The Receipt

What actually happened

The election cost roughly 850,000 florins in payments to the seven prince-electors; Fugger provided about two-thirds, and the electors accepted only his letters of credit. The banker's paper was the currency of the bribe. Charles V won the crown.

When Charles's jurists then advanced anti-monopoly proceedings aimed at the great merchant houses, above all Fugger's, the old banker wrote to the emperor directly. As the family chronicle records the letter of April 1523: 'It is well known that Your Imperial Majesty could not have gained the Roman Crown save with mine aid.' The proceedings faded; the debt was honored.

Fugger died in 1525 with a fortune estimated at around two percent of Europe's economic output, a scale no private banker has matched since.

The play to remember

Real power is being un-defaultable. Fugger didn't just lend to the system. He made himself the system.