On a spring day in 1523, Jacob Fugger, a banker from the German city of Augsburg, summoned a scribe and dictated a collection notice. A customer was behind on a loan payment. After years of leniency, Fugger had finally lost patience.
Fugger wrote collection letters all the time. But the 1523 letter was remarkable because he addressed it not to struggling fur trader or a cash-strapped spice importer but to Charles V, the most powerful man on earth. Charles had eighty-one titles, including Holy Roman emperor, king of Spain, king of Naples, king of Jerusalem, duke of Burgundy and lord of Asia and Africa. He ruled and empire that was the biggest since the days of ancient Rome, and would not be matched until the days of Napoleon and Hitler. It stretched across Europe and over the Atlantic to Mexico and Peru, thus becoming the first in history where the sun never set. When the pope defied Charles, he sacked Rome. When France fought him, he captured its king. The people regarded Charles as divine and tried to touch him for his supposed power to heal. "He is himself a living law and above all other law," said an imperial councilor. "His Majesty is as god on Earth."
Fugger was the grandson of a peasant and a man Charles could have easily strapped to the rack for impertinence. So it must have surprised him that Fugger not only addressed him as an equal but furthered the affront by reminding him to whom he owed his success. "It is well known that without me your majesty might not have acquired the imperial crown," Fugger wrote, "You will order that the money which I have paid out, together with the interest upon it, shall be reckoned up and paid without further delay."
-Greg Steinmetz, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger
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