The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State

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We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us: His present and your pains we thank you for: When we have match’d our rackets to these balls, We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard […] I will rise there with so full a glory That I will dazzle all the eyes of France, Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us. And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his Hath turn’d his balls to gunstones; and his soul Shall stand sore-charged for the wasteful vengeance That shall fly from them; for many a thousand widows Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands; Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down…

Henry V, I. ii

Before the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788, potentates were free to lavish tokens of esteem on American worthies whenever they chose. In 1785, the king of Spain sent two especially handsome donkeys to General George Washington in recognition of his military exploits and they were graciously received. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution immediately made such gestures suspicious, even illicit. Henceforth, no American public servant was to ‘accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state’.

So when, in 1839, the emperor of Morocco decided to present the United States with a lion and a lioness (a prodigious gift by any standard), the local consul Thomas Carr faced an awkward decision. He could either offend an influential monarch or transgress the new rules of American diplomatic conduct. Carr valiantly tried to reject the gifts, but was forced to relent when the emperor’s messenger threatened to release the animals into the street. After a few months’ sojourn in the consulate buildings, the lions were shipped to Philadelphia and quietly sold off at auction.

(#litres_trial_promo) Intended as a necessary check on bribery and corruption, the constitutional prohibition had managed, at a stroke, to jeopardize one of the most venerable of diplomatic rituals: the exchanging of meaningful, preferably spectacular, gifts.

For millennia, such exchanges had succeeded in capturing the tensions inherent in any ambassadorial encounter. Those giving the gifts often sought to demonstrate their affection or admiration for the recipient – see what we are willing to give – but they also hoped to hint, rather loudly, at their superiority, at their own wealth, ingenuity and influence – see what we are able to give. To despatch too meagre a gift was a snub, to send too exotic a gift was a boast. Polities were always much more likely to err on the side of boastfulness. Upon receiving presents from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, one tenth-century Muslim ruler had immediately declared: ‘send him a gift one hundred times greater than his so that he may recognize the glory of Islam and the grace that Allah has bestowed upon us.’

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The Romans won favour by presenting gold necklaces to British tribal leaders, while the courts of Enlightenment Europe fastened upon the idea of trading elegant Se‘vres and Meissen porcelain. Fidel Castro would even limit the distribution of certain brands of luxury cigar to enhance their cachet as diplomatic gifts. In the eighteenth century, Frederick William I of Prussia went so far as sending an entire room, a candlelit Baroque confection of amber panels, mirrors and mosaics, to Peter the Great of Russia. Peter had admired the so-called ‘Amber Room’ during a visit to Berlin in 1712. The Prussian king, eager to cement an alliance against Sweden, ordered the room’s dismantlement. In 1717 it was packed into eighteen boxes and made the precarious journey from the Charlottenburg Palace to St Petersburg. Until Hitler’s invading troops tore it down in 1941, it came to symbolize the amity between two great nations.

Presenting something that was particularly evocative of one’s own culture was another shrewd strategy. The Ottoman rulers of Turkey looked to fragrant soaps and carpets, the Chinese to precious silks. In the seventeenth century, the Polish city of Gdansk routinely selected the engraved amber for which it was so renowned, just as the burghers of Nuremberg favoured their city’s humble, but much-coveted, Lebkuchen cakes. Japanese emperors sent a full suit of shogun armour to James I of England in 1613, and an elaborate samurai sword to Queen Victoria two and a half centuries later.

Comparison was everything in the world of diplomatic gift-giving. Monarchs endlessly contrasted themselves with their peers and predecessors. When a Russian ambassador presented James I of England with a ‘rich Persian dagger and knife’ in 1617, ‘the king was very much pleased, and the more so when he understood Queen Elizabeth never had such a present thence’.

(#litres_trial_promo) They also compared the different gifts offered up by rival ambassadors. In 1614, when the East India Company looked to recruit an ambassador to send to the north Indian court of the Moghul emperor Jahangir, its gaze settled on Sir Thomas Roe, ‘a gentleman of pregnant understanding, well-spoken, learned, industrious, of a comely personage’.

(#litres_trial_promo) He left for India in February 1615 with a suitably impressive retinue: a chaplain, physician, apothecary, secretary and cook.

Unfortunately, his diplomatic gifts were decidedly uninspiring. Upon receiving a scarf, swords and some leather gods, Jahangir turned to a visiting Jesuit priest to ask whether James I was really the great monarch he purported to be. ‘Presents of so small a value’ did little to bolster the English king’s reputation. Jahangir had hoped, at the very least, for a cache of precious jewels. As for the coach that Roe also presented to the emperor, it simply did not measure up to the exacting Moghul standard of opulence. Jahangir has his servants dismantle it, replacing lacklustre velvet fittings with silk, and ‘instead of the brass nails that were first in it, there were nails of silver put in their place’.

Roe’s embarrassment turned to utter humiliation with the arrival of a Persian ambassador. Here was a diplomat who truly knew how to impress a Moghul emperor. As well as twenty-seven Arabian horses, nine mules and two chests of ‘Persian hangings’, he offered Jahangir ‘forty muskets, five clocks, one camel laden with Persian cloth of gold…twenty-one camels of wine of the grape, fourteen camels of distilled sweet water, seven of rose water, seven daggers set with stones…[and] seven Venetian looking glasses’. Roe contrasted the two assortments of gifts and confessed to being ‘ashamed of the relation’.

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In this delicate game of cultural dialogue and rivalry, nothing was ever quite as impressive as the animals – whether the camels, bears and monkeys despatched to Frederick II of Sicily by the sultan of Cairo in 1228, the ten greyhounds taught to sit on horses’ backs that ambassadors from India brought to the Mongol court a few years later, or even the pandas Ching-Ching and Chia-Chia that Peking gave to Britain in 1974. Animals, especially when transported over long distances or into strange climates, did have a tendency to perish en route. In 1514, when the king of Portugal sent a rhinoceros to Pope Leo X, the creature drowned on its way to Rome. Even when they arrived in perfect condition, the animals were not always wonderfully well behaved. In the tenth century, dogs sent as gifts from the Hungarian king almost bit the Byzantine emperor’s hand and an unfortunate diplomatic incident was only narrowly avoided.

Such risks were well worth taking, however. Animals flattered even the greatest monarch. Very rarely, the gift of a curious animal was rejected. In 693 ad, Arab rulers suggested sending a lion to the Chinese empress. Unfortunately, it was a time of scarcity and famine in the east, and one of the empress’s advisors suggested that an animal that ate such a prodigious amount of fresh meat every day would be an unwelcome strain on the court’s limited resources. This was an aberration.

(#litres_trial_promo) Throughout the world’s history, possessing exotic creatures was a hallmark of power and influence. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt ordered hunting parties that travelled as far as Somalia to capture monkeys and leopards, and rulers – whether Solomon or Kublai Khan, the Bourbons or the Medici – lavished untold wealth on their menageries.

Giraffes always made for unusually extravagant gifts. The Chinese emperor was delighted with the creature sent as tribute, via Bengal, from East Africa in 1414; four centuries later, in 1827, the pasha of Egypt scored a notable diplomatic triumph by despatching giraffes to the rulers of England, France and Austria. Two of the animals soon perished, but the giraffe that had been shipped to Marseilles and then marched through the French countryside would continue to delight crowds of Parisians at the Jardin des Plantes for the next sixteen years.

Most prized of all, however, was the elephant, a creature that had charmed and fascinated Europe for centuries. To the ancient world, elephants were ‘of all the brutes the most intelligent’, known to ‘have taken up their riders when slain in battle and carried them away for burial’. They were invested with the full gamut of human faculties and emotions. ‘It understands the language of its country,’ the Roman naturalist Pliny explained; ‘it obeys commands, and it remembers all the duties which it has been taught. It is sensible alike of the pleasures of love and glory, and, to a degree that is rare even among men, possesses notions of honesty, prudence, and equity.’ It had ‘a religious respect for the stars, and a veneration for the sun and the moon’, and, according to the Greek historian Arrian, ‘there was even one that died of remorse and despair because it had killed its rider in a fit of rage.’

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The typical elephant enjoyed ‘his bath with all the zest of a consummate voluptuary’, and he was endearingly temperamental. If his keepers did not fill his manger with just the right kinds of flowers, he would begin roaring in protest. Even when the requisite flowers had been located, he would refuse to eat if they were not properly arranged, ‘for he loves to have his sleep made sweet and pleasant’. A suitor’s promise of an elephant, Arrian revealed, had even been known to seduce chaste Indian women away from the path of virtue. To present an elephant to a coy mistress served as an irresistible flirtatious gambit.

Elephants also carried an air of menace, of course. They were formidable engines of war, able to turn the tide of any battle and to terrify the hardiest soldier. They would always be associated in the Western imagination with Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps in 218 BC, but their fabled military prowess only added to their mystique. As a result, there was obvious capital to be made from exhibiting mastery over such fearsome creatures.

In 55 BC, the Roman general Pompey treated crowds at the Circus Maximus to a banquet of cruelty and bloodshed, overseeing the slaughter of 500 lions and 400 leopards. Roman audiences were hardly squeamish, but the culling of seventeen elephants that came next was too brutal even for them. Realizing that their lives were in the gravest danger, the elephants sought to gain the compassion of the crowd by letting out desperate cries and wails. Suddenly, the formerly bloodthirsty crowds turned against Pompey and showered him in curses and abuse. It was perhaps wiser to treat elephants with greater respect, making use of them, for instance, as the very finest of diplomatic gifts.

In 1552, Suleyman the elephant trekked across central Europe from Genoa to Vienna. A present from the Portuguese king to the Holy Roman Emperor, it attracted huge crowds in all the towns and villages through which it passed, and inspired dozens of adoring songs and poems.

Three centuries earlier, Louis IX of France had also presented Henry III of England with an elephant, the first such creature to be seen on British soil since the Roman invasions of the first century AD. It took up residence in the menagerie at the Tower of London, already home to leopards sent by the German emperor and a polar bear, a gift from the Norwegian king, that fished for its supper in the Thames each evening. Sadly, the creature died within two years, most likely from overindulgence in the red wine prescribed to warm its blood. Not the worst of deaths, perhaps, but the English king was heartbroken and is said to have nursed his outrageously unusual pet through its final death agonies.

Some elephants travelled even further.

Greece, India and China were the triple pillars of our survey of the ancient world. Turning now to the early medieval centuries, Charlemagne’s Europe, the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad and the Byzantine Empire take centre state. All three mistrusted one another, and such mistrust sometimes engendered hatred. But, as three of the greatest powers in the world, they all realized that they were obliged to maintain diplomatic relations. Their encounters forced a collision between Islam and Christianity, between the two squabbling halves of the Christian commonwealth – and, in the year 801, the despatching of yet another diplomatic elephant.

The death of Muhammad in ad 632 ushered in the era of the rashidun, the first four Islamic caliphs, all of them trusted companions of the prophet. From their Arabian stronghold in Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, they oversaw decades of staggering territorial expansion. Jerusalem was taken in 638, and by 641 the Muslim conquest of Syria, Palestine and Egypt was all but complete. Persia’s armies were crushed at the battle of Qadisiyyah in 636 and its capital, Ctesiphon, was seized: the prelude to the wholesale takeover of the entire Sassanid Persian Empire. Within a few more years Cyprus had been snatched from Byzantium, and Muslim armies had marched as far as Tripoli in the west and Afghanistan and the Indus River in the east.

Military adventures abroad could not disguise factionalism and theological bickering at home, however. Towards the end of the rashidun, rebellion brought Muhammad’s cousin Ali to power in 656. His authority was not universally recognized across the Muslim world, and a period of civil war was only ended by the arrival of the Umayyads, the first great Islamic dynasty descended from one of Muhammad’s closest companions. A new period of expansion began. By 750 Sicily and Crete had been welcomed into the Islamic fold and a Muslim kingdom had been established in Spain. It was in the year 750 that a new dynasty wrested control of the empire from the Umayyads. The Abbasid caliphate, descended from an uncle of the prophet, transferred the capital from Damascus to Baghdad and ushered in one of the golden ages of Islamic history.

Under Abbasid rule, Baghdad was to become a wonder of the early medieval world, a circular city of science and poetry, famous for its bookshops and bathhouses, its chess games and secret cabarets. One observer calculated that it had ‘no equal on earth either in the Orient or the Occident, it is the most extensive city in area, in importance, in prosperity, in abundance of water, and in healthful climate’. Merchandise flooded in from as far away as India, China and Tibet, and one might imagine that ‘all the goods of the earth are sent there, all the treasures of the world gathered there, and all the blessings of the universe concentrated there’. The water was sweet, the trees flourished, the fruit was of perfect quality, and the people were all blessed with bright countenances and open intelligences. No one was ‘better educated than their scholars…more solid in their syntax than their grammarians, more supple than their singers…more eloquent than their preachers, more artistic than their poets’. The only possible conclusion was that ‘Iraq is indeed the centre of the world.’

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Harun al-Rashid (reigned 786–809) was the most famous of the Abbasid caliphs, his opulent court familiar to history through the pages of The Thousand and One Arabian Nights. A ruthless politician, patron of the arts, builder of magnificent palaces, Harun was an expert diplomatist.

During the reign of the Byzantine empress Irene, he had marched his troops to within sight of Constantinople and demanded the payment of a handsome yearly tribute in exchange for not attacking the city. Irene had acquiesced but her successor, Nicephorus I, thought it far below Byzantium’s dignity to humble itself before a Muslim ruler. In 802 he despatched an envoy to Iraq with a strongly worded letter, replete with an analogy to the game of chess that any Abbasid caliph was certain to appreciate: ‘The queen who reigned before me gave you the position of the tower and placed herself in the position of a simple pawn. She paid the tribute that was once imposed upon you…This was the result of the frailty and foolishness of women. When you receive my letter, send back the money that you have received from her, and ransom yourself by paying the sums that are incumbent on you. Otherwise, the sword will decide between us.’ For added emphasis, the Byzantine envoys then threw swords at the caliph’s feet. A furious Harun took up his sabre, smashed the swords to pieces and then penned the tersest of replies. ‘From Harun, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the Roman dog: I have read your letter, son of an infidel woman. You will not hear my reply but will see it with your own eyes.’ Sure enough, Harun marched his army northwards and to halt his progress the emperor, distracted by other affairs, agreed to recommence tribute payments. But even before Harun had returned to Raqqa (his new capital), he learned that Nicephorus had reneged on his promise. Having lost all patience, Harun led his troops towards the Black Sea coast where he besieged and conquered the Byzantine city of Heraclea.

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Happily, some of Harun’s other dealings with Christianity were more polite. In 801, Charlemagne’s ambassador Isaac the Jew returned from a diplomatic mission to Iraq with an elephant named Abu’l Abbas, after the founder of the Abbasid dynasty. It was a present from Harun to Charlemagne, king of the Franks.

The caliph was eager to recruit allies against rival Muslim rulers in Spain, Charlemagne hoped to make travel safer for Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land, and both rulers shared a mighty rival in the Byzantine Empire. Crossing the Alps so late in the year was impractical, but after wintering at Pisa the ambassador escorted the elephant to Charlemagne’s capital at Aachen. The Emperor would dote on Abu’l Abbas for years to come, regularly taking him along on military expeditions. The creature would die in 810 while crossing into Saxony, although his bones would be preserved at Lippenheim until the eighteenth century.

At other times Harun would send Charlemagne ivory chessmen, water-clocks and perfumes, but Abu’l Abbas was his most precious diplomatic gift, exchanged between two of the greatest powers in the ninth-century world. Harun referred to himself as the shadow of God on earth, but he did not underestimate the talents of his compeer in the west.

ii. Aachen

He was broad and strong in the form of his body and exceptionally tall without, however, exceeding an appropriate measure. As is well known, his height was equal to seven of his feet. The top of his head was round, his eyes were large and lively. His nose was somewhat larger than usual. He had attractive grey hair, and a friendly, cheerful face. His appearance was impressive whether he was sitting or standing, despite having a neck that was fat and too short, and a large belly. The symmetry of his other limbs obscured these points. He had a firm gait, a thoroughly manly manner of holding himself, and a high voice which did not really correspond to the rest of his body.

Einhard’s description of Charlemagne

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In April 799, Pope Leo III approached the Flaminian Gate in Rome. An armed band descended upon him, threw him to the ground and, after trying to pluck out his tongue and eyes, left him bleeding in the street. His assailants, supporters of the previous pope, had hoped to disfigure Leo so severely that he would be unable to continue in his papal duties. They failed and, after recuperating at a nearby monastery, Leo travelled north, to Paderborn, to recruit the help of Charles the Great, king of the Franks. A few months later the pope returned to Rome in the company of an armed escort. It was not the first time that Charlemagne had served as guardian and protector of a vulnerable papacy.

The Franks, however temporarily and belatedly, had filled the political vacuum left by the demise of the western Roman Empire. Between ad 370 and ad 470, Asiatic Huns, perhaps the descendants of the Hsiung-nu that had so troubled Han China, pushed westwards, forcing Germanic tribes into Roman territory. Over the following decades these tribes spread across Europe – the Visigoths into Spain, the Ostrogoths into Italy, the Vandals as far as North Africa.

Rome sought to establish workable relations with these newcomers, even allowing them to settle on lands within the empire. Diplomacy and accommodation had their limits; however, and by 410 the German chieftain Alaric was sacking Rome. The empire, now based in Ravenna, tottered on, but by 476 the last Roman emperor in the West, the sixteen-year-old Romulus Augustulus, had been forced to abdicate and begin his premature retirement in the Bay of Naples. The barbarian Odoacer was now the king of Italy and the future of Roman civilization lay in the east, in the city founded by the emperor Constantine on the Bosporus: the capital of the new Byzantine Empire.

There were many beneficiaries of this dramatic shift in Western politics, among them the Franks who, under Clovis, moved into the territories of Gaul. In the eighth century the Merovingian dynasty established by Clovis was displaced by the Frankish aristocrat-turned usurper, Pippin the Short. The centre of Frankish power now moved 300 miles to the east, from Paris to the Carolingian capital of Aachen, in present-day Germany. Pippin’s son, Charlemagne, proved to be the greatest of all Frankish rulers. Through a combination of military might and subtle diplomacy he outflanked his immediate neighbours – the Bavarian, Breton and Aquitanian tribes of northern Germany – and waged successful campaigns against more distant opponents, among them the Saxons of Germany and the Avars of Hungary. At its height, Charlemagne’s empire stretched from the Spanish border and central Italy in the south, to Saxony in the north, as far as Bavaria in the east.

He also rescued the papacy from the intrusions of the Lombard kings of northern Italy, conquering Lombard possessions from the German border to the lands south of Rome. The Holy See had a new champion: Charlemagne, the mightiest king in Western Europe. On Christmas Day 800, in the church of St Peter in Rome, Leo III crowned Charlemagne as emperor, heir to the Caesars. The pope, in keeping with tradition, prostrated himself before the new emperor’s feet and the crowds let up a shout. ‘Life and victory to Charles the most pious Augustus,’ they chanted three times, ‘crowned by God, the great and pacific emperor.’

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The future kings and emperors of Western Europe would always dream of emulating Charlemagne’s achievement. Napoleon Bonaparte was no exception. Much like Charlemagne, Napoleon was always well supplied with detractors. One of them wrote a scurrilous, rather far-fetched account of Napoleon’s trip to Aachen, Charlemagne’s ancient capital. Napoleon summoned the entire French diplomatic corps to bear witness to this act of imperial pilgrimage. He apparently visited every spot where Charlemagne had walked, sat, slept, talked, eaten or prayed, dragging the foreign representatives behind him.

Napoleon was apparently so intoxicated by the place that he allowed himself to be duped by local entrepreneurs who, in return for handsome rewards, offered up supposed relics of the great Frankish king – a stone on which Charlemagne had once kneeled, a document bearing his signature, a contemporary portrait, a ring he had worn, a crucifix he had used in his devotions.

One German professor wrote to Napoleon, urging him to be less credulous and suggesting that the portrait was a drawing of this century; the diploma written in the last; the crucifix manufactured within fifty years, and the ring perhaps within ten. Napoleon was not amused and, upon reading the professor’s note, despatched officers to his rooms. They woke the professor, forced him to dress and then bundled him into a covered cart which carried him under escort to the left bank of the Rhine, where he was left with orders, under pain of death, never to return to the French Empire.

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If the story was a fabrication or, at best, an exaggeration, it was one that hinted at just how long a shadow Charles the Great cast over European history. Perhaps only an Arthur or an Alexander bequeathed a more intoxicating legend.

Charlemagne’s diplomatic acumen was certainly part of that legend, but the one thing that medieval Europe enjoyed even more than celebrating its heroes was denouncing Islam. The Song of Roland was the most famous of the medieval chansons de geste (songs of deeds) that flourished from the twelfth century and made such efficient work of denouncing Muslims as duplicitous, avaricious scoundrels. La Chanson de Roland would principally be remembered for its fanciful account of the murder of a heroic Frankish knight at the Pass of Roncesvalles, high in the Pyrenees. It also offered a typically unflattering portrayal of Muslim statecraft, and the Islamic penchant for subverting the protocols of diplomatic encounter. This would prove to be a staple of medieval European discourse. The elephant, sent from Islam to Christianity, was dismissed as an aberration. Muslim ambassadors managing to deceive as mighty an emperor as Charlemagne was surely more representative of Islamic treachery.

At the beginning of the poem, Charlemagne and his armies have been ensconced in Spain for seven years. They have won endless victories, but the town of Saragossa still remains under Muslim control. On his blue marble throne, King Marsile calls forth his counsellors and asks if there is any way to avert military disaster. One of them proposes a devious plan. The king should pretend to submit to Charlemagne. He should reveal that he is willing to be baptized as a Christian in the emperor’s own kingdom, and promise to pay tribute, only to renege once his troops have departed.

Charlemagne will doubtless require hostages as guarantors of payment, and he will likely execute them when he realizes that he has been deceived, but surely this is a price worth paying. Better that the hostages’ heads be shorn away than the Muslims lose the whole of Spain. Marsile chooses ambassadors from among his most cunning followers, and sends them off to Charlemagne on ten snow-white mules, bridled with gold and saddled in silver.

Charlemagne is in high spirits when the Muslim ambassadors arrive. His catapults have recently battered down the walls at Cordoba and a mighty haul of plundered treasure has been secured. All pagans have been slain or made to convert to Christianity. He is relaxing in an orchard surrounded by his 15,000 followers. The older knights are lying on white carpets playing chequers, while the younger squires fence beneath an eglantine-embowered pine tree.

The ambassadors approach him on foot and launch into a fawning address. Marsile will send him lavish gifts – lions, bears, greyhounds and seven hundred camels – provided Charlemagne returns to France.

It is approaching sunset, so Charlemagne tells the ambassadors to tie up their mules and retire to the tents he has provided for them. The next morning, after hearing mass, Charlemagne summons his counsellors to a spot beneath a pine tree to discuss the events of the precious day. Opinion is divided. The knight Roland reminds Charlemagne of a worryingly similar situation seven years earlier, when Marsile had also sent ambassadors bearing olive branches. In reply, two imperial envoys were despatched to the king, only to have their heads severed from their bodies. The Christians have been fighting for seven years, Roland insists, and they should complete their campaign by besieging Saragossa. As Charlemagne clasps his chin and tugs at his beard, another of his advisers suggests that such ‘counsel of pride is wrong’. Receiving Marsile’s homage would be victory enough.

Charlemagne is convinced, and all that remains is the selection of the ambassador to be sent to Marsile. Some are rejected because they would be too dearly missed; Roland is regarded as far too hot-headed for such delicate negotiations. However, he does succeed in nominating his stepfather, Ganelon, one of his harshest critics. Ganelon is far from happy with being chosen for such a treacherous mission. He asks Roland why he would be so wrathful as to nominate his own stepfather and promises that, should he return safely, ‘I’ll follow thee with such force of passion, that will endure so long as life may last thee.’ Roland offers to go in his stead, fully aware that Ganelon would never accept so insulting a proposal. Charlemagne calls Ganelon before him and presents his staff and glove, symbols of his authority, but Ganelon drops the glove – an unhappy omen. And so the ambassador sets out for Sarragossa. The Muslim ambassadors have succeeded in hatching their plan: Charlemagne has been utterly deceived. They have also managed to sow dissent within the Frankish camp, and Ganelon will not forget the treachery of his stepson. He will turn to plotting with the Moorish king and help to bring about Roland’s death.

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The historical Charlemagne was rather less gullible, and he developed an efficient wide-ranging diplomatic apparatus. The Carolingian ambassador – usually referred to as missus or legatus – was a familiar figure throughout the courts of Europe and beyond. Under the Carolingians, there was a steady stream of envoys to Rome, Bulgaria, Constantinople and Scandinavia, to the kings of Northumbria, the emir of Cordoba and the patriarch of Jerusalem. There was no professional diplomatic class, and individuals – whether clerics, palace officials or nobles – were chosen as the need arose. However, there was a tendency to return envoys to places they had previously visited and learned something of: Gervolde, the abbot of St Wandrille on the Seine, for instance, would make several embassies to the English king at Mercia.

There was more to diplomacy than industry, of course. It also demanded glamour. The wonderfully named Notker the Stammerer most likely spent his entire adult life sequestered in a Benedictine monastery. In his biography of Charlemagne, the emperor is portrayed as a master of diplomatic ritual. When a party of Greek ambassadors arrived in Aachen in 812, the palace courtiers decided to have a little sport at their expense. They took turns dressing as the emperor, allowing the envoys to think they were speaking with the mighty Charlemagne. The exhausted Greeks doubtless grew impatient but suddenly, with the appearance of the true emperor, all weariness and irritation evaporated. ‘Charlemagne, of all kings the most glorious was standing by a window through which the sun shone with dazzling brightness. He was clad in gold and precious stones and he glittered himself like the sun at its first rising.’ His sons stood around him ‘like the host of heaven’; next to them his wife and daughters, adorned alike with wisdom and pearls. ‘Had David been in their midst,’ Notker suggested, ‘he would have had every reason to sing out: “kings of the earth and all people, princes and judges; both young men and maidens, old men and children; let them praise the name of the lord.”’ The Greek envoys, overcome by such a majestic sight, ‘fell speechless and senseless to the ground’.