The youth of an emperor
A few months after emperor Henry VII had died in the Tuscan village of Buonconvento and before a successor had been elected, a young man, Ludwig, second son of the duke of Upper Bavaria made his name defeating a much larger Habsburg force. This success could not have come at a more opportune time as it propelled him into contention for the title of King of the Romans and ultimately, emperor.
His rule, constantly contested but lasting 33 years would become a major turning point in German, if not European history as it triggered the modern notion of the separation of church and state.
I know that I cannot always maintain a completely unbiased position in this podcast, but I rarely succumb to my personal bugbears. But this time I will have to expose you to one of my biggest, and that is the weird romanticization of Ludwig II of Bavaria, the mentally ill recluse who built the three kitsch palaces of Neuschwanstein, Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof in the deluded hope of resurrecting an absolutist regime in a kingdom he had sold to Prussia. Don’t get me wrong. The three palaces are worth visiting, if not for their somewhat morbid charm, but what irritates me is that this politically and artistically inconsequential monarch overshadows the more interesting, more complex and more consequential Bavarian rulers, chief amongst them his namesake, Ludwig IV the Bavarian. Let’s see whether HotGPod cannot right this misconception…..
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 149 – The Real Ludwig of Bavaria, part of Season 8 – From the Interregnum to Golden Bull.
A few months after emperor Henry VII had died in the Tuscan village of Buonconvento and before a successor had been elected, a young man, Ludwig, second son of the duke of Upper Bavaria made his name defeating a much larger Habsburg force. This success could not have come at a more opportune time as it propelled him into contention for the title of King of the Romas and ultimately, emperor.
His rule, constantly contested but lasting 33 years would become a major turning point in German, if not European history as it triggered the modern notion of the separation of church and state.
I know that I cannot always maintain a completely unbiased position in this podcast, but I rarely succumb to my personal bugbears. But this time I will have to expose you to one of my biggest, and that is the weird romanticization of Ludwig II of Bavaria, the mentally ill recluse who built the three kitsch palaces of Neuschwanstein, Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof in the deluded hope of resurrecting an absolutist regime in a kingdom he had sold to Prussia. Don’t get me wrong. The three palaces are worth visiting, if not for their somewhat morbid charm, but what irritates me is that this politically and artistically inconsequential monarch overshadows the more interesting, more complex and more consequential Bavarian rulers, chief amongst them his namesake, Ludwig IV the Bavarian. Let’s see whether HotGPod cannot right this misconception…..
But before we start a big thank you to our one-time donation supporters. I have finally done the proper analysis over all of you and wow, some of you are extremely generous, making multiple donations over time. I want to thank specifically today Gary S., Dodo S., John C., Mary-Jane H, Simon F., Stefan A. and wortbau for their generosity.
Now back to the show
Last week we ended with the untimely death of emperor Henry VII from the House of Luxemburg. Even though he failed in his ambition to bring Italy to heel, his coronation as emperor had brought an end to the long period without emperors that began with the demise of Frederick II in 1250.
A lot had happened in these 63 years and the power structures of europe in general and the empire in particular had changed fundamentally.
The epic struggle between popes and emperors had resulted in a papal triumph. Pope Boniface VIII declared that it was paramount for the salvation of humanity that every monarch became subject to the pope. It was that self-same pope that was brought back down to earth by physical force and his successor Clement V had moved to Avignon under the de facto supervision of the king of France. The Kings of France had not only captured the papacy, they had also consolidated their lands and established a modern (in inverted commas) bureaucracy that gave them access to resources far, far larger than that of their eastern neighbors, the Kings of the Romans. Only the English kings and largest vassals of the king of France could contest their position.
The empire meanwhile had fragmented. The lands north of the Main River had de facto seceded out of the imperial orbit since the days of Henry IV and the Investiture Controversy in the 11th century and by the 14th century had only scant interest in the goings-on down south. They still fielded two electors, the dukes of Saxony and the Margraves of Brandenburg, but both rarely attended elections and used their right to elect mostly as a way to extract cash from the candidates.
Italy, after Henry VII failed attempt to bring it back under control was now left to its own devices. The emperors still claimed nominal overlordship and would appoint imperial vicars and grant aristocratic titles, often against generous donations. But apart from going to Rome for coronations and the fights on the way down and back, the emperors no longer saw Italy as a land they could or should control.
Within the core imperial territory that comprised modern day Southern Germany, the Rhineland, Austria, Switzerland and Czech republic power had consolidated into three main families, the Habsburgs, the House of Luxemburg and the House of Wittelsbach.
By 1313, duke Frederick the Handsome of Austria, oldest son of king Albrecht I together with his brother Leopold was the head of the Habsburgs. King John of Bohemia, son of emperor Henry VII, together with his uncle Balduin, the archbishop of Trier was the head of the house of Luxemburg . And the house of Wittelsbach was led by two brothers, Rudolph, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine and his brother Ludwig, the duke of upper Bavaria.
If things had followed the pattern of the last decades, we should now see one of the archbishops pull a minor unthreatening looking territorial lord out of his miter who would sign all sorts of promises and would then be elected king. But that was no longer the case. For one, the concept of electing poor counts had not exactly worked out. Each of these allegedly malleable rulers had broken all the promises and leveraged their royal position to acquire major imperial fiefs, and two had succeeded, Rudolf von Habsburg captured Austria for his sons and Henry of Luxemburg by gained Bohemia for his. Moreover, the three houses now held 3 of the seven electoral votes between them, Bohemia, Trier and the Palatinate. Hence the time of the election of small counts was over.
If one was to become king, it had to be someone from the three big families. The Habsburgs and the Luxemburgs each had a go already, the Habsburgs even had two. The Wittelsbachs had tried three times and three times had been kicked out in the early rounds. Spoiler alert, in 1313 it was the Bavarians’ turn, though -second spoiler alert – it was not at all smooth.
But before we get to the election itself, it time to get to know the Wittelsbachs, the third of the powerful families a little better, in particular their champion, Ludwig, duke of Upper Bavaria.
Therefore. Let’s start at the beginning.
If you come to Munich today and you look for the seat of the Bavarian dukes and kings, you will be directed to the Residenz, the largest inner city royal palace in Germany comprising 6 major courtyards, theatres, concert halls, an impressive hall of antiquities, a file of rococo state rooms, a treasury, museums etc.,etc., pp.
None of that existed in 1313. At that time the dukes of Upper Bavaria resided in what is today called the Alte Hof, the Old Court, a much more modest affair, tucked away two blocks away from the Residenz. And inside the Old Court you find a small tower, called the Monkey tower that allegedly could have put an end to the story of Ludwig the Bavarian before it had even begun. The story goes that the ducal family kept a pet monkey. That monkey took a liking to baby Ludwig and one day when a negligent servant left the window of the nursery open, the monkey snuck in and took the little prince. Once the nannies and servants realized what had happened, they tried to wrestle the baby away from the monkey. The frightened monkey fled and climbed up to the top of the monkey tower, still holding the precious little prince. It took hours for the ducal household to calm down the terrified animal and coerce it and the baby boy back to the ground. Ludwig was unharmed, the fate of the monkey is unknown, largely because the story is entirely invented and the tower tourist guides point out was built much later. But it is a cute story and I did not want to deprive you guys of it.
In part because up to Ludwig the Bavarian, his family, the house of Wittelsbach had been a touch short of cute stories.
The Wittelsbachs had been an important family in Bavaria since the 11th century. They made a huge leap forward in 1180 when Otto von Wittelsbach, hero of the battle on the Veroneser Klause and loyal paladin of emperor Frederick Barbarossa was enfeoffed with the duchy of Bavaria recently vacated by Henry the Lion. By then the ducal position mirrored that of the emperor in as much that the duke would generate some modest income from the rights, lands and privileges associated with the ducal title, but was mainly dependent upon his own resources when it came to maintaining his court and fund military adventures. So, when Otto became duke, his circumstances did not change quite as fundamentally as one may think.
It was Otto’s son, Ludwig I, known as the Kelheimer, who laid the foundation of the wealth of the Wittelsbachs. The Kelheimer was a supreme tactician and a very lucky man. For one, he benefitted from the demise of several important Bavarian families whose fiefs he seized on account of his ducal rights and kept hold of on account of his superior military forces. His fortunes improved further when the death of emperor Henry VI flung the empire into a civil war. The Kelheimer played each side against the other very smartly and walked away with the title of Count palatinate on the Rhine which made the House of Wittelsbach one of the Electors. When his cousin, another Otto of Wittelsbach murdered king Philipp of Swabia, far from being accused of collusion, the Kelheimer was able to seize the possessions of the other branch of the family. All that meant that by 1230 the Wittelsbachs had become the most powerful family in southern Germany after the Hohenstaufen and the kings of Bohemia.
1230, as it happened, was also the year the Kelheimer was murdered, weirdly in Kelheim, the place of his birth, by a man of foreign appearance who was unable to give his name, let alone the name of his client on account of being torn to pieces by the enraged crowd. Fingers pointed at emperor Frederick II. One of the Kelheimer’s schemes had upset the emperor who had close links to the Middle East and was rumored to be a friend of the Old man of the Mountain, the head of the Assassins. Whether or not he ordered the hit, we will never know though.
The Kelheimer’s son Otto II became known as the Illustrious. What made him key to this story, apart from his splendid court and another round of territorial acquisitions was called the first Bavarian division of 1255.
One of the most devastating things that could happen to a powerful aristocratic family in the 13th and 14th century was to have a lot of male heirs. Because contrary to the perception that all these duchies and territories were states, the holders of these titles regarded them as private property. And since the Salian law applied only in parts of the empire, many families, including the Wittelsbachs would split their lands amongst their surviving sons. And that is what happened in 1255. Otto II had two sons, and so the duchy of Bavaria was divided into two parts, the duchy of Upper Bavaria and the Duchy of Lower Bavaria. The oldest son, another Ludwig got Upper Bavaria and the Palatinate, whilst the younger one received Lower Bavaria.
This Ludwig duke of Upper Bavaria was the father of our Ludwig and the first Bavarian ruler who made Munich their main residence. Ludwig was known as der Strenge, which translates as “the Severe”. This moniker goes back to an event in his youth when he had his beautiful young wife, Marie of Brabant executed because he suspected her of infidelity. It turned out that this was a misunderstanding, but by that time her head was already in the basket. Ludwig – to his credit – became stricken with remorse, founded the monastery of Fürstenfeld and promised never to kill another wife. He stuck to that promise and his next wife died of natural causes after which he married Mechthild von Habsburg. Ludwig and his brother henry had both been candidates at the election of 1273 but had to concede to Rudolf von Habsburg pretty quickly. The marriage to Mechthild was part of Rudolf von Habsburg’s charm offensive that paved the way to his election.
Mechthild gave Ludwig the Severe five children, of which two sons, Rudolf born 1274 and the focus of this episode, Ludwig, born most likely in 1282.
As so often with individuals in this period we know next to nothing about Ludwig’s childhood and upbringing. It is likely that he spent the first 7 years of his life under the supervision of his mother. Once children had reached the age of seven they were considered old enough to begin preparation for their future occupation. Children of burghers would go to school, whilst peasants children would be expected to earn their crust in the fields or as servants in the manor house. The son of a duke would be educated in war, hunting and tournaments and the art of courtly love. By now a man of Ludwig’s status would be expected not only to read and write but also to be familiar with poetry and the chivalric romances. Many of Ludwig’s fellow aristocrats all the way up to the emperor Henry VI even wrote poetry. Hunting and tournaments played a huge role in the social interactions of the territorial lords and their vassals, hence Ludwig was expected to excel in all of these. Since he had not been destined for a role in the church, he did not learn much Latin or theology, but he had enough to recite the main prayers in Latin and probably understand their broad meaning.
So, apart from the dramatic thing with the monkey, Ludwig’s childhood was rather uneventful.
All that changed when his father died in 1294. Ludwig is at that point 12 years old. His brother, Rudolf is 19. As an adult, Rudolf had already set up his own court and had taken on some of the burdens of the ruler alongside his father. Given the Wittelsbach propensity to treat the surviving sons equally, Rudolf and Ludwig were supposed to manage their lands, the Palatinate and Upper Bavaria jointly. And since Ludwig was a minor, Rudolf demanded that he would be made the guardian of his brother, meaning that in effect Rudolf would run the place all by himself.
That attempt fell at the first hurdle which was the mother of the two dukes, Mechthild von Habsburg. Mechthild feared that Rudolf would push Ludwig aside or worse and she was not letting that happen. Mechthild had been appointed young Ludwig’s guardian and co-regent by the old duke and she insisted on having her say.
To protect young Ludwig, she sent him to the court of her brother, Albrecht, then still duke of Austria and on his way to become king of the Romans. In Vienna little Ludwig grew up with Albrecht’s two son’s, Frederick the Handsome and Leopold. I know there are a lot of name in this episode – again, but you may want to remember these two, Frederick the Handsome and Leopold of Austria.
Again, we do not know anything about Ludwig’s time in Vienna, so we can only speculate that he was trained in all chivalric skills. And Vienna was surely a great place to do that, in particular once Albrecht had become king of the Romans in 1298.
Meanwhile relations between Ludwig’s brother Rudolf and the Habsburgs deteriorated rapidly. Rudolf had voted for Adolf von Nassau as king, thereby denying Albrecht von Habsburg the crown at his first attempt. Then Rudolf married the daughter of king Adolf von Nassau, putting him firmly into the anti-Habsburg camp. At the battle of Goellheim where Albrecht defeated king Adolf von Nassau, Rudolf had fought on the losing side of his father-in law. Still Albrecht treated Rudolf with kindness and Rudolf attended Albrecht’s coronation.
But soon afterwards the relationship soured further. Rudolf attempted to overthrow Albrecht together with the Rhenish archbishops. Albrecht besieged and captured Heidelberg and Rudolf had to submit to the king’s mercy – again.
Rudolf is a fascinating personality in as much that literally every single one of his many, many schemes failed. And still he kept going and going.
After his defeat he went into a sulk. That sulk turned into all-out rage when king Albrecht demanded that Rudolf accepted the now 19 year old Ludwig as his co-ruler in the Platinate and Upper Bavarians had been set out in their father’s last will and testament. Being unable to do anything against the royal order, he turned instead on his own mother. Mechthild had been defending Ludwig’s rights these last seven years and Rudolf assumed that it was her who was behind the royal demand to let the little brother get his share of the inheritance.
And for that Rudolf really hated her. He had her and her key advisor, Konrad Oettlinger arrested and brought to Munich. She was accused of interfering in the running of the duchy and was ordered to hand back her morning gift, the lands she had received upon her marriage from her husband. She refused. Rudolf then had her advisor Konrad Oettlinger executed. Mechthild still refused. Rudolf went one further and accused her mother of having had a sexual relationship with Oettlinger. It all turned into a rather unpleasant scandal.
Under this enormous pressure Mechthild agreed to hand over her lands and rights to Rudolf and live out her life on a small pension somewhere in the remote countryside. But – as a frail woman – she would need to get this agreement confirmed by her brother, king Albrecht before she could sign it. Rudolf let her go and once she was safely at her brother’s court, Albrecht turned on Rudolf, declared the agreement null and void, returned everything to Mechthild and gave the scheming Count Palatinate a right old rollicking.
After all we know about Rudolf now, this kind of treatment was neither going to discourage him from pursuing further schemes nor was it going to improve his relationship with the Habsburgs. But things trundled along reasonably well. The two brothers ran the territory jointly though Rudolf probably had more control of the levers of power having been in charge for a decade already.
Things took a dramatic turn when as we know king Albrecht von Habsburg was murdered in 1308. At the election of Henry VII the two brothers had initially harboured a hope it may now finally be their turn, but that vanished rapidly. They did fall in line with everyone else and it was actually Rudolf who declared Henry VII emperor elect.
After this election Rudolf became a strong supporter of the Luxembourgs whilst Ludwig took a more neutral stance. But at the same time he decided that this co-ruler thing did not work any more. He proposed to Rudolf that they should split the Duchy of Upper Bavaria between each other.
The way they did that was quite fascinating. The brothers summoned their friends and relatives, including duke Otto of Lower Bavaria, Frederick the Handsome duke of Austria, Duke Henry of Carinthia, four bishops and brace of Bavarian counts. This commission was to split the duchy into two equal parts and then the two brothers would draw lots who would get which bit.
That whole thing was completely absurd. Let’s start with the fact that Frederick the handsome and the duke of Lower Bavaria were in the middle of a hot war with each other whilst at the same time they worked happily together on this commission. Henry of Carinthia had been expelled as king of Bohemia by his Habsburg cousins and Rudolf supported the Luxembourgs in their scheme to remove him again from Prague, still Henry of Carinthia was on the commission. Suffice to say that the inhabitants of these lands, the city councils and parishes had no say whatsoever in this decision that may cut them off from their neighbours, their trade routes and their longstanding allies. Still these kinds of processes weren’t at all unusual in that period.
The only way to understand what is going on is to look at the alternative. And that alternative was to settle the conflict by feud. And a feud would have a much more painful impact on the local population than a decision by a panel of local magnates who may even have a vested interest in preserving the settlement. And as for the fact that some members of the panel were actually at war with each other, it helps to regard these feuds not as “wars” but as legal disputes. Hence Frederick the Handsome could be in a legal disagreement with the Duke of Lower Bavaria, but that was not a personal vendetta, just a kind of a commercial dispute. And hence these two men could still cooperate with each other on issues like the division of Upper Bavaria. “Nothing personal, just Business”, though the protagonists did quite often harm and sometimes even kill each other in these feuds, but then, so do Mafia dons.
And as you would expect the separation of the duchy into two parts did not lead to a rapprochement between the brothers. The ink was barely dry on the agreement and the two of them were already at odds about the interpretation of this or that. So they gathered their followers and burned each other’s lands in an attempt to force the respective other side to accept their viewpoint.
What brought this feud to an end was the departure of Henry VII to Rome and his son John’s departure for Bohemia. Rudolf as a supporter of Henry VII first joined John and then caught up with the emperor in Pisa. I think last episode I called Rudolf Robert by mistake. So, Rudolph, count palatinate on the rhine and duke of one half of upper Bavaria spent the next 2 years with Henry VII in Italy, gained much praise for his street fighting skills in Rome and cut a fine figure at the farce of a siege of Florence.
Rudolf’s passion for supporting the emperor did however wane a bit when he asked for some sort of compensation for all his efforts. Henry VII, completely broke by this time said, no can do, to which Rudolph responded, nor can I, and returned home.
When Rudolf returned to Munich, he found the landscape quite profoundly changed. His little brother had used his time wisely. For one, he got married. And then he had gotten closer to his cousin and neighbour, duke Otto of Lower Bavaria. Otto and Ludwig had been joint guardians of Otto’s nephews, another set of dukes of lower Bavaria.
Maybe a quick word about this inflation in ducal titles. Since the ducal title no longer referred to an actual office, if a duke would split his lands between his sons, each of these sons would receive the title of duke. Occasionally the ducal title would even pass to all the sons even if they held no land in their own right, And in Bavaria that had meant that by 1312 there were a total of five dukes of Bavaria, 2 dukes of upper Bavaria, Ludwig and Rudolf, and three dukes of Lower Bavaria whose names you really do not need to hear. The same happened in Saxony and Brunswick plus the regular elevation of counts to dukes and you can easily have 100s, some say even a 1000 ducal titles at the same time in the empire. That is a very different situation to England, where there is always only one son who inherits the title, so that there were usually only about a dozen dukes and sometimes just 2 or 3.
Now back to Ludwig and his cousin Otto one of the three dukes of Lower Bavaria. Said Otto really liked Ludwig and made him the guardian of his son should he suddenly and unexpectedly pass away, which he then duly did.
Ludwig was now the guardian of all three dukes of Lower Bavaria, which made him the de facto ruler down there. That, together with his own half of the duchy of Upper Bavaria made him now a lot richer and more powerful than his hated brother Rudolf.
And guess what, Rudolf did not like this one bit and came up with another one of his brilliant schemes. He noticed that there were many in Lower Bavaria who hated the Habsburgs and therefore disliked Ludwig who had been a great friend of the Habsburgs. These Lower Bavarians were easy prey for even the rather modest charms of Rudolf. The growing unrest in Lower Bavaria put Ludwig into an uncomfortable situation.
If he remained an ally of the Habsburg he may lose control of the duchy, and worse, would lose it to his nasty brother Rudolf. The alternative was to break with the Habsburgs, tie the lower Bavarians to him. Since the Habsburgs may retaliate, this option would require a reconciliation with his brother as well.
Surprisingly, Ludwig chose option 2. He kissed and made up with his brother and retained control of Lower Bavaria. He even got a really good deal. The division of Upper Bavaria was reversed, a common administration was established and Rudolf whose main heir had died gave everything over to Ludwig, except for his rank as Elector.
Everything was fine now, right. No, it wasn’t. The Habsburgs had interests in Lower Bavaria for a long time and Ludwig’s U-turn did not go down well with them. They gladhanded the nobility of Lower Bavaria and even got to the mothers of the Ludwig’s wards. These ladies now offered the guardianship over the young dukes and hence control of lower Bavaria to the Habsburgs.
Frederick the Handsome and his cousin Ludwig who had grown up together met on the castle of Landau to resolve the conflict. But as so often in the Middle Ages, one, or both, lost their temper and the negotiations ended in a shouting match. In good old Wittelsbach fashion Ludwig was about to go after Frederick the Handsome with word in hand. The Habsburg and his retinue retreated before serious harm could be done putting an end to negotiations. As soon as he was out of arrowshot, Frederick accepted the guardianship of the Lower Bavarian dukes and war was on between the Habsburgs and the Wittelsbachs, two of the three most powerful families in the empire.
On the Habsburg side, Frederick the Handsome was the eldest brother but by no means the most competent or impressive. His younger brother Leopold was the brains and the brawns behind the enterprise. And there you can also see the big difference between the Habsburgs and many of the other great German houses. The Habsburgs stuck together, at least most of the time. Leopold was certainly aware that he was the smarter one, but he remained loyal to his brother in the interest of the Habsburg family. No divisions of lands or wars between the two, as we have seen amongst the Wittelsbachs.
And because they did not fight with each other, the Habsburgs had a lot more resources than the Wittelsbach brothers. And they started to bring them to bear. Frederick who ran Austria was assembling an army to lead into Upper Bavaria, whilst Leopold put together a second force that was to come up from the Habsburg possessions in Switzerland and Alsace.
The situation was extremely precarious for the two Wittelsbachs. Ludwig and Rudolf were skint. Rudolf had spent huge amounts of money on Henry VII’s wars in Italy and had received nothing in return. Ludwig was a bit of a profligate anyway, but had spent quite a bit bailing out the dissolute finances of Lower Bavaria.
Still, Ludwig gathered a meaningful force, in part from the cities in Bavaria who – as we will find out – were his greatest supporters, as well as amongst his nobility and other knights and princes who were opposed to the Habsburgs. But still Ludwig’s army was too small to take on a combined forces of Frederick the Handsome and Leopold. So the strategic imperative was to prevent the two enemy armies from joining.
The first column to arrive in Bavaria was the army of Frederick the Handsome which comprised a large number of nobles from lower Bavaria alongside the Austrian and Hungarian forces that had come up from Vienna.
The two armies met at Gammelsdorf, 60km north-east of Munich, near the city of Landshut. What happened next has become part of Bavarian mythology, in particular for the cities of Landshut, Moosbach, Straubing and Ingolstadt who had provided the majority of the infantry in this battle.
It is likely that Ludwig’s forces were much smaller than the Austrian contingent, at least those the Habsburg commanders could see. Some chroniclers tell us that there was fog in the morning which may have helped Ludwig to hide major reinforcements on the flanks of the battlefield.
As so often in these late medieval battles, the build-up to the fighting was an elaborate process governed by the laws of chivalry. Once the two armies were close enough to engage, it was customary for the party that felt superior to send envoys and ask whether the enemy would accept a battle. The opponent was perfectly entitled to decline and then walk off the battlefield, and would often do if they felt their forces were too small or their position unfavourable. If both sides accepted the engagement, either side would be given time to say mass, make their peace with god, put on their armour and line up for battle, which could take several hours. By the 14th century armour had already become very elaborate, though the classic plate armour you see in castles had not been widely used by the beginning of the 14th century.
Once both sides were ready and good to go, they lined up across from each other and then rode at full tilt at each other, hoping to break the enemy line. Foot soldiers, Hungarians and Cumans on the Habsburg side and city militia on Ludwigs end were usually only employed at the start of the fighting.
However, some historians have argued that it was here at Gammelsdorf that common soldiers had for the first time a major impact on fully armoured riders using precursors of the halberds.
Whether that is true is hard to ascertain given the paucity of sources, though in Landshut everyone makes a big deal out of it. What is very much clear though is that Ludwig did win the engagement either because of the Halberds or because of the reinforcements that attacked the flanks or both. Archaelogical evidence suggests that it wasn’t a particularly bloody battle and chroniclers mainly talk about a large number of prisoners.
Still the defeat of the mighty Habsburgs by this young and underpowered duke of Bavaria created big waves across the empire. Ludwig’s name was suddenly on everyone’s lips as another case of David versus Goliath.
What impressed them even more was the aftermath. Ludwig met up with his childhood friend Frederick the Handsome and they quickly reestablished their old rapport. In a bout of generosity, Ludwig released all his prisoners without a ransom, an almost unheard of act, in particular for a massively cash strapped duke.
But still, if, as many historians believe today, this had been a significant engagement but not a major battle, Gammelsdorf would have been replaced in the news cycle by other battles within a few months or years.
The reason it was not forgotten had to do with Henry VII having died in Italy just a few months earlier and subsequently the usual painfully protracted election process was now under way.
At the outset it looked like a two-horse race. Who was it to be, Frederick the Handsome, the head of the House of Habsburg or John, the son of the recently deceased emperor Henry VII and the king of Bohemia? Will the electors allow a son to immediately follow his father for the first time in more than a century or will they let the ambitious and acquisitive Habsburgs have a third bite at the cherry?
Let’s take a look at the electors. It all seems pretty promising for John of Bohemia. He has three votes pretty much in the bag, his uncle Balduin, the archbishop of Trier and brother of the unfortunate Henry VII. Then the archbishop of Mainz, Peter von Aspel was a close ally of the Luxemburgs and the man who had brought John onto the throne of Bohemia. And there is John who as King of Bohemia can vote for himself. That makes it three votes for Luxemburg, all they need is a fourth one.
On the Habsburg side, there was the archbishop of Cologne, not because of some sort of family ties, but because he had fallen out with his colleague in Mainz. That is it.
As for the remaining electors, one of whom was Rudolf of Wittelsbach, the question is not so much, which one is the least worst option, but what is the alternative, and maybe even more important, who pays the largest bribes.
And do not forget, there are two powers in the background that had so often had their hand in the elections of these last decades, the king of France and the pope. Who would they like to push? Will the king of France try his own candidate again?
To make things more complicated, there is also the question, who is the elector? Like in Bavaria some of the electoral titles have been split between different lines of the family and either could claim the right to vote. Others, like king John of Bohemia had only recently expelled the previous title holder who may came back on his old ticket.
This will be one of the most complex and convoluted elections in the History of the Holy Roman empire. But by now you know the runners and riders, Ludwig and Rudolf of Bavaria, Frederick the handsome and Leopold of Austria and John Of Bohemia and his uncle Balduin of Trier.
I hope you will join us again next week when we look at the horse trading and watch as two sets of electors elect two kings of the romans at two different ends of the city of Frankfurt. I Hope you will join us again.
