The Election of rudolf von Habsburg in 1273

On October 1, 1273 seven princes elected a new king of the Romans. Their choice was a momentous one that set European history further down its path away from a universal empire to separate kingdoms and principalities. The pope had demanded that they come to a unanimous decision so that the empire could again participate in a crusade to stop the remains of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be swept away for good. So why did  they chose a modest count from what is now Northern Switzerland and not any of the kings, dukes and princes who had been vying for the job and who could count on support from Naples, Rome, Prague and Paris is what we will look into in this episode, the first of our new season “from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull – the Holy Roman empire 1250-1273.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 139 – The end of the Interregnum

On October 1, 1273 seven princes elected a new king of the Romans. Their choice was a momentous one that set European history further down its path away from a universal empire to separate kingdoms and principalities. The pope had demanded that they come to a unanimous decision so that the empire could again participate in a crusade to stop the remains of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be swept away for good. So why did  they chose a modest count from what is now Northern Switzerland and not any of the kings, dukes and princes who had been vying for the job and who could count on support from Naples, Rome, Prague and Paris is what we will look into in this episode, the first of our new season “from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull – the Holy Roman empire 1250-1273.

But before we start let me run through the usual Spiel about the History of the Germans being advertising free. It matters. I guess you have seen the recent news about Google being fined §2.6bn  for market abuse as they pushed customers towards their own shopping platform. This used to be such an elegant machine providing super fast, uncluttered access to the information one wanted. Now it is like a shopping mall where you have to squeeze past shrieking billboard to find the little independent bookshop in the far corner. Since I am short a few billions to spend on fines, I rely on Patrons and one time supporters who can sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans and historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks so much to Michael P., Krystian N., Sarah R., Steve M and geweinstein who have already signed up.

On December 13, 1250 in Castel Fiorentino, near the small town of Torremaggiore in the northern part of his beloved Puglia, the emperor Frederick II, the Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World breathed his last. The official cause of death was dysentery, but at the time of his death he had been exhausted from decades of conflict with the Lombard cities, rebellious Sicilian nobles, the crusaders in the Holy Land, and above all, the papacy.  Whilst not defeated, his position was precarious, he had lost the crucial battle of Parma and with it his war chest. Most of his friends and advisers who had been by his side since he first set out to Germany to gain his imperial crown at the age of 16 were now dead, some by his own paranoia.

His death marked not just the end of the era of the Hohenstaufen as a major European dynasty but also the end of the high medieval empire that had begun with the coronation of Otto the Great in 962. What followed was a century of chaos and convulsions until a new political structure settles in, the Holy Roman empire with its electors, its prince-bishops, free imperial cities and its diets and courts as set out in the Golden Bull of 1356.

Or that is how the story is commonly told. But as we all know, history does not tip on the pin of a single event. Many of the structural pillars of the Holy Roman Empire date back long before the death of Frederick II and the ideal of a universal emperor crowned by the pope in Rome continued for several centuries after the light of the Stupor Mundi was extinguished.

The death of the last of the Hohenstaufen emperors created two separate sequences of events. One of those were the various attempts of the descendants of Frederick II to hold on to and then regain the kingdom of Sicily. We covered this in Episode 91 “Hohenstaufen epilogue” which is one of the most epic stories in German medieval history, but one that had limited repercussions for the narrative we want to follow here.

What we will focus on now is what happened North of the Alps.

In 1245 Pope Innocent IV had excommunicated and deposed Frederick II. In the wake of that decision some of the German princes elected anti-kings, first Heinrich Raspe, the Landgrave of Thuringia and once he had died, William Count of Holland. These anti-kings stood against Konrad IV, the son of Frederick II who had been elected King of the Romans way back in 1237, but had never been crowned. This civil war ended when Konrad IV decided to seek his fortunes in Sicily in 1251 where he died in 1254.

William of Holland was therefore King at least from 1251 to the day in the winter of 1256 when his horse broke through the Ice of a Frisian lake and his enemies clubbed him to death and concealed his body under the foundations of a house, not to found for 26 years.

William of Holland had two successors, in the loosest meaning of the word. One was Alfonso X, the Wise of Castile, a thoroughly well-educated man with some Hohenstaufen blood who took the crown proposed by the cities of Pisa and Marseille for reasons even his biographers cannot quite figure out. Alfonso never travelled north and remained very much a footnote in the History of the Empire. At the same time some of the electors raised Richard of Cornwall, the brother of king Henry III of England to be the future emperor. Richard was a bit more proactive than Alfonso, traveled to Aachen to be crowned king and visited the empire a subsequent three times, before he became so embroiled in English politics, his already modest role in German politics vanished completely.

Now here is the thing. None of these kings had much impact. They were absentee landlords who had taken the title to pursue narrow personal objectives. It was more vanity than a sincere ambition to take on the mantle of a universal emperor defending Christianity against its foes. And even more importantly, they were either unable or unwilling to assume their role in the emerging constitution of the realm as the provider of peace and justice.

The Mainzer Landfriede that formalized the relationship between the princes and the emperor and established rules for conflict resolution had been agreed upon in 1235. Under these rules the emperor had precious little left of the regalia, the fundamental expressions of medieval sovereignty which included the right to raise taxes, demand tolls, administer justice, mint coins, found cities, build castles and so on and so on.

Rather than being a monarch who could call upon all free men of the empire to go to war on his behalf, the emperor was an arbiter between the diverging interests of the princes. He was to resolve differences by offering compromises both parties could agree upon. And if one of the parties rejected the compromise, the resolution was to be found by force of arms. All the emperor could do at that point was to set the rules of feuding, demanding a 3 day cooling-off period and putting limits to the level of violence. For instance the parties were prohibited from burning down castles, houses and barns and should protect widows and orphans. It was apparently ok to produce widows and orphans, just not harm them beyond massacring their husbands and fathers.

Combatants who breached these limitations could be subjected to an imperial ban. An imperial ban strips a person of all their rights, namely the right to property and even to his or her own life. A person under the ban was “vogelfrei”, which translates as “free as a bird” but has a very different meaning. Like a wild bird that belongs to no one, anyone can trap it and kill it, or more precisely could at the time since this was before the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was established in 1889.

This level of imperial power is indeed a long way away from the crowned figure on the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes Leviathan that carried the quote from the book of Job: “There is no power on earth to be compared to him.”

But despite the narrowness of the imperial mandate, the absence of an effective King of the Romans during the period from 1245 to 1273 did have a major impact. Sure, during the time of the Hohenstaufen and even the previous dynasty, the Salians, emperors had been absent for extended periods of time. But they usually left behind some form of regency council or a caretaker to perform the duties to maintain peace and justice. And the emperors had influence far beyond their formal rights due to two things, their personal prestige and the resources coming from the combination of their family possessions and the imperial lands and estates.

When it comes to prestige Frederick II and his grandfather Frederick Barbarossa were hard to beat. Impressive personalities both, able to display imperial grandeur through elaborate displays combined with military prowess made their voices heard. It is always important to remember that the medieval political system was built on personal relationships, not the monopoly of power of the state. Hence a ruler who can impress his vassals has a huge room to maneuver, even if his formal powers are limited. On the flipside a ruler like William of Holland who ever so often had to remind his subjects that he “was appointed by the pope” quickly finds himself isolated and unable to drive policy.

As Theodore Roosevelt quibbed many centuries later, effective politics means to: “speak softly and carry a big stick”. And in the case of the emperors in the High Middle Ages, that big stick were the financial and military resources they commanded directly. The Hohenstaufen had accumulated quite a lot of those sticks. They had been the dukes of Swabia and hence held large sways of lands in what is now Alsace, the Palatinate and Wurttemberg. They had taken over the Welf lands in Swabia that was once a almost a duchy in its own right. They had taken possession of the Salian inheritance that stretched along the Main river and then further north into the Harz mountains, including Goslar. By their imperial role they controlled parts of Franconia, including the rapidly expanding city of Nurnberg. And then south of the Alps Frederick II possessed many a castle, some on the back of the inheritance of the countess Matilda of Tuscany, some thanks to his son in law, Ezzelino da Romano’s conquests. And then most importantly, there was the fantastically rich kingdom of Sicily. Few, if any princes could ignore an imperial order backed up by so much wealth and power.

Which gets us to the period from 1245 to 1273. None of the kings and anti-kings had enough personal standing or wealth or power to tell the princes what to do. Some, like Richard of Cornwall tried to bring their weight as great military leader and wealthiest man in England to bear, but he rarely stayed long enough to follow through with his decisions.

The conflict resolution process collapsed and imperial bans, if issued at all, were widely ignored. The traditional view is that the empire descended into chaos during this period. But modern historians like the great Peter H. Wilson dispute this, claiming that to be Habsburg propaganda.

When I look at what we have seen so far, some of the fiercest feuds were taking place during this period, such as the conflict between the Landgrave of Meissen, Albrecht the degenerate and his sons, namely Friedrich der Gebissene (Frederick the Bitten). We also have the rapid expansion of king Ottokar II into Austria, Styria, Friuli and Salzburg, most of which on the back of cold hard steel rather than marriage contracts. But then feuds and illicit acquisition of lands wasn’t anything new and the days of Henry VI and Frederick II had seen similar rough play.

But those large feuds of the previous century had taken place in the north where imperial power was already much weaker than it was in Swabia and Franconia. What was new and what brought about contemporary fears of the end of days was that this kind of violence had now engulfed the south as well.

One particular menace is now one of Germany’s most popular tourist attractions, the castles along the Rhine. Many of them like Rheinfels, Sooneck and Reichenstein had been built by actual robber barons who harassed trade along the river. Given the vital importance of the Rhine as a conveyer belt of goods from the south to the north, including supplying thirsty Englishmen with copious quantities of white wine, the cities along the river tried to bring the situation under control. In 1254, led by the cities of Mainz and Worms a league of Rhenish cities was founded. The purpose was to keep the trading channel open, smoke out the barons and protect the merchants. The league quickly attracted all the other major cities on the Rhine, Cologne, Oppenheim, Bingen, Speyer, Strasburg and Basel. They established a fleet of armored ships and besieged the Rheinfels. But they failed militarily, by 1257 the league dissolved and the Rhine trade kept suffering.

The other main event was the dismemberment of the Hohenstaufen and the imperial possessions. Once Konrad IV had disappeared down south in 1251, local lords began nibbling at the edges and when he died in 1254 the contest became ever more intense. When the last Hohenstaufen, Konradin, was executed in Naples in 1268, the final feeding frenzy set in.

Some of these properties had been imperial fiefs, others had been the private property of the Hohenstaufen family. But all of them were up for grabs. Imperial princes and lesser lords occupied castles and towns waving dubious charters and double handed swords. Within just a few years all of it was redistributed. Some may have believed they took it for safekeeping should a real emperor finally appear, some, like the landgrave of Thuringia claimed to be the true heir of the House of Hohenstaufen, but many just took it for themselves.

The regnum Teutonicum was not the only kingdom that was in trouble in the second half of the 13^th century. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was on its last leg. The city of Jerusalem that Frederick II had regained for the crusaders was lost and had been sacked in 1244. A crusade led by Saint Louis into Egypt ended in another unmitigated catastrophe. The Mamluks of Egypt had now taken over Syria and the crusaders were again pushed back to a long strip of land along the coast. Baibars, the new sultan of Egypt picked off the great strongholds, the Krak des Chevaliers of the Hospitallers and Montfort of the Teutonic Knight in 1270. In 1272 another crusading effort fizzled out, leaving Accre as the very last outpost.

This impending collapse of the crusader states did occupy most of Europe but nobody more than the pope. As papal policy saw it, only a concerted effort of the whole of Western Christendom could turn things around. Experience of the preceding three decades had shown that efforts by just the French and the English weren’t enough. What was needed was a major contribution from the empire. These considerations weren’t just purely political and military. Mystics and holy men had been predicting for a century that only an emperor would be able to conquer Jerusalem and initiated the 1000 years of bliss, whilst the fall of the empire would bring about the collapse of the world.

The current king of the Romans and hence emperor in waiting, Richard of Cornwall could not lead the imperial forces to victory in the Holy land, in part because he was stuck with baronial insurrections and Simon de Montfort’s push for a proper parliament in England, but more crucially, because he had died on April 2, 1272.

Therefore, despite all the misgivings about overbearing emperors, Pope Gregory X demanded that the next King of the Romans should be elected unanimously and should be someone who could lead a crusade. And the man to make this happen was Werner von Eppstein, the archbishop of Mainz.

Werner’s first question that needed answering was, what does unanimous mean? In the early days of the empire, all elections had been unanimous, not because everyone agreed, but because all those who did not agree left the election diet and had to be convinced, aka bribed, one by one as the new emperor made his progress across his new realm.

That model began to fall apart with the election of Lothar III in 1125 where the Hohenstaufen brothers stormed out and went to war with the newly elected emperor. After that we had a whole string of contested elections where frustrated contenders claimed the election to be invalid on the grounds that not enough or not the right people had been at the election diet.

Who were the right people to elect a king of the Romans and future emperor?

When things kicked off in 919 at the election of Henry the Fowler, the idea was that the king was elected by the stem duchies, i.e., by the Swabians, Bavarians, Saxons and Franconians. These duchies were to be represented by their dukes and senior lords, which made sense when there were dukes for each of the duchies. But as the duchies fragmented, Franconia into lots and lots of little princes, Swabia into Swabia, Zaehringen and the Welfish lands, Saxony into Westphalia, Brunswick and Saxony and Bavaria into Austria, Andechs-Meranien and Bavaria that system had to be abandoned.

In 1152 at Barbarossa’s election, the general view was still that all lords, ecclesiastic and secular were allowed to participate, but that narrowed down rapidly. At Frederick II election in 1196 counts were excluded and in 1198 the abbots. Participation still fluctuated. In 1208, 1212 and 1220 elections were large gatherings whilst those of 1211, 1237, 1246 and 1247 were much smaller events.

At Konrad IV’s election, the last one that had been universally recognised as valid, only 11 electors were present. These were the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Salzburg, the bishops of Bamberg, Regensburg, Freising and Passau and amongst the secular lords, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine, the king of Bohemia, the landgrave of Thuringia and the duke of Carinthia. That election was described as unanimous, even though some important imperial princes like the dukes of Saxony, Zaehringen and Andechs-Meranien, the archbishop of Cologne and the margraves of Meissen and Brandenburg had not attended.

So this does not help. What we do know is that in 1273 when this momentous election happened it was broadly acknowledged that there were seven electors. But nobody has yet found a constitutional document that sets out when and why this was decided nor a logic that explains who was in and who was out.

The first legal text that states the election rights of the seven electors, the Schwabenspiegel of 1273 unhelpfully claims that it had always been thus, ever since Charlemagne had decreed it so.

This is a conundrum that has baffled medievalists for centuries now and I am afraid there is still no consensus. There are several competing theories.

The first one is the arch-offices theory. That theory says that the electors are those who hold the great offices of state, the three archchancellors of Germany, Italy and Burgundy, which are the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier. Then the Grand Marshall, which was the duke of Saxony, the High Stewart who was the Count Palatinate on the Rhine, the High Chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburg and Grand Cup Bearer, the king of Bohemia. That sounds sensible. Princes who take a major role in managing the empire should also be in charge of selecting the new emperor. The problem with that theory is that it just shifts the debate. These great offices of state for the secular princes come about around the same time the role of the electors is established, so it remains unclear why it was seven and why these seven.

Then we have the canon law theory which says that the legal framework of the electors was modelled on the college of cardinals who had the exclusive right to elect the pope since the 11^th century. That too makes sense and explains why the number of electors was narrowed down, but again fails to explain why it was seven and why these seven. Eike von Repgow in his Sachsenspiegel had stated that there were 6 electors as early as 1237, but again nobody knows where he got that from.

Then recent elaborate studies were trying to prove that the underlying principle was that the seven electors are the direct descendants of the Ottonian family through the female line. Now I do not want to  offend anyone, but given the analysis identifies 3,400 descendants of the Ottonians alive in 1273 I am profoundly at a loss how this narrows it down in any meaningful way.

Call me a cynic, but if I had been in the position of archbishop Werner of Mainz and had been under strict instruction by my boss in Rome to organise an election that results in giving the empire a viable monarch, I would go and make sure I get all the most powerful people in the empire into a room and make them agree. And as it happened, nature had helped narrowing down the list of powerful princely families in the empire.  The Babenberger dukes of Austria, the Zaehringer, the dukes of Meranien and the Ludolfinger landgraves of Thuringia had all died out.

Which meant that if we go through the major clans, there is first and foremost the king of Bohemia, Ottokar II, the by far richest and most powerful of the imperial princes. He definitely deserves a seat. Then we have the Wittelsbachs who hold two major principalities, the duchy of Bavaria and the Palatinate. At least one of them should be on the list. Then there is the house of Anhalt who were dukes of Saxony and margraves of Brandenburg, no question, they should be there.

Then we get to the more difficult ones. The House of Wettin had inherited the Landgraviate of Thuringia but was in the middle of the feud and Frederick the Bitten was the grandson of emperor Frederick II which would be a good enough reason for the papal authorities to want him kept out. The house of Welf, dukes of Brunswick too were squabbling plus were far away so NFI.

And to represent the church the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier were materially richer than Hamburg and Magdeburg. Only Salzburg could compete but was outmanoeuvred by the other three.

There we have it. Seven votes are needed for a unanimous vote.

Now let’s go to the runners and riders, which is what made the election of 1273 one of these very rare events that could indeed have put European history on very different path.

The first one to put his hat in the ring was King Alfonco X of Castile. In fact he had been in the ring all this time since 1257 since he was elected at the same time as Richard of Cornwall. He just hadn’t done anything about it. He wrote to the pope asking for endorsement. That was immediately rebuffed. Pope Gregory X knew that Alfonso had no backing in Germany whatsoever plus he was another Hohenstaufen descendant in the female line which made him suspect.

Alfonso out, the next one bringing his weight to bear was King Ottokar II of Bohemia. Ottokar II commanded the resources not just of Bohemia with its rich silver mines and fertile lands. He also had taken over the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia, had put one of his followers on the seat of the archbishopric of Salzburg and expanded further south into Frioul and Aquilea.  Even more importantly, he had been a crusader up in the Baltic. We had met him in episode 131 when he rescued and then expanded the Teutonic Knight’s position in Prussia and had the city of Koenigsberg named after him in gratitude. His friends and his foes called him the Golden King for all the splendour of his dress, his castles and his entourage.

Ottokar was a perfect candidate as far as the papacy was concerned. Powerful and committed enough to lead the rescue of the Holy Land.

Though he looks like a shoe-in, there is a few small issue here.

Before Ottokar had decided to go after the imperial diadem, he had been very close to Frederick the Bitten, the landgrave of Thuringia and margrave of Meissen. Frederick’s mother had been the daughter of emperor Frederick II and – now that all the male Hohenstaufen were dead, he, Frederick saw himself as the true heir to the crowns of Sicily and Jerusalem, the duchy of Swabia and all the rest. The Ghibelline faction in Italy saw him as Frederick III, the promised emperor who would expel the Guelfs and bring back imperial order.

By the time old king Richard had died, Ottokar was still engaged to Frederick’s daughter and there had been rumours of Frederick and Ottokar would break into Northern Italian and ride all the way to Naples.

Though Ottokar had quickly ditched Frederick and all these plans to go south once he sensed he was in with a chance to gain papal support, but there was still a whiff of imperial overreach around him.

And that whiff was what the German princes felt in their nostrils too. They – quite rightly – worried that such a rich, powerful and ambitious prince could turn into an emperor who would curtail their rights and – shock horror – force them to hand back all the formerly imperial lands and castles they had so recently acquired.

And then a third international player registers an interest – Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily and count of Provence. Charles is the man who had wrestled Sicily from the heirs of Frederick II and just five years earlier had Konradin, the last Hohenstaufen prince executed on the market square of Naples. He did not want an emperor to come down and contest his rule claiming some imperial overlordship of Sicily as had happened several times before.

Charles could not stand himself as the blood of the teenage hero of the Ghibelline cause was still not dry on his hands, but he had a nephew, king Philipp III of France he decided to champion. Philipp, son of Saint Louis and inveterate crusader should again please the pope.  His nickname, le Hardi, the bold spoke to his determination to expand the royal domain which gained Toulouse and Alencon and to eradicate feuding in his kingdom.  He was by all accounts a great medieval ruler. And he was very keen on the imperial crown. As France had gained in standing, its rulers positioned themselves more and more as the true heirs to Charlemagne. Why, they asked with some justification, should the imperial crown be in the gift of the Germans with their fragmented kingdom and ineffectual rulers.

All good arguments though again from the papal perspective there was some fear that a linkup between Sicily and the empire was again on the cards, meaning the papacy could again be encircled by a powerful ruler which in turn would lead to a re-run of the epic battle between pope and emperor that had only just been brought to a close.

Then we have the homegrown princes. Federick the Bitten was obviously out as the Hohenstaufen continuity candidate. The Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria had his eye on the throne, but he would have to convince his brother, the Count Palatinate to endorse him, but that was impossible. The duke of Saxony briefly considered a candidature but gave up quickly being the poorest and most remote of the electors.

That was it. The pope had said he wanted a unanimous vote. He wanted the empire united so that the urgently needed crusade could get under way. He did have a preference for Ottokar, but in the end he left the decision to the electors.

Spoiler alert, the electorss did not choose Ottokar. Nor did they choose Philipp of France, nor did they choose anyone amongst their own number. They did choose a count from the Aargau who had become wealthy, if not rich on the disintegration of the Hohenstaufen and the demise of the Kiburgs and Zaehringer. A man 55 years of age, a renowned warrior, tall and manly, a name you may have heard before, Rudolf of Habsburg.

Before we get to how they arrived at this decision, let us just take a few moments and think about how European history had panned out if they had chosen either Ottokar or Philipp of France.

A king and later emperor Ottokar would have shifted the centre of gravity of the empire eastwards. His interests lay in Poland, Hungary and North-east Italy. He would in all likelihood have regained the Hohenstaufen possessions in Franconia and maybe Swabia. Bavaria and the Palatinate would have  become satellites of the Bohemian king.  In other words the Habsburg empire a two hundred years before it was actually created. And this could have been enough time to assert a more powerful central authority across the empire. It would also have given the Slavic components of the empire much more weight whilst the three archbishops of Cologne, Trier and Mainz would have ended up in the periphery.

Had Philipp III of France gained the crown, a quite different scenario would have emerged. The French monarchy was a lot more streamlined and focused on consolidating power and establishing a functioning royal bureaucracy. If gradually applied to the westernmost regions of the empire, France would have had more resources to rebuff the English in the 100 years war. From 1303 they also dominated the papacy and, in conjunction with the Anjou in Sicily could have dominated the wealth of Italy.  The empire would thus become again the universal empire of Charlemagne and Otto the Great, the central authority for the whole of western Europe. We may even had re-consolidated Germany, France, Burgundy and Italy and thereby sidestepped the nationalist wars of the 19^th century. Ok. This is maybe pushing it a bit too far, but one fact is undeniable. Without this election, the counts of Habsburg would have remained in the second division as important princes in Swabia, and after the loss of Switzerland could have even faced relegation into the regionals.

Which gets us to the million dollar question, why Rudolf von Habsburg?

Usually this is all about friends in high places, but sometimes, rarely, but sometimes it is about just friends. And Rudolf’s friend was another Frederick, Frederick the burgrave of Nurnberg. This Frederick was not in contention for the crown but he was seen as an honest broker. Someone who had the ear of all the important people. And he convinced the electors, that Rudolf,a count from the Aargau with possessions in Alsace and the Black Forest was the perfect candidate. He was already old by the standards of the time and should hence not last for very long. He was rich but not so rich as to be a genuine threat. He was a warrior of some renown, someone who could lead an army on crusade. And he was already a crusader having fought with the Teutonic Knights alongside Ottokar. And he had been one of the great winners in the dismemberment of the Hohenstaufen lands which meant he was unlikely to force the other princes to hand back their gains. He had a brace of daughters he could marry to the remaining bachelors amongst the electors tying him to them and vice versa. He had been a supporter of the Staufers in the past, may even be the godson of the old emperor Frederick II, but was also loyal to the papacy. He was all around the solution to the problem.

And Fr4edrick Burggrave of Nurnberg convinced them. Ottokar II protested but the other electors removed him from the list and replaced him with duke of Bavaria. And so, after negotiations that had lasted 18 months from April 1272 to the 1^st of October 1273 finally a unanimous decision was arrived on. Rudolf von Habsburg was to be king.

And here is the irony. Frederick, burgrave of Nurnberg who held the stirrups for the ascent of the House of Habsburg to become rulers of an empire where the sun never sets had been a member of the house of Hohenzollern, an ancestor to Frederick the great and Wilhelm I who would break the power of the Habsburgs almost exactly 600 years later. Now what is that for a coincidence!

Being elected to kingship of an empire that barely exists any more is not a straight road to world domination though. Many things Rudolf and his descendants will still have to do to get there. The very first step on this journey was the confrontation with Ottokar II, the golden king who is, as the English would say, a bit miffed about the outcome of the election. But that is a story for another time, next time to be precise. I hope you will come along again.

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