section_path: Institutions/Foreign relations
section_name: Foreign relations
paragraph_text: Foreign relations
  
  The Habsburg royal family had its own diplomats to represent its interests. The larger principalities in the Holy Roman Empire, beginning around 1648, also did the same. The Holy Roman Empire did not have its own dedicated ministry of foreign affairs and therefore the Imperial Diet had no control over these diplomats; occasionally the Diet criticised them.
  
  When Regensburg served as the site of the Diet, France and, in the late 1700s, Russia, had diplomatic representatives there. The kings of Denmark, Great Britain, and Sweden had land holdings in Germany and so had representation in the Diet itself. The Netherlands also had envoys in Regensburg. Regensburg was the place where envoys met as it was where representatives of the Diet could be reached.