The first chapter explores the new presence of the military in the city after the start of the war. It analyzes the militarization of civil society and the blend of increased prestige and tensions in civil–military relations characteristic of wartime. During the mobilization days, reactions in Prague resembled scenes in other European cities: streets buzzing with anxious agitation as crowds thronged army barracks and train stations. Increasingly ubiquitous gray uniforms delineated new visible wartime hierarchies. Contacts between soldiers and civilians sometimes led to violent clashes, especially prevalent around cafés and pubs. These locales were also hubs for spreading information in a context of increased censorship and military repression. General suspicion by the military authorities transformed Prague residents’ experience of the rule of law. The different facets of military mobilization and emergency measures in urban space are examined to contribute to the discussion on the nature of the Habsburg military wartime government.

Political intelligence was vital to the Company’s subsidiary alliance system; to enforce it, Residents needed to be able to identify when its conditions were being breached. Yet, the Residents’ papers indicate that the problem was not so much collecting intelligence as determining how to use it. Fraud, or the possibility of fraud, was an important consideration; Residents devised elaborate strategies for identifying forgeries as well as for managing the composition and transmission of letters at court. News passed by word of mouth proved even more ungovernable. Residents were prone to distrust rumour, viewing it as either idle gossip or as insidious disinformation propagated by enemies. Still, they sometimes had no choice but to engage with rumour, particularly when allegations of Company brutality circulated in the streets. Mistrust might have been a common feature at royal capitals, but it also permeated the Residents’ relationship with his superiors in the Company. Residents sometimes misrepresented their activities as a means of shoring up their authority, but they also relied on keeping lines of communication open; frequently, it was Calcutta that remained frustratingly silent. In sum, though gathering and disseminating intelligence was one of the Residencies’ primary functions, fulfilling this responsibility was never simple.

This chapter is a case study of the Histories of Gregory of Tours (d. 594). Other case studies in this book focus on letters of one particular author who criticised a person in power. This chapter is the exception, in that it treats not letters but a historiographical narrative, to see how the author presents himself as a truth-telling actor in the historical events he describes. It examines the models that may have inspired Gregory to present himself as a fearless defender of truth, and analyses the ways in which he embeds criticism in the autobiographical parts of his narrative. Two well-known episodes that Gregory described in his Histories, in which he confronts a Merovingian king, is studied in more detail; one concerns a clash with Chilperic I (d.584), king of Neustria, and the other a brush with Guntram (d. 592), king of Burgundy. A question that is addressed towards the end of this chapter is that of how Gregory’s professed ideal of telling the truth frankly relates to the reports of rumours and gossip in his Histories.