About this ebook
Against the background of war and destruction, of tortuous intrigue, biographer Francis Watson has limned the enigmatic Wallenstein, tracing skillfully his furious, dramatic life from an indigent Protestant nobleman, through Catholic glory and prestige, to the day of his tragic assassination.
The thrilling climb to almost unexampled power of the unknown Bohemian soldier; the struggle with the cleverest diplomats in Europe; the reclaiming of war-wasted lands to industry and prosperity; the dogged conflict with Gustavus Adolphus that ended at Lützen; and at last the tragedy of a dishonored death; these are the main incidents in a story that Watson has traced with precision and imagination.
Nor does the biographer neglect Wallenstein's less dramatic activities: that the great Kepler cast his horoscope, that he planned a canal, built magnificent palaces, founded schools, hospitals, and monasteries, and took the cure at Carlsbad for the gout.
In preparation for this book, Watson travelled three thousand miles over sites and battlefields of the Thirty Years War, and studied original documents in Vienna, Prague, Dresden and elsewhere.
The result is an intensely interesting and lively piece of writing as well as an authoritative biography.
About the author
Francis Leslie Watson, OBE (1907-1988) was a British biographer, critic, and radio feature writer.
Born on 7 August 1907 to Major Frank Leslie Watson and his wife Charlotte Ethel (née Barber), a Yorkshire-based family, he was educated at Giggleswick School and Downing College, Cambridge, where he read Modern Languages, mainly French and German. After working on the Yorkshire Post, Watson found his bent as an independent writer, mainly of biography. Lord Dawson of Penn (1936) was followed by Wallenstein (1938), before he went to India in 1938.
For the duration of the Second World War, he was assigned to intelligence with the General Staff at Delhi. He subsequently worked as Director of Counter-Propaganda to the Government of India, for which he was awarded his OBE, and it was in India that he met his wife, Claire, by whom he had a son, Giles Hugh Shirburn, in 1950.
Watson's time in India influenced much of his later career, publications, and broadcasting. In 1957 he was awarded the Italia Prize for a programme on Mahatma Gandhi, and he wrote a history of India and other related works, such as, Gandhi, The Trial of Mr. Gandhi, and The Frontiers of China. Whilst living back in London, he scripted for broadcasting many programmes with literary and historical themes, including some on his native county of Yorkshire.
In 1974 he published his book The Year of the Wombat, which portrayed Victorian life in the England of 1857.
Watson died in the autumn of 1988 at the age of 81.
