Summits were more fun in those days. When Ferdinand III, the Habsburg monarch of the Holy Roman Empire, arrived in Re-gensburg, the Brussels of its time, in late 1652, he brought 60 musicians and three dwarves. There were sleigh rides, fireworks and the first Italian opera ever performed in Germanic lands. Aside from that, the Reichstag (imperial diet) was much like today's European Council, the gathering for leaders of the member states. The emperor arrived with a retinue of 3,000 people to meet the empire's princes, bishops, margraves and other assorted vips. They negotiated for more than a year. By the time Ferdinand left again for Vienna, with 164 ships floating down the Danube, quite a lot had transpired.
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