Graf Matthias von Gallas

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BIOGRAPHY Matthias von Gallas was the only child of Pancrazio di Gallasso and Annunziata Marcanti di Gandina. He married Countess Dorothea Anna von Lodron, and they had four children, of whom three had children in turn. After the death of Matthias, his widow in 1650 married Prince Ferdinand von und zu Liechtenstein, but she had no more children.

Matthias began his military career as a foot soldier, and ended it as a field marshal of the imperial army. Up to and including the Battle of Nördlingen he was an outstanding leader of the imperial troops, though without the political foresight and feel for diplomacy of some of his contemporaries, particularly Wallenstein. He was one of three closest confidants of Wallenstein until the latter's death, but he was deeply involved in the conspiracy against Wallenstein, some historians even maintaining that he coordinated the assassination plot. His service to the Court brought him among other things the Wallenstein estate of Friedland, the properties of Count Adam Erdmann Trczka, loyal to Wallenstein and murdered at the same time, and the supreme command of the imperial army.

The climax of the military career of Matthias Gallas was his prominent role in the victory over the United Protestant armies at Nördlingen in 1634.

He died in 1647 and is buried in the Jesuit church at Trent. Matthias Gallas, Graf zu Campo und Matarello, belongs to those personalities about whom it is difficult to make a rational judgment from today's standpoint. He had everything a man of his time could dream of. From birth he belonged to a social stratum to which all doors were open. If some doors were closed to him he commanded enough inherited and acquired wealth to arrange for them to be opened, and he had sufficient military power to force open any that remained shut.

He comes across from contemporary writings as carefree, easy-going and immoderate. As an officer he was manifestly courageous, as a tactician often brilliant, but as a strategist manifestly incapable.