4 ideas
In 1519 the seven prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire openly sold their votes, and Jacob Fugger supplied roughly 544,000 of the approximately 850,000 florins in bribes that secured the election of the Habsburg Charles V over Francis I of France. When repayment lagged, Fugger wrote to the emperor in 1523 reminding him that 'it is well known that Your Majesty without me might not have acquired the Imperial Crown' and demanding his money.
Fugger did not lend to rulers against their promises; he lent against specific productive assets, such as the future output of the Schwaz silver mines of Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol, which he took in kind at a fixed low price. This turned an unenforceable sovereign loan into a claim on metal he could sell himself.
Once a single lender becomes a ruler's indispensable source of cash, power shifts toward the creditor. The ruler cannot afford to default on the one financier able to fund his next war or election. Fugger used this dependence to extract monopolies, tax farms and legal protection from Habsburg rulers who formally outranked him.
Church doctrine banned usury, so Fugger worked to change the rule rather than evade it. He sponsored the theologian Johann Eck's 1515 disputation in Bologna defending 5% interest as legitimate. He also financed Albrecht of Brandenburg's purchase of church offices, which was repaid through indulgence sales that helped provoke Luther. Read this way, a financier's key moves include shaping the moral and legal frame that decides which profits count as legitimate.