Ludwig the Rich and Albrecht IV

On November 14^th and 15^th 1475 one of the grandest events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire took place, the Landshuter Hochzeit, the nuptials of Georg, the Rich, son of Ludwig, the Rich and grandson of Heinrich, the Rich, all of them dukes of Bayern-Landshut, and Hedwig, the daughter of king Kasimir IV of Poland and Lithuania.

The event attracted 10,000 guests, amongst them the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Dukes of Württemberg, the archduke Maximilian of Austria and the emperor Friedrich III himself. It lasted several days during which the eminent invitees as well as the citizens of Landshut ate, drank, danced and watched an endless row of tournaments, plays and musical performances.

The fame of these festivities reverberated through the ages, so that in the 19^th century the burghers of the town decided to stage the event again, initially annually and nowadays every 4 years. The reenactment involves over 2,000 participants, and culminates in a procession through the city, complete with bridal carriage, musicians and Landsknechte, all in splendid historical costumes.

Which leaves us with more questions than answers. How come the most powerful ruler of central Europe, Kasimir King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania married one of his precious daughters to the son of the ruler of half a duchy, hundreds of miles from his capital; secondly, how such a duke became so rich he could afford to stage an event that counted amongst the grandest weddings of this already very ostentatious century; and lastly, why Landshut is today a gorgeous, but only medium sized country town, and by no means the beating heart of Bavarian commerce, culture and politics.

That is what we are going to explore in this episode.

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Transcript

On November 14^th and 15^th 1475 one of the grandest events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire took place, the Landshuter Hochzeit, the nuptials of Georg, the Rich, son of Ludwig, the Rich and grandson of Heinrich, the Rich, all of them dukes of Bayern-Landshut, and Hedwig, the daughter of king Kasimir IV of Poland and Lithuania.

The event attracted 10,000 guests, amongst them the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Dukes of Württemberg, the archduke Maximilian of Austria and the emperor Friedrich III himself. It lasted several days during which the eminent invitees as well as the citizens of Landshut ate, drank, danced and watched an endless row of tournaments, plays and musical performances.

The fame of these festivities reverberated through the ages, so that in the 19^th century the burghers of the town decided to stage the event again, initially annually and nowadays every 4 years. The reenactment involves over 2,000 participants, and culminates in a procession through the city, complete with bridal carriage, musicians and Landsknechte, all in splendid historical costumes.

Which leaves us with more questions than answers. How come the most powerful ruler of central Europe, Kasimir King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania married one of his precious daughters to the son of the ruler of half a duchy, hundreds of miles from his capital; secondly, how such a duke became so rich he could afford to stage an event that counted amongst the grandest weddings of this already very ostentatious century; and lastly, why Landshut is today a gorgeous, but only medium sized country town, and by no means the beating heart of Bavarian commerce, culture and politics.

That is what we are going to explore in this episode.

But before we start just a brief thank you for sticking around during this period of nasal congestion that made it hard and at times impossible to record the show. As you may hear, I have now at least partially recovered and hope to record this without the crutches of artificial intelligence. Let’s see. If you find this nasal sound irritating, I will produce a separate AI version that will be made available on the historyofthegermans.com website in the membership section. To become a member, just head to historyofthegermans.com/support.

And special thanks go to Lincoln B., Stephen, Palle H., the always supportive Tom B., Schlager-H., Georgi Nikolaev and Matthew V. who have already signed up.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we lived through the tragic end of Agnes Bernauer, the love interest of the wayward only son and heir to the duchy of Bavaria-Munich. Sad as her violent demise was, politically it put an end to the potential succession crisis. Albrecht III, the young duke who had once been prepared to give it all up for love, retuned to the straight and narrow and married a suitable princess. As our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini described it quote: “She was a beautiful woman with exquisite manners and knew how to rule a man with sweet words and womanly arts. Albrecht sired children from her.” (end quote) The fact that it was a whole brace of sons has its own issues we will get to in time, but for now, Bavaria-Munich is stable.

And 12 years after the death of Agnes Bernauer, another of the protagonists of last week’s episode, Ludwig the Bearded, the duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, the third of the Bavarian duchies, died after a life of feuds, violence and betrayal. This large and wealthy part of the duchy went in its entirety to the Landshut branch of the family. Since the fourth branch, Bavaria-Straubing, had already gone extinct in 1425, the duchy of Bavaria was now shared amongst just two sets of cousins, the dukes of Bavaria-Munich and the dukes of Bavaria-Landshut.

Which gets us to the first question we raised in the introduction, why were the dukes of Bavaria-Landshut so rich when they only held a part of the former duchy of Bavaria?

One key asset was ownership of Kitzbühel and Kufstein. These two places are still very wealthy today, but not for the same reason. Kitzbühel is the skiing suburb of Munich, the place where the Schickeria who cannot be bothered to press on to Lech, goes skiing, or goes out parading their fur coats.

If by the way you want to go to Kitzbühel and enjoy the brilliant ski resort without having to mortgage one of your villages, stay at the top of the Hahnenkamm at the Hocheckhütte. No luxury, bunk beds in shared accommodation, showers across the corridor, but lovely hosts, a wood paneled dining room and you are guaranteed to be the first one up on the piste in the morning and also the first at the Après Ski at the Hahnenkammbar.

During the days of the rich dukes of Bavaria-Landshut, the delights of bombing down the Streif followed by even deadlier Jagerbombs had yet been unknown, nor had it occurred to anyone that they could lure human ATMs to come up to their remote valleys all under their own steam.

But what Kitzbühel and Kufstein offered were silver mines. The seam that had turned Schwaz and the Tyrol into the greatest source of silver in the pre-modern period had an extension that filled the pockets of our Landshuter dukes.

As much as this was an appreciated contribution, the mines were only a partial driver of the wealth of the dukes.

As we have heard in the last few episodes, the 15^th century was a period when long distance trading and banking services made many of the cities in the South of Germany very, very, very rich. So, did these Bavarian dukes control any one of those centers?

The four largest cities in modern day Bavaria are Munich, Nürnberg, Augsburg and Regensburg. Munich in the 15^th century was on a rising tide, being the residence of the dukes of Bavaria-Munich and having recently received a boost in the form of a road down to Innsbruck, but in the 15^th century, it was still just a medium sized town, if that. Nürnberg was in Franconia, not in Bavaria, and a free and imperial city, unwilling to yield to anyone. Augsburg, home to the Fugger, Welser and Hochstetter, too wasn’t part of the medieval duchy of Bavaria, but part of upper Swabia, plus also a free and imperial city.

Regensburg was surrounded by Bavarian territory and the dukes had some influence in the city despite its status as a free and imperial city. But Regensburg had been outmaneuvered by the likes of Augsburg, Vienna, Nürnberg and the other Swabian cities, had lost its central role in long distance trade and had gone effectively bankrupt as the patricians had been extracting cash the same way we had seen it happening in Mainz.

So no, the cities and towns of Bavaria, Ingolstadt, Landshut, Freising, Straubing, Dachau etc, were country towns. Important local centers where local farmers brought their produce to market and bought the cloth and tools they could not get back home in their villages. Some of the excess agricultural production was exported, but there was not much in terms of specialized trades sending luxury goods all across europe, like the armorers of Augsburg or the cartographers of Nürnberg did.

So, what was it that made this otherwise unremarkable economic system so successful?

The answer is – law and order.

With the demise of central authority in the empire, responsibility for keeping the roads safe from bandits had gone to the local princes. And the Bavarian dukes, both those in Landshut and those in Munich took this responsibility seriously. They smoked out the robber barons and hanged the highwaymen. They strengthened the system of courts and local mediators that gave people reassurance that their property was protected and that contracts would be honored.

This policy benefitted considerably from the fact that the ducal territory was largely contiguous, i.e., there were only very few exclaves sprinkled inside it, and most of those were bishoprics which had submitted to ducal power fairly early on. Ludwig IV, the second of the rich dukes, who ruled Bavaria-Landshut from 1450 to 1479 pushed this policy beyond the confines of his own principality.

He agreed a Landfrieden, a common peace with his cousin, Albrecht III of Bavaria-Munich. Such an arrangement included both a commitment to refrain from mutual attacks, but also to support efforts to maintain law and order, apprehend wrongdoers who had fled across the border and recognize court orders. That meant from 1451 onwards the old duchy of Bavaria had again a common legal framework and enforcement mechanism.

And because both Ludwig the Rich and Albrecht III were so good at this, more local lords joined their arrangement. First, their cousin Friedrich der Siegreiche  (the Victorious) of the Palatinate, our friend from episode 189 came in, then a number of the Swabian free and imperial cities we met in episode 193 joined, followed by some of the independent knights and counts of the area, and finally in 1455 Sigismund of the Tyrol joined.

We have met Sigismund before. He was the dissolute ruler of Tyrol who came to depend on the Fugger loans to keep his extravagant court, rapacious mistresses and pointless wars going. Even the Habsburg dukes further east showed an interest.

What this meant was a number of things.

First, it meant that Ludwig the Rich, as leader of this consortium was now in charge and able to keep the roads across the Brenner pass and through southern Germany safe. That significantly increased the volume and value of goods travelling along those roads, which in turn allowed Ludwig to collect more tolls, tolls merchants were happy to pay as it saved them the much higher expense of armed guards – it was a win-win for all concerned.

The third source of wealth for both duchies was a fundamental transformation of the state apparatus. When the previous generation, represented in its purest form by Ludwig the Bearded, cared about personal honor, representations and fighting in full armor for both business and pleasure, this new crop of princes were prepared to do the drudgework, scrutinising bills, reclaiming lost property, building infrastructure, resolving disputes, not as a means to collect bribes, but as a way to provide fair justice, and all the other stuff that comes with actual administration.

By those means Ludwig the Rich improved the yield on his estates and manors, and was able to acquire ownership of the salt production at Bad Reichenhall, the largest industrial enterprise in his lands. Bad Reichenhaller salt is still one of the leading brands in Germany.  

Having a prince who secured law and order, kept the roads safe, stopped the incessant feuding and spent money on building infrastructure, such a prince gained the right to do the most profitable thing a prince could do – tax his subjects. Sure princes have tried to tax their subjects for a long time, but usually the estates limited or blocked these attempts, citizens hid their wealth or bribed the tax collectors, meaning the tax raised was always disappointing. In the states of Ludwig the Rich, the subjects saw some value in paying the tax, which must have made collection easier. Add to that the build out of a professional bureaucracy staffed with lawyers trained at the newly founded universities, and you get the beginnings of a modern state. Such a state needed a university, which is why in 1472, Ludwig founded the university of Ingolstadt, which would later morph into the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

Ludwig the Rich hired one of the first professional prime ministers in German history, Dr. Martin Mayr. Mayr had studied law in Heidelberg and immediately after graduation he was hired by the city of Nürnberg as a city chancellor and senior diplomat. Almost over night Mayr became a hugely influential figure within the complex political system of the Holy Roman Empire. Practically on his first day he was sent out to rally support amongst various princely courts for the city in its conflict with the Hohenzollern. That brought him, amongst other things to the court of the emperor Friedrich III in Vienna. Friedrich III who took an interest in the young lawyer and engaged him to prepare the Reichstag of 1454 where the defense against the Turks was to be discussed.

This imperial favor was not rewarded with Mayr’s appreciation of the sovereign. Mayr concluded a) that the empire urgently needed reform to halt the decay and to defend Christendom against the Turks, and b) that Friedrich III was not the man to deliver this kind of reform. He became a one man machine seeking to elevate a proactive and capable prince who could bring about this change. In 1457 he rallied several prince electors around the idea of putting Friedrich the Victorious, Count Palatine on the Rhine, onto the imperial throne. And he nearly succeeded, his plans only been thwarted at the very last minute.

Mayr’s machinations did force the various princes in southern Germany to take sides, either for the elected emperor Friedrich III or for the challenger, Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate.

The supporters on the imperial side were obviously the members of the Habsburg family, as well as the Margraves of Baden and the Dukes of Württemberg. The leader of this faction was however not the emperor, a man history remembers as the Reichserzschlafmütze, the imperial arch-sleepyhead. Instead it was Albrecht, margrave of Brandenburg, who the inevitable Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini described as follows: quote

“How great isn’t the glory of Albrecht, margrave of Brandenburg, whether you consider his strength or prudence? From childhood, he was trained in the use of weapons, and he has participated in more wars than others have read about. He has fought in Poland, Silesia, Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. In all of Germany, there is almost no area where he has not marched under arms. He has led large armies and defeated ferocious enemies. He has fought nine wars against the people of Nürnberg – the victor in eight and the loser in one, in which he was betrayed and almost caught by treason but was saved from the threatening danger by a sudden energetic effort. In battles, it was he who opened the fight and was the last to leave, as a victor. Often challenged to duels, he always defeated his enemy.

He ran 17 times in tournaments, where they attack with sharp lances and are only protected by a shield, and was always victorious. When storming cities, he was often the first to climb the wall. Therefore, he is justly called the German Achilles, and, indeed, we know of nobody whom this age could prefer to him or even consider as an equal. Military skills and talents of leadership shine forth in this man, but also his family’s nobility, his physical stature, his handsomeness of face, his eloquence, and his strength make him admirable.” (unquote)

What a nice guy, as long as he is on your side.

As it happened, he wasn’t on the side of the duke of Bavaria Landshut. Our man Ludwig the Rich had shifted to the anti-imperial side, because after all, Friedrich the Victorious was his cousin and a key member of his Landfrieden Consortium. And Michael Mayr, the instigator of it all, had become his prime minister. One ally they thought they could count on was their cousin Albrecht III of the Munich branch. Bur before we get too excited, here is what Piccolomini had to say about him (quote): “loved music and greatly enjoyed singing, but his greatest pleasure was hunting. He is a veritable enemy of wolves. He has huts built in trees, furnished as a chamber. There he lies concealed, and when he has lured the wolves there with food and sees a number of them, he draws the bowstring and shoots the animals. Thus, he spends the whole winter, when there is snow and horrible cold.” (end quote). The other problem with Albrecht III was that he died in 1460, just when the conflict reached boiling point.

What really helped Ludwig the Rich and his friends was that Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg had made a lot of enemies with all this marching of armies back and forth across the German lands and the spearing opponents at tournaments.

Furthermore, Albrecht Achilles long term plan was to revive the old stem duchy of Franconia, with him as duke, obviously. That irritated the current theoretical holder of that largely defunct title, the prince bishop of Würzburg. Then there were his constant wars with the city of Nürnberg. After eight wars it was quite clear where he stood and where the city stood, so Nürnberg joined the Palatine-Bavarian coalition.

Things ratchet up one level further when Albrecht Achilles declared that his lawcourt was to become the imperial court, as in the highest court for the duchies of Swabia, Franconia and Bavaria. That lined up a whole cohort of minor princes, bishops and cities against the imperial side. Because if they had to submit to a court of the margrave of Brandenburg, their chances of forming their own viable states were gone for good.   

And finally, incoming stage right, was the most improbable of allies. Georg of Podiebrad.

Georg who?

If you have followed season 9 on the Hussite wars, the name may ring a bell. Georg of Podiebrad had become king of Bohemia in 1458, though not everyone recognised him as such, certainly not the pope and not emperor Friedrich III. Pope and emperor believed, the previous king of Bohemia, the emperor Sigismund had passed the Bohemian crown to the Habsburgs, which by now meant emperor Friedrich III himself. Georg of Podiebrad had been raised to the throne not by inheritance but by the decision of the estates of Bohemia, most of whom were Hussites and hence – if no longer explicitly heretics – were still a deeply suspect lot.

By bringing Georg of Podiebrad into the fold of the princely fronde against the emperor, the Bohemians and their Hussite faith was readmitted into polite society. So much so that Dr. Martin Mayr at a later stage proposed Georg as a future emperor.

But before we move any further, let’s just recognise something quite fundamental here: The Wittelsbachs are back on the national stage. Last episode they were nothing than a babbling, squabbling bunch of baboons, burning each other’s villages, and now they find themselves once again in the running for the imperial title, able to bring Bohemia back from the cold and just generally being important again. Not bad for a young prince who took over only a few years after the last of the wars between the Wittelsbach cousins.

Avoiding war between cousins did however not prevent war entirely. The two sides, the imperial faction lead by Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg and the reform-oriented grouping put together by Ludwig the Rich and Dr. Martin Mayr were set to clash.

The conflict escalated when Ludwig the Rich decided to incorporate the free imperial city of Donauwörth into his territory. The constitutional status of Donauwörth was at least doubtful, due to some financial machinations under emperor Karl IV. This uncertainty had already triggered the 1376 war between the Swabian cities and king Wenceslaus the Lazy and will continue being a flashpoint well into the 30-years war.

In October 1458, Ludwig the Rich occupied Donauwörth. The  citizens call upon the emperor to come to their aid. Friedrich III declares the occupation illegal and places Ludwig in the imperial ban, and instructs Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg to execute this order.

Ludwig’s response was to make a pact with his cousin Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate “for life”. Immediately thereafter the imperial faction too agrees a pact, this one only for 10 years. At the end of 1459, the imperial faction declares war on Ludwig and Friedrich.

One leg of this war we have already discussed. This is the same war we have encountered as the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, when Baden, Württemberg, Mainz and Metz set out to smash up Heidelberg. And as we remember, their effort came to a dramatic and unexpected halt when Friedrich the Victorious was – well – victorious at the battle of Seckenheim.

A few weeks later it is Ludwig the Rich who scores a modest win, but a win nevertheless. Albrecht Achilles has to come to the negotiation table and give up his ambitions to become duke of Franconia and have his law court lording it over everyone. In exchange, Ludwig returns Donauwörth. So, on paper it seems as if nothing had happened, but in reality, a whole lot has happened. Ludwig and his cousin Friedrich have become the most important political axis in Southern Germany. The Wittelsbachs are again at the top table. Their system of common peace sweeps up most of Swabia and Bavaria, making them, not Achilles the highest legal authority in the south.

Towards the end of his reign, Ludwig the Rich makes one last major move. As Georg of Podiebrad’s finds it harder and harder to resist the pressure from the papacy, Ludwig swapped sides. He makes peace with the emperor Friedrich III, who by now is no longer a viable threat to him. 

And all that explains why in 1475 Ludwig the Rich is able to host the wedding of the century. Arguably now the most important prince in the empire, his son is a coveted son-in-law, in particular for the king of Poland, who had just positioned his son as king of Bohemia and potential successor to Georg of Podiebrad.

And it explains the presence of so many important princes including the emperor Friedrich III and his son Maximilian, confirming their recent alliance.

As for the splendour of the event, Piccolomini offers an explanation that went beyond the usual “keeping up with the Jones”. (quote): “While his father lived, he [Ludwig] was given a strict upbringing and was allowed neither to consort with harlots and prostitutes nor to have feasts. He had little money to spend and was continuously urged to be virtuous. He did not render his father’s labour vain, for when he took up the reins of government, he became an excellent prince, even though he did not imitate his father’s frugality (some say his avarice).” (end quote). In other words, Ludwig loved luxury and splendour because his daddy had been mean to him, preventing him for consorting with harlots, as had seemingly been the right of any young prince.

Ludwig the Rich died in 1479, his cousin Friedrich the Victorious had already passed away in 1476. Ludwig’s only son Georg, the one who had married Hedwiga of Poland at that splendid wedding, was an ok ruler. He continued the build-out of the state and diligently managed the finances. But he completely lacked the diplomatic skill and standing of his father. Though the duchy’s resources were undiminished, Georg was by no means the most important prince in the empire.

The same could be said for the successor of Friedrich the Victorious, his nephew Philipp, “der Aufrichtige”, which translates as Philipp the Honest. Being called honest is rarely the kind of moniker that is given to a ruler who is pushing hard to get to the top.

Basically, it looked as if the Wittelsbachs were about to slide back into the second league.

But there is one more branch we have not talked about much, the dukes of Bavaria-Munich. Last we heard was that Albrecht III, former lover of Agnes Bernauer, liked to hunt wolves by hiding in trees. Which is pretty much all he did, apart from bringing in similar reforms to his state that his cousin in Landshut had done. When Albrecht III breathed his last in 1460, he left behind a well-ordered but largely harmless political entity. What he also left behind was an abundance of sons, seven in total. The silver lining was that he ordered that always only the two eldest sons should rule, whilst the others were to receive pensions and live the quiet life.

The eldest, Ernst had died even before his father, so that sons number two and three, John and Sigismund, took over in 1460. John had the decency to die in 1463, which meant the fourth brother, Albrecht, moved on to the list. Sigismund and Albrecht ruled together until 1465 when Sigismund formally resigned his position.

Sigismund was a friend of the arts, not a man of action. By his own admission, he was not designed for  the daily grind. So he happily retired to his castle to paint watercolours or some such thing and left the running of the duchy to his younger brother. Albrecht IV neglected to elevate his next youngest brother to co-rulership which caused no end of headaches and chivalric tales, but made him the sole duke.

And when Ludwig the Rich was already a new kind of ruler, Albrecht IV is even more firmly in the modern world. He was unbelievably ambitious and prepared to take the pain. Not the pain that comes from being knocked off a horse in a tournament, but the pain that one endures during an all-nighter with accountants. His contemporaries laughed at him, called him a Federfuchser, a pen pusher. His richer cousins in Landshut looked down on him, his modest court and lack of bling.

Amongst the reforms he introduced, beyond administration and taxation, was a fundamental cleanup of the church. He went through monasteries, parishes and bishoprics, removed dissolute prelates and replaced them with pious, learned monks and priests. He restricted the excesses of the indulgences to a minimum, and limited the flow of cash out to Rome. This not only improved the spiritual well-being of his subjects, but also gave him access to the vast wealth and resources of the church.

If he had anything in common with anyone in this period, it was probably with Jakob Fugger. The two men shared the commercial acumen and the burning ambition. Where Fugger wanted to become the richest man who ever lived, Albrecht wanted to bring the old stem duchy of Bavaria back together. And that meant not just taking over the lands of the Landshut cousins, but also the source of all the coin in Europe, the Tyrol and its silver mines. The Tyrol had once been part of the stem duchy of Bavaria and been a Wittelsbach possession in the golden days of the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian.

It sounds ambitious, but not impossible. The Tyrol had its great vulnerability in the form of its ruler, Sigismund, he of the magnificent manors, pretentious paramours and fruitless fighting. And for all these pastimes, Sigismund needed money, a huge amount of money.

By 1479, after 10 years of toiling with accountants, tax managers and investment advisors, Albrecht IV had become rich, almost as rich as his cousins in Landshut. Rich enough to help out poor Sigismund of the Tyrol. But he did not want to do this alone. Albrecht IV, as we need to remember, wanted to bring the House of Wittelsbach back to power, not just his little statelet. So he made a huge effort to cut his cousin Georg in on the deal.

And Georg could see the great opportunity that was appearing before their eyes. They pooled their money and started lending to their distant cousin Sigismund in exchange for mortgages over his lands. In 1482 one of these mortgages, over the county of Burgau, was turned into an outright sale to Georg. In 1487, Sigmund handed over the whole of Further Austria, meaning the south west corner of modern day Germany, as well as half of Alsace and the Sundgau to be administered by the Wittelsbach cousins for 10 years. And in the same year, they seal the final deal, the big one. Sigismund and Albrecht make each other the heirs to their respective fortunes, should they die without legitimate male offspring. That seemed an ok deal given Sigismund was childless and Albrecht IV unmarried.

That latter state of affairs did however not last very long. Amongst the guests at Sigismund’s grand court in Innsbruck was the emperor’s only daughter, Kunigunde. Kunigunde had grown up in a more liberal environment than was common. She had acquired not just the usual skills of reading, writing and embroidery but had learned to ride, to hunt as well as mathematics and astronomy. She was the apple of her father’s eye and had been brought to Innsbruck to be kept safe. Instead, she fell for Albrecht IV, who must have displayed some alluring attributes beyond pen pushing.

The emperor Friedrich III was already pretty annoyed with Albrecht’s expansion plans, in particular since he intended to take over the Tyrol himself upon Sigmund’s demise. So one would think this unplanned liaison was the thing that broke the camels back. But it wasn’t.

Where Friedrich III drew the line was when Albrecht IV tried to buy the free imperial city of Regensburg. As mentioned before, Regensburg was essentially bankrupt due to declining trade and a rapacious upper class. Albrecht IV did what he always did, he offered money. He promised to wipe out their debt in exchange for submitting to his authority. The burghers wrote to Friedrich III and told him that unless he could rustle up a few hundred thousand gulden, they would have to take that deal. Friedrich III did not have a few hundred thousand gulden and so Regensburg signed on the dotted line.

But what Fridrich had was that he now really had it. The Regensburg deal was a breach of imperial law, or so he declared and he called for an imperial war against Albrecht and his cousin Georg. Albrecht’s response was to swiftly marry Kunigunde, against her father’s explicit wishes.

This could have been the high point of the house of Wittelsbach. Friedrich III was not a powerful prince any more. His hold on the Habsburg positions was fragile, he had been defeated in his war against the king of Hungary and was in no position to take on the Wittelsbach cousins and their vast financial resources.

If it had been just Friedrich III, the Wittelsbachs would have taken over the Tyrol, would have gained the imperial crown and Munich would have indeed become the capital of Germany.

But Friedrich III was not alone. He had a son, Maximilian. Maximilian had not only been elected and crowned King of the Romans, more importantly, he had married Marie of Burgundy and subsequently inherited and then defended a large part of her immense wealth. This marriage, gave him the resources to rebuild the Habsburg position in the empire as we will see in the upcoming Habsburg series. And one of these recovery actions was to use Fugger money and personal charm he convinced the estates of Tyrol to depose Sigismund and to hand over the county to him, not to Albrecht IV.

That would have just evened out the respective positions given the range of issues Friedrich III and Maximilian had to deal with at the same time. But the reason the balance ultimately tilted against the House of Wittelsbach was a self-inflicted issue.

Did I mention that cousin Georg from Landshut had some  deficits when it came to diplomacy? Well, that deficit turned out to be massive. In the years since his father’s passing, Georg had managed to not just irritate but enrage the free imperial cities of Swabia who had once been part of the Landfrieden consortium. Ulm and others were so upset, they decided to take up the mantle of executor of Friedrich’s demand to wage war against the Wittelsbachs.

This renewed Swabian league immediately attracted other members of the former “imperial faction”, like the dukes of Württemberg the margraves of Brandenburg and Baden, the archbishop of Mainz and even Sigismund of the Tyrol himself. The Wittelsbachs were isolated and outnumbered. It wasn’t even necessary to go to war after all. Cousin Georg caved almost immediately. He paid 36,000 gulden as a fine, handed back all he had gained in the previous decade and it seems wrote off a lot of the debts Sigismund of Tyrol had piled up.

His cousin gone, Albrecht IV was now all alone in the field. He was a steadfast man and kept going, but in the end could not hold. A combination of a rebellion by some of his nobles, the threat of a Swabian Bund army marching in and a further upswing in the Habsburg fortunes forced him to submit to Maximilian. He gave up Regensburg and some of the territorial gains he had so patiently worked for.

The rise of the Wittelsbachs was again cut short.

The last act of the drama came when cousin Georg died in 1503. According to the family pact that underpinned the various divisions of the Wittelsbach territories, every time one of the branches died out in the male line, the lands had to return to the remaining lines. That is what happened with Straubing and Ingolstadt and that was what should now happen with Landshut, since Georg and his Polish bride did not have any male children. In other words, the duchy of Landshut was to go in its entirety to Albrecht IV.

But when Georg passed, his testament was unveiled and the last of the Landshut dukes had determined that all his lands and wealth were to go, not to Albrecht IV, but to his daughter and her husband, Ruprecht of the Palatinate, youngest son of the ruling Count Palatine, Philipp.

This was a scandal that went against some of the fundamental rules that underpinned the functioning of the Holy Roman Empire. Why Georg did that is unclear, but likely the relationship between the cousins had suffered during the recent setbacks and the Landshut duke blamed Albrecht IV for having lured him into this dangerous adventure that had brought him close to ruin.

With two pretenders for the riches of Landshut in play, war was inevitable. And given that it was again, two branches of the Wittelsbach family fighting each other, it was clear who would win, whatever the outcome, and that was the house of Habsburg, the dukes of Württemberg and any other neighbouring statelet with an axe to grind.

The war, as most of these events was just a continued sequence of raids into each other’s territory with few, if any battles. For two years, the war of the Landshut succession devastated Bavaria, undoing much of the good work done by the last generation of Bavarian dukes. By 1505 both sides reached the necessary level of exhaustion to come to an arrangement.

The Palatinate had to give back a lot of the gains made by Friedrich the Victorious in the Mainzer Stiftsfehde 40 years earlier. The Landshut territory was to be divided up, with a northern part forming a new principality of Pfalz-Neuburg given to the sons of Ruprecht of the Palatinate; the central part was granted to Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich, and the southern bit, with the lucrative silver mines of Kitzbühel, was going to emperor Maximilian of Habsburg.

This still hurts, not because of the silver mines, which have long closed, but because with it the fastest downhill slope on the FIS world cup circuit came to the Austrians…

For the Bavarian Wittelsbachs the outcome was a mixed one. On the one hand Albrecht IV was able to put the duchy of Bavaria back together, and by introducing primogeniture, prevented any further divisions of the territory. The internal reforms, the build out of the administrative state and the reform of the church held, making Bavaria one of the most stable princely territories in the upcoming storm of the Reformation.

On the other hand the territorial losses reduced the duchy to a scale that it was no longer able to compete with the Habsburgs for predominance in the Holy Roman Empire. Bavaria became a reluctant ally of the House of Habsburg, usually marching to the Viennese tune, except for the occasional bouts of rebellion.

I initially planned to move on with our circular motion around the empire and head for Saxony next, but several of you asked about the fate of the fourth branch of the Wittelsbachs, the counts of Hennegau, Seeland, Friesland and Holland. That is another story full of romance and the smell of gnpowder, and it is also the story of how the Netherlands moved out of the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire. I hope you will join us again.

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