[DIPLOMACY] To the Reform Party

To the Archchancellor of Germany, the Archsteward and the Archmarshall,

with grave concern I have received your complaints about the results of the last Diet. It pains me deeply that you did not voice them at the Diet itself. I was there in person, we could have discussed and adjusted the details before facts were created through votes. The Holy Father has done it the regular way, and I am disappointed that you failed to do so and you are now scheming in the dark instead, undermining the authority of not only the Emperor, but the Diet itself, and with it that of all the Princes.

The vote on the reform of Reichsitalien was tied. The decision was therefore left to me, and I chose to institute the reform, as I think it is the only way to protect Italy from being French or Spanish a decade from now. The great powers of Europe have expressed their interest in Italian lands before, and the only thing stopping them is the Empire. It is not a gift to the Italians, it is a trade with them. While they gain the rights that German Princes have, they also are required to follow the laws that German Princes have to follow. Before, they settled their conflicts the barbarian way through war and conquest, now they have to use the courts, the German way. You complained that they get their special Italian court that the Germans do not get. Yet I ask you, what is the Reichskammergericht if not a court by and for German Princes?

I am sick. I feel the Lord is calling me and soon I will leave this mortal coil, I know it. I do not want to leave my son with this problem that arose from my inability to make you follow due process. It is therefore that I ask you to offer me a compromise, one that does not include the repeal of a reform sponsored by the Holy Father or the renouncing of an entire Kingdom from the Empire.

Signed, Ladislaus, Holy Roman Emperor etc.