being the Holy Roman Emperor`s Peace Commissar, was expressly authorized. Apart from maintaining secret connections to Cardinal Richelieu, the Prince-Elector of Saxony and Swedish generals like Horn, Báner and Bernhard Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Wallenstein was rumoured to conspire with some of the oldest enemies both of the House of Habsburg and the Catholic cause in general. Having vainly attempted to bring about peace, an increasingly bitter Wallenstein grew more and more outspoken as to whom he held responsible for the predicament of a war that had long outlived the purpose for which it had been unleashed: the Emperor and the entire House of Habsburg, the Jesuits and the Spanish party at court. The leader of the Bohemian Protestant emigrés, Count Matthias v. Thurn, a Bohemian magnate from a German noble family, who had been one of the leaders of the Bohemian Revolt in 1619, now a Swedish general, approached Wallenstein with the proposal to take up the Bohemian crown.
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