The Limits of Dynastic Power: Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and the Problem of Composite Monarchy in the Age of the Vasas, 1562-1668¹

This chapter investigates the sources of Eustace Chapuys’s diplomatic and rhetorical technique. Chapuys is an excellent case study of the diplomat as image protector/constructor and as intelligence gatherer/ author. Chapuys’s documents have four orienting elements: subject, author, translator, and reader. Chapuys’s early embassy focused on his support and defense of Habsburg matrimonial empire-building: legally defending Charles V’s aunt and Henry VIII’s queen, Katherine of Aragon, during the ‘Divorce Crisis’. Geoffrey Parker differentiates two types of empire pertinent to the Habsburgs of the sixteenth century: matrimonial and military. Garrett Mattingly spent his career in narrating the high drama at play around Renaissance princes. The accumulation of distinct lands into the hands of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was the result of the matrimonial approach to empire-building and ‘carried the Habsburg dynasty to the height of its greatness’. Finally, Chapuys’s documents were read by officials of the Imperial government, whether secretaries or the Emperor himself.