Comunicating news, representing the patron, and enjoying mercedes. Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein's informants in Flanders
Abstract
This paper focuses on the role of clientelism and patronage in the political and cultural communication process between the court of Brussels and the Kingdom of Bohemia at the time of the Thirty Years' War. Based on the correspondence of Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein preserved in the Regional Archive of Moravia in Brno, we will analyse the activities carried out by his informants from the Flanders area: Guillermo Verdugo and Martin Somogyi.
While the former, a colonel in the Spanish army and governor of the Rhenish Palatinate, reported to Dietrichstein on matters of war, Baron Somogyi was a member of Archduke Albert's household and served Dietrichstein as a defender of his private interests at the archducal court. The study therefore belongs to the recent lines of historiographical research on the court, the phenomenon of agents, patronage, and clientelism.