INTRODUCTION: AN EXTRAORDINARY SITUATION
⌅The problem of Charles II’s succession was, without any doubt, of the utmost importance in the European diplomacy of the second half of the seventeenth century. The possibility that Charles II of Spain could die without any legitimate children, and the military confrontation that such situation could provoke, influenced and conditioned decisively the political development of the continent during the last few decades of the aforementioned century. In recent years, leading experts such as Luis Ribot (amongst many others, 2002Ribot, L. (2002) La Monarquía de España y la guerra de Mesina (1674-1678). Madrid: Actas. , 2006Ribot, L. (2006) El arte de gobernar: estudios sobre la España de los Austrias. Madrid: Alianza. , 2009Ribot, L., coord. (2009) Carlos II: el rey y su entorno cortesano. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. , 2010)Ribot, L. (2010) Orígenes políticos del testamento de Carlos II: la gestación del cambio dinástico en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. , Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño (especially, but certainly not only, 2002Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, A. (2002) La República de las parentelas: El Estado de Milán en la monarquía de Carlos II. Mantua: Gianluigi Arcari Editore. , 2015Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, A. and García García, B. J., coords. (2015) Vísperas de sucesión: Europa y la Monarquía de Carlos II. Madrid, Fundación Carlos de Amberes. , 2016)Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, A. (2016) “The legacy of Charles II and the art of government of the Spanish Monarchy.” In: A. Álvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, C. Cremonini and E. Riva, coords., The transition in Europe between XVII th and XVIII th centuries. Milano: FrancoAngeli, pp. 23-34. , Silvia Mitchell (2013Mitchell, S. Z. (2013) Mariana of Austria and Imperial Spain: Court, Dynastic, and International Politics in Seventeenth Century Europe. University of Miami: Ph. D. dissertation. , 2019)Mitchell, S. Z. (2019) Queen, Mother & Stateswoman. Mariana of Austria and the government of Spain. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. , Laura Oliván (in particular, 2006Oliván Santaliestra, L. (2006) Mariana de Austria: imagen, poder y diplomacia de una reina cortesana. Madrid: Editorial Complutense. , 2011)Oliván Santaliestra, L. (2011) “Giovane d’anni ma vecchia di giudizio. La emperatriz Margarita en la corte de Viena.” In: J. Martínez Millán and R. González Cuerva, coords., La dinastía de los Austria: las relaciones entre la Monarquía Católica y el Imperio. Madrid: Polifemo, vol. 2, pp. 837-908., and Christopher Storrs (2013)Storrs, C. (2013) La Resistencia de la Monarquía Hispánica, 1665-1700. Madrid: Actas. , just to name a few, have made significant progress in the study of different aspects of Charles II’s reign. However, one issue in which there is still much to research is the diplomatic relationship that Charles II maintained with the different territories that composed the extremely difficult political conglomerate that was the Holy Roman Empire. And, more specifically, with an elector1 In this article, I am going to use the shorter version of the title, Elector (Kurfürst) to allude to Maximilian II Emanuel, as it was the most common denomination used in the diplomatic documents of the time. That will also help us to differentiate between this title and the one given to the son and heir of an elector, Electoral Prince (Kurprinz) that in the translation is easy to mix up, despite the titles in German being quite different. This last title will be used here to talk about Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria. About the title of prince-elector and its holders in the Empire, see Stollberg-Rilinger, 2020, pp. 27-35. that was of crucial importance regarding the problem of Charles II’s succession: Maximilian II Emanuel, prince-elector of Bavaria.
The reason why Elector Maximilian II Emanuel was so important in the context of Charles II of Spain’s succession came from his marriage to Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria. His wedding with the only surviving daughter of Emperor Leopold I and his first wife, Infanta Margarita of Austria, took place in 1685. This marriage was negotiated with the main goal of securing a defensive and offensive alliance between Leopold I and the young Bavarian elector, a pact that was of paramount importance for the emperor in a moment in which the Turks, that had besieged Vienna in 1683, were a dangerous and constant threat for his patrimonial territories. Additionally, Leopold I also wanted to drive the young elector away from Louis XIV’s dangerous influence, especially taking into account that Maximilian II Emanuel’s father and predecessor, Ferdinand Maria, had signed several treaties of collaboration with the French king over the years that were highly detrimental for his interests (De Schryver, 1996, pp. 16-26De Schryver, R. (1996) Max II. Emanuel von Bayern und das Spanische Erbe. Die Europäischen Ambitionen des Hauses Wittelsbach, 1665-1715. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. ; Hüttl, 1976, pp. 132-145Hüttl, L. (1976) Max Emanuel. Der Blaue Kurfürst, 1679-1726. Eine politische Biographie. München: Süddeutscher Verlag. ).
But Maria Antonia not only was the first-born daughter of Emperor Leopold I. Since the death of her mother in 1673 and until her own demise in December 24th, 1692, Maria Antonia was considered as the legitimate heiress of her uncle Charles II by the Spanish government and her position as such was politically, diplomatically and legally defended by Madrid’s court over the years, despite the constant complaints Leopold I and Louis XIV expressed in this regard (Martínez López, 2018Martínez López, R. (2018) El Imperio y Baviera frente a la sucesión de Carlos II. Relaciones diplomáticas con la Monarquía de España (1665-1699), Ph. D., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). ).2 Regarding the question of Charles II’s succession, in this article we are going to focus on the descendants of Infanta Margarita of Austria and their rights to the inheritance of the Spanish Monarchy. But we must remember that the infanta was the youngest of Philip IV’s surviving daughters. The oldest was Maria Teresa of Austria, who married Louis XIV of France in 1659. She was forced to renounce to all her rights to the Spanish throne for herself and her descendants before her marriage could take place and, although her husband continuously defended that said renunciation was invalid, the Spanish government always considered it as completely legitimate. Following that renunciation, Margarita of Austria was considered for all purposes as the eldest sister of Charles II and his direct successor, a position that Archduchess Maria Antonia inherited when her mother died in 1673. This alteration of the succession order was ratified in Philip IV’s testament, and was also included both in the legal compilations of the time and in the marriage contract of Margarita of Austria. Given the purpose of the article, Maria Teresa of Austria’s renunciations and Louis XIV’s reclamations regarding her position in the line of succession will not be discussed here, but the reader can get more information about these topics in Ribot, 2006 and 2010. Following the tradition of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty, Leopold I compelled his daughter to sign a formal renunciation to all her rights of succession to both the Austrian and Spanish territories in favour of the male members of her dynasty, before her marriage to the elector could take place. As a compensation for the possible loss of Charles II’s inheritance, the emperor committed himself to give the couple the sovereignty of the Spanish Netherlands if he or any of his male descendants were to inherit the Spanish Monarchy, within the same political framework designed for Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia after Philip II’s death3 Regarding the circumstances and conditions attached to the sovereignty of Isabella Clara Eugenia and Albert of Austria of the Spanish Netherlands after Philip II’s death, see Duerloo, 2011, pp. 170-177.. At the same time, he promised that he would try to convince Charles II to give the couple the permanent government of said Spanish Netherlands as soon as possible (De Schryver, 1996, pp. 16-20De Schryver, R. (1996) Max II. Emanuel von Bayern und das Spanische Erbe. Die Europäischen Ambitionen des Hauses Wittelsbach, 1665-1715. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. ). However, Charles II never approved or recognized the aforementioned renunciation as valid and, in the following years, the king and Madrid’s government continuously defended the position of Maria Antonia and, after her death, of her only surviving child Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, as the legitimate heirs of the Spanish Monarchy, without altering this posture until the extinction of this line with the premature death of the electoral prince in 1699 (Martínez López, 2018Martínez López, R. (2018) El Imperio y Baviera frente a la sucesión de Carlos II. Relaciones diplomáticas con la Monarquía de España (1665-1699), Ph. D., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). ). After Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria’s death, Charles II finally decided to leave his whole inheritance to Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip of Bourbon, Duke of Anjou. As Luis Ribot has successfully argued, this decision was based purely on reasons of political convenience. Charles II and many of his counsellors of State considered that Louis XIV’s grandson would be the best option to maintain the unity of the Spanish Monarchy, threatened by the Partition Treaties signed in 1698 and 1700 by France, England and the United Provinces. Also, it was believed that the emperor did not have the means to defend the territories of the Spanish Monarchy against France’s ambitions, so it was safer for Charles II’s territories to be given to the French candidate (Ribot, 2010Ribot, L. (2010) Orígenes políticos del testamento de Carlos II: la gestación del cambio dinástico en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. ).
At first, Maximilian II Emanuel accepted the aforementioned renunciation to marry the archduchess, but, in the following years, he put into practice an ambiguous diplomatic strategy whose main goals were to secure the possession of the Spanish Netherlands for himself and increase Bavaria’s importance in the international arena, leaving in the background the possibility that his wife or his son could become the universal heirs of a vast monarchy whose territories he could not realistically defend in their entirety from Leopold I’s and Louis XIV’s ambitions. Although the elector would always keep an eye on the greater possibilities that the problem of the Spanish succession could offer him, he only began to seriously consider the option of claiming the whole inheritance of the Spanish Monarchy for his son well into the last decade of the century, after he had secured important political support for his candidacy and against the advice of some of his closest collaborators, that thought that it was better for the elector to fight for more realistic objectives and protect the prosperity of his patrimonial lands4Extrait de la lettre du Baron de Bertier de 19 Janvier 1696. Munich, Bayerische Haupstaatsarchiv (hereafter, BayHStA), Kasten Schwarz, 17690. The letters of this box were dispatches addressed to Korbinian of Prielmayer (1643-1707) who was the most important person of the bayerische Geheimer Rat or Bavarian Secret Council at this point in time and, as such, the most relevant matters related to Bavaria or the Elector’s government passed through his hands. As the elector was, at this moment, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, there was a delegated government in Bavaria in his absence. It was considered by Bertier that his official letters, unless specified otherwise, would be seen by both Prielmayer and Maximilian II Emanuel, who would be informed of its content, usually by extracts or copies of those letters, that can still be seen at the Bayerische Haupstaatsarchiv. In fact, in some instances, both Maximilian II Emanuel and Prielmayer replied to the same letter of Bertier and, in others, just the Elector wrote him back. So regarding the letters of Bertier that I am going to present in this article, we are going to assume this tripartite approach, in which the main receptor of Bertier’s letters is the minister Prielmayer, but the content was also known by Maximilian II Emanuel, unless specified otherwise..
Thus, his marriage with Charles II’s heiress and the difficult situation regarding the succession of the Spanish Monarchy were the two main reasons why Maximilian II Emanuel had a particular desire to assure himself that his interests were especially well represented in Madrid’s court. But to properly understand the hardships and difficulties that Maximilian II Emanuel’s envoys faced to accomplish their missions at Charles II’s court, we must examine first how the diplomatic relationship between the Spanish Monarchy and Bavaria was articulated in the Early Modern period.
THE DIPLOMACY BETWEEN BAVARIA AND THE SPANISH MONARCHY: A RELATIONSHIP MONITORED BY VIENNA
⌅Arguably, the most important challenge that the envoys of the Bavarian elector had to face when they were sent to Madrid by Maximilian II Emanuel was the lack of precedents that existed regarding the presence of resident ambassadors or envoys of electors during extended amounts of time, in a court dominated by a strict ceremonial. Although we can find envoys from different territories of the Holy Roman Empire like Brandenburg, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, the Palatinate or Mainz from time to time, they usually stayed in Madrid’s court for a very short time. Unlike the cases of other “minor” states from Italy that, as Jorge Fernández-Santos points out, strove to keep up a continuous and recurrent diplomatic presence in Madrid, like Parma, Modena, Mantua or Lucca (Fernández Santos, 2020, p. 43Fernández-Santos, J. (2020) “The Madrid of the Ambassadors under Philip IV.” In: J. Fernández-Santos and J. L. Colomer, eds., Ambassadors in Golden-Age Madrid. The Court of Philip IV through Foreign Eyes. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, pp. 31-70. ),5 Regarding the way in which the ambassadors of minor Italian states acted and the strategies they put into place to achieve their diplomatic goals at Madrid’s court during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see especially Volpini, 2014. the presence of envoys of the imperial princes, including electors, in Madrid, for a prolonged extension of time was considered pretty unusual. A visual example of this fact can be found in the seating place reserved for ambassadors and foreign envoys to Philip IV’s court in the Plaza Mayor. In a wonderful table created by Jorge Fernández-Santos to present the placement of the different ambassadors in the Plaza Mayor between 1621 and 1665, we can see that, despite the presence of envoys of territories with little tradition of frequent embassies in the Spanish court, like the Canton of Grisons or the Ottoman Empire, or of specific dignitaries like the Queen Mother Maria of Medici, Archduchess Claudia of Tirol or the Prince of Condé, the electors are totally absent (Fernández Santos, 2020, pp. 54-55Fernández-Santos, J. (2020) “The Madrid of the Ambassadors under Philip IV.” In: J. Fernández-Santos and J. L. Colomer, eds., Ambassadors in Golden-Age Madrid. The Court of Philip IV through Foreign Eyes. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, pp. 31-70. ).
So, how did the diplomatic communication between the imperial princes, especially electors, and the Spanish Monarchy play out during the Early Modern period? As it is widely known, the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty had a wide range of interests linked to the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, so a complete lack of diplomatic communication with the electors was not an option. But an essential difference they had with other “minor states,” like the ones I have already mentioned, is that the electors had a very powerful mediator that had a very privileged position in Madrid’s court: the emperor’s ambassador. It was the emperor and his ambassadors who bridged the gap between the electors and the Catholic King, at the same time that the Spanish ambassadors at Vienna were also tasked with keeping diplomatic contact with the elector’s envoys stationed in the Imperial City, or even with the electors themselves when they travelled there6 It was usual for the electors to travel to Vienna, especially those that had a close political or dynastic relationship with the emperor or had to negotiate matters of special importance with him. Maximilian II Emanuel was a frequent visitor of the Imperial Court from his ascension to the government of Bavaria in 1680 until he was appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands and his journey there in 1692. On numerous instances, the presence of several electors in Vienna at the same time provoked important problems related to their treatment, rank and precedence. We can see an example of this in several letters written by the marquis of Burgomayne, the Spanish Ambassador in Vienna, in which he told the king that the constant presence of different relatives of the emperor in the Imperial Court made him feel uncomfortable, especially regarding the elector of Bavaria, who complained to him of the preferential treatment given to the duke of Lorraine and the brothers of the empress Eleonora Magdalene of Neuburg (the heir of the Palatine elector amongst them). Charles II only replied that he was sure that his ambassador would not do anything to “embarrass (mortificar) the Empress” and that he should “keep himself away” from the problems of precedence that had arisen between the duke of Lorraine and the Bavarian elector (Instructions given by King Charles II to the marquis of Burgomayne, dated on July 4th, 1686. Archivo General de Simancas, hereafter AGS, Estado, leg. 3951)., usually (although not always) in concert with the Emperor7 Although, as Jorge Fernández-Santos points out, in the seventeenth century we can see a growing tendency to have permanent residents in foreign courts, it was usually restricted to a few capitals like Madrid, Paris, Vienna and Rome. The decision of having a resident ambassador in other court was dictated by considerations like the expected costs and the importance and size of bilateral negotiations (Fernández-Santos, 2020, pp. 4647). In the case of Bavaria and the Spanish Monarchy, the vicinity of Vienna, which allowed the Spanish ambassador there to handle the diplomatic relationship between the electors and the Catholic Kings from the Imperial city, and the common interests shared by both branches of the Habsburg dynasty in Central Europe made it easier for the Spanish King to benefit from the already established network that the emperor had in the Holy Roman Empire and Vienna than to invest huge amounts of money in a resident embassy to a court which was considered of secondary interest for the Spanish Monarchy’s international diplomacy. Bavaria had more to gain having a resident ambassador in Madrid that the Catholic King in Munich, but it was a huge investment to make when their primary international counterparts were other European powers and the electors could make things work well enough with their diplomatic contacts in Vienna, the elector’s network there and the emperor’s mediation, as well as with extraordinary embassies when they deemed them necessary. This changed in the reign of Charles II, as we are going to see here, but after his death, the War of Spanish Succession and the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt, the loss of the territories of the Spanish Monarchy in Central Europe and the dissolution of the shared interests of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty and their extinct relatives provoked that the diplomatic relationship between Bavaria and the Spanish Bourbons was not considered important enough to warrant a resident embassy in Munich or Madrid.. In the letters written by the different Spanish ambassadors in Vienna during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we can find numerous examples of this statement8 To mention some examples, we can name the letter written by the marquis of Balbases, ambassador of Charles II in Vienna, dated on December 26th, 1675, in which he confirmed that he had received the order to try to convince the Bavarian elector to support the imperial party or, at least, to remain neutral in the war against France, saying that he had not achieved anything important in that regard (AGS, Estado, leg. 2397). Likewise, in a letter dated on May 21st, 1683, the marquis of Burgomayne said that he had talked with the elector of Bavaria in two separates occasions about questions related to the Spanish government while he was in Vienna (AGS, Estado, leg. 3925).. This mediation had its advantages, but also important disadvantages for the electors, as we are going to see for the case of Bavaria.
The Bavarian electorate was not an exception to this rule until the period we are going to discuss in this essay, although the frequent marriages that took place between the Wittelsbach dynasty and the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave them a closer degree of kinship that, in the diplomatic context, hardly ever translated into anything more than the creation of extraordinary embassies linked to official missions of congratulations for marriages and births, or expressions of condolences for deaths within the family.9 Marriage alliances between different members of the Wittelsbach dynasty and the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg were common in the context of the complicated internal structure of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus, the children of Emperor Ferdinand I, Archduchess Anna and Charles II of Styria were married respectively to Duke Albert V and Princess Maria Anna of Bavaria. From this last marriage of Charles II of Styria and Maria Anna of Bavaria, Emperor Ferdinand II and Margaret of Austria-Styria (who would become the queen of Spain after her wedding to Philip III) were born. Ferdinand II would also marry another Bavarian princess, Maria Anna, daughter of Duke William V and Renate of Lorraine. A third Maria Anna, born from this last couple, would marry her uncle Maximilian I of Bavaria, who became elector. See their respective biographies in Hamann, 1988. It was very unusual for the Spanish Monarchy to send ambassadors or envoys to the Bavarian court and, when it happened, it was most often just another stop in a longer trip that forced an ambassador or delegate to visit several places during an established journey.10 Thus, for example, in the planned embassy of the marquis of Malpica, whose mission was to congratulate Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria and Maria Antonia of Austria for their wedding and, at the same time, offer the king’s condolences to the Archduchess for the recent death of the Dowager Empress Eleonora, he also had to travel to Vienna to offer the same congratulations and condolences to the emperor, as well as to compliment him for his last victories over the Turks. See, for example, the letter that Leopold I sent to Charles II to thank him for sending him this embassy (Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv, Finanzund Hofkammerarchiv, hereafter AVA, Familienarchiv, Harrach, 302) and the description of the audience the marquis was granted at Munich (AGS, Estado, leg. 3929). The instructions given to the marquis for this embassy are kept, as by Ochoa Brun, 2006, p. 150, in the Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter AHN), Estado, 3459. If any special circumstances forced the Spanish Monarchy to send an exclusive envoy to Munich, the person who travelled to the electoral court usually was the Spanish ambassador in Vienna himself or a person designated by him to do that commission,11 For example, in a letter dated on February 10th, 1649, Philip IV’s ambassador in Vienna, the count of Lumiares, told the king that he had sent fray Josef de la Cruz to Bavaria’s court to try to win the favour of the electress and the young princes, as well as to gather information, as he was very well-liked by both members of the electoral couple. AGS, Estado, leg. 2354. although, in any case, it was considered as something unusual that was remarked by foreign envoys and courtiers as something outside the norm that should be carefully observed. For example, when Philip IV sent Diego de Saavedra Fajardo to the court of Maximilian I of Bavaria in 1633 to try to ensure his support for the House of Habsburg and to prevent him from securing an alliance with France in the complicated political context of the Thirty Years’ War, the king himself was very aware of how unusual it was for the Spanish Monarchy to send a separate envoy to the Bavarian court and realized that such movement could arouse suspicion amongst allies and enemies alike, as well as within the Bavarian court itself. Thus, in the instructions redacted for Saavedra Fajardo dated on April 11th, 1633, it was said that only time would tell them if it was convenient or not that he would remain in Munich for a prolonged period of time, because “as there has never been a person in my name whose mission was to assist me on an ongoing basis at that Court, [they] could think that my intention is for me to have there a witness of their proceedings.”12Instrucción a Don Diego de Saavedra Fajardo para su jornada a Baviera, April 11th, 1633. AGS, Estado, 2459, in Aldea Vaquero, 1986, t. 1, p. 41. To know more about the political and diplomatic context in which Saavedra Fajardo was sent to the Bavarian court, see Aldea Vaquero, 1986, pp. XXI-LXXIV. As we can see, it was considered so unusual for the Spanish Monarchy to send an ambassador directly to the Bavarian court for an extended period of time that the monarch predicted that the elector could suspect some kind of a foul play on his part if Saavedra Fajardo remained there for too long.
In the same way, it was not common either that an ambassador or envoy of an elector or imperial prince remained for a very long time in the Spanish court except in very specific cases. It was way more usual for their interests to be represented by the emperor’s ambassador in Madrid, that for them to send long embassies to the Spanish capital. To present an example unconnected with Bavaria, we can mention the case of Duke Philip William of Neuburg, later elector of the Palatinate, who tried to negotiate the concession of the government of the Spanish Netherlands for his heir and, afterwards, the Grand Priory of the order of Malta for his son Charles Philipp, through the mediation of the imperial ambassador at Madrid’s court, the marquis of Grana, without positive results (Baviera and Maura Gamazo, 2004, I, pp. 15-17Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.). Likewise, when the marriage between Charles II and his daughter Mariana of Neuburg was negotiated, an important part of the discussions was conducted by the imperial ambassador in Madrid, the count of Mansfeld, and the ambassador of Charles II in Vienna, the marquis of Burgomayne, although the Palatinate elector took care of some important aspects of said negotiations himself from Düsseldorf, especially those related to the question of the dowry or the creation of the household that would accompany his daughter to Madrid. But the imperial ambassador acted as his main intermediary with the Spanish Court in this issue, instead of appointing his own envoy to negotiate the marriage.13 In this regard, see Martínez López, 2021.
Back to Bavaria, the already mentioned more common extraordinary embassies of congratulations or condolences usually lasted a very short time. For example, already in Maximilian II Emanuel’s time, the elector sent Count Maximilian Johann of Preissing to Madrid’s court to announce officially to Charles II and his family his wedding with archduchess Maria Antonia. The translation of the credentials that the count of Pressing gave the king when he arrived at Madrid is dated on July 26th, 1685, and already in a letter dated on September 29th of that same year, Manuel de Lira wrote to Crispín Botello that the Bavarian envoy wanted to return to Munich as soon as possible to prepare the archduchess’s solemn entry to the city, as he considered that he had already completed his mission, leaving Madrid soon after14Traducción de una copia de la carta del Elector de Baviera para S. M. en creencia del conde de Preising, July 26th, 1685; Consulta to the Council of State, August 24th, 1685, and the letter of don Manuel Francisco de Lira to Crispín Botello dated on September 29th, 1685. AGS, Estado, leg. 3927.. This is a very clear example of the kind of short embassies that the electors of Bavaria used to send to Madrid before this period.
In those cases in which Bavarian envoys were present at Madrid, the strict etiquette that dominated the court of the Spanish Monarchy (Coniez, 2009Coniez, H., ed. (2009) Le Cérémonial de la cour d’Espagne au XVII e siècle. Paris: PUPS.; Rodríguez Villa, 1913Rodríguez Villa, A. (1913) Etiquetas de la casa de Austria. Madrid: J. Ratés.; Río Barredo, 2000Río Barredo, M. J. del (2000) Madrid, Urbs Regia. La capital ceremonial de la Monarquía Católica. Madrid: Marcial Pons.) greatly hindered their movements and maintained them away, to a large extent, from important centres of informal power and the proximity to the royal authority, except for those general areas open to all foreign envoys and the mandatory audiences with the king. As Jorge Fernández-Santos points out, ambassadors and envoys of “minor states” (as Bavaria was considered at the time) would make a mistake if they thought that they could expect frequent and scheduled royal audiences with the king and being in close contact with him (Fernández-Santos, 2020, p. 48Fernández-Santos, J. (2020) “The Madrid of the Ambassadors under Philip IV.” In: J. Fernández-Santos and J. L. Colomer, eds., Ambassadors in Golden-Age Madrid. The Court of Philip IV through Foreign Eyes. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, pp. 31-70. ). The emissaries of small states were admitted to the royal presence for the audiences of introduction and leave-taking when they departed, but did not have access to all public ceremonies in which the king was present, so they were forced to “slip into the cracks” of the system to be able to carry out their missions (Volpini, 2018, pp. 72-73Volpini, P. (2018) “«On those occasions one must ride roughshod over punctilios»: ceremonial meetings of minor State ambassadors in the early modern age.” Cheiron, 1, pp. 64-82. doi: https://doi.org/10.3280/CHE2018-001004 ). In addition, Bavarian envoys’ status was far away from the privileges and exceptional access to the king enjoyed by the official ambassadors of the crowned heads of Europe, especially those considered “chapel ambassadors” (embajadores de capilla), who benefitted from a special treatment and had assigned seats at the Royal Chapel.15 The embajadores de capilla were the imperial ambassador, the papal nuncio, the ambassadors of those kings who were Catholic (usually only Poland and France, whose representation in Madrid’s court was also intermittent) and the Venetian ambassador (Fernández-Santos, 2020, pp. 42-43).
The special standing of the Imperial ambassadors, who were treated as “domestics”16 It meant that imperial ambassadors were considered and treated as subjects of the Spanish Kings and members of their own entourage, instead of being viewed as foreign officials, with all the privileges and diplomatic advantages this consideration granted them. and had direct and exclusive access to the royal family, is especially important for the matter we are discussing here.17 The imperial ambassadors in Madrid enjoyed this kind of privileged status until Philip V’s reign. In fact, in his modifications to the regulations for the Palace’s etiquette, it was specified that the French ambassadors should enjoy the same privileges and preferential treatment that were given to the Imperial ambassadors in the time of the Habsburgs. Reglamento del ceremonial que S.M. ha tenido por bien de mandar que se observe, desde ahora en adelante, con todos los ministros de Coronas, Repúblicas y demás Príncipes extranjeros que vinieren a esta Corte a residir en ella, y a los otros que vinieren a cumplimientos o dependencias particulares, April 25th, 1717. Biblioteca Nacional de España (hereafter BNE), Mss/10411, fol. 4v. As the closest foreign envoys to the Catholic King, the imperial ambassadors had the possibility to be in continuous direct contact with the monarch and had resources and diplomatic structures at their disposal that the electors simply did not have the option to acquire, so they were a very powerful allies for them to have. The imperial princes were extremely aware of this so, to facilitate the political negotiations between the electors and the Spanish king, the natural point of diplomatic union between them was the emperor and his representatives. It also worked to the Spanish Monarchy’s advantage, as the negotiations regarding the electors usually concerned shared interests between both branches of the Habsburg dynasty or were linked to the complex workings of the Holy Roman Empire. Regarding Bavaria, until the last decades of the seventeenth century, it was very usual for Madrid and Vienna to share common strategies to try to obtain the political and military support of the different Bavarian electors and to maintain them linked to the Habsburg dynasty’s interests, as well as far away from other alliances that could be potentially harmful to their goals.18 There are countless examples of this approach. To present one, we can see this strategy in the letters exchanged by Mariana of Austria, when she was regent of the Spanish Monarchy, and the marquis of Balbases, her ambassador in Vienna, in 1673, in which the queen regent constantly reminded her ambassador of the need to collaborate with her brother to convince the Bavarian elector Ferdinand Maria to sign an alliance treaty with the Habsburg dynasty and to distance himself from France. The complete negotiations in this regard can be seen at AGS, Estado, leg. 2486. At the same time, the elector usually employed the mediation of the emperor and his ambassadors in Madrid to defend his interests with the Catholic monarch in different moments, as we have already seen in the example given regarding the duke of Neuburg.
But this system, that seemed like a well-oiled machine on paper, faced in practice innumerable problems and setbacks. After all, the imperial ambassador was an envoy selected by the emperor and he protected the interests of his sovereign, not those of the Holy Roman Empire in its entirety or of the different imperial princes if they were not aligned with the emperor’s own goals. As Laura Oliván points out when she alludes to the way the word “embaxada” is defined in the well-known Tesoro de la lengua castellana by Covarrubias, this position was more closely linked to the diplomatic relationship carved between sovereigns than amongst territories (Oliván Santaliestra, 2018, p. 11Oliván Santaliestra, L. (2018) “Introducción: diplomacia y embajadas en la Edad Moderna. De lo global a lo cotidiano.” Chronica Nova: Revista de Historia Moderna de la Universidad de Granada, 44, pp. 11-19. doi: https://doi.org/10.30827/cn.v0i44.8351 ). That is the reason why we can never forget that the imperial ambassador, despite his denomination, protected only and exclusively the interests of the emperor and not necessarily those of other sovereign imperial princes. Therefore, when there were confrontations and disputes between the Bavarian elector and the emperor that involved the Spanish Monarchy in some way, the intermediation that we have talked about became very problematic and, sometimes, even impossible.
The relationship between the different emperors and the successive electors of Bavaria became extremely tense on numerous occasions, even reaching a breaking point in some instances, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.19 We can mention the case of the Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria, Maximilian II Emanuel’s father, who ruled the Bavarian electorate between 1654 and 1679, and whose political strategy was defined by his constant confrontation with emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold I in different issues regarding the Holy Roman Empire, his alliance with France and his desire to increase the relevance of Bavaria at an international level through different alliances with other sovereigns, the improvement of his armies, and an important cultural and artistic patronage. It is especially telling in this regard the treaty signed on February 17th, 1670, between Ferdinand Maria and Louis XIV, in which it was stipulated that, if Leopold I were to die without any male surviving children, the French king would help Ferdinand Maria to obtain the Imperial crown. At the same time, the Bavarian elector would help Louis XIV to obtain the Spanish Monarchy if Charles II were to die without any issue (BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 6462). About Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria and his relationship with France, Michael Doebelr’s classic study, Bayern und Frankreich vornehmlich unter Kurfürst Ferdinand Maria (Doebelr, 1900-1903) still is one of the most important sources of information in this regard and, more focused on the topic of Bavaria as an alternative to the House of Habsburg in the imperial election, see Bangert, 2008. In fact, the Bavarian electors were considered as a very important threat for the interests of the Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg inside the Holy Roman Empire, especially (but not exclusively) in the last years of the Thirty Years’ War (Tercero Casado, 2017, especially pp.107-125Tercero Casado, L. (2017) Infelix Austria: Relaciones entre Madrid y Viena desde la Paz de Westfalia hasta la Paz de los Pirineos (1648-1659). Ph. D., Universität Wien. ) and they were even perceived as a possible alternative to the Habsburgs for the imperial election (Bangert, 2008Bangert, A. (2008) Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria: Bavarian Imperial Politics during the Interregnum, 1657-1658. München: Herbert Utz. ). In the specific case of Maximilian II Emanuel and Leopold I, their political confrontations increased over time, especially regarding four key questions: differences linked to the Nine Years War; the defence in Madrid of the rights of Maria Antonia and Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria as the legitimate successors of Charles II; the efforts of the elector to obtain more and more advantages for himself from the Spanish succession problem, and the elector’s rapprochement to international powers like England and the United Provinces, a strategy that Leopold I saw with distrust (Martínez López, 2018Martínez López, R. (2018) El Imperio y Baviera frente a la sucesión de Carlos II. Relaciones diplomáticas con la Monarquía de España (1665-1699), Ph. D., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). ). Thus, when elector Maximilian II Emanuel’s envoys reached Madrid’s court during the last years of Charles II’s reign, they knew they could not count on the help of the imperial ambassadors except to promote very specific shared interests. They were also unable to take advantage of the imperial ambassadors’ well-established network, given that the elector’s interests regarding the Spanish succession were in direct conflict with those of Leopold I, who considered himself as the legitimate heir of Charles II.
To make everything even more complicated, in the last years of the seventeenth century, the diplomatic relationship between both branches of the Habsburg dynasty was not at its best. The peace of Westphalia meant, on one hand, a very significant estrangement between both lines of the dynasty and, on the other, the beginning of a change of direction in the diplomatic strategies put into practice by the Spanish Monarchy in Central Europe, in which the pursuit of new allies would be of paramount importance. As Luis Tercero Casado points out, after the peace, the Spanish government began to look for the cooperation or alliance of states like the United Provinces, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanseatic League, the electorate of Cologne or the bishopric of Münster (Tercero Casado, 2017, pp. 137-144Tercero Casado, L. (2017) Infelix Austria: Relaciones entre Madrid y Viena desde la Paz de Westfalia hasta la Paz de los Pirineos (1648-1659). Ph. D., Universität Wien. ; Herrero, 2000Herrero, M. (2000) El acercamiento hispano-neerlandés. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. ). Manuel Herrero also points out that, after the peace and despite the deterioration of the classic alliance between both branches of the dynasty, the Habsburgs presented themselves as the defendants of territorial entities like German republics, urban leagues like the Hansa or cantons from the Swiss Helvetic Confederation (Herrero, 2020, p. 90Herrero, M. (2020) “El congreso de Westfalia y la paz bilateral de Münster entre la Monarquía Hispánica y las Provincias Unidas.” In: J. I. Fortea Pérez, J. E. Gelabert González, R. López Vela and E. Postigo Castellanos, coords., Monarquías en conflicto. Linajes y noblezas en la articulación de la Monarquía Hispánica. Madrid: Fundación Española de Historia Moderna - Universidad de Cantabria, pp. 87-128.), which also helped the Spanish Monarchy to revisit different types of alliances. The emperor was not a stranger to these negotiations and, more often than not, also had a part in them, but he did not have such a crucial role as he would have had in the past, and these negotiations were made directly by the Spanish Monarchy without relying completely on the emperor. Although the emperor remained as the most important and secure ally that the Spanish Monarchy had at an international level, the growing estrangement in their political goals that they experienced in the following years constituted a long process that could be traced through the regency of queen Mariana of Austria (Mitchell, 2019Mitchell, S. Z. (2019) Queen, Mother & Stateswoman. Mariana of Austria and the government of Spain. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ; Oliván Santaliestra, 2006Oliván Santaliestra, L. (2006) Mariana de Austria: imagen, poder y diplomacia de una reina cortesana. Madrid: Editorial Complutense. ; Sánchez Belén, 1999, pp. 138-172Sánchez Belén, J. A. (1999) “Las relaciones internacionales de la Monarquía Hispánica durante la regencia de doña Mariana de Austria.” Studia Histórica. Historia Moderna, 20, pp. 137-172. ) and it reached its peak during Charles II’s personal reign, culminating in the dynastic change in the Spanish Monarchy that happened after his death in 1700. For the topic we are discussing here, the 1680s constituted a fundamental point of no return, as it was in this decade when Leopold I prioritized his military conflict with the Turks in the Eastern border of his patrimonial lands, giving less importance to the defence of the interests of the Spanish Monarchy regarding the protection of the Spanish Netherlands against Louis XIV’s ambitions (Rodríguez Hernández, 2011, pp. 142-143, and 164-172Rodríguez Hernández, A. J. (2011) “El precio de la fidelidad dinástica: colaboración económica y militar entre la Monarquía Hispánica y el Imperio durante el reinado de Carlos II (1665-1700).” Studia Histórica. Historia Moderna, 33, pp. 141-176. ). The idea that the emperor did not have the defence of the territories of the Spanish Monarchy as one of his main objectives and, more importantly, the belief that he was unable to help them in a convincing, strong way in the king’s time of need was a certainty that had a fundamental impact in the international political strategy of the Spanish Monarchy during the last two decades of the seventeenth century.
A consequence of this problem was the necessity of both branches of the Habsburg dynasty to compete for the same allies in very specific political contexts, something that had never happened before in such manner. Leopold I needed allies to continue his military confrontation against the Turks, and Charles II had the same necessity to defend his territories from Louis XIV’s threats, so they were forced to negotiate alliances with the same princes with different goals, all the while trying to avoid an open conflict with the other line of the dynasty. We can see a clear example of this in the year 1684, when the Spanish Monarchy was immersed in the War of Reunions against France and Leopold I was involved in a gruelling conflict against the Ottoman Empire. The ambassador of Charles II in Vienna, the marquis of Burgomayne, asked the emperor desperately for help to defend Luxembourg and the territories of the Spanish Netherlands threatened by the French. And, at the same time, he tried to convince the elector of Bavaria, who was then one of the most important allies that Leopold I had in his confrontation against the Turks, to send his troops to defend the Spanish Netherlands instead of travelling with them to Hungary to join the Imperial front, as planned. The Spanish ambassador argued that the threat posed by Louis XIV was so important that if Luxembourg ended up falling into the French’s hands, he was sure that it would be the end to the whole Holy Roman Empire’s freedom and the security of Maximilian II Emanuel’s patrimonial lands would be in jeopardy, so it was in the elector’s best interests and convenience to help the Spanish Monarchy in its plight. Although the elector ended the conversation telling the ambassador that he would follow Leopold I’s wishes in this regard, it is a good example of this competition for the same resources, that grew stronger over time.20Letter of the marquis of Burgomayne to Charles II, April 22nd, 1684, and Traducción de una carta que el marqués de Burgomayne escribió al elector de Baviera en 22 de mayo de 1684, AGS, Estado, leg. 3926.
Therefore, when Maximilian II Manuel of Bavaria decided to send different diplomats to Madrid’s court to defend his interests, they had to face an extraordinarily complex diplomatic situation. But, despite all these difficulties, Bertier and the rest of the Bavarian envoys in the court of Madrid would have three advantages that no other foreign diplomat would enjoy: the conviction that Charles II had always exhibited that the descendants of his sister Margarita were his rightful heirs, despite the claims made by Leopold I and Louis XIV; the unwavering support of the powerful queen mother, Mariana of Austria, great grandmother of the electoral prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria, and the sympathies that the possibilities of a Bavarian succession had amongst a good quantity of important personalities of Madrid’s court, which gave the Bavarian envoys a relevance that they would never had enjoyed in any other context.
BAUMGARTEN AND LANCIER, BERTIER’S PREDECESSORS AT MADRID’S COURT
⌅The baron of Bertier was not the only envoy that Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria sent to Madrid in the decisive years of the succession conflict. The elector sent other diplomats to Charles II’s court with different missions, both before and after Bertier himself arrived at Madrid. Some of them remained very little time there, as it was the case of the aforementioned count of Preissing or the baron of Simeoni (who was sent to Spain in 1690).21Instrucción del elector de Baviera para el Barón Fernando Simeoni, Gentilhombre y enviado a la Corte de España (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 191). But in the following section we are going to examine with further detail the two direct predecessors of Bertier as envoys of Bavaria at Madrid’s court: Johann Joseph Francis Baumgarten22 Depending on the case, his name can also appear in the documents as “Paumgarten.” and Juan Bautista of Lancier.
The baron Juan Bautista of Lancier arrived at Madrid on September 1686. He was born in Besançon, as the son of Juan Claudio Lancier and Claudia Françoise Mariot,23 Most of his biographical information came from his examination for the concession of the habit of the order of Santiago, performed in 1689. This record is kept at the Archivo Histórico Nacional under the title Pruebas para la concesión del Título de Caballero de la Orden de Santiago de Juan Bautista Lancier y de Mariot, natural de Besançon. AHN, OM-Caballeros, Santiago, exp. 4290. and he obtained the habit of the order of Santiago in 1694, a concession that he would retain until he died in 1702 (Martín Nieto, 2008, p. 818Martín Nieto, D. A. (2008) “La encomienda de Casas de Calatrava y su iglesia de Santa María en la ciudad de Badajoz, pertenecientes al partido de la Serena de la Orden de Alcántara.” Revista de estudios extremeños, 64 (2), pp. 799-870. ). He was sent by the elector to Madrid less than a year after his wedding to Maria Antonia of Austria and his main mission there, as we can see in his instructions, was to negotiate the payment of the archduchess’s dowry (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 20-21Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.). In the marriage contract, it was indicated that Leopold I had never received the 500.000 escudos de oro allotted to his wife, Margarita of Austria, when they married. As Maria Antonia was her mother’s universal heiress, she was entitled to that sum and the emperor had assigned her that money as a dowry, with the interests and revenues that it could have produced since her parents’ wedding. Thus, the newlyweds were forced to negotiate the payment of Maria Antonia’s dowry directly with Charles II.24 The negotiations for the payment of the dowries of Empress Margarita and her daughter Maria Antonia were extremely difficult and they were never satisfactorily resolved. The claims in this regard dragged on for decades and, when Prince Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria died prematurely, it became another point of conflict between the elector and the emperor, which the court of Madrid resolved in favour of one or the other depending on the political context. The payment of said dowry was still demanded by the Bavarian’s government at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Regarding these negotiations, see for example AGS, Estado, leg. 3933. That’s why Lancier’s main mission at the time of his arrival to Madrid was to obtain this payment, although he did not achieve this goal. Lancier remained in Madrid for more than ten years and would not be relieved of his post until Bertier’s arrival.
For his part, Baumgarten was sent to the Spanish court in 1692, arriving at Madrid on March 20th of that year. He was one of the most trusted members of Maximilian II Emanuel’s household; he held the title of Obersthofmeister and came from one of the most important aristocratic Bavarian families, with a long tradition of service to the Wittelsbach dynasty. Baumgarten arrived at Madrid with the apparent mission of thanking Charles II, on the elector’s name, for Maximilian II Emanuel’s appointment as governor of the Spanish Netherlands. But he was also ordered to convince the king to send the elector increased amounts of money and military resources in the context of the Nine Years’ War (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 260Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.). Baumgarten’s original mission evolved with time and he ended up negotiating several issues related to the cession of the Spanish Netherlands and the perpetuity of its government for the elector, that Maximilian II Emanuel wanted to assure for himself, with limited success. Baumgarten remained at Madrid with Lancier until 1697, with a short interruption in 1693. When Bertier arrived at the Spanish court, both Lancier and Baumgarten were ordered to surrender every relevant code, documents, and information to Bertier, so he could remain in Madrid as the Elector’s main and only permanent envoy there and avoid any complication that could arise from the presence of more than one representative of the same sovereign in the same place and time.25 Lancier had been in Madrid more than a decade when the Elector told him that he had to leave the capital of the Spanish Monarchy. He wrote to Maximilian II Emanuel telling him that he wished to remain in Madrid, as his wife was born in this city and they were used to their life there. He begged him to let him stay in Madrid, but Maximilian II Emanuel persevered and Lancier finally followed his orders at the beginning of 1697. Letters from Lancier to the elector of November 22nd, 1696, and January 17th, 1697, and from the elector to Lancier of November 2nd and December 14th, 1696 (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 584-585, 587-588, 593 and 600-601). Baumgarten, who was appointed Lord High Steward of the elector’s second wife, Teresa Kunegunde Sobieska, left Madrid as well at the beginning of 1697.
The elector told his envoys that they should work closely with each other, but although Baumgarten stayed at Lancier’s house when he arrived (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 280Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.) and both of them left a written record in their letters of their collaborations, they did not share a good relationship. In particular, Baumgarten frequently complained of his partner’s actions and expressed the poor opinion he had of Lancier in his correspondence. For example, in a letter to Prielmayer dated on July 7th, 1692, Baumgarten said that Lancier’s wife was a sensible woman and that she had a great influence over the queen mother, but her greatest disgrace was the husband she had the misfortune to be tied to (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 292-293Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.). Notices about disagreements between both Bavarian envoys were common and they appeared even in the correspondence of other courtiers or foreign ambassadors who were at Madrid at the same time,26 For example, the secretary of the Queen Regnant Mariana of Neuburg, Henry Wiser, wrote to the Elector Johann Wilhem of Neuburg on April 1st, 1694, that because of problems linked to the treatment and position that should be given to the ambassador of Savoy, neither the Palatinate ambassador nor the envoys of Venice, Poland, Portugal, Florence, Geneva or Modena had sent their liveries to his public entrance in Madrid. Baumgarten had followed the same suit, but Lancier, as he had a dispute with his partner, decided to send his servants to it (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 387), defying the unitary position presented by the other foreign envoys. with the consequent discredit of the elector’s envoys.
Both Baumgarten and Lancier soon realised the complications they would face in a court tightly controlled by a very strict etiquette. Lancier left evidence of these difficulties in his correspondence with problems that, to a large extent, Bertier also had to face later on.27 With Bertier already in Madrid, the elector and Prielmayer seemed to become aware of the necessity of granting a higher rank to their envoy to the Catholic King’s court to facilitate their negotiations there. This was briefly talked about, for example, in a letter dated on April 5th, 1696, in which they emphasize the necessity of giving Bertier an official and better rank that would reflect his quality, as there were instances in which he was almost incapable of doing his job effectively for ceremonial reasons (BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, fol. 135v.). Little after his official entry in Madrid, Lancier wrote to the elector that the title of “minister” that he had been given in his credentials had disconcerted the members of the Council of State, as it was considered way too general. Lancier explained that he went to see the count of Oropesa to tell him that he would adapt to the court’s style, and he thought that he would be treated the same as the envoys that held the title of extraordinary ambassadors, even though he was not sure (Baviera y Maura Gamazo, 2004, I, p. 21Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.). But he also stated the following: “they will not want to give me precedence and it is possible they will not give me the exceptions they [the extraordinary ambassadors] enjoy and that contribute greatly to soothe the shortage with which we live here.”28 Letter from Lancier to the elector Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria, September 21st, 1686 (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 187-188). In a subsequent letter, dated on October 10th, 1686, he indicated that his title was still giving him problems and asked the elector to name him officially resident or even extraordinary ambassador to avoid further issues. These problems related to the protocol also made it very difficult for Lancier to communicate with other envoys and relevant members of Madrid’s court, to the point that in the aforementioned letter, he admitted that the ambassadors, counsellors and other ministers did not want to give him their hand, and the envoys refuse to yield their place to him, so he had decided to try to avoid any new encounters with them in public for the time being (Baviera and Maura Gamazo, 2004, I, pp. 22-23Baviera, A. de, and Maura Gamazo, G. (2004) Documentos inéditos referentes a las postrimerías de la Casa de Austria en España. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols.).
But as we have previously stated, despite these problems, these envoys of Bavaria, and Bertier afterwards, also had advantages. Undoubtedly, the support of the queen mother was extremely important, and it gave them numerous possibilities that the Spanish etiquette denied them. Mariana of Austria was one of the most powerful people of Madrid’s court and she not only had a great influence over her son, but she had also created a solid diplomatic network in which were present several of the most important members of the Spanish government. Bertier even wrote to the elector and Prielmayer that the queen mother was the most powerful person at Madrid’s court and that she had the power to decide the outcome of the succession problem.29Extrait de la lettre du baron Bertier, 2 février 1696, BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690. As Silvia Mitchell points out, the palace of Uceda, in which Mariana of Austria established her official residence from 1679 until her death, became a true hub of political activity in which ministers and ambassadors as important as those of the Empire, France and Savoy, as well as Bavaria, gathered and exchanged information (Mitchell, 2019, p. 229Mitchell, S. Z. (2019) Queen, Mother & Stateswoman. Mariana of Austria and the government of Spain. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ). In the new phase of her political life that began for Mariana after the end of her regency and exile, she constantly showed her desire to help the descendants of her daughter Margarita. That included the question of her son’s succession. The queen mother, as king Charles II and a lot of important personalities at Madrid’s court, considered that Empress Margarita, Maria Antonia of Austria and Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria successively were the legal heirs of her son’s throne, following the legitimacy of Infanta Maria Teresa’s renunciation to her rights to the throne and Philip IV’s testament, as well as because of the closer blood relation that the descendants of Margarita of Austria had to Charles II, in opposition to his French relatives.30 Letter of Bertier of February 16th, 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690. Thus, the envoys of Bavaria found in Mariana of Austria a faithful ally that not only was tremendously powerful, but also had a personal motivation to help them.
The correspondence of both envoys, as well as the letters Prielmayer and Maximilian II Emanuel himself wrote to each other show us that they were very aware of this fact and they pointed out often how Mariana of Austria helped and supported them in their different diplomatic actions and gave them very important information. Her support went as far as to arrange Lancier’s marriage with one of her chambermaids, doña Cristina Teresa Cipresin, which took place on February 14th, 1692 (Novo Zaballos, 2016, II, p. 206Novo Zaballos, J. R. (2016) Las casas reales en tiempos de Carlos II: la casa de la reina Mariana de Austria. Ph. D., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2 vols. ). It was considered that doña Cristina Teresa enjoyed a special status as “confidant” of the queen mother and through her, another direct channel of communication was opened between Queen Mariana of Austria and the envoys of Bavaria.31 To present an example of the influence that Cristina Teresa Cipresin had before her marriage to Lancier, the envoy of the Palatinate elector Johann Wilhem of Neuburg, Novelli, wrote in a letter to his sovereign that he only knew about some symptoms of pregnancy that the queen regnant had experienced thanks to a confidence made to him by doña Cristina Teresa, to whom he refers as “the favourite” of the queen mother. Letter written by Novelli for the Palatinate Elector, November 29th, 1689 (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 222).
The publicly known support of the queen mother to the Bavarian elector and the active political life of the palace of Uceda were enormously beneficial for both envoys, who were able to interact there with important ministers of the Spanish government without the difficulties, hierarchization and protocolary restraints of the Alcázar. In the queen mother’s parallel court, they were able to obtain important, direct and fast information, either through Queen Mariana of Austria’s herself, different members of her household or the numerous courtiers, counsellors and ambassadors who assiduously visited the palace. For example, in a letter dated on November 16th, 1689, Lancier wrote how he met the count of Monterrey (then president of the Council of Flanders) in the antechamber of the queen mother and he took advantage of this encounter to speak privately with him about the government of the Spanish Netherlands, whose appointment to the Elector of Bavaria was not resolved yet.32 Letter written by Lancier for Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria. November 16th, 1689 (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 159160). To present another example, in a letter to the elector dated on November 28th, 1691, Lancier said that, after visiting the counsellors of State and Cardinal Portocarrero in different days, he went to the palace of Uceda, where he had the opportunity to talk some more with the marquis of Mancera and the duke of the Infantado.33 Letter written by Lancier to Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria. November 28th, 1691 (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, pp. 254255). But Bertier would be the one who capitalized the most the opportunities that the unwavering protection the queen mother offered to the envoys of the Bavarian elector.
“LIKE A HEDGEHOG BETWEEN FALCONS.”34 Bertier uses this metaphor to illustrate his complicated diplomatic position as Bavarian ambassador, threatened by the “falcons,” that is, the skilled envoys of the King of France Louis XIV and the emperor Leopold I, much more powerful than his sovereign. Letter of the baron of Bertier dated on April 26th, 1697. BayHStA, Gesandtschaft Wien, 106. THE FIRST YEARS OF THE EMBASSY OF THE BARON OF BERTIER IN MADRID (1695-1696)
⌅The baron of Bertier was sent to Madrid in the context of what de Schryver calls “the great diplomatic offensive of Maximilian Emanuel of the spring of 1696” (De Schryver, 1996, p. 70De Schryver, R. (1996) Max II. Emanuel von Bayern und das Spanische Erbe. Die Europäischen Ambitionen des Hauses Wittelsbach, 1665-1715. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. ). Pierre, baron of Bertier, was amongst Maximilian II Emanuel’s most trusted diplomats and he would become one of the members of his Private Council. Considered a very skilled diplomat, he would remain in Madrid as the elector’s envoy during the rest of Charles II’s reign, although in the following lines we will only talk about the first years of his embassy. His predecessors had already paved his way, but it will be the baron of Bertier who would create a diplomatic network in the Elector’s favour strong enough to successfully survive the death of their main protector.
Bertier arrived at Madrid on September 21st, 1695, with the apparent mission of congratulating the king for the capture of the city of Namur, which happened in August of that same year. But, in addition to those congratulations, Bertier had brought with him instructions from the elector linked to three main issues: to convince the king to send more subsidies and troops for the defence of the Spanish Netherlands; to obtain the government of the Spanish Netherlands for the Elector in perpetuity, and to explore the topic of the whole inheritance of the Spanish Monarchy for the electoral prince. If it was possible, Bertier was ordered to try to obtain both the elector’s perpetuity in the government of the Spanish Netherlands, and as many advantages as possible for his son regarding the succession of Charles II. But Bertier told his master early on that it was impossible for him to achieve both goals, as the king did not want to consider a separation of the Spanish Netherlands from the whole of the Spanish Monarchy and assured him that pushing the issue would only damage the progress he could achieve regarding the question of Charles II’s succession for the electoral prince.35 Bertier wrote to Prielmayer and Maximilian II Emanuel that the king was “extremely aggravated,” because several of his socalled allies were trying to “put a rope around his neck” regarding the succession, something that the envoy thought it was a reference to the international treaties that were being negotiated by the emperor, England and Maximilian II Emanuel regarding the succession and the question of the Spanish Netherlands, so they needed to drop the conversations regarding the perpetuity if they wanted to win the good faith of the king in the matter of the succession. Letter dated on 22-25th March, 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690. It was also important for his mission to neutralize the diplomatic advances of other ministers, especially the imperial ambassador, identified as the elector’s main enemy regarding the succession problem. For example, when it was made known to Bertier by the ambassador of the elector in Vienna that Leopold I had decided to send Ferdinand Bonaventura of Harrach to Madrid with his son Louis, Bertier wrote that they would have a great advantage if they knew the details of his mission to design a strategy to forestall his success. Letter of March 1st, 1697. BayHStA, Gesadtschaft Wien, 107. But Maximilian II Emanuel did not want to give up either possibility and he did not decide to pursue the option of the whole succession of the Spanish Monarchy for his son until a later date. Bertier was in despair regarding the hesitations showed by the Elector in this regard, as his doubts forced him to alter his diplomatic strategies fairly often (Martínez López, 2018, pp. 271-294Martínez López, R. (2018) El Imperio y Baviera frente a la sucesión de Carlos II. Relaciones diplomáticas con la Monarquía de España (1665-1699), Ph. D., Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). ).
Thus, Bertier’s missions were of great political importance. We must remember that, at this moment, the imperial ambassador would not help Bertier to obtain the elector’s goals regarding the succession, although he would collaborate with him in negotiations related to the subsidies for the Spanish Netherlands and, sometimes, also in his inquiries regarding the concession of the perpetual government of these territories for the elector. At that moment, Leopold I was putting into place a great diplomatic offensive in his nephew’s court to convince him to accept the renunciations that his daughter had made in the past to her rights to the Spanish throne and to appoint his son Charles as the rightful heir of the Spanish Monarchy. The emperor would try to reach this goal first through the imperial ambassador that was in Madrid when Bertier arrived, Ferdinand Wenzel of Lobkowitz and, afterwards, through the counts Louis and Ferdinand Bonaventura of Harrach. Therefore, especially regarding the question of Charles II’s inheritance, Bertier could not take advantage of the rich imperial network to achieve his goals. So, to whom could Bertier go to negotiate the aforementioned issues, besides the queen mother?
Bertier began to work immediately to obtain firm supporters and to pave the way to secure a negotiation that was not going to be easy. A very interesting document, kept at the Bayerische Haupstaatsarchiv of Munich gives us very telling information regarding another powerful ally that the Bavarian envoy had in the Spanish court, whose alliance was very sought after by Bertier. Dated on December 8th, 1695, it presented the dire need to give the queen mother full legal powers so she can use them in Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria’s favour in case the king were to die suddenly. With them, she could declare herself iutrice et administratrice of the electoral prince and could take possession of the Spanish Monarchy in his name, declaring him as king following all the required formalities. But in this document, it was also pointed out that, if the queen mother was unable to fulfil said roles, these full powers should be given to the Archbishop of Toledo, Cardinal Portocarrero. This appointment is even more meaningful if we take into account how it emphasizes the need for forging these papers in the most legal, formal and secure way possible, so nobody could doubt their validity if they need to use them, and the importance of maintaining these plans in the utmost secrecy. Thus, this document presents Portocarrero as the second most important ally of the Bavarian elector in Madrid, appointing him as the “spare” possibility for such a transcendental plan, only second to the queen mother herself.36 BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, fol.17v.-17r. So Bertier had secured, from the beginning of his embassy, the support in his mission of the two most powerful people of Charles II’s court: the Queen Mother Mariana of Austria and Cardinal Luis Fernández Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo.37 We have an important number of contradictory testimonies regarding the allegiance of Cardinal Portocarrero to one or other candidate to Charles II’s succession. Portocarrero, a seasoned politician, used to tell foreign ambassadors what he thought they wanted to hear, to the point that we have testimonies of the ambassadors of Bavaria, Leopold I and Louis XIV that as sured their corresponding masters that the powerful Cardinal supported their cause almost at the same time. But in 1696 and 1697 it was publicly accepted that Portocarrero favoured Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria’s candidacy, following Charles II’s stand on the matter. We can see it, for example, in the letter that Ferdinand Bonaventura of Harrach wrote to the emperor on June 20th, 1697, in which he informed Leopold I that Portocarrero was a firm supporter of the Bavarian prince’s candidacy, as well as many of the most powerful people of Madrid’s court (AVA, Familienarchiv, Harrach, 209). Several members of the imperial court gave Bertier credit for the support that the electoral prince’s candidacy had garnered since his arrival. For example, in a letter written by the Count of Kaunitz, member of the Emperor’s Privy Council, to Leopold I, he praised Bertier, saying that the elector had a very smart envoy in the Spanish Monarchy’s court that was very well considered by most ministers, that had granted him support and access to them (except for the Admiral of Castille, who was still considered as a firm supporter of the Archduke’s candidacy). The complete letter, edited and published by Arnold Gaedeke, can be read here: Gaedeke, 1877, Band I, pp. 67*-70*.
Besides Queen Mariana of Austria and Portocarrero, numerous documents related to Bertier’s embassy and extracts of his letters can give us the key to know who were the main figures of Madrid’s court whose allegiance Bertier wanted to obtain for the elector and if he succeeded or not. We can divide them into three main groups. The first one would be composed by the royal family, Charles II and both queens. Although Mariana of Austria was their main ally, the envoys of the elector tried to obtain as well the goodwill and support of Mariana of Neuburg. Regarding the queen regnant, Bertier is told that he should try to get closer to her in those occasions he could naturally approach her, and lavish her with gifts and trinkets, but without provoking any kind of offence or displeasure to the queen mother.38 Letter dated on January 19th, 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, fols. 119v.-121v. Bertier’s approach was successful and his relationship with the regnant queen, who had already been tentatively cultivated by Baumgarten before,39 For example, in a letter dated on October 1st, 1693, Baumgarten wrote to Prielmayer that Lancier’s wife was talking badly about him because he was “in good terms” with Mariana of Neuburg and that their relationship was so good that she had conceded him the honour of letting him wait for her in her antechamber, a privilege that had never been conceded to a Bavarian envoy before (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 353). was especially important in the following years. In fact, it culminated with the signing of a secret treaty between Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria and queen Mariana of Neuburg in which she committed herself to support the candidacy of prince Joseph Ferdinand to the succession of the whole Spanish Monarchy. This treaty was drafted and negotiated by Bertier, on Maximilian II Emanuel’s behalf, and in it, the closeness he had cultivated with the countess of Berlips, who already appear in the envoy’s correspondence of these first years as a person with which Bertier maintains a constant and useful contact, was of the utmost importance.40 Regarding the relationship between Bertier and the countess of Berlips, see AHN, Estado, leg. 2907. Bertier carefully cultivated the queen regnant’s entourage from these first years in Madrid onwards and this strategy would be very successful for him, especially when the relationship between Leopold I and his sister-in-law worsened from 1696 onwards (Baviera, 1938, pp. 193-230Baviera, A. de (1938) Mariana de Neoburgo. Reina de España. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.).
In a second group, we can find the ambassadors of other territories. Bertier would use this relationship with them both to favour the interests of the elector with their respective sovereigns and to begin negotiations and obtain valuable information inside Madrid’s court, thanks to their better access to the Charles II and the most important people of the government. Bertier would maintain frequent encounters with the imperial ambassadors, first with Lobkowitz and afterwards with Ferdinando Bonaventura and Louis of Harrach, with the reservations that we have previously stated. But especially Francis of Schonenberg, ambassador of the king of England William III and agent of the United Provinces in Madrid (Herrero, 2014, p. 144Herrero, M. (2014) “La red diplomática de las Provincias Unidas en la corte española durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVII.” Dimensioni e problema della ricerca storica, 1, pp. 131-163. ) would become one of his most trusted collaborators in Charles II’s court on these first years of his embassy, to the point that his expulsion was considered by Bertier as a very harmful event for the elector’s interests.41Extrait du la lettre du Bertier du 5 avril 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 129v.-129r., amongst other examples. Bertier also remarks in his letters the importance of the king of England’s influence over the question of the succession, saying that, after God, he was “the key of the succession” at an international level and it was important to keep him “obliged” (obligado). One of the ways to do this, in Bertier’s opinion, was to support the interests of William III of England in the Spanish court and to act as an intermediary for his negotiations after Schonenberg’s expulsion from Madrid. Papers written by Bertier (signed just as B.) dated on August 28th, 1698, and September 12th, 1698. AHN, Estado, leg. 2907. William III’s ambassador would maintain regular contact with Bertier and, although most of their interactions were focused on the war and the support that the English king and the United Provinces were willing to offer Maximilian II Emanuel regarding his perpetuity in the Spanish Netherlands’ government, Bertier’s correspondence reflects the growing sympathies these territories felt for the electoral prince’s candidacy as heir to the Spanish throne, despite the treaty they signed with the emperor in 1689, which was renewed several years later.42 Although we cannot dwell on this topic right now, the idea of the succession for the prince elector as some kind of third way to avoid that the emperor or the king of France would gather too much power and to prevent an open conflict between both powers is closely linked to the negotiation of the Second Partition Treaty, in which Joseph Ferdinand was named as the principal heir of Charles II, during the last months of 1698. See Ribot and Iñurritegui, 2016, and Arroyo Vozmediano, 2012. But Bertier also got close to other ambassadors and foreign envoys that were in Madrid at that time, with different results, like the envoys of the Palatinate Elector or, after the end of the Nine Years’ War, with the French ambassador the marquis of Harcourt.
Finally, a third and capital group would be composed by the most important courtiers and politicians of the Spanish government, especially (but not exclusively) the counsellors of State and people closest to the members of the royal family, like the aforementioned countess of Berlips. In fact, the elector ordered Bertier to win the support and the goodwill of as many people who could help them with the question of the perpetuity and succession as possible with the use of money and presents.43Extrait de la lettre du Bertier du 2 de fevrier 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690. About the importance of presents in the diplomatic sphere in the Early Modern period, see Colomer, 2003. Bertier was fairly successful with this approach, as the count of Kinsky, member of the Privy Council of the emperor and vice-chancellor of the Empire wrote to Leopold I.44 See note 38. Two documents in particular can give us invaluable information about the people to whom Bertier went for information and advice, and which ones were considered as the elector’s firm supporters.
The first document is a letter written by Bertier to Prielmayer and dated on April 5th, 1696. In it, Bertier said that, to know about the desires, recommendations and advice of the queen mother, he had to talk to don Juan de Larrea, the Condestable of Castile, the marquis of Balbases or the marquis of Mancera, whereas if he wanted to know what Mariana of Neuburg demanded from him, he had to go to see the countess of Berlips or her confessor, fray Gabriel de la Chiusa. Bertier could have very regular and easy contact with the people linked to the queen mother in Uceda’s palace in these first years, amongst other places, whereas the countess of Berlips and Father de la Chiusa did not have the same ceremonial restrictions than those who occupy important positions in the government. Following this path, Bertier was able to communicate directly and without any problems with the most trusted people of both queens, even if his personal access to the royal family was more difficult. Amongst these names we can find the secretary of State, several members of the Council of State, the Lord Chamberlain of the queen mother and those considered as favourites by the regnant queen. This communication worked in the other direction as well, as it is also pointed out in the aforementioned letter that these people were used by Bertier to communicate the desires and petitions of the elector to both queens in an informal way, so they could favour Maximilian II Emanuel’s interests accordingly.45Extrait de la lettre de Bertier du 5 avril 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, 129r.
We find more information in a letter dated on March 29th, 1696, also intended for Prielmayer. In it, we are told about the favourable disposition Bertier had found in Madrid’s court regarding the interests of the elector, especially about everything related to the possible succession of his son. But, more specifically, it is said that Bertier had been able to forge a good relationship with the count of Monterrey, the marquis of Balbases, cardinal Portocarrero and don Juan de Larrea, and that he worked well enough with the marquis of Mancera and the count of Aguilar, so he thought they could count with their support regarding the defence of the elector’s interests. Afterwards, it points out whom Bertier needed to “cultivate” more decisively to obtain their steady support. These are the duke of Montalto46 Regarding Montalto, he was appointed by the king as the official intermediary (comisario) to interact with Bertier in his name. Baumgarten wrote to the elector that Montalto seemed very pleased (muy satisfecho) with this post and “very grateful for the esteem that the Elector felt for him” (Letter of Baumgarten to Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria, dated on September 29th, 1695. Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 512). Despite this comment from Baumgarten, Montalto is not shown in Bertier’s documents as one of his most important allies at Madrid’s court and in some of them, as in the letter of March 29th, 1696, it is remarked the necessity of assuring his goodwill for the elector, suggesting that they were not sure that he supported their interests. and the Admiral of Castile, as well as the confessors of the king and both queens, and the members of the Supreme Council of Flanders, whose decisions could be very important regarding the topic of the perpetuity.47 Letter of March 29th, 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, fols. 174r.-175v.
Bertier tried constantly to assure the goodwill of all the aforementioned people, as well as to reinforce the support of those who he already considered as the elector’s secure allies. For example, when it was announced that the queen mother was seriously ill, Bertier wrote that he was afraid that Lobkowitz (the emperor’s ambassador at that time) and his wife would try to take advantage of Mariana of Austria’s weakness to gain supporters for Leopold I, especially regarding the succession problem. That’s why he advised the elector to send some letters to the marquis of Mancera, the duke of Montalto, cardinal Portocarrero and the queen mother’s confessor, to ask them to not forget about his interests. He even recommended the elector to send them a portrait of the electoral prince with a letter of his aya that included some compliments from the prince himself and was signed by him, so they will forget neither the child nor his father.48 Letter of April 3rd, 1696. BayHStA, Kasten Schwarz, 17690, fol. 140v.
The queen mother’s death was a serious setback for the elector’s interests and especially for his envoys in Madrid, as they no longer had Mariana of Austria and her palace of Uceda as pivotal points of reference for their diplomatic exchanges. But their efforts to cultivate the support of the main members of Madrid’s government allowed them to overcome this obstacle, becoming Portocarrero, Monterrey and, increasingly, the entourage of Mariana of Neuburg their most important allies at the court. The dangerous illness that Charles II suffered in that same year, mere months after the queen mother’s death, tested the strength of Bavaria’s new diplomatic network, as well as Charles II’s resolution regarding his inheritance. During his sickness, Charles II signed a testament in which the electoral prince was named as his universal heir.49 Regarding the king’s first testament of 1696, there are numerous contemporary references about its content. All of them agree that said document favoured the candidacy of the prince elector, but not about which counsellors defended Joseph Ferdinand’s position and which ones voted for another successor for Charles II, except in Portocarrero’s case, as all the documents consulted indicate that he was the most powerful instigator behind the winning candidacy. In the so often cited work of Adalbert of Bavaria and Gabriel Maura Gamazo we can see several testimonies about this issue. For example, the count Louis of Harrach, in a letter to the emperor, said that Portocarrero, Aguilar and Balbases voted for the electoral prince, whereas the Admiral of Castile, Mancera and Montalto voted in favour of the King of the Romans Joseph, and Monterrey and Villafranca opted for Archduke Charles (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 585). But in a letter dated on October 31st, 1696, and written by Johann Wilhem of Neburg to his sister, Empress Eleonora, he implies that Monterrey had supported the electoral prince’s candidacy, saying that the testament in the young prince’s favour was obtained by Portocarrero, Monterrey “and other ministers” (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 584). Lastly, Lancier wrote in this regard to both Prielmayer and Maximilian II Emanuel telling them that only Portocarrero and Larrea knew the content and details of the king’s last will and they vowed that they will never tell anybody about it, so there was no way to know for sure (Baviera and Maura, 2004, I, p. 586). This testament, and the second one he signed several years later, presented the electoral prince as the main candidate for the succession with a legal legitimacy that no other potential successor possessed at that time and boosted the political and diplomatic importance of both Maximilian II Emanuel and his embassy at Madrid at a European level.
CONCLUSIONS: A “SNOWFLAKE” EMBASSY?
⌅These Bavarian embassies did not last. After Charles II’s death and the end of the War of Spanish Succession, the diplomatic relationship between Madrid and Munich returned to be as occasional and uncommon as they were before Maximilian II Emanuel’s time, with the addition that the dynastic change also meant that the emperor would not be acting as such an effective intermediary for them anymore. In that sense, we can almost consider these as “snowflake” embassies, understanding as such a unique and very contextual development that did not have any continuity and were never repeated with the same conditions. But they give us a great insight about the diplomatic relationships maintained by the Spanish Monarchy and the Bavarian electorate during the Early Modern period and, more specifically, in the very particular and difficult context of the problem of Charles II’s succession.
In this regard, Lancier, Baumgarten and especially Bertier, used the opportunities given to them by the queen mother Mariana of Austria and Charles II’s support of the rights of Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria to create a very solid diplomatic network that promoted Maximilian II Emanuel’s interests in Madrid. Forced to carry out their missions in a court where there were no precedents of the presence of Bavarian envoys during extended periods of time, where the strict court ceremonial made extremely difficult for them both their contact with the king and the possibility of maintaining a fluid relationship with different political actors, and where they did not have any traditional support network of their own unrelated to the imperial ambassador, Bertier and their predecessors were clever enough to use Queen Mariana of Austria and her closers collaborators, as well as the Palace of Uceda, as their base, but they did not settle just with the queen mother’s more than considerable influence in the Spanish Monarchy’s court. As we have seen in the case of Bertier, he enjoyed the advocacy of Cardinal Portocarrero and other important members of Madrid’s government like the count of Monterrey and the marquises of Balbases and Mancera, as well as, eventually, the support of the Queen Regnant Mariana of Neuburg and her favourite, the countess of Berlips. He created a support network that was varied and strong enough to withstand the death of the elector’s main benefactor and to confront the diplomatic manoeuvring of the successive imperial ambassadors. Arguably, Bertier and the other envoys of Maximilian II Manuel of Bavaria were a very important part of the complex political and diplomatic context of the Europe of the last years of the seventeenth-century and, more specifically, of the complicated question of the Spanish succession, in which their master had much to say.