The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

to increase his goods by trading with the bankers,
by lending to the court, and by imposing taxes on
both friend and foe.
But if his revenues were immense, amounting
to many millions of florins annually, his
expenditure was great. He lived surrounded by the
pomp of an Eastern monarch. His table was
sumptuous, and some hundred guests sat down at it
daily. Six gates gave entrance to his palace, which
still stands on the right bank of the Moldau, on the
slope of the Hradschin at Prague. The pile is
immense, and similar chateaux were erected on his
numerous estates elsewhere. His chamberlains
were twenty-four, and were selected from the
noblest families in Bohemia. Sixty pages, in blue
velvet dresses bordered with gold, waited on him.
Fifty men-at-arms kept guard, day and night, in his
antechamber. A thousand persons formed the usual
complement of his household. Upwards of a
thousand homes filled the stalls of his stables, and
fed from marble mangers. When he journeyed, ten
trumpeters with silver bugles preceded the march;
there followed a hundred carriages, laden with his
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