PROPER GRADE OF DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIVES 359 



a particular space should be set apart for their carriages, and that 

 this should be the post of honor; a fierce quarrel occurred over the 

 allotment of rooms, and in the conference-room a single table had 

 been provided; but no agreement could be reached as to the order 

 of seating, and so in that room they all stood, and another room was 

 provided in which there was no table, and the envoys sat in a circle. 

 At the Diet of Regensberg the precedence of the ambassadors 

 was decided by an arithmetical rule by which each had precedence 

 over the rest twice in ten days. At Utrecht a round table was used, 

 but this lost its accommodating qualities when it was discovered that 

 the place of honor was opposite the door of entrance, and that every 

 place of honor has a right and left. At this congress a quarrel for 

 precedence took place between the footmen of the several ambassa- 

 dors, in the account of which it is recorded that it " threatened to 

 retard the peace of Christendom." Addison gives an amusing 

 account in the Spectator of a discussion over it which he heard in one 

 of the coffee-houses of London, the result of which he sums up in 

 these words: " All I could learn at last from these honest gentlemen 

 was that the matter in debate was of too high a nature for such heads 

 as theirs, or mine, to comprehend." Macaulay, in his History of 

 England, describes in his best vein the Congress of Ryswick, which 

 well illustrates these idle controversies. 



The contest of envoys to these international congresses of the past 

 have not been more animated and absurd than those of the envoys to 

 the several courts of Europe. Many amusing and sometimes tragic 

 incidents have been narrated of the latter, from which I give some 

 instances. It is related that the Spanish ambassador to England, in 

 1661, in order to secure a place in the royal procession next to the 

 King and before his French colleague, attacked the latter's coach in 

 the streets of London, hamstrung his horses, and killed his men, 

 thus vindicating his country's greatness. When the plenipoten- 

 tiaries of France and Austria met to settle the conditions of marriage 

 between Louis XIV and Maria Teresa, in order to preserve the full 

 dignity of their nations, they stepped together, with the right foot, 

 side by side, into a council chamber hung in corresponding halves 

 with their respective colors, and sat down at the same instant, 

 precisely opposite each other, at a square table, on two mathemat- 

 ically equivalent armchairs. A story is told of two newly arrived 

 envoys from Italy and Germany, who, being unable to agree on which 

 should first present his credentials to the King of France, stipulated 

 that whoever reached Versailles the soonest on the day of their 

 reception should take precedence of the other. The Prussian went 

 the night before the audience and sat on a bench before the palace 

 until dawn. The Italian, arriving early in the morning, saw the 

 Prussian there before him and slipped surreptitiously through 



