Behaviour Strategies of the Foreign Diplomats at the Perpetual Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th Century

The article analyses the changes that took place in the official diplomatic communication of European rulers after the Thirty Years' War and the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which affirmed a number of sovereign rights to the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation (and former vassals of the emperor), including the right to send and receive ambassadors. The new sovereigns, primarily the princes-electors, began to fight for the so-called royal honours (honores regii), which were de facto expressed in a certain set of ceremonies in relation to the ambassadors of the crowned heads and republics assimilated to them. The arena of the struggle for the royal honours was the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in Regensburg — a general assembly of all Imperial Estates (in the middle of the eighteenth century — their representatives), by which since the end of the 17th century foreign diplomats had been accredited (first France, a little later — Great Britain, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in the middle of the eighteenth century — Russia). Having declared their representatives in 1702 as the ministers of the first rank, the electors tried for a century to force the “old” monarchs to send ambassadors to the Diet, and they, by custom, were sent only to the sovereigns. Comparing the various ways out of the ceremonial impasse, the author comes to the conclusion that the struggle for elusive precedence, which foreign diplomats of the second rank (envoys or ministers plenipotentiary) waged with the representatives of the electors at the Imperial Diet, was a deliberately unwinnable strategy, leading either to their isolation or to the recall from their posts. A much more effective strategy that did not damage state prestige was to send to Regensburg so-called ministers without character or residents, who occupied a less honorable position in comparison with ambassadors and envoys, but according to their status were freed from the opportunity to compete with them and, as a result, to come into conflict.