In the sixteenth century this yearning for swift and reliable information also led to the establishment of the first private news offices, dealing in confidential news on a subscription basis. These news agencies, with their commercially distributed manuscript news-sheets, are by far the least known of the communication media of the period. But these agencies would play an essential role in creating an international news network in the age before the newspaper. For two centuries their news-sheets, or avvisi as they were known, would be the touchstone of reliability for those who needed to keep abreast of events – and who could afford to pay the subscriptions.
Diplomats, of course, furnished their own confidential briefings and advice. The resident ambassador was meant to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff: to bring his experience to bear to distinguish rumour from fact, and offer his own sage judgement of the local political situation. But the ambassadors too were avid readers of the avvisi. Sometimes it seemed to their princely employers that they did little more than take the manuscript news-letters and prepare their own digest. A new news medium had been invented; and like the craft of diplomacy itself, its origins must be sought in Renaissance Italy.
The Business of Peace
The sixteenth century was the great age of Renaissance diplomacy. It had taken some time for a network of diplomatic representatives to become wideless spread throughout Europe. Although the Italian city states had been exchanging ambassadors since the fifteenth century, the larger kingdoms held to night back: at the accession of Francis I in 1515, France had only one resident ambassador. When he died in 1547, there were ten.2 Ambassadors had become a major adornment of the Renaissance court, a vital symbol of their nations’ status in the European state system. Usually drawn from the higher social echelons of their own country, the ambassadors would be expected to move easily among their peers, sharing courtesies and information. Their personalities, scheming and not infrequent struggles for precedence were the subject of much animated comment.
Fourteenth-century diplomatic theory envisaged an embassy as the response to a particular problem, to resolve an issue or conclude an alliance between two states, rather than as a permanent state of residency. In practice, the distinction was quickly dissolved. While a special embassy might be despatched to propose a diplomatic marriage, treaties or alliances could seldom be concluded so rapidly. Ambassadors rarely had full licence to close the inevitable gaps between the negotiating positions of the two parties. So an embassy might drag on, as the ambassador sought further instructions, often to the weary envoy's intense frustration.
The diplomatic despatch was in this respect an unintended by-product of this evolutionary process. ‘The business of an ambassador,’ as Bernard du Rosier emphasised repeatedly in his influential ‘Short Treatise’ (1436) on the office of diplomacy, ‘is peace.’3 ‘The speedy completion of an ambassador's mission is in the interest of all.’ Nowhere was it envisaged that these illustrious plenipotentiaries should become informed observers of the host state. But as time went by, and the web of negotiation between contesting powers became more intricate, the need for informed assessment of the mood, strength and true intentions of potential allies became ever more acute. Ambassadors were instructed to write home on a regular basis. The art of diplomacy had spawned a whole new medium: political commentary. This was the first real sustained attempt to add commentary and analysis to the raw data of news.
5.1 A diplomatic mission asks for the hand of the king's daughter in marriage.
About the earliest generation of diplomatic despatches we are not well informed. Though in other respects precocious exponents of bureaucracy, the Italian states did not make provision for the systematic filing of incoming ambassadorial reports. The earliest examples have only survived because they made their way into family archives: the papers and despatches accumulated by an envoy abroad remained, just like ministerial papers, their own personal property, to be retained or disposed of as they thought best.4 Venice legislated to ensure that all public papers in the possession of returning diplomats were surrendered to the state, but to little avail.5 It was only in the 1490s that Venice began to assemble an archive. But what despatches they are: over the course of two centuries Italian ambassadors abroad offer a stream of shrewd and well-informed observations on the politics, customs and personalities of their hosts. Their reports range widely, from the immediate issues of the day, through gossip, strange occurrences, to more anthropological observations about the differences of national character, dress and behaviour. Tempered in the harsh schools of Italian politics, closely connected to the business elites from which they were sometimes drawn, pragmatic and thoughtful, Italian ambassadors were ideally suited to this new craft.
Diplomatic despatches were not, of course, public documents. They were intended only for a limited circle in the innermost councils of the state: this was news and analysis for a privileged elite. But some news did begin to leak out, through indiscretion or the vanity of the envoy. A semi-licensed form of publicity developed with the tradition of the Relazione, the final reflective despatch presented to the Venetian Senate on the conclusion of an embassy. The purpose of a Relazione was quite different from that of the regular despatch. Rather than reporting on the hubbub of everyday events, the ambassador now took stock: he offered his view on the character of the ruler and his principal advisors, the strengths and weaknesses of the state, the attitudes and sentiments of the people.6 These reflections were presented orally, by men who relished the opportunity for a display of erudition. Relazioni were eagerly anticipated, not least for the calculated indiscretion. Who, of those present, would not have marvelled at the impudence of ambassador Zaccaria Contarini's frank description in 1492 of Charles VIII of France:
The Majesty of the King of France is twenty-two years of age, small and badly formed in his person, ugly of face, with eyes great and white and much more apt to see too little than enough, an aquiline nose, much larger and fatter than it ought to be, also fat lips, which he continually holds open, and he has some spasmodic movements of hand which appear very ugly, and he is slow in speech. According to my opinion, which could be quite wrong, I hold certainly that he is not worth very much either in body or in natural capacity.7
5.2 The reading of a despatch before the Doge of Venice and other members of the Signoria.
This was not kind; all the more so as this candid and rude assessment was very likely to filter back to France, souring relations and complicating the life of Contarini's unlucky successor as ambassador there. But among contemporaries such despatches were much admired. The anonymous French author of Traité du gouvernement de Venise, composed about 1500, noted with approval that newly appointed ambassadors would seek out in the archives the Relazioni of their predecessors, in order to begin their missions well briefed.8 These documents circulated widely among the senators, and many Venetian families kept copies of those which they believed brought them honour. With the passage of time copies were made and circulated outside the circles of those strictly entitled to see them; some copies changed hands for money. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the Venetian Senate finally acknowledged the public value of Relazioni and allowed a small number of them to appear in print. Presumably none of those chosen contained anything as wounding as Contarini's dissection of the young French king a century before.
5.3 Charles VIII of France.
Lying Abroad
In the development of international diplomacy a crucial figure was the shrewd and far-sighted Ferdinand, King of Aragon (r. 1479–1516). As ruler of Spain's Mediterranean kingdom he had a close interest in Italy at a time when French ambitions in the peninsula were transforming its politics. As co-ruler of Castile, through his wife Isabella, Ferdinand was the master of Europe's incipient superpower, Spain. His great strategic goal was to challenge the hegemony of France; his principal instrument, alliance backed by traditional dynastic marriages. In the pursuit of these goals Ferdinand established a web of permanent emb
assies: his was the first of Europe's nation states to do so. He even attempted to plant an embassy in France, largely to collect military intelligence. Such a legation, to a hostile power, would again have been a first, but Charles VIII was no fool and Ferdinand's envoy was soon sent packing.9
Ferdinand was not an easy man to please. The king sometimes neglected to write to his ambassadors for long periods, and often kept them in ignorance of his plans. His reciprocal demands for regular information were made without concern for the logistical obstacles. His long-suffering London envoy, Dr de Puebla, calculated that to send news to Ferdinand daily, as the king had requested, would require a relay of sixty couriers; in fact de Puebla had two, and could not afford to pay those. Ferdinand was also careless with paperwork, and prone to leave unsorted chests of papers in remote castles. But like Emperor Maximilian, his irrepressible contemporary, Ferdinand was an innovator. He left his ambassadors in place long enough for them to become real experts: nine years was the norm, and de Puebla was in London for most of the last twenty years of his life. As a result, Ferdinand bequeathed to his grandson Charles V a Spanish diplomatic corps that remained an established fact of European politics for the rest of the century.
A case study in suave and effective diplomatic service is provided by Eustace Chapuys, long-term ambassador for the Emperor Charles at the court of King Henry VIII.10 Chapuys arrived in September 1529 in unpromising circumstances. Henry VIII had by now made unmistakably clear his determination to proceed with divorcing Katherine of Aragon. The queen, previously a valuable source of informed advice for the Spanish envoys, was no longer available for consultation; and the ambassador could scarcely in all conscience conceal his master's appalled opposition to Henry's policies. But over the course of sixteen years Chapuys gradually created a dense and subtle network of information to pepper the shrewd and well-sourced reports that have been such a treasure trove for historians. His first step was to take into his service several members of Katherine's household, including her gentleman usher, Juan de Montoya, who now became his private secretary. Young men of breeding, who could circulate unobtrusively at court, were recruited from France and Flanders. Although Chapuys did not speak English himself, he insisted that these young men should learn the language; the taciturn valet who accompanied him everywhere (Chapuys suffered from gout) was also a talented linguist. Through these agents Chapuys heard much of value that should not have been said in his presence. He was also at pains to lavish care and hospitality on the international merchant community, the source of a great deal of valuable information about currency movements, and on the incipient Lutheran movement (Chapuys had his friends among the German merchants too). Some information was paid for. It was a major coup to turn the French ambassador's principal secretary, who for eighteen months made available to Chapuys Marillac's private correspondence, and Chapuys also received regular reports from one of Anne Boleyn's maids. But most of what he reported was freely given, from the merchants ‘who visit me daily’: the gossip of informed but often lonely men far from home, exchanged for hospitality and good fellowship.
A Spaniard in Rome
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Rome had been the inadvertent laboratory of the new diplomacy. A common desire to exploit the resources of the Catholic Church made it necessary for Europe's rulers to send frequent emissaries to Rome requesting the confirmation of nominees in ecclesiastical office and other favours. Forced to linger by the slow pace of papal business, they became, in effect, ambassadors. Even in the sixteenth century Rome lost none of its importance as a centre of business, politics and news. Its centrality in the political calculations of the Spanish Habsburgs is indicated by the fact that the Roman ambassador was always paid the largest salary (though this, in common with all ambassadorial remuneration, never covered expenses).11
Although the Habsburgs had largely succeeded in establishing supremacy in the Italian Peninsula in the sixteenth century, vanquishing French competition, their ambassadors were ever vigilant. Their reports suggest anxiety more than confidence, and an overwhelming sense of the volatility of Italian politics. The case was well put by Miguel Mai, imperial ambassador to Rome, in a despatch to Charles V in 1530:
As Rome is the vortex for all the world's affairs, and the Italians catch fire at the least spark, those who are partisan and even more those who have been ruined [by recent events] are stirring up trouble here, because they always want novelties.12
Note that this was written only months after the great triumph of Charles V's coronation at Bologna, when imperial power was at its apparent height. Spanish ambassadors returned again and again to the Italian thirst for novelty (novedades) that made them such fickle allies, and here they made no distinction between Rome, Venice and Florence. Spain, of course, wanted the opposite, quiescent allies who appreciated the virtues of Spanish hegemony. In this they were constantly disappointed.
Within the colonies of diplomatic representatives that gathered in Rome, Venice and elsewhere, we can detect two contrasting strategies for diplomatic representation. England, admittedly one of the minor players, made great use of Italian nationals, rather in the pattern of today's consular representatives.13 Charles V, and Philip II after him, always appointed Spanish noblemen. There were advantages to both strategies. The native Italians could move smoothly among the indigenous noble and merchant communities, and doubts as to their loyalty to the foreign power they served seem largely to have been unfair. The Spanish ambassadors represented their masters with energy and passion, but sometimes failed to appreciate why Italians did not accept the pax Hispanica as the natural order. They also frequently felt disliked and frozen out of the gossip and exchange of information that were the essential lubricants of diplomatic life. But as members of the highest caste of Spanish society they were adept at reading the implications attached, for instance, to the welcome given to the emissary of a rival power.14 This was an age in which shifts in policy were often signified by public gestures: affection shown to a nobleman restored to favour, a visiting prince or a likely suitor; slights to those whose fortunes were on the wane. None of this escaped the eye of the astute diplomat, and news of this sort filled reams of ambassadorial despatches.
Papal elections were among the great news events of the sixteenth century, marking as they did the potential for major shifts in policy and alliances. Since they were so different from the hereditary succession of nation states, papal elections were difficult to plan for, though ambassadors were obliged to try. The characters and loyalties of the potential popes among the cardinals were the subject of obsessive diplomatic interest: Spanish ambassadors sent back to Spain copious dossiers detailing the characters, wealth, ambitions and – crucially – state of health of the significant figures. A series of profiles of over fifty cardinals compiled by ambassador Luis de Requeséns in 1565 ran to forty-eight pages.15
Ambassadors were well aware that the election of a pro or anti-imperial Pope could either consolidate or threaten Spanish power in the peninsula. Every election was hotly contested, as France, in particular, seized the opportunity to reverse by diplomacy the consequences of successive battlefield defeats. The resident ambassador bore much of the burden of this warfare of whispers and insincere promises, but this sort of multi-dimensional chess was deeply unpredictable. News of the election of Giovanni Maria del Monte (Julius III) in 1550 was greeted with joy in Paris, since he had been a prominent name on Charles V's blacklist.16 In fact he proved a good friend to Habsburg pretensions until the two fell out over the war of Parma in 1551. But this was as nothing to the disaster of the election of the Neapolitan Gian Pietro Carafa (Paul IV) in 1555, whose hatred of Spanish domination of his homeland was deep and unshakable. Any hope of rapprochement probably died the following year when the Spanish ambassador, finding himself unrecognised by the guard at the city gate, battered down the door to force an entry.17
Despite Spain's domination of the Italian Peninsula, this was a difficult posting and many ambassa
dorial careers ended in failure. Both of Philip II's first two ambassadors left in high dudgeon having antagonised the Pope. Spanish emissaries found the shifting, multi-polar politics of Venice equally difficult to fathom. Diplomacy was a new trade, requiring discreet charm and subtle skill. Not all ambassadors realised that if they became the story the game was probably lost.
Espionage
As these examples suggest, the development of a network of permanent diplomatic representation was not always a force for harmony. The high-minded principles enunciated by Bernard du Rosier in 1436 had been replaced by more pragmatic nostrums. The Venetian scholar-diplomat Ermolao Barbaro, writing in 1490, set out the new doctrine with brutal clarity. ‘The first duty of an ambassador is exactly the same as that of any other servant of government, that is, to do, say, advise and think whatever may best serve the preservation and aggrandizement of his own state.’18 The tortured conflicts of the Reformation era added further layers of peril and distrust to international relations. Diplomats of the major powers had to ply their trade in an atmosphere of increasing distrust and hostility. Previously routine connections and hospitality became potentially compromising for citizens of the host country. ‘It is impossible for me to find out anything certain at present here,’ reported the Count of Feria, Philip II's first ambassador to Queen Elizabeth. ‘Nobody wants to talk to me; people flee from me as if I were the devil.’19
The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself Page 13