Thisarticle deals with an early modern court historian's judgments concerning the political competence and incompetence of his contemporaries. Although the phrase “political competence” may seem anachronistic when referring to the second half of the seventeenth century, hardly any historian today would deny that, at least since the late medieval period, European intellectuals belonging to political elites had developed their own understanding of what constitutes effective statesmanship. That understanding was not always normative, or based on exempla of the classical past—it could be practical and expressed through evaluations of current events. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the future Habsburg court historian Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato wrote about Oliver Cromwell: “And let it be noted from his extraordinary example, that not the nobility of birth, nor riches . . . qualify one for high office, as it usually solely happens, but that it is the opportunity that . . . wakes up the spirits, and sharpens the minds.”Footnote 1 This article will deal with Priorato's judgments of political competence (and incompetence) in the works that he wrote while in the service of the Austrian Habsburgs.
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Recent research into diplomatic relations between European powers in the 1630s shows that during the second half of the Thirty Years' War, all of the states involved in it, including the Habsburg monarchy, were looking for ways to reach some kind of agreement with their political and confessional opponents.Footnote 2 This important evidence suggests that there was, indeed, a certain distance between the more ideological manifestations of confessional propaganda, such as the works of Habsburg apologists Vernulaeus and Lamormaini,Footnote 3 and the actual position the monarchs and their diplomats took in everyday politics. It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that in the midst of the war, the Habsburg diplomat Franz Christoph von Khevenhüller,Footnote 4 a Carinthian noble who had converted to Catholicism early in his career, was commissioned to write a history of Ferdinand II's reign. The desired outcome was to be a sober pragmatic history, with an emphasis on legality, based on the documents available from the imperial Chancellery—and not a confessional treatise on recent history.Footnote 5 Khevenhüller's history signals a step toward a new approach in Habsburg historiography: by creating a more “grounded” and legalist narrative, the confessional propagandistic message is made less immediate.Footnote 6 In the second half of the century, Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, court historian to Emperor Leopold I, took this tendency a step further.
Priorato: Religious Strife as a Conflict of Interests
Count Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato was famous in his day primarily for his writings, which covered a vast terrain and were by no means limited to history.Footnote 7 Nevertheless, his primary career was that of a soldier. Active in military campaigns across Europe since the 1620s (including the siege of La Rochelle in 1629), Priorato took part in the wars of Venice against the Ottoman Porte. After having served Mazarin, Priorato passed, in 1657, into the service of Queen Christina of Sweden. He maintained his French connections for a long time before becoming completely attached to the court of Vienna as official court historian in the later 1660s. Before that, he published several editions of the history of Mazarin's government, a history of Queen Christina, a history of France, and many other works. It is ironic that in the mid twentieth century Anna Coreth viewed him predominantly as an “Austrian” historian—“Gualdo Priorato, der sich durch mehrere Arbeiten aus österreichischen Geschichte bekannt gemacht hatte.”Footnote 8 Apart from his histories, Gualdo Priorato wrote a number of works on military art and produced some of the best-known geographical descriptions of towns and fortifications in Europe of his day.Footnote 9
One of the reasons behind modern historians' disregard for his work is the almost universal focus on histories written in the “national” language of a respective country, which persists to this day despite the increasing internationalization of the academic field. Excellent studies produced in the second half of the twentieth century have suffered from this nation-based perspective. Hence, Orest Ranum's Artisans of Glory,Footnote 10 despite its in-depth analysis of historical thought and the social and political position of historians in early modern France, makes no reference to Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato, who wrote French history under the patronage of Mazarin, but did so in Italian. As long as the national perspective persists, the work of Gualdo Priorato is bound to fall outside the scope of most researchers' interest, because his histories were inevitably in Italian, but the subject matter depended entirely on the patron of the day—from Mazarin to Christina of Sweden to Leopold I. This choice of working strategy, which certainly did some good for Priorato's career and provided him with ample material for his writing, was rather unfortunate from posterity's point of view, which later sought to arrange the historical oeuvre of previous centuries in the boxes of national historiographies.
Priorato's contribution to the official history of the Habsburgs in the middle of the seventeenth century consists in resuscitating the connection between dynastic historiography and the traditions of Italian civic humanism (distinct from the Christian humanism of sixteenth-century intellectuals close to the Habsburg court, such as Erasmus and GattinaraFootnote 11) and in steering dynastic history toward a vision of politics in which secular constellations of interests play a greater role than considerations of spiritual salvation—at least as far as the explanation of motives of political actors is concerned.
Priorato's work for the court of Vienna began when Empress Eleonora Gonzaga first commissioned him to write the history of her deceased husband, Ferdinand III. Around the same time, in the early 1670s, Priorato wrote a history of the early years of Leopold I's reign, also commissioned by the court of Vienna. In both books, a decisive break with confessional models of political competence that had previously dominated dynastic historiography is in evidence. The tendency to emphasize secular political interests and to omit spiritual interpretations of political affairs was, as we shall see later, a prominent feature of Priorato's earlier works, written long before he began to write for the Habsburgs. What matters for the present study, however, is that he chose to preserve this feature, with minimal modifications, in the histories written for the court of Vienna.
Writing several decades after the end of the Thirty Years' War, Priorato uses the benefit of hindsight to avoid the pitfalls of fiercely partisan and confessional history in the mode of Catholic pro-Habsburg historiographers of the earlier day, such as Vernulaeus, Lothicus, or Wassenberg.Footnote 12 In Historia di Ferdinando Terzo Imperatore, the pattern of the political world is made up of private and public interests in which considerations of religion appear secondary.Footnote 13 Hence, the narration of the life of Ferdinand III begins with the words:
The Austrian emperors sustained great wars almost constantly. The mightier they became, with their hereditary realms and vast provinces, the more it awoke the envy and fear in other potentates of Europe. Among the greater part of those this (envy) caused intrigues which are prone to be born of the jealousy of state and of emulation, which easily turned step by step into open and irreconcilable wars.Footnote 14
To be sure, Priorato is far from condemning the religious policies of his patrons and their predecessors, but he is always ready to justify a policy of compromise which, for the likes of Chancellor Gattinara in the sixteenth century and imperial historian Vernulaeus in the early seventeenth century, was barely short of apostasy.Footnote 15 In the beginning of his Historia di Ferdinando, Priorato looks back on the interactions of the previous Habsburgs with the Protestants and sees, for the most part, a long story of ambitions, interests and “jealousies.” The very discursive framework and choice of words in Priorato's work contrasts sharply with the confessional rhetoric of Vernulaeus and other Habsburg apologists during the Thirty Years' War. Where Vernulaeus and his followers could easily describe a compromise as “pernicious to the faith” (as when outlining the concerns of Ferdinand II about the peace that Wallenstein had supposedly intended to conclude),Footnote 16 Priorato preferred the wording “gravely detrimental to the interests of the Catholics” (as when speaking of the privileges Rudolph II accorded the Protestants).Footnote 17
In Historia di Ferdinando Terzo, the relative weakness of the Catholic cause during the Reformation is not a punishment of God, but a result of human passions and mistakes. In Priorato's narrative of the origins of religious strife in Germany, Habsburg ancestors are guided by pragmatic motives and not necessarily by zeal—although pragmatic motives can also fail them. According to Priorato, Charles V concedes religious liberties to the Protestants in the peace of Augsburg because his efforts are needed elsewhere—he has to defend hereditary domains from the Turk. Priorato does not necessarily approve of his action: “This departure was not sufficient to save Hungary, but was enough to infest Germany with the new dogmas preached by Martin Luther.”Footnote 18 However, how could the emperor be blamed if others behaved as they did? Priorato directs blame explicitly at ecclesiastic princes and prelates who, instead of guarding their flock, had neglected their duties and accumulated wealth and luxury “in such a manner, that in relation to priests, public scorn succeeded in place of reverence; in the place of love, hatred, and there was more abhorrence than filial affection.”Footnote 19 Secular princes, too, neglected their moral duty. Priorato writes:
Those who had previously sought with great piety to extinguish in human hearts the cupidity of earthly ambition, began on the contrary to gather and foment it in their own hearts. … [T]hose princes lured by the shine of gold claimed to protect every unjust cause, from which they could derive profit.
This, according to Priorato, led to them spurning the doctrine of Saint Peter and the authority of the church that they sought to weaken.Footnote 20 What follows is an unending struggle of various interests leading in the end to the Thirty Years' War, in which the dynasty and its allies are shown as, for the most part, triumphant. Rebellion is always followed by retribution, the suppression of the rebels in Austria by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria is called “valorous,” and the emperor's ban on the Elector Palatine and his adherents, as well as the executions of Bohemian rebels, is presented in a positive light. The question remains whether Priorato applauds the restoration of Catholic religion to the Hereditary Lands or merely the restoration of strong monarchical power.
In the very beginning of Historia di Ferdinando Terzo, Priorato provides a certain answer to that question in his musings on the vicissitudes of German history. There, he states that “the German Empire used to be in its majesty, richness, discipline, piety and good government so flourishing and potent, that it attracted the glances of all the parts of the world.” It seemed that no other dominion could equal it. However, later, secular and ecclesiastical authorities alike brought unwelcome change by their inconsiderate actions:
Later the vicissitudes in it caused to decline the ancient vigour of virtue with which it (the Empire) had been founded, and it reduced itself to such circumstances that its majesty was almost lost, its riches dispersed, its discipline corrupted, its good policy subverted, its virtue reviled or destroyed, by (private) interest, by ambition, and by the ignorance of private individuals who indulged voraciously in cupidity and pursued their private interests, and (thus) was ruined the good reputation which is the splendour and the glory of principalities.Footnote 21
It is, hence, the greatness of principalities (described in terms leaving no doubt of the connection between Priorato's worldview and the traditions of Italian civic humanism) that concerns the historian much more than the religious soundness of government.
Competent Historian for Competent Politicians: Priorato's Model of Political Competence
While working as a historian on commissions from different monarchs and governments, Priorato insisted to the last that he committed the notable deeds of his contemporaries to paper not as a historian, but as a noble and a soldier. Priorato constructs his own competence as history writer through emphasizing personal experience of politics. His carefully circumscribed self-image is that of a man of the world with firsthand knowledge of the arts of war and diplomacy. Not only has he been personally “to theatres of action and almost all courts” described in his account, but Priorato also takes care to remind the reader that this kind of expertise is essential for achieving a valid account of history. His message, formulated in several publications, not least in the introductions to Historia di Leopoldo Cesare and to its sequel, Continuatione, published in 1676, postulates that those who do not know the art of war cannot describe war, and those who have little idea of interests of the state (called “reason of state” in the introduction to Continuatione) should better keep silent concerning political events because they cannot understand “causes and councils.” Indeed, according to Priorato:
It is not to be wondered if those who have never left their country and never travelled anywhere but in squares among crowds of ignorant people, and among the fantasies and lies of the gazettes, have caused nausea by publishing histories of our time without truth, without clarity, without sound judgement . . . with turbid and confused narratives, with manifest contradictions . . . which renders them worthy of punishment for defrauding merit . . . and assigning glory to those who have not had any part in the deeds.Footnote 22
The “low and vulgar” sources of information concerning political events are hence indicated and discredited. For Priorato these, notably, include the main printed media of the time providing updated information on current state of political affairs—the gazettes. Doubts concerning the reliability of historical accounts in contemporary media were, of course, commonplace in Europe in the seventeenth century; but, ironically, also court historians like Priorato were among the usual suspects credited with producing unreliable narratives.Footnote 23 Perhaps to preempt such critiques, Priorato contrasts the “low and vulgar” sources with what he sees as reliable sources—the texts of official treaties and relations, inserted at the end of his book with the purpose of not interrupting his narrative (to avoid the trap of becoming unreadable, into which Khevenhüller's Annales fall pitifully), but reinforcing its authenticity. The author of numerous histories also stresses occasionally that he, in fact, does not consider himself a professional historian. As pointed out in the introduction to the third volume of Historia:
Truly my profession is not that of historian, however noble, useful and pleasant to those who love the memory of things past it is, since I have not applied myself to studies, but more to arms, as in thirty years that I have spent taking part in wars in various parts, and also at the courts of almost all kings and princes of Europe, of which I have also published relations, thus having learned from practice of military fortunes, and of political government, which is exceedingly useful and if I may say so necessary for relating histories, to which I have been incited by natural leanings (un genio naturale) for my own pleasure and diversion, [and] have applied myself to writing in my natural manner of a nobleman and soldier, without niceties, and without artificial ornaments.Footnote 24
It would be perhaps a mistake to take the reluctance of the author of about thirty books and relations published before 1670 to call himself a historian for a sign of modesty. As late as 1676, in the introduction to Continuatione, Priorato feels obliged to defend himself from hypothetic detractors who would doubt that writing history is a worthy occupation for a noble, by reminding them that Julius Cesar, too, wrote history. Moreover, as one can see from the quotation above, for Priorato the firsthand knowledge of events, including military operations, is the primary qualification for historical writing. Military and political competence happened to be the things of which he considered himself an expert. Of all Priorato's works, two—Il Guerriero prudente, e politico Footnote 25 and Vite et azioni di personaggi militari, e politici Footnote 26—seem to provide the best summary of his own assessment of what it takes to be competent in affairs of state and war.
The first, published in Venice in 1640 and dedicated to Louis XIII, probably in view of Priorato's then aspirations in the service of the French, speaks of the art of war with a heavy emphasis on pragmatic and measured “political” behavior, which allowed Giuliana Tosso Rodinis to label Priorato as a moralist and to place him in the tradition of Machiavelli and Guicciardini.Footnote 27 The emphasis on political behavior was common for the period, but it has to be emphasized that Priorato was not a mere imitator of Gracián, whose El político Don Fernando el Católico was first published in the same year as Guerriero prudente, e politico. As had to be expected from a manual of political behavior, Il Guerriero prudente makes extensive use of contemporary examples, both successful and less successful. In Vite et azioni di personaggi militari, e politici, Priorato foregoes, for the most part, the theoretical approach that he uses in Il Guerriero and goes straight to the examples themselves. The book consists of brief biographies of officers, diplomats, ministers, and bishops, some from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, some Priorato's contemporaries. Many of the biographies are followed by a brief evaluation of the political and military skills of the persons described, in which aspects of rationality and discursive competence are often emphasized. The qualities singled out are, as a rule, military success, pragmatism (ragione), eloquence, and power of persuasion. Hence, concluding the description of the life of Hans Georg von Arnim, military commander in the Thirty Years' War, Priorato notes:
His ability to persuade was miraculous, and there were few who did not follow his advice . . .In arguing, he valued reason above all. Making decisions, he considered the instability of the times, and before acting he gauged the outcomes by the example of others. A great politician and expert captain (Gran Politico, & esperto Capitano).Footnote 28
One characteristic, obvious in Priorato's early books, makes him an unlikely exponent of the Habsburg doctrine of dynastic virtue. For Priorato, political and military brilliance are, from the outset, strictly individual achievements, not transferable to whole families. In the introduction to Vite et azioni, he mentions that although Sansovino wrote about illustrious families, Priorato himself prefers to discuss the quality of persons because experience shows that many scions of noble stock fall victim to degeneration.Footnote 29 Nor is political competence, according to Priorato, a privilege of those who share his religion. He warns in the address to the reader that references to persons hostile to Catholic faith should not prejudice his work because he judges their actions and not their conscience.Footnote 30 Following this minimalist interpretation of political virtue, echoing earlier civic humanistsFootnote 31 and far removed from the Christian politics of both Erasmus and Gattinara, Priorato has no scruples about including in his cohort of illustrious politicians Oliver Cromwell, viewed by many—not only in the Catholic world of his day—primarily as regicide. It is exactly Cromwell's life that leads Priorato to another conclusion concerning the attainment of political success:
And let it be noted from this extraordinary example, that not [only] the nobility of birth, nor riches . . . qualify one for [high] office, as it usually solely happens, but that it is the opportunity that, like fire, which refines even the impurest metals, wakes up the spirits, and sharpens the minds.Footnote 32
This is, of course, an allusion to stoic philosophy filtered through the sieve of civic humanism: Poggio Bracciolini had quoted Seneca to the effect that a noble soul enables a person to overcome the mutability of fortune and to attain a more suitable standing in society.Footnote 33 The fact that Priorato later piously adds a sentence concerning the nothingness to which Cromwell's power came after his death does not change much in the way of perception of success as a matter of opportunity and individual achievement.
The model of political and military competence that Priorato constructs in Il Guerriero prudente and Vite et azioni di personaggi militari, e politici is well-defined and rests on the pillars of experience, rationality, opportunity, and prudence. Giuliana Tosso Rodinis is probably right in placing him both in the Renaissance Florentine tradition and in the same cohort with Larochefoucauld. The question remains: Where does this clear-cut secular model of competence come in when Priorato is faced with the task of describing the life and actions of his last patron, Leopold I and his ancestors, who was engaged in confessional wars and whose earlier apologists prided themselves on his fiercely confessional motivation?
Priorato's Model Applied to the Habsburgs
I. Contextualising Competence: The Field of Politics
As a court historian par excellence, Priorato had to create a history that would, from beginning to end, conform to the expectations of the commissioning monarch and his or her court. Part of his task was presenting his patron of the day or his ancestors as successful rulers. In doing this, Priorato shows remarkable sensitivity toward the predominant models developed before him by the dynasty's apologists, even when those contrast sharply with the general style of his history. Hence, although he is not ready to imbue virtually every episode of the Thirty Years' War with religious meaning (as Vernulaeus, Lothicus, and others before him were prepared to do), Priorato is more than ready to pay lip service to the preferred virtues of the dynasty, as when describing Ferdinand II as both extraordinarily zealousFootnote 34 and full of clemency:
In short, he was almost without fault (quasi senza difetto), except for his superfluous goodness, which is a virtue in private persons, but in sovereigns sometimes causes the scorn of others, for subjects become perverted and start scorning those laws whereof they do not feel the rigor.Footnote 35
In other cases, Priorato simply stated that a Habsburg ruler he was about to describe had the necessary makings of a successful leader: hence, speaking of Ferdinand III in the introduction to his history, Priorato notes that Ferdinand's realms, tossed by fortune, needed at that time “a head no less endowed with talent than that fearless, valorous, and prudent emperor.”Footnote 36 Priorato projects a somewhat unexpectedly triumphant image in the introduction to Historia di Leopoldo Cesare. Beginning his history of the young Leopold I, Priorato promises his reader a description of “the actions of an emperor not less just, clement, and pious, than victorious, glorious and fortunate.”Footnote 37 Despite this promise, as noted by later historians, Priorato does not make Leopold, by any means, the central figure of the narrative in Historia di Leopoldo Cesare.Footnote 38 The question is, why is this so?
There can be little doubt that, on the whole, Priorato's history of Leopold I supports his last patron's claim to political and military competence. Indeed, when first introduced to the reader on page 15 of Historia (his turn comes after the immediate political context in the beginning of his reign is described), Leopold is stated to be capable enough: “del governo de Regni hereditarii mostro capacita, & applicatione corrispondente al bisogno.”Footnote 39 He is also, as we soon find, modest (in commanding Priorato “to write without adulation, and with respect towards the great, be they even enemies”), majestic without being arrogant, pious, prudent in letting the resolution of even most pressing affairs to take its due course, and even courageous—“but circumspectly”—through military intermediaries. To round up this brief and necessary deviation from his story of diplomatic negotiations and military campaigns, Priorato throws in a passage of elaborate praise much in the style of Leopoldine court operas.Footnote 40 Apart from this necessary minimum of desirable characterization, however, Priorato does not spend much time on detailed discussion of Leopold's actions, or his political and military qualities. Instead, Priorato turns to the description of political and military events as such, by no means limiting himself to the confines of the Holy Roman Empire or of the Hereditary Lands.
It is perhaps not a mere matter of style that Priorato chooses to fill the pages of Historia di Leopoldo Cesare with descriptions of events that happened far from the court of Vienna and sometimes had only mediated impact on the empire's or the Habsburgs' political affairs—such as the sea battles between the English and the Dutch or the complexities of elections of the king of Poland. The reasons and motives of political actions are for Priorato, rather like they would be much later for nineteenth- and twentieth-century diplomatic and military historians, a matter of sophisticated play of interests of various states, in which circumstances are objective, whereas political choices may depend on the actors' capacity to make the best of the circumstances, much less on their moral qualities. In this, Priorato differs sharply from the German historians of Leopold I, such as Rinck and Wagner, and from the emperor's Austrian apologists in the 1660s and 1670s. For Priorato, Leopold's early history is mostly concerned with what today could be termed “interstate relations” in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia. Relations with Leopold's nominal vassals in the empire also fall into that category, whereas relations with the Austrian subjects as such play virtually no role in the history.
The field of politics is firmly placed outside the ruler's hereditary domains, and his relations with institutionalized interests of subjects (such as the Estates of Hereditary Lands) are not merely secondary, but simply irrelevant when compared to the all-important matters of his relations with other sovereigns. When (in Book II of Volume I) he turns to the imperial election of Leopold I, Priorato makes it into a long story of international political circumstances and negotiations, outlining or guessing the considerations of all parties involved. For Priorato, the election of an emperor is very much a matter of realpolitik. He tells the reader what he knows of the backstage of European diplomacy, as long as this does not prejudice the principle of respect for i grandi requested by his employer. In line with the importance of ceremony for seventeenth-century court diplomacy,Footnote 41 descriptions of ceremonies and festivities make up another considerable part of his narrative, possibly recommended by the interested authorities at the court of Vienna, which, according to Peter Moraw, were by no means above meddling in and supervising Priorato's work.Footnote 42 Priorato uses descriptions of festivities as occasions to pay compliments to the governments on whose favor he had depended in the past and could depend again—not only to the court of Vienna for the spectacles staged on the occasion of the emperor's wedding, but also, for example, to the Republic of Venice for spending much on festivities in honor of Leopold's bride Margarita Teresa, “as it has always done in honor of her illustrious ancestors and other princes who passed through its domain,” despite the fact that Venice's finances were badly depleted after the war with the Ottomans.Footnote 43
Priorato's attention is only turned back to home affairs in the emperor's hereditary domains in the fourth, additional volume, Continuatione dell’ historia di Leopoldo Cesare nella quale si descrive la Ribellione d'Ungheria, published in 1676. It is here that Priorato suddenly changes the previously slow and winding story of European politics into a dynamic account of one rebellion, which gives occasion for the writer to dwell on aspects of sovereignty, obligation, and political competence that remained less clearly outlined in Historia di Leopoldo Cesare. In Hungary, Priorato finds ample material for exercising his judgment concerning what is and what is not competent political behavior, while also criticizing the alternative scheme of argumentation used by rebellious Hungarian magnates themselves, which it is Priorato's duty to discredit post factum.
II. Civic Humanism, raison d' etat, and the Incompetence of Subjects
On very few occasions Priorato does describe Leopold's individual actions in the political field. The central qualities that these descriptions attribute to the emperor are caution and prudence combined with the good knowledge of political circumstances. Hence, at a certain point, Priorato describes Leopold as unwilling to commit himself to a militant course of action, as urged by Spain. Leopold is quoted answering the Spanish ambassador that:
although he appreciates his zeal for the House of Austria, however, he will not give an answer, before he knows what the Queen (regent for Charles II of Spain) has answered to the Most Christian King concerning the offered terms, or whether the king would move his armies to Flanders before obtaining the reply from the Queen. . . . He understands very well that some wish that he should enter war before all the others, since France, not having (yet) entered the war, can use his declaration as a motive to declare war on him . . . The ambassador also knows very well, how many times His Majesty, through his ambassadors in Spain, noted the need he has of monetary subsidies, to increase and sustain his troops for such a need as at present arises, and how many times such a subsidy was promised, but never paid.Footnote 44
This is very much in line with the advice Priorato gave thirty years earlier in Il Guerriero prudente, which describes accumulating necessary finance as one of the foremost preconditions of successful warfare.
The opposite of prudence in Priorato's taxonomy of competence is superfluous striving for glory. Hence, in advocating prudent behavior in Il Guerriero prudente, Priorato criticizes Frederic of the Palatinate, “whom the desire of glory made lose the position of elector in hope to attain the crown of Bohemia.”Footnote 45 A critique of thirst for glory is very much in line with the traditions of Italian civic humanism. Since the fifteenth century, the normative literature promoting notions of inner nobility frowned on thirst for glory per se, as can be seen from the humanist version of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead that was well known both in Italy and at the court of Burgundy.Footnote 46 Priorato thoroughly exploits the dichotomy of prudence (competence) and individual quest for glory (incompetence) in his narrative of the Hungarian rebellion in the Continuatione.
More than a mere account of recent events, the Continuatione is almost a political treatise. The address to the reader points out its didactic purposes: the example of the magnates' rebellion should teach the readers to avoid “the cliffs on which men of voracious ambition have so miserably shipwrecked.” Ambition and desire for self-aggrandizement, Priorato adds, putting on his hat of political moralist, lead people to the abyss of irreparable ruin. The example set in his story by the punishment of the malcontents should serve as “veritable precept of civic life” (i veri precetti della vita civile).Footnote 47 The Continuatione is, hence, an account endowed with an articulate didactic message concerning political behavior—at least, the political behavior of subjects.
If Priorato's interpretation of the causes of rebellion may have more to do with the doctrine of political obligation he is expected to promote, his account of the events preceding it is nevertheless another exercise in pragmatic thinking. His version of the reasons why Hungary became part of the Habsburgs' domains and had to stay that way is particularly interesting. For Priorato, the initial causes that led to the Habsburg succession in the Kingdom of Hungary are down-to-earth and have little to do with divine providence. He claims that because Hungarians were no longer able to defend themselves and had no other king to turn to for protection than the House of Austria (more powerful in the military sense than any other neighbor was at the moment), the Austrian succession was perfectly justified. Hungarians, however, were not happy with “the Germans” owing to antipatia naturale and their vain and unfounded wish to be able to do on their own what their ancestors were able to do.Footnote 48 Hence, their treacherous behavior toward the Germans during the siege of Váradin when the Palatine Wesselényi promised that Hungarians would come to support the imperial troops; instead, looting Hungarian peasants killed many imperial soldiers after their defeat.Footnote 49 The Hungarians, Priorato points out, were to be blamed for the loss of Neuhäusel, whereas the subsequent victories were due to the imperial forces. Hence, the image of the Hungarian noble elite as an unreasonable, incompetent, and generally malicious political force emerges and gradually acquires new features as the narrative progresses.
The discussion of the protests of Hungarian nobility against the peace of Vasvár is also interesting from this point of view.Footnote 50 First, Priorato faithfully relates the main points presented by the Hungarians—that the kingdom was suffering from unfounded presence of foreign troops; that the peace treaty was concluded without their participation and part of the country was lost without their notice; that the principal offices of the kingdom were, although conferred on Hungarians, not supported by proper military authority; that the liberty conceded to those of Protestant religion was not maintained, churches were taken away by force, and ministers were expelled; that the privilege of magnates of the kingdom to be judged by the tribunals of the kingdom and not by foreigners was not maintained; and that although the emperor enjoyed the taxes collected from the land and the incomes from the exploitation of the mines, Turks were not chased away from the lands, and, on the contrary, they continued taking tribute from villages and selling peasants into slavery.Footnote 51
Following this enumeration of Hungarian magnates' grievances, Priorato provides an extended summary of the replies given to them by royal authorities, embellishing the summary in places by his own commentaries. These commentaries proceed directly from the repertory of civic humanism reinforced by raison d' etat, the political creed that provides the discursive framework for Priorato's argumentation. Hence, if the Hungarians are concerned about the presence of foreign troops, Priorato stresses that it was according to “all reasons of good government” that Leopold should keep troops in Hungary. With Turkish forces in Transylvania directly threatening his territories, Leopold had more reason than previous emperors “to keep himself armed.” As to the damage done by the presence of the troops, “there can be no reflections of (private) liberties or privileges if that prejudices the public good.”Footnote 52
The answer concerning the lack of support to Hungarians occupying high offices of the kingdom is even more elucidating. “It was only due to the incomparable clemency of His Imperial Majesty that the principal offices in Hungary were conferred on subjects little practiced in military art,” because “there was none among the Hungarian nationals at that moment,” with military experience to speak of, “who would have commanded a siege, or led assault on a fortress, or led the troops in a field battle.” Hence, it would be “inappropriate” to give so much authority to someone “who would only apply it to make quick attacks, and so disturb the Ottomans against peace.” If left to their own devices, the Hungarians would not have been able to defend fortresses and towns. This diatribe is followed by a characteristic remark contrasting personal bravery exhibited by Hungarian nobles to raison d' etat, thinly disguised as service to the patria: “And if some of them had committed some extreme and successful acts of valor, those resulted in increasing the glory of their names, but were of little advantage to Christendom, or to their fatherland.”Footnote 53 The Hungarians may be capable of obtaining (and thirsting for) individual glory, but that only casts their political competence in greater doubt.
This image of Leopold's Hungarian subjects as precocious warriors lacking expertise, driven by desire for personal glory, and negligent of public good (and hence unfit for high office) is further complimented by statements concerning their poor management abilities. Although the mines, which were in the possession of the House of Austria, had been a reliable source of considerable income since persons “of zeal, sound judgment and intelligence” were appointed to run them, the mines that remained in the hands of Hungarians were less useful, “which can be seen from the example of the mines of Nagybanya, as neglected as they are (now) obscure, since they were applied to the personal interest [of those who managed them] without slightest understanding of how useful they would be if well managed by another.”Footnote 54 The Hungarians are, hence, shown as incapable of managing well even if it is in their own interest.
The limited effect of the emperor's policy of raising taxes on the success of his military campaigns is explained by the likelihood of bad administrators appropriating the money; the limited rights of Hungarian Protestants by the behavior of the First Estate—that is, Hungarian prelates, as well as by the Protestants' own self-seeking behavior at the Diet of 1662—when they opposed every document concerning “the business of state” claiming that the satisfaction of their “private demands” was primary. The privileges of the magnates, on the other hand, like all privileges, had to be based on merit (merito).
So far, Priorato has espoused the line of argumentation that is impeccably in accordance with the concept of nobility and public good as exhibited both by the Italian civic humanists and by the Burgundian ancestors of the Habsburgs.Footnote 55 However, a difference between the Renaissance concept of merit and Priorato's early modern understanding of it becomes obvious in the next argument. Having stated that Hungarian privileges, like any privileges, have to be based on merit, Priorato adds that open rebellion, for one, would always be a sign that merit was lacking, hence leaving no ground for the privilege to remain.Footnote 56
Very little reference is made to the main point around which those less happy with the emperor's Hungarian policies in fact coalesced—that is, the peace treaty of Vasvár itself. The few explanations that are given are very much in the tradition of arcana imperii: “His Imperial Majesty was induced to conclude the peace treaty by many considerations,” and in particular for it was “difficult to maintain war where the people are contrary.” As to participation in the negotiations, the magnates were acquainted with “the instructions and authority of those who were appointed to negotiate the peace”; so it cannot be said that it was concluded without giving them any notice.Footnote 57
Whether the scarcity of these explanations is due to court censorship, Priorato's reluctance to dwell on the less brilliant aspects of Leopold's government, or Priorato's adherence to the arcana imperii school where political communication is concernedFootnote 58 is difficult to say. However, one thing is clear: Priorato sees no inevitable need to dwell extensively on the motivation behind the actions of the monarch and his high officials vis-à-vis the subjects, as the monarch owes them no explanation of the kind he gives to the Spanish ambassador as a representative of another sovereign. It is the lack of merit and the incompetence of the Hungarian subjects that form the subject matter of Priorato's narrative. Unlike the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Burgundian historians dwelling on the differences between the princes and their rebellious subjects, Priorato painstakingly adheres to the creed that disobedience on behalf of the subjects is always criminal. As with the majority of Habsburg histories since Weisskunig (a fictional ghost-written autobiography of Maximilian I glorifying the suppression of many rebellions), there is no negotiation of the boundary between disobedience and legitimate articulation of the subjects' distinct interests—and in Priorato's case, the rhetoric of raison d'etat is called on to justify this approach.
The political and personal portraits of the main protagonists of the rebellion take up a large part of the book. Hence, Peter Zrinyi is shown throughout as an extremely ambitious, even if sadly incompetent leader, whose mistakes, beginning with his wish to attain the rank of general, were largely owing to the negative influence coming from various sources, including his even more ambitious wife and—remarkably—the news industry:
Count Peter Zrinyi travelled to the imperial court which was at that moment in Ratisbon, misled and full of hopes owing to the fame (invaghito, e insperanzato dalla fama), which resounded in all lands through the public gazettes and among the people, further magnifying his admirable courage . . . It did not appear a good thing to the Imperial Council, to raise subjects to such greatness, that later only with difficulty they let subside the vapours which great dignities and new honours generate in the heads of the ambitious, and none were more so than the Zrinyi brothers.Footnote 59
Ironically, Priorato undermines the moral message concerning the dangers of ambition by telling the reader that in fact Prince Auersperg, the emperor's minister whose brother was interested in the same position as Zrinyi, was opposed to his appointment. We are dealing, hence, with an ambiguous interpretation, in which the author's own tendency to speak of politics as a matter of competing interests and pragmatic considerations sometimes comes into conflict with the didactic task he was given or had assumed in the service of Leopold I. Reconciling these two perspectives becomes easier as Zrinyi's behavior turns, according to Priorato, increasingly unreasonable. Zrinyi sustains military losses in conflict with the Turks in Croatia owing to the illusion of luck and continuing intoxication from previous victories: “Quivi il medesimo Conte Pietro, ostentando il suo valore per la ottenuta vittoria, si lusingava d'esser fortunato. . . .”Footnote 60 Giving in to illusions, hence, leads first to military incompetence.
As the narrative progresses, the behavior of leading magnates increasingly falls into the category of treason, and Priorato continues to mix and match his arguments from two registers—that of moral judgment and that of practical expediency, sometimes making little difference between the two. Hence, when the conspirators turn to the Ottomans in hope to secure military support for their uprising in exchange for promises of political allegiance, Priorato notes:
The Turks, who are good politicians (buoni politici), having considered the quality of those rebels, could not believe it other than mad that the Hungarians, in their bestiality, rebelled against their Christian prince, from whom they could hope for advancement in war and peace, and wanted to subject themselves to the Turks . . . and that they imagined they would be followed by those nations that knew all too well that it is better to be subjects of a great monarch than to obey a new prince who would rule in Upper Hungary alone, and another of Croatia, who on their own did not have the power to maintain their royal dignity, asking for help from the Turk, by whom instead of being raised they would be oppressed.'Footnote 61
The Turks, hence, are presented as possessing better political judgment than the rebellious Hungarian Christians and showing, on the whole, a better understanding of the mechanics of war and state. Priorato accords them the title of “good politicians” without qualms, even though for him the term bears no negative connotations. This is a kind of competence that has little to do with moral theology—as Priorato himself puts it in the introduction to Vite et azioni di personaggi militari, e politici, his judgment is of actions, not of consciences (le azzioni, e non le coscienze).Footnote 62 A claim to rule, as we can see from this passage, rests also on the ability to maintain one's rule by force. This is in line, most obviously, with the precepts of The Prince. In fact, Priorato in his works often uses the classical Machiavelian formula of mantenere lo Stato. This points at a coexistence of the fairly anti-Machiavellian military doctrine that Robert Bireley has describedFootnote 63 and that was still visible in the ideology of the court of Vienna in the 1660s, with a distinctly different Renaissance-inspired approach to politics that Priorato professed.
After the actions of Hungarian magnates are presented both as inexpert and treasonous, the logic of politics and the logic of political obligation converge, and there is no dilemma concerning the rightness of the actions of Leopold and his ministers once the rebellion has failed. Both aspects of Priorato's persona, the baroque apologist of a pious Catholic monarch and the heir of Florentine political philosophy, coincide in their approval of repressive measures taken toward the rebels. As baroque apologist, Priorato is careful to stress that the promises given by imperial government to the priest sent to Zrinyi with a message from Vienna after the rebellion was discovered, and inviting him to submit himself to the emperor, were “general, not special or obligatorie”—hence, no pardon had been promised, therefore none was given.Footnote 64 And although some space is accorded, posthumously, to Zrinyi's own version of events—his letter to the emperor, written when he was already imprisoned in Vienna, is translated and reprinted in the book—it is followed by the historian's laconic remark that because “the birds were now in the cage” and because it was clear that Zrinyi had not disclosed all of his crimes in the letter anyway, an incomplete confession deserved no pardon.Footnote 65 It is difficult to see which of the arguments, the moral or the pragmatic one, has more weight in Priorato's eyes.
Priorato concludes the story of the conspirators with a didactic statement to the effect that fortune is cruel, and there are great dangers inherent in desiring too much, hence conforming to the tradition widespread in the Habsburg apologetics of the period and making a moral example of the rebel magnates.Footnote 66 Priorato's illustrations on the topic of political (in)competence, however, do not end at that.
If the Hungarian magnates are cast in the role of bad politicians showing exemplary incompetence, those appointed by Leopold to rule over Hungary in his name once it is reduced to obedience are commended for proper military experience and political loyalty. Hence, the choice of the candidate for the office of Governor General (the office of Palatine was suppressed in the constitutional changes introduced by Leopold in the early 1670s) is explained in terms of search for a person “of authority, zeal in his service, and of military and political intelligence.” The military career of the successful candidate, Grand Master of the German Order, Ampringen, including his previous involvement in war against the Ottomans and some actions accenting his loyalty to Leopold, is described as proof of his competence.Footnote 67
As in the previous three volumes of Historia, commentary on the causes of the emperor's actions is scarce, but it consistently attributes prudence to Leopold's actions. The motives ascribed to Leopold fall into two categories—that of practical politics and that describing motivation of a higher order. Hence, when Leopold decides, after the death of Palatine Wesselényi, not to appoint another Palatine in Hungary, he is “inspired, one could believe, by God, who visibly assists him in his piety and innocence.” At the same time, Leopold acts on experience, “having seen that those subjects that are ambitious and avid followers of their own interest, rather than of the service of their master, will increase their claims, hoping for better things in the future, forgetting what they already have, rushing towards uncertain hopes.”Footnote 68 He is also obliged to rely on “‘his loyal Germans” (suoi Alemanni fedeli), because:
from experience he knows that it is impossible to rely on Hungarians, nor to believe their words . . . none of them rushed to help in the battle of St Gotthard on the Raab, which was won by the valour of the Germans and foreigners, without whom the Hungarians would have lost, and with that they would have lost the remains of their kingdom, and their own freedom.Footnote 69
There is, hence, a consistent model of legitimacy closely tied to pragmatic expediency and practical competence, a model almost Hobbesian in its justification of power as long as its serves the purpose of preserving the state, present throughout Priorato's work for the Habsburg court in Vienna.
If the question concerning the presence of a model of competence divorced from the precepts of moral theology, which shaped most of the official political discourse in the Habsburg domains in the seventeenth century,Footnote 70 can be answered on the basis of Priorato's work as court historian, the answer can be a cautious “yes.” Priorato's narrative systematically makes references to aspects of governing and making war that are not imbued with religious or moral meaning, but are, in his opinion, crucial to the practical success of one who governs and makes war. Claiming exceptional political competence for himself (much more articulately than other Habsburg historians before him), Priorato applies his own model of political competence—as a set of standards by which to measure political and military actions—to virtually all persons involved in the events he describes, though less frequently to the rulers themselves.
It is also worth noting that Priorato's work introduces a distinct anti-Hungarian streak into the official and semiofficial historiography of the court of Vienna. As a mere hypothesis, it is tempting to regard this feature as arising both from the specific events that Priorato had to describe (e.g., the rebellion in Hungary) and also from the need for identifying a new enemy once the issue of heresy was no longer a marker of unquestionable wickedness in dynastic historiography. In later decades, the emphasis on Hungarians as internal enemies would be preserved,Footnote 71 whereas a new external enemy would be identified in the person of Louis XIV and the model of politics for which he was assumed to stand.
