(1686), now at the
Louvre Julius's ceremonial list may have temporarily resolved some squabbles, but did not satisfy those monarchs who felt entitled to a higher position than it granted them. The disputes were made visible by proceedings of the Papal court in Rome, where all the significant monarchies had ambassadors, and of occasional councils, as well as in third locations on occasion. The solution of acknowledging equality of all royal crowns as a matter of principle only emerged gradually, even though an early case was the mutual recognition of equal rank between France and England in the mid-16th century. The Kings of France, who reigned over Europe's most populous country with
absolute power, were continuously frustrated by the primacy of the Emperors of the fragmented and decentralized Holy Roman Empire (virtually a feudal remnant of the Middle Ages, to the point where
Voltaire centuries later famously declared it was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire"), but were never able to question it, even though they did object to the fact that the
King of the Romans would similarly outrank them. The quest for higher status partly explains why the French kings sought the Imperial crown at the
1519 imperial election and again at the
1658 imperial election. As it happened, both attempts were unsuccessful. Similarly, the monarchs of Spain, who had become rulers of vast, rich and populous colonial possessions in the Americas, were malcontent with the seniority of those of France, following the end of the reign of
Charles V who had outranked his French counterpart as Holy Roman Emperor. The
Council of Trent, which had started under Charles V, was the inevitable theater of the rivalry. In 1560,
Philip II of Spain suggested a joint representation there of himself and his uncle
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, so that his envoy would outrank that of France. In 1562–1564 and again in 1583, Philip appears to have contemplated an imperial title over the Indies for similar reasons, but eventually gave up. Spain contested French seniority for many generations: to avoid incidents, the respective ambassadors of the two countries often had to make sure they would not find themselves in the same place at the same time. Eventually France built its own
colonial empire, however it governed only small Caribbean islands and sparsely populated regions of North America. In 1661, a contest for position between the French and Spanish ambassadors in a ceremonial procession in London led to a number of deaths. The , Spanish ambassador in Paris, had to apologize to
Louis XIV the next year, an event that was deemed significant enough to be memorialized a generation later in a bronze relief by sculptor
Martin Desjardins on the
Louis XIV Victory Monument on
Place des Victoires in Paris together with major military victories. The issue was alleviated after the
House of Bourbon secured the Spanish crown in the 18th century, and eventually settled with the
Pacte de Famille of 1761. Other conflicts of precedence lasted for most of the early modern era, notably between England and Spain; England and Portugal; Denmark and Sweden; Sweden and Poland; Poland and Hungary; Poland and Portugal. The generally held view that older monarchies deserved higher rank led to
pseudo-historical claims of ancient origins, such as, for Sweden,
Johannes Magnus's
Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus. The power politics of the day also played a role, for example when France accepted Sweden's claim of status equality at the
Peace of Westphalia. In addition, the emergence as European powers of the
Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, and of the
Tsardom of Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries, created additional conflicts of precedence. After the
fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Sultans viewed themselves as rightful
successors of the Roman Empire and would not concede superiority of rank to any European monarch. The European powers grudgingly accepted the Sultan's imperial rank above European kings, but were unwilling to countenance a higher position for the Sultan than that of the Holy Roman Emperor. In the
Treaty of Constantinople (1533), at the height of Ottoman power, the European accepted the subterfuge of referring to
Charles V only as
King of Spain. At the
Peace of Zsitvatorok (1606), the Ottomans for the first time acknowledged equal rank for the Holy Roman Emperor, in a manner reminiscent of the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empire's prior parity of status with the
Byzantine Empire. As for Russia, its monarch's title of
Tsar was not viewed (outside of Russia itself) as denoting Imperial rank until the 18th century, after its victories in the
Great Northern War transformed it into a fully-fledged European power. The Tsar's imperial dignity was recognized in 1721 by the
Kingdom of Prussia and the
Dutch Republic; 1723 by
Sweden and
Saxony; 1741 by the
Ottoman Empire; 1742 by
Great Britain; 1745 by the
Holy Roman Empire,
France and
Spain; and 1764 by
Poland. In 1760, the Portuguese statesman and diplomat
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, attempted to definitely resolve the issue of diplomatic precedence by denying any permanent seniority to envoys others than those of the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor. This was predictably rejected by the French minister in Lisbon. The formula eventually adopted at the Congress of Vienna would be similar. In 1785, there were plans to the
Wittelsbach-held
Duchy of Bavaria with the
Austrian Netherlands and upgrading the former with the title
King of Burgundy. The plan met resistance from France and the
Fürstenbund who feared that it would disturb the imperial constitution leading to its failure. ==Congress of Vienna and later practices==