The Empire seemed to be hopelessly divided between Catholicism and Protestantism, and civil war with all its terrors and horrors laid waste its fairest provinces. The Emperor had lost much of his authority, while Maximilian of Bavaria, commander-in-chief of the armies of the Catholic League, wielded a power which was supreme wherever the so-called Imperialists held possession of country or town. It was a humiliating position for the Emperor, but he was utterly powerless to extricate himself from it. Suddenly a deliverer came to him in the person of Albert, Lord Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman, who had married the daughter of Count Harrach, the Emperor’s special favorite. He was immensely rich, and had won great military distinction in the Bohemian wars. It was this Lord Wallenstein who on a morning in June, 1625, presented himself before the Emperor Ferdinand of Germany with a proposition which, at first, appeared so extravagant and incredible to the Emperor himself and to his counsellors that they doubted the sanity or sincerity of the man who made it. But he insisted on the feasibility of his plan with so much eloquence and enthusiasm that they finally consented to it. Wallenstein proposed to the Emperor to enroll, entirely at his own personal expense, an army to fight for the cause of the Emperor and to protect his hereditary states, provided he should have the power to make that army at least fifty thousand strong, to appoint all the officers, and take supreme command himself, without being interfered with by other generals, no matter how highly stationed they might be. The immense wealth of Wallenstein guaranteed the financial success of the plan; moreover he received permission to make his army self-sustaining by pillage, marauding, and forced contributions in all those districts which it might temporarily occupy.