Ludwig der Gebartete And Agnes Bernauer

As you can hear from my voice, I am still all bunged up. I tried to record this episode in the usual way and quite frankly it was horrible. But the show has to go on. So I did have to resort to other means. I cloned my voice with elevenlabs and what you will hear now is not me, but bionic me. If that is not for you, just wait, maybe a week, hopefully no longer and I will record the episode again, this time in the traditional good old human way.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 196 – Love and War in Bavaria – Part 1, which is also episode 12 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15th Century.

As you can hear from my voice, I am still all bunged up. I tried to record this episode in the usual way and quite frankly it was horrible. But the show has to go on. So I did have to resort to other means. I cloned my voice with elevenlabs and what you will hear now is not me, but bionic me. If that is not for you, just wait, maybe a week, hopefully no longer and I will record the episode again, this time in the traditional good old human way.

And with that, on to the show.

Bavaria is a truly unique place. And that is not only because it has become the cultural touchpoint for foreigners who associate Germans with the Lederhosen and Octoberfest. I may not see these things as particularly German, but at least it is one up from goosestepping and “don’t mention the war”.

By the 15th century all the original stem duchies of the Holy Roman Empire: Swabia, Franconia, Lorraine, even Saxony had vanished as political entities, except for Bavaria. Sure, it had lost large sways of land to Austria, Carinthia and Tyrol, but it was still there.

And since its ducal family, the house of Wittelsbach had kept its position all through the upheavals of the Hohenstaufen and Interregnum periods, it was a remarkably coherent structure. There was only one free imperial city within its confines, Regensburg, and three dioceses, again, Regensburg, Freising and Passau, all of which were under more or less tight control of the dukes.

This contiguous territory had been the reason the Wittelsbachs had risen to being one of the top three families in the empire alongside the Habsburgs and Luxembourger. As we discussed in season 8 – From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull, for about a 100 years period power had shifted back and forth between these three families.

For the Wittelsbachs this period was a time of material expansion. They had already captured the Palatinate in the later stages of the reign of the Hohenstaufen but when Ludwig the Bavarian became emperor, things accelerated rapidly. In 1323 Ludwig enfeoffed the vacant margraviate of Brandenburg to his son Ludwig. And in 1342 they gained the Tyrol in an audacious move, as we discussed in episode 152 – The not so ugly Duchess Margarete Maultasch. The last acquisition were the counties of Holland, Seeland & Hennegau in 1347.

In aggregate, this was real estate that could rival the wealth of the Luxemburgers and certainly outshone the Habsburgs. And some of these places were already very rich, like the Palatinate and others had a great future ahead, like the Tyrol where the largest silver mines in Europe were discovered in 1409, and even more so, Holland with its great cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Dordrecht, Delft, Haarlem etc.

If the Wittelsbachs had been able to hold on to these gains and then translate them into a permanent claim on the imperial title, Germany’s capital might have been Munich, Landshut or Ingolstadt, rather than Berlin.

But as we know, that is not what happened. Somehow the Wittelsbachs lost their way.

The decline had already set in during the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian. Ludwig had gained control of the Palatinate not in his own right, but as guardian of his nephew. That nephew survived and when he became an adult, demanded his lands back. In 1329 the treaty of Pavia established two separate Wittelsbach lines, one for the Palatinate, one for the Bavarian possessions. These two territories would remain seperate, except for temporary occupations, until in 1777 Count Palatine Karl Theodor inherited both.

When Ludwig the Bavarian died in 1347, he left behind six sons who each received one bit of the great inheritance. The eldest, Ludwig V received the lion’s share, Brandenburg, Tyrol and Upper Bavaria, the second eldest, Stephen received Lower Bavaria and the two younger ones succeeded each other as dukes of Holland, Seeland and Hennegau.

The Tyrol was lost to the Habsburgs in 1363, when Margarete Maultasch in a last swipe at her husband passed it on to the Habsburgs. Duke Stephen II marched into Tyrol to claim it back, but found such resistance that he conceded the transfer to the Habsburgs in 1369.

The Wittelsbachs also proved unable to tame the chaotic situation in Brandenburg and sold it to the Luxemburgs in 1373.

The silver lining was that the sons of Ludwig the Bavarians prove largely unable to produce heirs, so that the second eldest, Stephen II could reconsolidate at least Bavaria proper. The payments he had received from the sale of Brandenburg allowed him to buy up some of the remaining independent territories inside and adjacent to his lands. He was also a decent steward of his patrimony, smoked out robber barons and organized key industries, like the salt production in Bad Reichenhall.

Though diminished, the wealth and importance of the house of Wittelsbach was still such that Stephen II secured marriages for two of his two sons, Stephen III and Friedrich to the immensely rich family of the Visconti dukes of Milan. Their extraordinarily lavish dowries were again resources to further expand and consolidate their territory.

When Stephen II died in 1375, he urged his three sons to keep peace and harmony amongst themselves and to rule the duchy jointly, so as to preserve the standing of the family. And that is what they did until 1392.

And if they had held on to that communal rulership, they could easily have risen to the top again. By the 1390s the Luxembourgers were engaged in almost continual internecine warfare between the hapless King Wenceslaus, the wily Sigismund and the rich brothers Jobst and Prokop of Moravia, see episodes 165 and 169. And the Habsburgs had been hitting a rough patch as well. In 1379 they had split their lands into two, later three separate principalities, and in 1386 they had suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Swiss Cantons at the battle of Sempach.

This would have left the Wittelsbachs as the last man standing and natural candidates for the imperial title. And indeed when the prince electors discussed replacements for the incompetent king Wenceslaus, either of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs were mentioned.

But this model of joint rulership had its drawbacks. In the chaotic years of the Western Schism and the vacuum left by Wenceslaus, princes were constantly required to make quick, difficult and far reaching decisions. Doing that in agreement with all three brothers was already difficult. But by 1392 each of the three brothers had sons of their own. And these sons had grown up and demanded their share in the decision making.

In 1392, following a couple of bad strategic decisions, the joint government had become untenable. Bavaria was divided up into three, later four separate duchies, Bayern-Munich, Bayern-Ingolstadt, Bayern-Landshut and Bayern-Straubing. Each one of these entities were still sizeable principalities within the context of the Holy Roman Empire, but no longer powerful enough to play on a national, let alone an international scale. The Wittelsbachs became what so many German princely families became in the centuries that followed, providers of wives and occasionally husbands to much more powerful royal houses, not as a way to forge alliances, but for other reasons.

Let me explain what I mean. Kings, emperors and truly powerful dukes married either the daughters of other kings, emperors and truly powerful dukes to cement some new alliance or to underpin a peace agreement. For instance the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was a direct result of the strategic realignment of Austria and France during the seven years war.

Another reason could be simply breeding purposes. What the German princes lacked in power and wealth, they could easily make up in lineage, tracing their ancestry back to Carolingian or even Merovingian rulers. Moreover, because they were politically insignificant in say a Russian, Swedish or even English context, they were the neutral choice of spouse.

And finally, though their territory may be small, if it was strategically important and the fecundity of the ruling prince in doubt, marrying down a rank may be worthwhile.

And that is how the Wittelsbachs got involved with the Valois, the royal family of France.

In 1385 John the Fearless, the heir to Burgundy and Flanders married Margaret of Bavaria from the branch of the family that ruled Holland, Seeland and Friesland, whilst his sister married her brother. Given the dukes of Burgundy were immensely rich and powerful, almost kings in their own right, that was a big step up for secondary branch of a declining princely family of the empire.

The idea of this alliance was to set the stage for a takeover of Holland, Seeland and Friesland, aka modern day Netherlands, by Burgundy, something that actually happened in 1433. We may get back to that story in a later episode, since it involves death by dog bite, a war between cods and hooks and another alleged love story.

This double marriage then paved the way for an even more prestigious marriage, that of the daughter of Stephen III, the eldest of the three Bavarian dukes to king Charles the sixth of France.

This girl, who came to France aged 13 or 14 quickly seduced the young king with her beauty and spirit, which is why she became known to history as Isabeau of Bavaria. Despite this auspicious start and the 12 children she bore him, her story took a very dark turn.

Her husband, Charles VI was prone to mental illness. In 1393 he held a masked ball where the king and his friends dressed up as savages, as Wild Men. Their costumes were made from linen soaked in resin and covered with flax, a getup that made them appear shaggy and hairy from head to foot. And since the zipper had not yet been invented, the king and his friends were sown into these costumes.

The only problem was that this combination of linen, resin and flax is extremely flammable. Orders had been given not to bring any torches in during the performance. But,…the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, however appeared drunk, carrying a torch. And since he was the king’s brother, nobody stopped him, not even when he was holding the torch over one of the dancers to be better able to identify who was behind the mask.

Putting a drunken torchbearer and an inflammable dancer together had the entirely predictable effect; one of the dancer’s costumes caught fire, sparks jumped from one to the next and within seconds, quote: “four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals dropping to the floor … releasing a stream of blood”. The king only survived because his aunt shielded him from the flames under the cover of her voluminous skirt.

This horrific event triggered the final descent of King Charles VI into outright insanity, probably paranoid schizophrenia. On occasion he believed himself to be made of glass and feared that even the slightest touch would made him break into a thousand pieces. At other times he would not wash nor change his clothes for months, so that he was covered in sores and scabs. Still Isabeau had more of his children.

As you can imagine, having a largely incapacitated king in the midst of the Hundred-Years War was not necessarily to France’s advantage. The country was ruled by regency councils, which quickly fractured into two parties, the Burgundians, led by Philip the Bold the duke of Burgundy, the uncle of king Charles VI, and the Armagnacs, led by Louis of Orleans, the brother of the king. Isabeau was a crucial element in this game of thrones, since she had been given sole charge of the royal children, including the dauphin.

Historians have not always been kind to Isabeau and her role; traitorous, wanton, frivolous, foreign and deceitful were accusations levelled at her at the time and later. She was accused of having caused the king’s illness through witchcraft in order to pursue an affair with the king’s dashing brother, the duke of Orleans. She became known as the most detested queen of France, blamed for the near complete defeat and capitulation of Charles VI to king Henry V of England.

I guess I do not have to say that none of these allegations hold much water, though one wonders how a 22 year old woman, married to a madman is supposed to navigate the deadly politics of the Valois court.

Anyway, where this all intersects with Bavarian history, is in her brother, Ludwig the Bearded, duke of Bayern-Ingolstadt.

For obvious reasons, this young duke, handsome, a great dancer and mighty warrior felt much more at home in the corridors of the French royal palaces of St. Pol and the Louvre, than in his tiny castle at Ingolstadt. And his sister was able to pass him attractive commissions, commands in the ongoing wars and rich heiresses. Ludwig the Bearded became a sort of royal brother in law slash condottiere slash ambassador during these tumultuous years. At times he represented his sister on the regency council, though claims he “ruled France” are a massive exaggeration. He was a player though.

Whilst at court, he witnessed the utter brutality of French politics at the time. In 1407 John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy had his rival and cousin, the duke of Orleans murdered, allegedly to protect the honor of the king, whose honor that had suffered due to the alleged adultery between Orleans and Isabeau. The ensuing civil war was exceptionally ferocious and culminated in the Dauphin, the future king Charles VII, luring the duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless into a trap and hacking him to pieces.

That was followed by a condemnation of the Dauphin, the battle of Agincourt and the Treaty of Troyes whereby king Charles VI of France disinherited his only surviving son and appointed Henry V of England as his successor. A policy Isabeau supported. As a consequence, the whole of Northern France was occupied by the English and the Dauphin barely held out in Bourges and Orleans. France would have fallen had not a farmer’s girl called Joan appeared out of nowhere….which is an entirely different story.

It seems that all that Isabeau’s brother, Ludwig the Bearded took away from his experience in France was that it was acceptable to put personal interest ahead of the interest of the state. He looked at the dukes of Burgundy, the true winners of all this mayhem and concluded that relentless pursuit of one’s own advantage and the defense of one’s honor was the route to success – and forget about the rest.

When he returned to the empire, he applied this logic to Bavarian politics. The division of territories in 1392 had not resolved the conflict between the three brothers and their respective sons. In particular Ludwig the Bearded and his father felt they had been taken advantage of. Though their share of the duchy, Bayern-Ingolstadt did include some of the richest parts, including Kufstein and Kitzbuhel with its mining operations, it was also fragmented into 9 disjointed exclaves. Meanwhile their cousins in Munich and Landshut had more contiguous and hence much easier to manage and to defend lands.

The conflict between the different branches of the family escalated when in 1397 the artisans of Munich rose up against the patricians. Ludwig and his father immediately threw their weight behind the rebels in the hope of stealing the city from their cousins the dukes of Bavaria-Munich. This turned into an armed conflict, which Ludwig and his father lost.

The net effect was that when once more a Wittelsbach became king, the Count Palatine Ruprecht, he could not rely on the combined might of the House of Wittelsbach, but only on the Ingolstadt dukes. This lack of a power base was one of the reasons Ruprecht’s reign was remarkable ineffective, even by the standards of the empire at the time. When Ruprecht died in 1410, neither his son, nor anyone else from the Wittelsbach family made any attempt to keep the crown in the family. The Wittelsbachs would only once more rise to the imperial honor, in 1742, which turned into a pretty much unmitigated disaster.

Having buggered that up, Ludwig was by no means done. He now focused on his cousin Heinrich the Bavarian duke of Landshut. Heinrich was the exact opposite of Ludwig. Where Ludwig was a party prince, generous to the point of financial ruin and always looking for ways to outshine his peers, in clothing, horses, houses and prowess in tournament and war, Heinrich was from a new era. He was a cold calculating prince, patiently gathering resources, forming viable alliances, expanding his reach. He was a shrewd player of the complex legal system of the empire, calling for justice and equity, whilst being occasionally brutal inenforcing his will on his lands. When in 1408 the citizens of Landshut protested against higher taxes, he had them incarcerated, and when they still did not consent, beheaded and their houses burned down.

Ludwig and Heinrich met and then clashed at the Council of Constance, not for the first time, but this time it was serious. Ludwig publicly claimed that Heinrich was a bastard, the son of a cook, which, if true would have left the duchy of Bavaria-Landshut without a legitimate ruler, and him, Ludwig, at least as partial owner. Heinrich responded to this attack on his honor by having his thugs roughing up Ludwig. Ludwig did sustain some serious wounds but recovered. When Ludwig demanded satisfaction before the court of emperor Sigismund, he was denied. His enemy, Heinrich of Landshut had build up a coalition of Southern German princes and cities that was too powerful for the emperor to ignore, and Heinrich also paid him 6,000 gulden.

It took a few more years, but Ludwig ultimately got his war with Heinrich. This was a war over honor, standing and land, pretty much in this order. Ludwig stood barely a chance. He was completely isolated. Heinrich’s patient alliance building had brought almost everyone who was anyone onto his side; the cousins in Munich, the Margraves of Brandenburg, the emperor, the free Imperial cities, everyone.

Ludwig still managed to burn down the famous castle above Nürnberg, but in turn his cousins devastated much of his lands. Running out of cash to pay his mercenaries, Ludwig had to concede. He had to give up some land to Heinrich, though the major payday was three years later. The fourth and smallest of the Bavarian duchy, the land around Straubing had come free as the last male heir had died from poison. Under the terms of the agreement by which the three brothers had divided the duchy in 1392, any vacant principality should be shared equally amongst the remaining branches of the family. Ludwig had to accept that his share was cut from one third to just one quarter.

Despite all these setbacks, Ludwig remained stubborn to the end. He kept seeking ways to attack his cousins in Lands-hut and in Munich, though chances of success had declined and declined. His only son felt that his father was about to lose it all. So he teamed up with Heinrich of Lands-hut and besieged Ludwig in his castle at Neuburg am Inn. The siege was successful and Ludwig was kept in prison until he died. His son, who was a more conciliatory type died before him, which brought the line of Bayern-Ingol-stadt to an end. Most of Ludwig’s lands went to his arch enemy, Heinrich von Lands-hut, who became known as the Rich.

Which begs the question, where was the third branch of the Bavarian dukes, those of Bayern-München? Why did they not get a share in the Ingolstadt inheritance?

As it happened, one of them had also decided to “do what I want and to hell with the consequences”, thereby knocking himself and his family out of the game. But this time it wasn’t about honor or glory, or land or greed, but love.

The Munich branch was probably the most sober and harmonious of this lot, at least until 1435. It was initially run jointly by two brothers, Wilhelm and Ernst. Having been attacked by Ludwig the Bearded and his father early on, they decided to support everyone who was opposed to these two. Sort of, my cousin’s enemy is my friend.

Hence when Ludwig supported Ruprecht of the Palatinate as king, the Munich brothers supported king Wenceslaus and the Luxembourgers, even though Ruprecht was their distant cousin. And as Wenceslaus deteriorated, they were linking up with the successor to both, the emperor Sigismund.

Wilhelm in particular was a gifted operator and became Sigismund’s representative at the Council of Basel, where he amongst other things facilitated the peace with the Hussites we discussed in episode 182.

It appears that the two brothers, Wilhelm and Ernst had decided that only one of them should go out and father legitimate children, so as to avoid a split of their already rather tiny principality. Wilhelm drew the short straw, or maybe the long straw, since Wilhelm lived with a woman he chose for reasons other than politics for most of his life.

But in 1433 Wilhelm changed his mind and married 17-year-old Elisabeth of Cleves who gave him two sons in quick succession, before Wilhelm himself died in 1435.

What brought about this sudden change in approach? A breakdown of brotherly unity?

No, what got in the way was one of Bavaria’s most famous love stories.

You see, the plan that Wilhelm and Ernst had to keep the land united had initially worked out brilliantly. Ernst had married Elisabetta Visconti from Milan in 1396 who brought him a huge dowry and bore him a son, Albrecht. Albrecht lived to adulthood and all the other children were girls. Brilliant, the continued existence of an undivided principality of Bayern-München was assured.

But then, in 1428, Albrecht went to a great tournament in Augsburg. And there, the son and heir to the duchy met a girl, Agnes Bernauer. Agnes was the daughter, not of an imperial prince, or at least of a mighty and rich nobleman, not even of one of the super-rich patricians of the city, but of a humble barber-surgeon. A barber surgeon usually worked out of a bathhouse, some of which were entirely respectable institutions where men and women went to wash off the grime of the road, but others were less so….

What exactly the circumstances of their encounter were is shrouded in mystery, but Albrecht was clearly smitten with the gorgeous Agnes. He took her home to Munich and she became his mistress. So far, so not a problem.

But it seems Agnes had a stronger hold over Albrecht than most other companions. She got involved in Bavarian politics, such as they were, and helped Albrecht to set up his own court, separate from his father.

That was a bit more worrying. And then rumors were going round that the couple were in fact living as man and wife, and that they had gotten married in secret.

For Wilhelm and Ernst this was a serious issue. Albrecht was their sole heir, and if he died without legitimate offspring – and no offspring of an Agnes Bernauer was ever going to be legitimate – their duchy would in the end go to the hated cousins in Ingolstadt and Lands-hut. Which was a total nono.

So they took a two-fronted approach. Wilhelm though already in his sixties got married and got busy making babies. Meanwhile Ernst tried to convince his son to let go of the alluring Agnes and get married properly. Albrecht stood by his girl.

We have no idea what Agnes Bernauer looked like, we do not even know her hair color. One chronicler claimed that her skin was so translucent that one could see the red wine going down her throat when she drank, which apparently was extremely attractive at the time.

When Wilhelm died in September 1435, Ernst was 63 years old and he realized the seriousness of the situation. His brother’s son, a baby called Adolf, was barely 2 years old. His own, grown-up son was unwilling to leave Agnes, and he himself was well past his sell-by date. If he was to die tomorrow, his little state would quickly fall prey to his ambitious cousins. They would claim guardianship of little Adolf and start a war with Albrecht, that he was unlikely to win. And once they had gotten hold of Munich, little Adolf would experience some unexpected mishap, allowing the cousins to cut up the land he and his brother had cared about for so long.

Ernst could not see any other way out than getting rid of Agnes Bernauer. In October 1435, when his son was away hunting with cousins in Lands hut, Ernst rode into Straubing and had Agnes Bernauer arrested. She was quickly convicted of some unknown crime and her execution by drowning in the Danube was ordered for the same day. She was thrown into the river and when she tried to swim back to shore the executioner pushed her back and then back under, until she was dead.

Albrecht was of course very upset about the killing of his partner, potentially his wife. So he went to Ingolstadt and sat down with guess who – Ludwig the Bearded. At that point Ludwig was still in charge of his lands and armies. They planned a campaign, besieged Munich and in the end Albrecht prevailed over his cruel father, let him rot in jail whilst building a shrine to his dead lover…

Ah – no. That is not how 15th century dukes operate.

Albrecht and his father reconciled quickly, astonishingly quickly to be frank. Just 13 months after Agnes had been cruelly put to death, Albrecht married another princess and had the requisite dozens of children. Father and son were seen out hunting in the best of spirits in 1437.

Sure, the two dukes commissioned a chapel for Agnes Bernauer in Straubing where we can now find her elaborate tombstone which shows her in the habit of a Carmelite nun. Albrecht made a generous donation to the local monastery to sing mass for her to eternity, a performance that continues to this day.

Agnes Bernauer became super famous. Her chapel turned into a major tourist destination in the 19th century, the Bavarian king Ludwig I composed a poem in her honor when he visited. Friedrich Hebbel wrote a tragedy and Carl Orff an opera about Agnes Bernauer. Every four years Straubing holds the Agnes Bernauer Festspiele where new and revised versions of the story are staged.

But as much as the adventures of Ludwig the Bearded and the tragedy of Agnes Bernauer are fascinating stories, they are also not really that relevant in a broader context of German history. What they tell us about is how a once powerful family could decline to petty squabbles between cousins, burning down each other’s villages in the name of honor, whilst out there other, truly powerful men were writing European history.

These years, from 1392 to 1450 were the low point for the house of Wittelsbach, but not its end. And the one to pull them out of the quagmire was the eldest son of Agnes’ lover, Albrecht. Not a son by Agnes, but a son from his second marriage to the proper princess. This son will unify all the Bavarian lands, improve its infrastructure, bring about law and order and put an end to the eternal divisions of territories, in short, he brought Bavaria back to the high table, even though by then, it was already too late.

I hope you will join us again next week for Part Two of Love and War in Bavaria when you will also be introduced to the correct pronunciation of Landshut, Ingolstadt, Freising, Orleans, Heinrich and probably a few dozens more.