Sigismund of Luxembourg emerges as a pivotal figure in the late Middle Ages, grappling with the dual crises of the Schism and the Ottoman threat while navigating a complex web of political intrigue. Born into the powerful House of Luxembourg, his journey is marked by ambition, charm, and a significant lack of funds, which shapes his tumultuous rise. The episode delves into his early life, including his education and the challenges he faced within his family, particularly the rivalry with his brother Wenceslas. As Sigismund seeks to secure his position through marriage to Maria, the heiress of Hungary and Poland, he encounters fierce opposition, especially from his mother-in-law Elizabeth. The narrative unfolds with Sigismund’s relentless pursuit of power, ultimately leading to his coronation as King of Hungary, albeit under precarious circumstances that reveal the intricacies of 14th-century politics and the personal struggles he faces along the way.

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TRANSCRIPT

The late 14^th and early 15^th century was a period of upheaval, the certainties of the Middle Ages, that the pope ruled the world and that knights were invincible were crumbling away, the long period of economic growth, of eastward expansion and conversion of the pagans made way for war, plague and famine. The church was split in half and the Ottomans were coming.

This was an age that called forth larger-than-life characters: Joan of Arc, fierce and holy; Henry Bolingbroke, seizing a throne; Jadwiga and Jogaila, uniting kingdoms; the audacious Gian Galeazzo Visconti and fiery Cola di Rienzo; the ever-scheming John the Fearless and Jacob van Artevelde; the tragic Ines de Castro and the unflinching Jan Žižka.

Into this glittering and turbulent lineup steps a man whose reputation has not exactly been polished by time. Despised in his kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia and even Constance, the city that owes him so much, decided to remember him as a fat naked crowned guy with skinny arms and legs, worn-out face, forked beard and disproportionate genitalia balancing on the hand of a nine-meter-tall sex worker. No, I am not making this up.

Sigismund, because that was his name, was a true enigma of the late Middle Ages. He had inherited his father’s charm and ruthless cunning, his knack for negotiating compromise in impossible situations, and his unshakeable belief in his role as the head of Christendom. But what he hadn’t inherited was his father’s performative piety, his zeal for relics, his asceticism—or his wealth. Instead, Sigismund was left with a volatile mix of ambition, enormous self-confidence, a lust for life, and, crucially, a chronic shortage of funds.

Yet despite his flaws, he took on Christendom’s two greatest crises—the schism and the Ottoman threat—and in doing so, managed to create a third…This is his backstory.

But before we start let me tell you that adverts on podcasts have now reached 7.2% of the total length of shows and in the most popular shows reached 10%. That means if this episode had podcast ads, you would have to skip through 4 minutes of a mix of me droning on about VPNs or dodgy mental health services. I guess you know how to prevent that. Do what Yordi V., Adam F., Risch S, John R., Karen G. and Edward R. have done, go to historyofthegermans.com/support and make a one-time donation. For that you gain my eternal gratitude but most importantly the thanks of all your fellow listeners who you protect…

With that, back to the show.  

Sigismund was born on February 15^th, 1368, the second surviving son of emperor Karl IV. We have heard enough about his father, so he needs no introduction, but his mother was no less remarkable.

By most accounts, she was a striking beauty, a full thirty years younger than her husband and, by all testimonies, deeply devoted to him. Though her frame seemed slight—”of weak appearance,” as one chronicler delicately put it—her strength was legendary, the kind spoken of in awe-struck whispers. She could twist horseshoes as if they were mere ribbons, shatter swords as easily as snapping a twig, and rend chainmail with her bare hands. Her son, Sigismund, was no stranger to physical prowess himself, though even his strength paled when measured against hers.

How much he saw of her is unclear, but probably not a lot. Like most princely children during this period he was likely raised by wetnurses and servants in one of the imperial castles, like the magnificent one at Karlsteijn, whilst his parents pursued the itinerant lifestyle of medieval monarchs.

By the mid-14th century, princely education had taken on a new dimension. Young aristocrats and future rulers still learned the essentials—swordsmanship, jousting, hunting—but this wasn’t the whole picture anymore. Sigismund, along with his brothers, was taught to read and write—a skill not taken for granted among nobility a hundred years earlier. Being groomed for a leadership role in the multicultural realm of the house of Luxemburg, languages were a priority. He was fluent in Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, French, Italian, and possibly Polish as well. His education even included a respectable grounding in theology and both canon and Roman law, giving him a broad base of knowledge that would serve him well as a ruler.

Though he did neither became a writer or embarked on grand building projects like his father, Sigismund’s contemporaries couldn’t help but notice—and remark upon—his relentless curiosity, sharp intellect, and remarkable drive. Even from a young age, he was known for probing questions and an eagerness to master every topic placed before him.

Sigismund appeared in the historical records for the first time in 1373 when he was enfeoffed with the margraviate of Brandenburg, alongside his two brothers. In 1376 he showed up at his brother Wenceslaus coronation as king of the Romans. As Margrave of Brandenburg and Arch Chamberlain of the empire the eight year old was entrusted with carrying one of the imperial regalia, the sword of St. Maurice at the head of the procession.

Sigismund was still only 10 and his brother Wenceslaus 17 when their father must have noticed that the two of them were not getting in. Where Sigismund was full of energy, ambition and ideas, Wenceslaus was pondering and slow. A terrible constellation in a system of Primogeniture, where the obviously less qualified was to inherit everything and the smart one is left with nothing.

Karl IV tried to pre-empt potential conflict by giving Sigismund both a task and resources to achieve it. The task was for him to acquire the crowns of Hungary and Poland through marriage to Maria, the eldest surviving daughter of Louis the great the king of Hungary and Poland.  And the resources to push through his claim was the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the territory Karl IV had only recently acquired from the house of Wittelsbach for the astronomic sum of 500,000 Mark and Sigismund now received in sole ownership.

And he made the brothers exchange letters in which they pledge to forever honestly and truly support each other, exercise their vote in the college of Electors jointly and that under no circumstances would they attack each other’s castles and cities.

Not exactly watertight, but the best Karl could do in the few months he had left.

Let’s have a look at where Sigismund stood in November 1378 when his father breathed his last.

Being margrave of Brandenburg sounds great, after all future holders of the title would indeed build an empire out of this poor soil. But in 1378 it had 200,000 inhabitants most of them battered and impoverished after the decades of feuds and civil wars that had followed the death of margrave Waldemar, the last of the descendants of Albrecht the Baer who had founded the principality way back in 1157 (episode 106 if you are interested).

As for his claim on the Hungarian and Polish crowns, that wasn’t nailed down pat either. Karl had agreed with king Louis I of Hungary that Sigismund would marry his daughter Maria. That was in 1372 and 1375, when Maria’s elder sister Catherina had still been alive. And Catherine was to marry Louis of Orleans, the younger son of King Charles V of France. King Louis of Hungary had even got his vassals to swear fealty to Catherine, not Maria in case of his demise. In one of his last acts, Karl IV resolved that issue in a secret pact with the king of France that granted the French crown de facto control of Provence and the Rhone Valley in exchange for letting Sigismund and Maria succeed Louis of Hungary. We discussed that bit of skullduggery in more detail in episode 163.

I hope you understand why there are so many episodes about all these goings on in the late 14^th century. It is just unspeakably complex with dozens upon dozens of players in the empire, in Poland, Hungary, France, Naples, Rome, Avignon, Constantinople, all with their own backstories. It is like Balzac’s novels where protagonists show up here and then there and then their get their own novel where others from previous plots show up, or for the modern listener, it is like the Marvel Universe. But do not worry, the Avengers endgame is in sight.

But first we need to get through Sigismund’s backstory.

By some miracle this complex web of arrangements between Prague, Paris and Buda survived the death of its creator Karl IV. In August 1379 Louis of Hungary and Wenceslaus, king of the romans hosted the official engagement of 11-year old Sigismund and 8-year old Maria heiress of the crowns of Hungary and Poland. The actual marriage was planned for 1382 when Sigismund would be 14 and hence and adult and Maria 11, apparently old enough for conjugal duties. Louis publicly recognised Sigismund as his chosen successor and took the young man in to live at his court.

That arrangement suited all concerned. For Wenceslaus, it was the perfect opportunity to send away his little brother, whose charm, good looks, and boundless energy were beginning to grate against his own surly, lethargic disposition. And for Louis, the greatly admired  chivalric king of Hungary, this was a golden chance to shape his young son-in-law into a fitting heir, grooming him with the skills and values that would one day serve as the backbone of his vast realms.

Just to recap where Louis came from and more importantly, what Sigismund hoped he would bring to him. Louis was from the house of Anjou, the cadet branch of the French royal family that had wrestled Sicily out of the hands of the Hohenstaufen – and had killed young Konradin.

Louis’ father had become the first Anjou king of Hungary pretty much the same way Sigismund was aiming to gain the crown, in the horizontal. Louis succeeded him in 1342 and reigned for 40 astonishingly successful years. He pursued broadly speaking three main policy aims.

The first was to expand Hungary southwards into the Balkans and along the Dalmatian coast. This worked really well. He picked up parts of Stefan Dusan’s  Serbian empire after the great ruler had died in 1355, established suzerainty over Transylvania and Walachia, became king of Croatia and took on the overlordship of Ragusa, modern day Dubrovnik. His zone of Influence comprised modern day Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and parts of Bulgaria.

His second ambition was to regain his family’s homeland, the kingdom of Naples that was ruled by the childless queen Joanna I he accused of having killed his brother. But that effort was not quite as successful. He did invade a couple of times, burned and plundered but could not oust queen Joanna against the opposition of the papacy. All he left behind was a shedload of bad blood between the Neapolitan side of the family and his own.

The third leg of his policy was Poland. Its king, Kasimir the Great had consolidated the once fragmented kingdom but found himself without a male heir. Louis supported Kasimir in multiple campaigns and formed an attachment that convinced the Polish king to name him his successor. And in 1370 he was crowned king of Poland in Krakow.

Louis realm was in other words huge and thanks to its mineral wealth that the clever Nurnberg merchants were exploiting, extremely rich. (for how they managed that, check out episode 153)

This sounds almost perfect. Young Sigismund lives at one of the most splendid courts in europe under the wing of his father in law, one of “great kings” of the 14^th century who is willing to hand him all of it on a silver platter. What else can a bright, ambitious 11 year old want.

But there is no such thing as a free royal banquet. Whilst Louis really liked him, not everybody shared the kings enthusiasm for the bouncy little prince. And those who did not were all called Elisabeth.

The first of these Elisabeths was king Louis’ mother, a sister of the much beloved king Kasimir III of Poland. As much as her son was shrewd and capable, she had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way until they lashed out. Her intervention in the kingdom of Naples cost her youngest son Andrew his life and her attempts at establishing a regency in Poland after her brother’s death nearly cost her hers. Not even her son Louis liked her very much and she retaliated by hating his chosen successor, young Sigismund.

That problem resolved itself when Elisabeth of Poland died just a year after Sigismund had arrived in Hungary. But her disaffection of the young man passed on to the next Elisabeth, Elisabeth of Bosnia, the wife of king Louis and therefore Sigismund’s mother in law.

Why she first disliked him, then despised him and finally fanatically hated him has never been properly explained. He might have slighted her in some way or done something foolish in the exuberance of youth. Or she simply hoped for something better for her daughter. After all, the couple was only engaged, not yet married. And better could mean a man who would be more caring and respectful to her darling daughter, or someone less forceful and younger who would allow her to establish her own regency once king Louis was dead.

What turned this from a bad 1960’s mother-in-law joke to full blown Greek tragedy was that Elisabeth passed her hate for young Sigismund on to her daughter Maria, the woman he was going to marry.

In 1382 King Louis declared Sigismund officially as his heir in Poland and  called on his vassals to swear an oath to serve him faithfully. Sigismund was given the command over a small contingent of soldiers and the task to calm down some minor disturbance and to prepare his ascension to the Polish throne.

Aged 14, Sigismund’s political career had begun

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And he was not given much time to settle in. He arrived in Poland in July 1382. The country was in chaos. Though properly crowned and everything, his father in law had not really gained much of a foothold in Polish politics. The regents he had deployed there were universally hated and were confined to the few castles they held. The magnates fought them and also amongst themselves.

The Polish nobles did not like the idea of an absentee landlord king who regarded Polish affairs as secondary. Polish affairs meaning getting the lands back the Teutonic knights had acquired over the years (episodes 130-138 if you are interested) .

They all agreed Louis wasn’t the king who would do it, but hoped things would improve once the old man had shuffled off his mortal coil. What they did not agreed on was what should happen then. One group was broadly amenable to Maria and Sigismund taking over, provided they would live in Poland. Others believed Poland should break with the house of Anjou and choose its own dedicated ruler.

This question became a lot more acute a lot earlier than anybody expected – because king Louis the Great of Hungary died in September of that same year.

Sigismund immediately demanded that the magnates of Poland recognise him as their lord, which some did before really thinking about it. The nobles of Wielkopolska had considered the situation more thoroughly and said, yes they would happily swear allegiance, but only if Sigismund promised to permanently reside in Poland. That was a no go for Sigismund, since it would mean abandoning the hope to ever becoming king of Hungary. And Hungary looked a lot easier since his future wife, Maria had just been recognised and crowned as king, not queen of Hungary without the slightest delay or hick-up.

Sigismund’s refusal prompted the nobles to form an alliance that demanded that if they were to recognise any of Louis’ daughters, it would be the one who was prepared to reside permanently in Poland. If neither were prepared to do that, well then – they would choose someone amongst themselves to be  their king.

If Sigismund ever had a chance to push back against the Polish nobles’ demands, it was taken away when his enemy mother -in-law Elisabeth pulled the rug from under him. She wrote to the Polish nobles, thanked them for their loyalty to the house of Anjou and promised them to select one of her daughters to come to Poland very soon. But in the meantime she urged them not to do anything rash, in particular not to recognise Sigismund as king.

So  much for familial loyalty. Sigismund sat down with the grand master of the Teutonic Knights who told him that the idea of becoming king of Poland was for the birds. You better go back to Hungary.

Oh yes. Let’s go back to Hungary. That is where his bride would be waiting for him and now that he had turned 14 and was an adult, the marriage could finally proceed. And once married he would be crowned king and everything would be as old king Louis had wanted.

But, not so.

There were three main parties amongst the Hungarian nobles and only one of them could see Sigismund wearing the holy crown of St. Stephen.

The Garai family wanted Hungary to align more with France, basically revive the old plan of bringing in the French duke of Orleans as the new king. The equally powerful Lackfi family preferred a closer alignment between Hungary and the empire as a way to fend off the ottoman threat that was slowly but surely coming up the Balkans. And finally there were the Horvati who preferred the king of Naples, Charles III, called the Small as their new ruler. Charles was a pretty ruthless man who had grown up in Hungary and had at some point been Louis’ designated successor.

Whilst Sigismund had been detained up in Poland, the queen mother Elisabeth had made herself regent on behalf of her 11-year old daughter. And she had sided with the pro-French party of the Garais. Envoys were on their way to Paris to negotiate a new marriage for little Maria, replacing Sigismund with duke Louis of Orleans.

If Maria married Lous of Orleans that would have been curtains for our friend Sigismund. Without a marriage to Maria he was just a foreign prince with no claim on the Hungarian or Polish crown, and not even a particularly wealthy one at that.

Elisabeth would have loved to call off the engagement right away and send Sigismund back home to Brandenburg, but did not dare to do it yet since the two other factions, the pro-imperial Lackfis and the pro-Neapolitan Horvatis were stirring up revolt. So she did the second best thing and sent him to Poland.

Sigismund went in the hope he could still convince his mother-in-law of his suitability as ruler and win the heart of little Maria. That wasn’t a great plan, but at least it was a plan.

What is less clear is what game Elisabeth was playing in Poland. Elisabeth knew she had no resources to force the Poles into recognising Maria as king unconditionally. So it was either sending her younger daughter Jadwiga up to Krakow or to give up on the Polish crown entirely. But she did neither, she tried to stall the Poles. That gave the anti-Hungarian party in Poland the justification to strike and they proposed one of their own as king. A full-blown civil war broke out in Poland. The pro-Hungarian party asked Elisabeth for help and she sent Sigismund with an army of 12,000 to put thing back in order in the north.

Sigismund burned and pillaged the oppositions lands but failed to take Krakow. So negotiations resumed and Elisabeth finally promised to send Jadwiga after all. A time was set for Jadwiga to be handed over, but then Elisabeth stalled again. And again she sent Sigismund to deal with the Poles, but this time without an army.  

Sigismund met the members of the Sejm who were now seriously angry and even those loyal to the Hungarian royal house had enough. If Elisabeth does not want to let Jadwiga become king, that is fine, we will just go with the Polish candidate, thank you very much.

It was Sigismund who talked them around. This is the first time his charm and diplomatic skill came to the fore. After long and arduous negotiations, and – knowing Sigismund probably including some serious partying – he and his mother in law is given one last and absolutely, completely final extension.

So, on October 15^th, 1384 the beautiful Jadwiga is crowned king, not queen of Poland. Shortly afterwards she married Jogaila, the grand prince of Lithuania, creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The amazing thing is that this great political juggernaut would never have come into being had Sigismund taken the Polish crown and promised to stay in Krakow.

Having saved the kingdom of Poland for the house of Anjou, having proven his allegiance to Elisabeth and her daughters by forsaking the Polish crown he once believed should be his, Sigismund returned to Buda to rapturous applause, his mother-in-law offering him the kiss of peace and young Maria getting excited about her upcoming nuptials.

Oh no, none of that. You completely underestimate how much the queen mother Elisbeth hated Sigismund. In 1385 she struck what she thought was the final blow that would rid her of that pesky Luxemburger. She called the engagement between Sigismund and Maria off. Immediately thereafter Maria married Louis of Orleans by proxy.

Now the chips are really down . Sigismund is outplayed, his grand plan is in tatters. But then  Sigismund, still only 16, can be very, very determined if he wants something badly. And he wanted the crown of Hungary very, very badly.

So badly, he did go for help to the man he never ever wanted to be dependent upon, who he not necessarily despised but regarded as mediocre and undeserving of the wealth and honours he had received, his stepbrother, King Wenceslaus.  Wenceslaus, as it happened, was riding high at this point in his reign. He had concluded the general peace of Eger, the great project their father had never managed to achieve, and was preparing his journey to Rome to obtain the imperial crown. Wenceslaus had the military resources to help.

And there were their cousins, the margraves of Moravia, Jobst and Prokop. They had inherited a very well run principality that was throwing up cash like nobody’s business. They had the means to bankroll Sigismund’s claim on the Hungarian crown.

Looks like the Luxemburg family is pulling together to put one of them to obtain the holy crown of St. Stephen…well, that is what the Habsburgs would have done. The Luxemburgs – different kettle of fish. Yes, dear brother and cousin, we are happy to help, but it’ll cost you. And dearly. Sigismund had to pawn them big chunks of his margraviate of Brandenburg and hand over some of his various rights, castles and income streams.

Having been stripped down by his relatives, he did at least gets his army and with that he returned to Hungary to force the queen regent to give her daughter over in marriage to him. Not the most romantic move, but then love did not really get into this.

Whether the plan would have worked on its own, we will never know. Because events outside his control pushed little Maria into his bed anyway.

You remember there were three political parties in Hungary, the Garai who were pro French and allied with evil mother-in-law Elisbeth, the Lackfi who supported Sigismund and the Horvati who wanted Charles the Small of Naples on the Throne.

This Charles of Naples was a tough nut. Once he had been dismissed as Louis of Hungary’s heir presumptive he went to Naples where he captured and then killed his cousin Queen Joanna I. This effort had been sponsored by pope Urban VI. But Urban found out that Charles had double crossed him when he was casually torturing a brace of cardinals. So Charles attacked the pope and besieged him in Nocera from where the pope escaped by a hairs breadth. The late 14^th century is no time for sissies and Charles may have been small, but he was definitely no sissy.

In 1385 this very much not a sissy Neapolitan landed on the Dalmatian coast to stake his claim on the Hungarian crown. His supporters, the Horvati raised their banners and they marched on Buda.

Elisabeth is panicking. Her regime had become quite unpopular for all the usual reasons, taxes, favourites etc. And her allies, the Garai alone weren’t strong enough to fend off the other two parties. She had no choice but to seek support from the man  who happened to be just about to muster a military force, even if that was the man she hated more than anyone else, our friend Sigismund. And Sigismund’s price was simple, marriage to the heiress Maria. In November 1385 the not very happy couple stood before a hastily prepared altar and were finally married.

Sigismund returned to Bohemia to take command of his troops whilst Elisbeth and Maria prepared the defence of Buda against Charles of Naples. As part of that they called an assembly of the Hungarian nobles, promised them remediation of all their grievances and asked for their support. But they refused. Instead they told her to make an arrangement with Charles of Naples.

So it happened that a month later Charles the small was crowned king of Hungary at Fehérvár where Hungarian kings have been crowned since time immemorial. But he did not stay king for very long though. Two months later, on February 7^th, 1386 his cupbearer attacked him, injured him severely. He was thrown into a prison where the queen regent who presumably had paid the cupbearer had him killed. Not nice but effective.

That kicked off a civil war between the Neapolitan party and the party of the queen regent. And the queen regent also went back on her deal with Sigismund, refusing to support his coronation as king. Sigismund had to go back to his relatives and ask for even more money and even more troops. Which they provided, pulling even more chunks out of his inheritance.

Sigismund took his troops into Hungary and occupied the western part of the country to force Elizabeth to hand over his bride and get him crowned. At this point the queen regent called upon Sigismund’s brother, Wenceslaus to mediate in the conflict.

Wenceslaus did pass judgement as one would expect. Hungary was to pay some astronomical sum to pay for the cost of the war, Maria was to accept Sigismund as her husband for real now and he was given some property to live off. But what Wenceslaus did not demand, what he even precluded, was his brother’s coronation as king of Hungary. These two really did not get on that well.

Sigismund was now broke. He was only nominally margrave of Brandenburg, but all the income from the territory was going to his cousins. He even passed over the right to inherit Bohemia should Wenceslaus die without an heir. And for what – no coronation, a wife who hated him so much, even he did not want to enforce conjugal rights and no real position of power in Hungary.

But in this super volatile environment things can sometimes brighten up in rather unexpected and unpleasant ways. This way was paved by the foolishness of the queen regent. Her paladin, Miklos Garai felt that after Charles’ of Naples death and some successes against the Horvati, it was possible for the queens to come down to Dalmatia and to inspect their lands. But he was wrong. The land was not yet pacified. When the ladies travelled along with a small bodyguard, Janos Horvati came out of the bushes, killed the Garai and the rest of the guards and then carried the queens away into captivity.

Hungary was now without ruler and in the midst of a civil war. To fill the vacuum, the Hungarian magnates declared themselves the guardians of the realm and took control of the kingdom. And these guardians of the realm recognised Sigismund as captain of the Hungarian cause, though not as king.

The ladies’ position was very precarious. The widow of king Charles, the one Elisabeth had murdered bayed for her blood. Not being able to kill Elisabeth with her own bare hands, the queen of Naples ordered the Horvati to do the deed on her behalf. In mid-January 1387 Elisabeth, the daughter of the king of Bosnia, widow of king Louis the Great of Hungary, Poland and lots more was strangled before the eyes of her daughter and her body thrown in the castle’s ditch. Maria was 15 years of age when that happened. Sigismund had months to mount a rescue, but did not send his army to the castle where they were kept.

Elisabeth’s death convinced the Guardians of the realm that to properly incentivise him, they had to crown him king of Hungary after all. Still Sigismund had to make far reaching concessions to the nobles, including the promise only to appoint Hungarians to  key positions and to pardon everyone who had risen up against him or opposed him. The already quite modest royal power was further undermined by these promises, making Hungary more of an aristocratic republic than a kingdom. Sigismund had to reward his supporters after his coronation with expensive gifts. 85 of the 150 royal castles and manors passed on to the magnates. This financial and political weakness meant that Sigismund remained hampered in his rule of Hungary for decades. The way he tried to wriggle out of the clutches of the barons was by building up his own parallel bureaucracy that gradually took over tax collection and the management of the defence of the country against the Ottomans.

That being so, at least after 5 years of fighting and frustrations, Sigismund is finally king of Hungary.

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The first item on the to do list of the freshly elected and crowned king was to free his wife Maria from the clutches of the Horvati. This took until the end of 1387 and a month-long siege.

The married couple were finally united, but the relations remained cold, professional until her death in a riding accident in 1395. Sigismund may be charming and all that, but wooing a young girl who had just seen her mother getting killed due to her suitors reluctance to come to her aid would go beyond the capabilities of even the most accomplished of seducers.

The subsequent 5 years from 1387 to 1393 were taken up with defeating the Horvati and the reconquest of Dalmatia, which again was extremely costly. The Hungarian estates and magnates did not provide the funds he needed despite regular assurances. Sigismund finally bit the bullet and pawned all that he had left to his cousin Jobst for the astonishing sum of 565,263 Guilders. By doing that Sigismund had severed all his links to the Holy Roman Empire. He was now 100% committed to his kingdom of Hungary.  

The funds were enough to muster an army capable to defeat the Horvati and regain Dalmatia. Janos Horvati was captured, brutally tortured, pulled through the streets of the city of Pecs tied to the tail of a horse and then drawn and quartered.

This success did however not mean that Sigismund could now kick back and enjoy being king. As we heard last week, the Ottomans were coming. In 1389 they had defeated and then incorporated the despotate of Serbia. They were standing at the Hungarian border.

Sigismund’s predecessor, the great king Louis of Hungary had not worried too much about the Ottomans. He had fought and won a couple of battles against them and remained unconcerned. What he had not realised was that the Ottomans had learned from their early defeats against armies made up of armoured knights and had developed their unique combination of light cavalry and janissary infantry that prove so successful. After the battle on the Kosovo field in 1389 where the whole Serbian army perished, the major players on the Balkans woke up to the power of the Ottomans.

Sigismund was a player on the Balkans and he did understand that the Ottomans would be unstoppable unless he could muster an army far larger than anything Hungary alone could raise. Hence his involvement in the crusade that ended in the battle of Nikopol we discussed in the last episode.

After the crushing defeat at Nikopol Sigismund was rescued by two of his closest supporters, count Johann von Zollern and Count Herman of Cilli who commandeered a ship on the Danube to take him away.

From there Sigismund could have easily returned home to Hungary, but instead decided to take a little detour to see the famous sites of Constantinople. This was borderline on madness given the Ottoman army was standing undefeated on the Hungarian border, thousands of Christian knights had been captured and either enslaved or killed and his opponents in Hungary had gone  on manoeuvres.

That was the other side of Sigismund’s character. Whilst he could doggedly pursue an objective for years and bet everything in the outcome, sometimes he would suddenly drop everything and just give up, looking for adventures and opportunities elsewhere.  

Hence the spa trip to Constantinople where he was received with great honours by a deeply disappointed emperor Manuel II. Whilst his host was falling into despair, Sigismund dreamt up grand plans to defeat the Ottomans. He embarked on a journey across the levant, taking in Rhodes and the Greek islands before returning to Buda via Ragusa and Split.

Back home he had the magnate Istvan Lackfi and his nephew killed for barely provable treason. This act, together with his previous brutality against the Horvati made him despised by the Hungarians, a sentiment that continued to this day. And that sentiment was at least for a time mutual. The concessions Sigismund had granted at his coronation and the vast wealth he had to transfer to the Guardians of the Realm left him with very limited room to exercise actual power in Hungary. Tired of being pushed around by the magnates he began looking for new opportunities abroad.

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His next project was to gang up with his cousins to unseat his step-brother Wenceslaus. We did discuss Wenceslaus demise in episode 165 so there is no point going through all of this complex story once again.

Wenceslaus was dealt a tough hand upon his father’s death and turned out being pretty bad at playing it. Between the simmering resentment of Bohemian nobles, discord with the church, his absence from the Empire, and his utter failure to address the schism in the papacy, Wenceslaus was left isolated, vulnerable, and ultimately a perfect target for Sigismund’s ambitions.

Sigismund had his hand in every one of the various conspiracies and uprisings that made his brother’s reign even more untenable than it needed to be. His comrades in crime were his cousin Jobst of Moravia and various Habsburg dukes. These guys would backstab and betray each other in a wild merry go around I simply cannot be bothered to recount. To call this self-destructive is an understatement of epic proportions. The house of Luxemburg, which once held a quarter of the empire and provided order and peace had formed an orderly circular firing squad.

By 1400, they’d managed to strip Wenceslaus of the rule of the hre, and they  nearly cost Sigismund his Hungarian throne as well.

The magnates of Hungary were disappointed with Sigismund’s constant trips to Bohemia and the mostly foreign administrators he left behind in Buda. So when he came down for a short visit, they seized him and locked him up in a castle. But then they had no idea what to do next. Some wanted to get Ladislaus of Naples,  the son of the murdered king Charles to return, others favoured a union with Poland, whilst a third party preferred a Habsburg duke. And cousin Jobst came down with an army claiming the Hungarian throne for himself. That was even by 14^th century Hungarian standards an awful mess.

In the end they decided it was better to stick with their disappointing monarch than to embark on a civil war. Sigismund promised to do better, to fire his foreign advisers and spend more time in Hungary and in exchange, the Hungarians let him be.

Sigismund said, thanks. That was great fun and buggered off back to Bohemia where he spent another 2 years trying to oust his brother, double cross his cousins and merrily signing and breaking alliances with nobles and neighbouring monarchs.

In 1403 the Hungarian magnates had again enough of their absent monarch and rose up. King Ladislaus of Naples landed in Dalmatia. Sigismund came back with an army, and now it was the final showdown. His followers gathered support and Ladislaus – in fear if ending like his father – rushed back to Naples. Sigismund acted the magnanimous victor for once and received the members of the opposition back into the fold. But this time he did not apologise or promise to do better. Instead he removed the magnates one by one from their positions of power claiming, quite accurately – that they lacked loyalty to their lord. Meanwhile more and more Hungarians realised that the incessant infighting was seriously undermining their ability to defend the kingdom against the Ottomans.

For almost 7 years Sigismund gave up o wild goose chases and focused on his job in Hungary. He expanded the state apparatus, reorganised taxes and the church, introduced military reform that created the famous Hussars, suppressed the robber barons and unjust feuds and generally rebuilt the country. His most notorious reform was the creation of the order of the Dragon he bestowed on local magnates and allies, including Mircea the elder, the Voivode of Walachia. Mircea was so proud of the honour he asked people to call him Draco, Latin for dragon and his son Vlad became little dragon or Dracola in Latin, a name you may have heard before.

This period of benign rule in Hungary lasted until 1410 when King Ruprecht of the empty pocket, the rather ineffectual ruler of the Holy Roman Empire unexpectedly died. And with that the throne of the empire became vacant. And Sigismund, always on the lookout for another crown, another adventure another grand plan, put his large ermine hat in the ring.

But that is a story for another time. Next week we will meet the next and last important participant in the Council of Constance, Jan Hus, professor at the university of Prague, follower of John Wycliff and radical preacher. And I promise, once we have talked about him, we will finally come back into Germany, get to the shores of lake Constance and watch pope John XXIII, 3 patriarchs, 23 cardinals, 27 archbishops, 106 bishops, 103 abbots, 344 doctors of theology, 676 noblemen of high birth, 336 barbers, 516 buglers, pipers & entertainers and 718 whores and public girls determine the fate of Christendom.

Just before I go just a quick reminder about the website where you can support the show – it is historyofthegermans.com/support.

Hope to see you back here next week.