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In the summer of 1604, the Transylvanian Council of Government, which had been formed shortly before, submitted a longer report to King Rudolf I of Hungary. They reported on the administration and financial situation of the newly pacified province of Transylvania. The most pressing issue, however, was the pay and maintenance of the mercenary corps stationed in Transylvania. Accordingly, the bulk of the report is devoted to discussing problems relating to the army. The report gives us an idea of how a Council of Government (Regiment) that had already been ‘tried and tested’ in the Austrian hereditary provinces functioned in Transylvania, and introduces the challenges members of the Council had to face.

En los últimos años hemos sido testigos de un cambio de tendencia con respecto al estado-nación como tema central de la historia política europea. Al mismo tiempo, hemos presenciado un creciente interés en las «monarquías compuestas» como entidades políticas importantes en la Europa de la Edad Moderna. La historiografía portuguesa, con un sólid oénfasis en la historia de Portugal como nación independiente, se ha inclinado a considerar los años entre 1580 y 164 0como un desafortunado episodio dentro de la historia nacional, concentrándose especialmente en aquellos aspectos del período de la Unión de las Coronas que parecían presagiar la recuperación de la independencia, como si éste desenlace hubiese sido más o menos inevitable. El propósito de este artículo es el de equilibrar la balanza mediante el análisis de la naturaleza de la Unión y las consecuencias, tanto positivas como negativas, de la incorporación de Portugal a la Monarquía Hispánica, concluyendo con una disquisición especulativa sobre la supuesta inevitabilidad de la ruptura con la España de Felipe IV en 1640.Recent years have seen a move away from the tendency to make the rise of the nation state the central theme of European political history, and a growing interest in «composite monarchies» as important political entities in early modern Europe. Portuguese historiography, with its heavy emphasis on the history of Portugal as an independent nation, has tended to regard the years 1580-1640 as an unfortunate interlude in the national story, and has concentrated in particular on those aspects of the period of the Union of the Crowns which seem to look forward to the recovery of independence as a more or less inevitable development. This essay seeks to redress the balance by examining the nature of the Union and the consequences, positive as well as negative, of Portugal’s incorporation into the Spanish Monarchy, and ends by speculating on the assumed inevitability of the break with the Spain of Philip IV in 1640.