The determination to penetrate the decision-making process of authorities – be they adverse or otherwise – has-been a long-standing reality in European civilizations – from the earliest accounts from Rome, to the present day. While the temptation is a constant in the continent’s history, the conditions in which espionage was performed has varied greatly from one society to another, depending in part on the technical means available.
Intelligence-gathering practices evolved after the upheaval of the “Writing Revolution” in the late Middle Ages. Its consequences on how information circulated throughout the western world were decisive to the birth of bona fide secret services.
The Institutionalization of Espionage
The Italian peninsula foreshadowed a great many innovations in political intelligence customs. The communal revolution and the emergence of City-States changed the conditions for espionage work. As far back as the mid-13th century, the cities of Sienna, Florence and Mantua were equipped to gather intelligence from their adversaries. The conflict with the emperor for control of Italy promoted the birth of intelligence networks. In Sienna, the existence of five Ufficiale sopra le spie (spy supervisors) was attested to as far back as 1252.
Through its systematic use of certain methods for obtaining intelligence, the Republic of Venice occupied an unusual spot in the world of espionage: it initiated the age of suspicion. The use of denunciation, particularly from the 16th century, was well-known. Bocca di Leone, mailboxes built into the walls of the Doge’s Palace, encouraged citizens to slip the names of corrupt government official into the slot formed by the lion’s mouth (ill. 1). Surveillance measures were greatly enhanced in 1539, with the creation of the State Inquisitors. Their purpose was political: their task was to ensure the safety of the Republic, which was then on the cusp between the Ottoman and Spanish empires, the Vienna-based Hapsburg Empire and the Barbary pirates of North Africa.
Faced with the “Muslim peril” and the rise of new Protestant powers, the Habsburgs of Spain also developed intelligence services. By the late 16th century, the position of Great Spy (or Espía mayor), sometimes described as the “superintendent of secret intelligence,” had been created. At the head of spy networks in Italy, France, England and, in the Germanic sphere, the Great Spy depended on the court of whoever had appointed him and to which he delivered his reports. The position lasted for at least a century, until the late 17th century. The British world was also aware of espionage practices and attempted to institutionalize them. In his Arte Of Warre (1587), William Garrard mentions the existence of the Master of the Intelligences: he was appointed to the office by the Royal Council, to whom he pledged a secret vow of allegiance. The personality of Elizabeth I’s secretary of State, Francis Walsingham (1530-1590), as well as his great interest in underground affairs explain why he was known as the “Master Spy.” While Richelieu’s Cabinet noir was not an intelligence service per se, the fact remains that it was indeed a tool for uncovering one’s adversaries’ schemes, or even infiltrating them.
Most military treatises from the 16th and 17th centuries mention intelligence gathering and the need for observers. Whether they were called scouts or spies, it was essential to have good agents, even before permanent offices came to exist. Mutations in communication, how information was presented, and how military affairs were conducted fueled rapid changes in the world of intelligence.
Circulation of Information and Sensitive Zones
Since the 16th century, postal networks had been taking shape and improving under the guidance of devoted public servants: the Thurn und Taxis family in the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian region, the Pajots and the Rouillés in France. They made information circulation more efficient and reliable. The handwritten, and more popularly, printed gazettes that developed with the rise of the printing press represented fabulous sources of observation for the authorities. In their hands, they became instruments for acquiring, and sometimes manipulating, information.
The development of embassies in the main western European nations enabled many diplomats to support a slew of more-or-less official agents, while even ambassadors themselves were suspected by their contemporaries of being little more than “honorable spies.” As in the present day, they were at the center of the web. They transmitted encrypted information to their governments via their secretaries. They paid for and transmitted information and underground actions against their adversaries: poisonings, censorship, intelligence and occasionally even assassinations and kidnappings. Although they were indispensable, diplomats were constantly disturbing the powers that hosted them, so some were expelled following scandals – like the Spaniard Guerau de Espées after being accused of involvement in Roberto Ridolfi’s plot against Elizabeth I (1571).
On a European level, geographies of espionage can be sketched in, although they did vary depending on the circumstances. The zones of confrontation in the Mediterranean region in the 16th century, the religious border that divided Protestants and Catholics from 1560 to 1660, the limits of the Germanic zone during the Great Northern War, and the wars of succession in Poland and Austria and during the Seven Years’ War all constituted hot spots of secret action. Alongside that, police power within those nations became more institutionalized, developing domestic surveillance networks involving “snitches,” “rats,” and informers.
Conducive Environments and Motivation
The role of the spy was covered in infamy; no European power would acknowledge spying on their adversaries even though, paradoxically, they were all desperately seeking intelligence at any price. In that context, the recruitment and sociology of spies had certain systematically shared features.
Espionage was often motivated by religious beliefs, which were still at the heart of Ancien Régime societies. On the border between Islam and Christendom, whether eastern or western, and where Catholicism and Protestantism met, individuals and political authorities did what they could to ensure victory for their faith. Within a single nation, the presence of often fragile religious minorities provided fertile ground for espionage. The Jewish diaspora offered numerous advantages for intelligence gathering. It lived in small communities scattered across Europe and in all of the main ports from the Maghreb to Antwerp, and from Thessaloniki to Rouen. Where Jews were poorly tolerated, they were susceptible to pressure: Martin de Santo Spirito, a Carmelite converted to Judaism was threatened by the Inquisition in a counterfeiting case and for having helped some of his fellow Jews leave for Rouen. Starting in 1607, he was forced to spy on Henri IV on behalf of Spain. Elsewhere, Jewish prisoners languishing in Christian prisons were blackmailed in exchange for intelligence. More generally, exiled communities – including English Catholics, French Protestants or Russian Latins – found themselves under great pressure to collaborate with the authorities of their host countries.
In addition to religious motivation and pressure on minority groups was the presence, or even the omnipresence, of the financial issue. One of the defining features of secret intelligence is the use of the secret funds that are set aside for it. Any agent involved in espionage had access to those funds… Which means that the line between their official motivation and greed was often hazy.
To what extent did European nations actually benefit from espionage? Was the information collected truly useful? Or was the desire for intelligence more a question of curiosity, or even obsession, on the part of rulers who could in turn find themselves deceived by the very people whom they believed held the answer to the mystery of their fates: spies.
