by the emperor, pronounced forfeiture on the estates of 658 landowners of the nobility out of a total of 728, whose names were on the list of accused. Thomas Bílek, a writer of unimpeachable authority, has published a voluminous book on these confiscations from which it would appear that the Liechtenstein Commission had confiscated fully two-thirds of all the lands in Bohemia. Some of the choicest estates taken away from the rebels the emperor retained for the Hapsburg family. A goodly portion of the forfeited lands was given to the church, of which the emperor was a devout member. “Take, fathers, take,” he used to say to the ecclesiastics when endowing this or that foundation with gifts of confiscated estates. “It is not always that you will have a Ferdinand.” Still other lands reverted to the state. What was left the emperor magnanimously distributed among those of his favorites whose military prowess in the rebellion entitled them to some special recognition or compensation. Albrecht, Count of Wallenstein or Waldstein, at one time a Generalissimo of Ferdinand’s army against Gustavus Adolphus, was able to “purchase” sixty confiscated estates of an enormous value.
Struve has remarked that of all the nobles in the world those in the Hapsburg Monarchy had
