From Revindication to the Battle of Dürnkrut

This week we will look at what the poor count Rudolf of Habsburg does once he had been elected King of the Romans. This is not the first time the electors have chosen a man of much more modest means than themselves. William of Holland and Hermann von Salm had failed to leverage their elevated status into tangible gains. But Rudolf is different. Through a combination of charm, cunning and fecundity he managed to wrestle the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia from its current owner, the immeasurably rich and profoundly vain king Ottokar II of Bohemia. A story of political acumen, personal bravery and dishonourable tactics.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 140 – Rudolf von Habsburg and the Golden King Ottokar II of Bohemia

This week we will look at what the poor count Rudolf of Habsburg does once he had been elected King of the Romans. This is not the first time the electors have chosen a man of much more modest means than themselves. William of Holland and Hermann von Salm had failed to leverage their elevated status into tangible gains. But Rudolf is different. Through a combination of charm, cunning and fecundity he managed to wrestle the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia from its current owner, the immeasurably rich and profoundly vain king Ottokar II of Bohemia. A story of political acumen, personal bravery and dishonourable tactics.

But before we start, let me thank our patrons one more time. They are the ones who keep this show on the road. And they get mentioned  at the start of the podcast. As you may have noticed, I normally just read out first name and initial, but some have asked to have their full name read out. So I asked the whole Patreon community how you want me to proceed. That was a genuine question not just me fishing for compliments, but I must say I am bit overwhelmed by the nice things you guys had to say about the podcast. On the subject it seems views are very divided, some like the anonymised version, others really want me to read out their full name. So I have concluded to read out the names of those of you who really want me to and stick with the previous version for everyone else. I hope that works for you. So, if you want to hear your full name here and you are a patron or one-time donor above £20, message me, and if you are not yet, you can sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans and on historyofthegermans.com/support and your name will be heard of to eternity, or at least as long as there are podcast hosting platforms. And special thanks to Rory H-J,  Simon W., Melissa G., Brad and Barry M.

And then just one more thing. As you know I do not do advertising here at the History of the Germans. However I occasionally highlight other history podcasters who make shows that I enjoy and believe you may enjoy as well. One of these is The Cold War Conversations Podcast by Ian Sanders. His show does exactly what it says in the title, he interviews people about the cold war. And, other than me, he is a gifted interviewer who gets his guests to truly open up, sometimes about very difficult subjects. He has talked to former Stasi officers, east German tank commanders, Mormon missionaries in Cottbus, a US soldier who defected to the GDR, various spies undertaking clandestine operations but also just regular people like Sabine who was 13 when the wall came down. They are all sharing their experiences, some for the very first time. The Cold War Conversations podcast has a solid 300 plus episodes under its belt and some are grouped in playlists, including one on the former GDR. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts from or on his website: coldwarconversations.com

Now let us get going.

Last week we ended on Rudolf von Habsburg being elected King of the Romans and future emperor. But apart from some basic biographical markers, we haven’t heard much about him.

So let’s dig into his background. The gigantic Habsburg propaganda machine had done its best to portray Rudolf as a poor count wearing a modest grey coat who rose up from humble beginnings to the crown, which can only have been down to divine providence rewarding his humility.

Well, that was not quite true.

Rudolf was born in 1218 the son of Albert, called the Wise of Habsburg. The Habsburgs were nobles based in the Aargau, which is today a region in the North of Switzerland. They were named after their ancestral castle, the Habichtsburg or castle of the hawk that still stands near the market town of Brugg.

At the time this was part of the duchy of Swabia and the Hohenstaufen had been the dukes of Swabia. As vassals of the emperors, the early Habsburgs were involved in many of Frederick Barbarossa’s and Frederick II’s campaigns.  One ancestor had been at the fateful siege of Rome in 1167 when the imperial army and with it all of Barbarossa’s political capital vanished. Episode 57 – The Hand of God if you are interested. During the civil war between Otto IV and Philipp of Schwaben, the Habsburgs were backing up their Hohenstaufen side. And in 1212 Rudolfs grandfather made an audacious and ultimately very profitable move. He joined the young king Frederick of Sicily who had come up to Germany on a desperate mission to oust his enemy the emperor Otto IV. That endeavour, despite papal support, was by no means a guaranteed success. Only by a stroke of luck did Frederick get into the city of Constance on time. That was in Episode 75 – Wet Pants and other Miracles.

Rudolf’s grandfather not only supported the future emperor Frederick II with his sword and his advice, he also provided some much needed funds. The Habsburgs contributed 1000 marks of silver to the subsequent campaigns of Frederick II more than the bishops of Worms and Mainz and the other four much more magnificent princes stumped up.

So not quite that poor a count after all. All these decades as loyal supporters to the house of Hohenstaufen had paid off quite handsomely. The family had been enfeoffed with various estates in the Alsace, the Black Forest and in the Aargau. Other bits were added by the usual combination of matrimony and murder. But what made the really rich was a much more mundane source, the construction of a bridge across the Schoellenen Gorge which opened up the Gotthard Pass. This provided a new route for goods from Northern Italy to come north and the Gotthard quickly became one of the busiest connections. And the Habsburgs by various means controlled the whole section from where the road comes down into the valleys of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden to the Rhine at Bad Saeckingen. The tolls on the bridges was what made the Habsburgs rich.

Later the Habsburgs will claim an even closer relationship with the Hohenstaufen, including asserting that Rudolf’s grandmother was a certain Agnes von Staufen and that Frederick II had stood godparent to Rudolf von Habsburg, all of which may or may not be true.

Rudolf comes into his inheritance when he was 22 and his father, Alber the Wise had died. Whilst his ancestors were mainly courtiers looking to progress by the generosity of their masters, Rudolf took a different approach. In his time there was no longer a powerful emperor to cosy up to. This was the Interregnum and it was dog eat dog time.

With imperial power waning, inheritances that in the past would have gone to the crown to be enfeoffed to a loyal vassal of the emperor were now divided up amongst the most aggressive of their relatives. And Rudolf was very good and very lucky at that game. He did benefit from the unusual fecundity of his family which had placed sons and daughters into the bloodlines of practically anyone who was anyone in the south west of the empire. Which meant that as other families, less blessed with powerful loins, expired, there is always a Habsburg claim in the mix. During his career as a serial heir, several important families were dying out or weakened. One was a lateral branch of the Habsburgs whose possessions he managed to consolidate. Then a number of neighbours suffered from extinction, The Lenzburgs, then the Kiburgs whose ancestor Werner von Kiburg was the friend of duke Ernst of Swabia from episode 23 and finally the mighty dukes of Zaehringen disappeared from natural causes. Whenever that happened, Rudolf of Habsburg was there, holding the marriage contract in on hand and the sword in the other, demanding his share of the spoils, until he was the most powerful lord in Swabia.

This kind of life is one of perennial warfare. The annals of Basel record that in 1268 he conquered Utzenberg and some other castles, in 1269 he takes Reichenstein, in 1270 he besieges the city of Basel for 3 days, in 1271 he burns down the monastery at Granfelden and several villages and that same year he also destroys the castle at Tiefenstein, in 1272 he goes after Freiburg and destroys the surroundings of the city, and so forth and so forth.

When the negotiations over the election of 1273 drew to a close and Frederick of Nurnberg thought it expedient to bring Rudolf up to Frankfurt for the formal election, he found him in the midst of a siege of the city of Basel where he conducted a feud against the bishop. Bishops were sort of a speciality of his. He made his name in a feud against the bishop of Strasburg who had refused to hand over another one of these inheritances. His retaliation was relentless. He did not stop until he had the bishop stripped of all his strongholds and cities, including Strasburg itself.

Once the bishop had been replaced and his successor had recognised Rudolf’s victory, all Rudolf asked for was his original demand. The cities and strongholds he handed back, allegedly without even asking for a ransom payment. According to the chronicler he did this to turn a foe into a friend and ally.

That kind of behaviour was extremely unusual in the Middle Ages. And it hints to a more general observation that Rudolf was a strategic thinker well ahead of his time.  Outwardly he was warm and affable. But his engaging friendliness and outward humility covered a steely determination  to win, and to win at all cost. Conventions of chivalry that ruled the behaviour of Europe’s elites to him were just that, conventions, guidelines to be observed in normal times but that could be broken if the occasion demanded it. The rules of feuding as laid down by the Mainzer Landfrieden he disregarded on several occasion, once by burning down a nunnery. It was for that that he was excommunicated and had to do penance by fighting with the Teutonic knights in Prussia.

His favourite pastime beyond stabbing people was chess, a game in which he gained something of a reputation. And like a good chess player, he was able to think several moves ahead, much further than his adversaries.

And the first move he made upon being elected was to reassure the electors that his days as an insatiable warrior – his own word – were now over. Shortly after his coronation he addressed the princes, nobles and the people saying: quote “Today I forgive all those wrongs that have been done to me, release the prisoners who are suffering in my gaols, and I promise from now on to be a defender of peace in the land, just as I was before a rapacious man of war” end quote.

We will see whether peace and justice were his main motivation to take the job, but he made the resurrection of the admittedly rickety but only available conflict resolution system, the Mainzer Landfriede the core of his political program. The Mainzer Landfried had determined that before any feud could be declared parties were to consult a judge who would be given time to find a compromise. And there was a code of conduct to be observed. Breaking the code was to be sanctioned by the imperial ban. A banned man was ostracised, could no longer own property and could be killed by anyone passing by.

The way Rudolf revived the old order was by appointing Landvogte, protectors of the land each looking after a district. There they were to resolve the disputes between feuding parties and enforce the limitations set by the Mainzer Landfriede. Whether this was successful or not is as always hard to determine. But the system of Landvogtes remained and their bailiwicks would later become the imperial circles.

Though the Landvogte were usually members of the local aristocracy, they pursued the role of Vogt on behalf of the king. Therefore they had to be remunerated. That remuneration was to come from two sources. One was a general tax levied twice during the Rudolf’s 17 year reign. The other, and more significant one was the income from the imperial lands.

But the imperial lands were all lost, weren’t they. Yes, they had been, at least in large parts. But part of the Landvogt’s job was to recover these lands. This process was called the revindication and formed Rudolf’s second most important policy.

It appeared that many of the lords and bishops recognised that the pendulum had swung too far away from central authority and were prepared to hand back at last some of the properties that had been lost. And so one by one towns and castles returned to the king. And that just shows the smart way Rudolf went about his program. By starting slowly and roping in local lords as Vogts, he created acceptance for his policy. Once established, it developed its own dynamic and the Vogts demanded more restitutions that became more difficult to resist as the central authority became stronger.

Peter Wilson has calculated that Rudolfs policy brought 66% of the imperial church fiefs back into royal control, 73% of the crown lands and even 68% of the Hohenstaufen family possessions. That is a truly remarkable success given that the family lands had been entirely lost. And just for the avoidance of doubt, the vast majority of these lands were in Franconia and Swabia. The north that used to be the stem duchy of Saxony remained distant from the king. Only 3% of all of Rudolf’s charters relate to the North.

The next thing that was needed was a flagship campaign that made it plain to see that times have changed and a new king is in charge. And that campaign was the cleaning out of the robber barons in the Rhine valley. The cities along the Rhine, Mainz, Worms, Cologne, Strasburg etc. had pooled their military forces and had tried to dislodge this menace to their trade in 1256 but had failed. Now, in 1273, Rudolf von Habsburg gathers an army, joins up with the city forces and takes and burns Soonegg and had the robber knights of Reichenstein hanged. Allegedly he then used the wood from their gallows to build a chapel.

In November 1274, about a year and a half into his rule, he takes another step to re-assert royal power. He calls an imperial diet in Nurenberg where he requires all the imperial princes who hold their fiefs directly from the emperor to renew their vows of allegiance. This had been a standard procedure under the Hohenstaufen. The feudal system in the empire perceived vassalage as a personal agreement between lord and vassal. Hence if either lord or vassal dies, the successor has to renew the arrangement. This ritual had however fallen into disuse during the ineffectual kings of the last 2 decades.

And in November 1274 all imperial princes gather or at least send emissaries who renew the vows as required. By now Rudolf had generously distributed five of his six daughters to various important princes, which made the whole thing a bit of a family affair.

Only one did not show, did not want a marriage alliance with Rudolf and was impervious to his charm, and that was Ottokar II of Bohemia, the richest and most powerful of the imperial princes. Ottokar had been a very strong contender for the crown but found himself outmanoeuvred by the princes, the archbishop of Mainz and the burgrave of Nurnberg for which he bore a grudge against all of them. And he had a point in as much that he was supposed to have been one of the seven electors but had been removed at the last minute for dubious reasons.

Otokar II not only failed to show, he also made clear that he did not recognise Rudolf as the true king. Instead he began to style himself as an independent king. We need to remember that the title of the king of Bohemia wasn’t a real royal title. It was purely honorific and other than a real king, Ottokar was the vassal of a another king, and that king was Rudolf of Habsburg, the king of the Romans. Or at least that is how things used to be.

Ottokar II added the imperial eagle to his coat of arms and issued charters in the style of the imperial chancellery referring to himself as king by the grace of god. No way was he to bow down before that little count.

When Rudolf called that diet in Nurnberg he must have known that Ottokar would not come. And he must have known that this would force a confrontation. And that this confrontation would be challenging because of a minor delta in income and hence ability to raise troops.

Rudolf’s own lands produced about 7,000 mark of silver a year. The imperial lands a further 8,000. Sounds like a lot, but you have to look at it in context. The archbishop of Cologne for instance enjoys an annual income of 50,000 mark of silver, three times that of his king.

But it pales into complete insignificance in comparison with Ottokar. Ottojar isn’t called the golden king for nothing. His homeland of Bohemia had struck gold, quite literally. The mines in the Ore mountains were rammed full of mainly silver, but also copper and other metals whilst there were gold mines in Jilove just outside Prague. Ottokar kept about 200,000 mark silver and 800 mark gold in four heavily fortified castles. His annual income from Bohemia alone was another 100,000 mark silver.

On top of that he had the income from his acquired duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia as well as adjacent lands in North West Italy and Slovenia, which might have been another 100,000 mark of silver.

No way that the little Habsburg count could ever successfully stand up or even attack king Ottokar II, the golden king in all his pomp and splendour. Or so Ottokar thought. And Rudolf probably knew that Ottokar would think that way and that was exactly why he staged that event at Nurnberg and why he had demanded Ottokar to come and swear allegiance.

Rudolf could not be an effective king with the Bohemian sniping from the sidelines, and how long would Ottokar be content with just sniping and when would he stage his own election and try to oust him. The conflict was inevitable and the only way Rudolf could win the conflict was if he gets the imperial princes to line up behind him.

And that is not easy. The imperial princes may not like Ottokar very much, but that is not the same as going out and fight him. Rudolf needed to create an incident that triggered them into action. Ottokar’s refusal to bow to him was that incident. It was not just an insult to him, but also to all the other imperial princes who had elected him and supported him. The honour of the empire, Barbarossa’s old war cry, is back in play.

And there is another dimension. When I talked about the borders of the empire, two episodes ago, I pointed out that whilst empire is universal and comprises all of Christendom, it also has an inner core which comprises those territories who accept the emperor as their direct overlord. The kings of Poland and Hungary no longer did that. If Ottokar II declared himself as a king by the grace of god, he thereby also declared his and his kingdom’s exit from the empire. And that was not acceptable, not to the king and not the princes.

Rudolf had his incident and the incident had created the support he needed. He mustered his armies, both secular and spiritual. The archbishop of Mainz kindly excommunicated Ottokar and issued an interdict that brought religious worship there to a standstill, which was a catastrophe in the eyes of the general population.

An imperial diet declared Ottokar’s acquisition of Austria, Styria and Carinthia illegal. The duchy of Austria had been ruled by the house of Babenberg  since the 10^th century and when the last Babenberger duke, Frederick the Quarrelsome had died a prolonged war of succession ensued that involved the king of Bohemia, the Austrian nobles and nieces and sisters of the dead duke. The war ended when Ottokar had gained the support of the Austrian nobles and had married the sister of the last duke. Whether that gives him a legal right to the duchy is at least disputed and almost certainly  disappeared entirely when he divorced the much older woman that he had snatched from a monastery in the first place.

So when the imperial diet declared Ottokar’s rule in Austria unlawful, they had good arguments, but that does not make it any less of a political decision. And they not only called in the fiefs, they went one further and placed him under the imperial ban, making him an outlaw.

Otokar II is now excommunicated and banned, which isn’t comfortable for anyone. But even more uncomfortable must have been the realisation that he has been outmanoeuvred by the little count. And then he gets outmanoeuvred one more time. Ottokar had expected Rudolf to come after him personally in Prague and that is where he concentrated his forces. But he did not. Rudolf went instead to the barely defended Vienna and within the shortest time cleared the duchies from Ottokar’s supporters.

Ottokar then found himself unable to retaliate. His people did not like the interdict placed on them by the archbishop of Mainz. Rumours were going round the pope was to confirm the excommunication, that Ottokar had put his daughter away in a nunnery to stop her from marrying Rudolf’s son, that a hermit has seen a Sphinx who predicted his immediate defeat etc., etc.. Ah, and there is the fact that whilst abroad everybody called him the golden king, back home in Bohemia they called him the iron king for his tyrannical role. These 100s of marks of silver had to come from somewhere and best guess it were the aching backs of the miners and peasants.

Facing rebellion, Ottokar II gave up. He came to Rudolf to swear his allegiance. This image of the bejewelled golden king in all his pomp and splendour having to bow to Rudolf von Habsburg who had chosen his most humble coat for contrast has been retold and reproduced infinite times. As was Rudolf’s comment quote: “Often has he mocked my simple grey coat, let him mock it now” end quote.

Such humiliation cried out for revenge. No way is Ottokar, the golden king, the crusading hero of Prussia, going to let this stand. There will have to be a second round. And that second round came quite quickly, merely a year and a half later, in the summer of 1278.

This time Ottokar played his political cards a lot better. The key to Rudolf’s previous success had been the imperial princes. If he could split them away from Rudolf, his chances would improve immeasurably. That wasn’t particularly easy since Rudolf had formed a number of alliances with the main imperial princely houses backed up by marriages to 5 of his six daughters.

But on the other hand, Rudolfs revindication policy started to discomfort some powerful people who saw rights and lands being brought back into royal control. And then there was the issue about Austria and the other duchies. The princes were all for taking them away from Ottokar. But that does not mean they wanted it all to go to the Habsburgs. And where the princes would draw a firm line in the sand would be if Rudolf would take over the rest of Ottokar’s kingdom, Bohemia. If that happened, Rudolf would be as powerful as Ottokar had been in 1273 and the whole point of electing Rudolf was not to have a powerful Bohemian king in charge.

Playing on these cracks in the Rudolf’s alliances, Ottokar ensured that the rematch would take place without the imperial princes.

That was an improvement to last time, but the flipside was that Rudolf was now not just a lot, but an awful lot richer. Austria added a cool 100,000 marks of silver annually to his previous income of 15,000. Not quite as much as the king of Bohemia could raise, but a lot more balanced than last time.

As the two sides worked their way to the decisive battle, Rudolf managed to find a new ally, the king of Hungary. Ottokar had been in conflict with Hungary for most of his reign and for the Hungarians supporting Rudolf was a no-brainer.

Ottokar made the first move on July 20^th 1278 and invaded Austria. Rudolf led his troops out of Vienna to confront him. However, his army was not yet fully assembled. The soldiers he had recruited in Alsace and the Aargau had to come a long way. The Hungarian allies too were delayed. All in it took three weeks before Rudolfs army could march on Ottokar’s position.

Ottokar had chosen the terrain, a large plain outside the market town of Dürnkrut, about 50km north-east from Vienna. He had chosen his position well. The battlefield was bordered on its eastern flank by the river March and on its western side by some hills forcing the battle to take place in the centre.

Rudolf had a slight numerical advantage, but a large part of his army was infantry and lightly armoured Hungarians. They were less effective in a heavy cavalry battle where two blocks of armoured knights crash into each other.

So Ottokar may be a touch more confident, but both kings knew that the outcome of a medieval battle was highly unpredictable and that the risk was not just political and military but intensely personal. Both were experienced warriors, veterans of dozens of battles and their men expected them to lead from the front.

On the morning of August 26, 1278. The two sides, separated by a small stretch of water were trading insults and chants not dissimilar to the crowds at a football match. The bohemian war cry of Praha, Praha was countered by Rudolfs armies reply Roma, Roma and Christ, Christ. There was a lot of rattling of shields and singing of songs as the knights mounted their steeds to form their line of attack.

Rudolf’s Flemish slingers hurled their stones at the Bohemians whose Cumans and Sarmatians responded with clouds of arrows. But the impatient knights weren’t prepared to leave the fighting to the great unwashed infantrymen. After barely a few minutes the armoured cavalry troops crashed into each other, and from then onwards the slingers, archers and bowmen could no longer distinguish between friend and foe and retreated to the grassy banks of the river to watch the spectacle unfold. They were fortunate that the great nobles hadn’t decided to just steamroll them under their horses as the French famously did at Poitiers.

What followed was a typical battle during the times of high chivalry. It was man against man and the two leaders, easily identifiable one by his crowned helmet and the red Lion of Habsburg and the other clad in the most splendid armour and flying S. Wenceslaus flaming eagle were found in the centre of the melee.

Knights on both sides vied for the opportunity to unseat the enemy king. Several knights got close to Rudolf but he fought them off, piercing one under the helmet with his lance. Then a gigantic Thuringian knight pushed his way to the king’s side and speared his horse in the shoulder. Rudolf fell to the ground. Contrary to the general trope, medieval armour wasn’t too heavy for a man to stand up again, even a 60-year old like Rudolf. But still, he was on the ground in the midst of fighting men on enormous horses and with his enemy in pursuit. His rescue came in the form of an Austrian knight who had seen him fall and charged his adversary and pulled his master up onto another horse.

Soon after Rudolf had fallen and recovered, the battle was decided. And it was decided, as ever so often with Rudolf of Habsburg, not by fair contest within the rules of chivalry, but by cunningly bending them. The chivalric code demanded that combatant fight fair and square. No hidden reserves in the woods or sudden flank attacks, that was dishonourable. Rudolf wasn’t a chivalric knight, but a wildly ambitious Swabian chess player who cared more about winning than honour.

He had kept a sizeable contingent of knights in reserve behind one of the hills. On his command, these knights appeared and charged the Bohemians who were now static and caught in fighting their opponents. The momentum of the assault broke the Bohemian lines and they fled.

King Ottokar who had been fighting on the front line was suddenly confronted by some of his personal enemies, a man whose family he had had executed. And that man did not do what would normally have happened at this stage, i.e., take the king hostage and demand an epically large ransom. No, this man wanted revenge and he killed King Ottokar II, the great golden king of Bohemia, crusader in Prussia and dominant figure in European politics for decades. Ottokar was striped of his rich armour and his body was left naked on the battlefield.

Rudolf had the body eviscerated to prevent putrefaction and then displayed in Vienna for six months to make sure no fake Ottokars appeared. Only after that was his body brought to Prague and buried in St. Vitus’s cathedral where he still lies.

Rudolf used the victory to confirm the Habsburg rule of Austria, but he did not take over Bohemia. Bohemia was left to Ottokar’s son, Wenceslaus who married Rudolf’s last available daughter turning again a foe into a friend. Again the little count had prevailed and can move on to his next ambition, the imperial crown. How this pans out we will find out next week. I hope you will join us again.