Count Tilly was now in sole command on the Catholic and Imperial side. Wallenstein had been dismissed. A military Richelieu, an absolutist in politics, an indifferentist in religion, caring at least for the religious quarrel only as it affected the political question, he aimed at crushing the independence of all the princes, Catholic as well as Protestant, and making the Emperor, or rather Wallenstein in the name of the Imperial devotee, as much master of Germany as the Spanish king was of Spain. But the disclosure of this policy, and the towering pride of its author had alarmed the Catholic princes, and produced a reaction similar to that caused by the absolutist encroachments of Charles V. Aided by the Jesuits, who marked in Wallenstein a statesman whose policy was independent of theirs, and who, if not a traitor to the faith, was at least a bad persecutor, Maximilian and his confederates forced the Emperor to remove Wallenstein from command. The great man received the bearers of the mandate with stately courtesy, with princely hospitality, showed them that he had read in the stars the predominance of Maximilian over Ferdinand, slightly glanced at the Emperor's weakness, then withdrew to that palace at Prague, so like its mysterious lord, so regal and so fantastic in its splendour, yet so gloomy, so jealously guarded, so full of the spirit of dark ambition, so haunted by the shadow of the dagger. There he lay, watching the storm that gathered in the North, scanning the stars and waiting for his hour.