such a “rustic boor” as to say that an “official lie” (officiosum mendacium) is never to be employed, or to deny that an ambassador should be, on occasion, splendide mendax.[1] The situation is summed up in the famous definition of Sir Henry Wotton, which, though excused by himself as a jest, was held to be an indiscreet revelation of the truth: “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”[2] The most successful liar, in fact, was esteemed the most successful diplomatist. “A prime article of the catechism of ambassadors,” says Bayle in his Dictionnaire critique (1699), “whatever their religion, is to invent falsehoods and to go about making society believe them.” So universally was this principle adopted that, in the end, no diplomatist even expected to be believed; and the best way to deceive was—as Bismarck cynically avowed—to tell the truth.
But, in addition to being a liar ex officio, the ambassador was also “an honourable spy.” “The principal functions of an envoy,” says François de Callières, himself an ex-ambassador of Louis XIV., “are two; the first is to look after the affairs of his own prince; the second is to discover the affairs of the other.” A clever minister, he maintains, will know how to keep himself informed of all that goes on in the mind of the sovereign, in the councils of ministers or in the country; and for this end “good cheer and the warming effect of wine” are excellent allies.[3] This being so, it is hardly to be wondered at that foreign ambassadors were commonly regarded as perhaps necessary, but certainly very unwelcome, guests. The views of Philippe de Commines have already been quoted above, and they were shared by a long series of theoretical writers as well as by men of affairs. Gentilis is all but alone in his protest against the view that all ambassadors were exploratores magis quam oratores, and to be treated as such. So early as 1481 the government of Venice had decreed the penalty of banishment and a heavy fine for any one who should talk of affairs of state with a foreign envoy, and though the more civilized princes did not follow the example of the sultan, who by way of precaution locked the ambassador of Ferdinand II., Jerome Laski, into “a dark and stinking place without windows,” they took the most minute precautions to prevent the ambassadors of friendly powers from penetrating into their secrets. Charles V. thought it safest to keep them as far away as possible from his court. So did Francis I.; and, when affairs were critical, he made his frequent changes of residence and his hunting expeditions the excuse for escaping from their presence. Henry VII. forbade his subjects to hold any intercourse with them, and, later on, set spies upon them and examined their correspondence—a practice by no means confined to England. If the system of permanent embassies survived, it is clear that this was mainly due to the belief of the sovereigns that they gained more by maintaining “honourable spies” at foreign courts than they lost by the presence of those of foreign courts at their own. It was purely a question of the balance of advantage. Neither among statesmen nor among theorists was there any premonition of the great part to be played by the permanent diplomatic body in the development and maintenance of the concert of Europe. To Paschalius the permanent embassies were “a miserable outgrowth of a miserable age.”[4] Grotius himself condemned them as not only harmful, but useless, the proof of the latter being that they were unknown to antiquity.[5]
Development of the Diplomatic Hierarchy.—The history of the diplomatic body[6] is, like that of other bodies, that of the progressive differentiation of functions. The middle ages knew no classification of diplomatic agents; the person sent on mission is described indifferently as legatus, orator, nuntius, ablegatus, commissarius, procurator, mandatarius, agens or ambaxator (ambassator, &c.). In Gundissalvus, De legato (1485), the oldest printed work on the subject, the word ambasiator, first found in a Venetian decree of 1268, is applied to any diplomat. Florence was the first to make distinction; the orator was appointed by the council of the republic; the mandatorio, with inferior powers, by the Council of Ten. In 1500 Machiavelli, who held only the latter rank, wrote from France urging the Signoria to send ambasiadori. This was, however, rather a question of powers than of dignity. But the causes which ultimately led to the elaborate differentiation of diplomatic ranks were rather questions of dignity than of functions.[7] The breakdown of feudalism, with the consequent rise of a series of sovereign states or of states claiming to be sovereign, of very various size and importance, led to a certain confusion in the ceremonial relation between them, which had been unknown to the comparatively clearly defined system of the middle ages. The smaller states were eager to assert the dignity of their actual or practical independence; the greater powers were equally bent on “keeping them in their place.” If the emperor, as has been stated above, was too exalted to send ambassadors, certain of the lesser states were soon esteemed too humble to be represented at the courts of the great powers save by agents of an inferior rank. By the second half of the 16th century, then, there are two classes of diplomatists, ambassadors and residents or agents, the latter being accounted ambassadors of the second class.[8] At first the difference of rank was determined by the status of the sovereign by whom or to whom the diplomatic agent was accredited; but early in the 16th century it became fairly common for powers of the first rank to send agents of the second class to represent them at courts of an equal status. The reasons were various, and not unamusing. First and foremost came the question of expense. The ambassador, as representing the person of his sovereign, was bound by the sentiment of the age to display an exaggerated magnificence. His journeys were like royal progresses, his state entries surrounded with every circumstance of pomp, and it was held to be his duty to advertise the munificence of his prince by boundless largesses. Had this munificence been as unlimited in fact as in theory, all might have been well, but, in that age of vaulting ambitions, depleted exchequers were the rule rather than the exception in Europe; the records are full of pitiful appeals from ambassadors for arrears of pay, and appointment to an embassy often meant ruin, even to a man of substance. To give but one example, Sir Richard Morison, Edward VI.’s ambassador in Germany, had to borrow money to pay his debts before he could leave Augsburg (Cal. State Pap. Edw. VI., No. 467), and later on he writes from Hamburg (April 9, 1552) that he could buy nothing, because everyone believed that he had packed up in
- ↑ Germonius, De legatis principum et populorum libri tres (Rome, 1627), chap. vi. p. 164; Paschalius, Legatus (Rouen, 1598), p. 302. Étienne Dolet, who had been secretary to Cardinal Jean du Bellay, and was burned for atheism in 1546, in his De officio legati (1541) advises ambassadors to surround themselves with taciturn servants, to employ vigilant spies, and to set afoot all manner of fictions, especially when negotiating with the court of Rome or with the Italian princes.
- ↑ See Pearsall Smith, Sir Henry Wotton, pp. 49, 126 et seq.
- ↑ François de Callières, De la manière de négocier avec les souverains (Brussels, 1716). See also A. Sorel, Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs et ministres de France (Paris, 1884), e.g. vol. Autriche, pp. 77, 88, 102, 112.
- ↑ “Nova res est, quod sciam, et infelicis hujus aetatis infelix partus. . . . Hinc oriri securitatem universorum, hinc stabiliri pacem gentium. Quae utinam tam vere dicerentur, quam speciose. Ego quidem, ne quid dissimulem, ab istis seorsum sentio. Nimirum, effoeta virtutis, foecunda fraudis haec saecula video peperisse spissata haec imperia, sive summas potestates, unde, ut e vomitariis, hae legationes undatim se fundunt.” Paschalius, Legatus (1598), p. 447. So too Félix de la Mothe Le Vayer (1547–1625), in his Legatus (Paris, 1579), says “Legatos tunc primum aut non multum post institutos fuisse cum Pandora malorum omnium semina in hunc mundum . . . demisit.”
- ↑ De jure belli et pacis (Amsterdam, 1621), ii. c. 18, § 3, n. 2.
- ↑ The term corps diplomatique originated about the middle of the 18th century. “The Chancellor Furst,” says Ranke (xxx. 47, note), “does not use it as yet in his report (1754) but he knows it,” and it would appear that it had just been invented at Vienna. “Corps diplomatique, nom qu’une dame donna un jour à ce corps nombreux de ministres étrangers à Vienne.”
- ↑ So too Pradier-Fodéré, vol. i. p. 262.
- ↑ Thus Charles V. would not allow the representatives of the duke of Mantua, Ferrara, &c., to style themselves “ambassadors,” on the ground that this title could be borne only by the agents of kings and of the republic of Venice, and not by those of states whose sovereignty was impaired by any feudal relation to a superior power. (See Krauske p. 155.)
