A merchant at his bureau. 16th Century. Previously unpublished on the Internet, a selection of secret ‘Cables’ follow. _____________ “Auto de fé” in Seville From Seville, 13th May 1569. The Auto de fé of which I have already written took place here today. Seventy persons were brought forth, of which have been burned two Burgundians, ...
Detail from ‘The Ambassadors’ Hans Holbein the Younger. It is unfashionable these days to see History as a glittering record of wars [heroic & unheroic], of royal deeds & misdeeds, of Courts & Court intrigues; this view of History has given way to somewhat dry investigations of social impacts, it has surrendered to ‘TV-lite edu-tainment’ ...
What with all the Cablegate hysteria in the MSM right now, I took out my rather nice 1924 Bodley Head edition of the selection of archives from the Fugger Newsletters. They are, in style and content, the forerunners of what we find on the Web today: An idiosyncratic description of events around the world that ...