The Gathering at trier in 1473

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Transcript

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 213 – Duping a Grand Duke or the Awakening of Friedrich III, which is also episode 11 of season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

How long can an emperor not be an emperor? The official record stands at 25 years, that is how long Friedrich III had stayed out of the core areas of the Holy Roman Empire. That meant 25 ears of Imperial Diets without the presence of an Emperor, 25 years of stasis on the challenges of the time, the reform of the empire and the defense against the Ottoman expansion.

But sometime in the late 1460s the apathic emperor Friedrich III, dubbed the Imperial Arch Sleepyhead awakes and does what he had never done before – something. And that something turned into a lot of things, some related to imperial reform, but the most significant something for European history was a marriage, well, an engagement for now, followed by a flight down the river Mosel away from the intended father of the bride.

Yes, it is that famous marriage, just not in the way you may have thought it happened.

Christmas Present

But before we start I wanted to ask you what you want for Christmas. There are so many of you who contribute to the show either financially or by telling their friends and family about the History of the Germans. I had originally thought I would provide a regular flow of bonus episodes for you, but this was ultimately not feasible. As we moved out of the early and high middle ages into the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, the sheer volume of information and the quite frankly bewildering complexity of the period has made demands on my time that left no room for bonus episodes. But you surely deserve more. So I am going to produce a Christmas special, and if you are a patron or one time donor to the show, you can choose what this Christmas special is going to be. Here are the options based on proposals I have received over time:

• A classic Q&A episode where I will try to answer all your questions,
• A travel itinerary through Germany where I give you 5 to 10 places I think you should see and that are not on the classic route, or
• A maximum five minute recording of me butchering German Christmas songs.

I will send you an email in the next few days from my email address historyofthegermans@gmail.com with a poll. Just click on what you prefer and I will deliver, but please do not make me sing….

And if you want to participate in the poll but have not yet signed up as a patron, you can do so at historyofthegermans.com/support as Ulrik M., Nathalie W. , Christopher T., Noel F. and Stepan C. have already done

And with that, back to the show.

What could Have Been…

We are in the 1460s and it is make or break time for the emperor Friedrich III. The head of the house of Habsburg was a case of terrible miscasting. For all we know, he would have been much happier as a simple imperial prince living in his castle in Wiener Neustadt and tending to his garden and his beloved wife Eleanor. If that had been his fate, he might have ended up as Friedrich the Fruitful, last mentioned in an 1878 biography by a renowned medievalist at the university of Graz, appreciated for his tasteful late gothic funeral monument, but otherwise completely forgotten.

But that was not his destiny. Instead the electors, believing he was the foretold last Emperor who would finally bring peace and justice to the land, if not ring in a 1000 years of bliss, had elevated him to king of the Romans.

They were sorely disappointed. Friedrich was apathic, always looking for compromise and happy to step back his ambitions. He had kept away from the issues of the empire, not even shown himself there for 25 long years. This long period of inertia had gained him the nickname the Imperial Arch Sleepyhead.

A.E.I.O.U.

But he was also an intelligent and a genuinely serious person. We do not know whether he realized his shortcomings, but he believed profoundly in the sanctity of the office he had taken on. Even though he had neither the resources nor the charisma to enforce the imperial rights, he never abandoned them. He was, if anything, a staggeringly stubborn man. The kind of doggedly tenacious person who would let his family be bombed to smithereens in the Hofburg rather than giving up his rights to the duchy of Austria.

Even before he had been elected he had devised his personal motto, the letter A.E.I.O.U. Like his ancestor Rudolf the Founder who had devised his own secret script, Friedrich was into astrology, puzzles and mysticism. So he never declared officially what this was supposed to mean, leaving everybody guessing.

When he first mentions it in his notebook in 1437, it might have meant “Amor electis, iniustis ordinor ultor”, which means something like “friend of the chosen and avenger to the unjust”. But then it could also mean, “Alle ere is ob uns” = all honour is for us or Aquila electa iusta omnia vincit = the chosen and just eagle conqueres all.

Friedrich not only saw the empire as eternal and superior to all other princes, he also firmly believed that the House of Austria was exceptional. He had fully bought into the Privilegium Maius, the great forgery of his ancestor, including the fake letters by Caesar and Nero granting Austria preeminent status in the Roman empire.

He took as gospel the “Austrian Chronicle of the 95 Rulers” that had emerged around the same time as the Privilegium Maius. We talked about that in episode 204. This was the story of the rulers of Austria going back to the year 1,500 BC. Here we are reliably informed that this glorious land, once founded by Hercules’ son Norix, had been ruled first by Jewish patriarchs, then Roman emperors and Babenberger dukes, before its great mission was taken up by the Habsburgs.

Friedrich had the coats of arms of these 95 imaginary predecessors immortalised in stone in the courtyard of his castle at Wiener Neustadt. He confirmed the validity of the fake Privilegium Maius in his function as emperor.

And somehow in his head and then in his propaganda, these two strains merged into a narrative whereby Austria was the natural inheritor of the imperial title and predestined to unite Europe. That is when the most common interpretation of AEIOU took hold: “Austriae est imperare orbi universo” or in German: “Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan”, both of which mean All the world is subject to Austria.

It is from here onwards that the members of the house of Habsburgs, even when they were ruling far flung lands in Spain or Naples or Flanders, referred to themselves as members of the Casa di Austria, the House of Austria, the dynasty that was predestined to rule over the whole world.

But in 1470, this idea of an all powerful Austria could not be further from reality.

the threat from Matthias Hunyadi

As we heard last week, Friedrich’s neighbour to the south, Matthias Hunyadi, the king of Hungary was reorganizing his kingdom along the lines of a modern Renaissance state, complete with humanists, libraries and a standing army. A standing army strong enough to hold back the mighty Ottoman empire and hence infinitely more powerful than any levy Friedrich could muster in Austria.

And the man who had so often come to Friedrich’s rescue, Georg of Podiebrad, had himself come under a lot of pressure. His past as a leader of the Utraquists had finally caught up with him. Pope Paul II had revoked the Compacta that had readmitted the Utraquists into the Catholic Church and in 1466 excommunicated and deposed the king. Matthias Hunyadi found it in his heart that he, as the shield of Christendom, had to pick up the burden of stealing Georg of Podiebrad’s crown.

As it turned out, Matthias wasn’t as good a general as he was an organizer and book collector. So, despite his extraordinarily well trained and well equipped army, his progress against Georg was slow. But as far as Friedrich was concerned, Podiebrad could no longer be relied upon to come and take the conkers out of the fire as the Germans would say. And the big question was what Matthias would do once he was finished with Bohemia.

Strengthening of the Wittelsbach opposition

Next up the alliance of imperial princes who had already tried to replace Friedrich twice, had become even more powerful. They had won the Mainzer Stiftsfehde and the Princes War. Friedrich’s allies, the margraves of Baden, the duke of Wurttemberg and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg were licking their wounds. And then the Wittelsbachs had added another Prince Elector to their list. In 1463 the canons of Cologne had elected the brother of Friedrich the Victorious as their new archbishop and Prince Elector. They might have lost Georg of Podiebrad as a candidate for the title of king of the Romans following the latter’s excommunication, but they were now talking to the richer and more powerful Matthias Hunyadi who was contemplating a bid for the imperial throne, not a man with modest ambitions was he.

But that was still not all. The empire had not only to deal with a resurgent Hungary looking north, but also with a duchy of Burgundy that was disentangling itself from France and was looking to expand eastwards.

Teh expansion of Burgundy into the Empire

The duchy of Burgundy as an independent state had come about initially because king John the Good of France who wasn’t very good as a king, had given the French Burgundy to his beloved youngest son Philipp.

Burgundy is one of those confusing places and political entities. The name goes back to a Germanic kingdom created in the 5^th century. It was absorbed into the Merovingian kingdom and broke up into several parts in the 10^th century.

There is the duchy of Burgundy, roughly equivalent to the French region of Burgundy around Dijon and Beaune. Then the free county of Burgundy around Besancon, known as the Franche Comte. The kingdom of Upper Burgundy, roughly today’s French Speaking Switzerland with its centers in Geneva and Lausanne and finally lower Burgundy covering the Rhone river from Lyon to Arles and the French Alps. This Burgundy that we are talking about today has its nucleus in the duchy of Burgundy, nothing to do with these other Burgundies.

After Philipp, called Philipp the Bold had received the duchy of Burgundy from his father, he married the heiress of the immensely rich county of Flanders, who also brought Brabant and Limburg into the family. There was one duke in the middle called John the Fearless, but it was under the third duke, Philipp the Good who ruled from 1419 to 1467, that the Burgundians expanded aggressively into the empire.

We did already discuss the acquisition of Hainault, Holland and Seeland in episodes 198 and 199. But Philipp the Good wasn’t done with that. Throughout his reign he added Luxemburg, Namur and Liege, making him truly the Grand Duke in the West.

The Burgundian rulers were immensely wealthy because they owned the great Flemish trading and cloth-making towns of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Ypres, and, and, and…. For a long time the Burgundians had been focused on French politics where they were the deciding force in the Hundred Years’ War. I was Burgundian support for the English that forced the French into the treaty of Troyes that brought the soin of Henry V to the French Throne.

But when Henry V died and England was careering towards the War of the Roses, the Burgundians were in a bit of a pickle. Though they were originally French princes, the French did not like them very much anymore – something about burning a virgin in Rouen. So as much for self-preservation as for self-aggrandization, the grand Dukes of the West needed a new title and a new positioning. And that title and that positioning was in or in conjunction with the empire.

The son of Philipp the Good, Charles who we call the Bold, but which the French call Le Temeraire, the Reckless, built a huge standing army and ordered tapestries that depicted Gundobad, the fifth century king of the Burgundians, and he would often talk about the lands of the emperor Lothar that covered a broad stretch of territory from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

All things that made many people inside the empire nervous, including the emperor Friedrich III, who as we have just heard, already had a long list of things to be nervous about.  

The Awakening of friedrich III

He was actually so nervous he did something he had not done before, which was – to do something. As I said, he wasn’t stupid or a total pushover, just slow, deliberate and keen on the quit life. But a quiet life was no longer on the card, If he wanted to get out of this situation, and most importantly for him, preserve the honor of the House of Austria as well as the Imperial crown, he needed to find new allies and approaches.

The first thing he did was to go to Rome and reconfirm his close relationship with the papacy now that his friend and former chancellor pope Pius II was dead. What he got from this meeting with pope Paul II apart from promises of support and friendship was the approval of separate bishoprics for Vienna, Wiener Neustadt, Ljubljana and I think one more, important steps that allowed him to deepen and consolidate his power at home.

A renewed Approach

But that was no longer enough. The powers arrayed against him had grown far beyond the once important powerbase of his family.

So, in 1470 Friedrich III completely reverses his policy stance. It is as if he had listened to a poem by Janos Pannonius, the great Hungarian Humanist who wrote:

Rome was once saved by Fabius’ delaying

But your delays, Friedrich have brought it to breaking.

You’re always consulting and never quite doing.

Couldn’t you act for once and stop all that chewing

You harken to Saturn, the most frozen of stars;

Far better if emperors were guided by Mars

After 25 years of not setting foot into the empire, of calling diets and assemblies he did not attend and eternal dithering and debating and delaying, Friedrich III took off his imperial arch sleepy head.

The solution to his problems lay in the empire. If he could harness the power of the imperial princes in the defense of his homelands, then he may be able to face off against Matthias Hunyadi. And how can he get that done – by finally delivering on Imperial reform.

The Landfrieden of 1467

In 1467 he issued another common peace, this time including an outright ban on feuding. Anyone pursuing a feud without authorization was guilty, not just of a breach of an imperial order, but was guilty of lèse-majesté.

That was significant in two ways. First, the concept of lèse-majesté is part of Roman Law, the famous laws of the Justinian which granted the emperor in essence absolute power over legislation and execution. These powers have been circulating and have been claimed by the emperors since Barbarossa. We discussed them extensively in episode 55. That was 3 and a half years ago in podcast time and 300 years in actual historical time.

In the meantime, Roman law had permeated so much of European, specifically continental European jurisprudence. What appealed was that Roman law was structured and comprehensive. Justinian had made sure that this great opus had an inherent logic where each element connected with the other in the creation of one coherent legal philosophy, the exact opposite of the Germanic laws built on tradition and precedent.

It was Roman Law that was taught at the universities across Europe making sure that lawyers from different legal traditions and speaking different languages could still understand each other, negotiate agreements and argue cases before each other’s courts.

And it was immensely popular with kings and princes as it cut through the messy set of ancient rights and privileges, the estates and other representative bodies that pointed to tradition and long practice to hem in the ruler.

Whether it was the Renaissance states of Italy, the grand kingdoms of France and Hungary or the German territorial princes, everyone was busy implementing Roman Law principles.

Friedrich III jumped on the bandwagon when he added the lèse-majesté to the arsenal of the fight against feuds. And he did implement these rules, at least to the extent he was able to. When his mercenary captain, Andreas Baumkirchner declared a feud against the emperor over unpaid bills, Friedrich lured him to Wiener Neustadt, and had him and two of his colleagues executed – for lèse-majesté. He had learned to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The Chancery under Adolf of Nassau

In 1470 he had a visit from Adolf of Nassau, the archbishop of Mainz. We have met him in episode 191 and 186 already. Not a nice guy, but Friedrich is no longer mister Nice Guy either. He needed to get stuff done and Adolf was a guy who could get stuff done. Adolf took charge of the imperial chancery and the Kammergericht, the redesigned professional court system that Friedrich had established in 1442, but that had fallen into disuse.

The Imperial Diet of 1471

And Friedrich showed himself again in the Empire. In 1471 he called the princes of Christendom to Regensburg for a grand assembly to discuss what to do about the Ottomans. Admittedly that was a bit late, a touch self-serving as Ottoman raiders had been penetrating into Styria and yielded the usual zero result, but at least Friedrich was breaking the ice, no longer Saturn, the most frozen of stars.

And Mars was on its way.

Build-up to The Burgundian Engagement

But before he got there, he took a detour to see Mars’ lover, Venus. Not for himself obviously. Since his wife Eleanor had died in 1467, he had not shown any interest in other women, either out of his natural inertia or in an attempt to create another holy imperial couple like Henry II and Kunigunde.

No, Venus was reserved for his one and only son, Maximilian. Last time he had appeared on the scene was in 1463 when he was a four year-old hiding in the cellars of the Hofburg. But by now, i.e., the year 1473, he had grown up to be a strapping lad of 14, ready to take on his duties as son and potential successor to the Holy Roman Emperor.

And his father had an idea, or more precisely his former chancellor Aeneas Piccolomini had  had that idea a long time ago. An idea so cunning, it would change the history of Europe quite fundamentally.

And that idea was for Friedrich to take a leaf out of the book of his ancestor Rudolf I and finally properly leverage his imperial title, not by calling in vacant fiefs, that he would do later, but by offering crowns in exchange of marriage. And the person he was offering the crown to was Charles “Le Temeraire”, the Reckless, the Grand Duke in the West, duke of Burgundy, Luxemburg, Limburg, Geldern, count of Flanders and Namur, advocate of the prince bishoprics of Liege and Utrecht, etc., etc. pp. And in exchange Charles would offer the hand of Mary, his only daughter and only child, in marriage to Maximilian of Austria.

What an amazing deal! Charles gets what he always wanted and the House of Habsburg brings home the richest heiress in Europe. But before you go, ah hurrah we are finally getting into how the Habsburg had married their way to the top, let’s hear what actually happened.

Such a seminal transaction could not be done over the phone or by messenger, the two principal actors – no not Maximilian and Mary – but Friedrich and Charles needed to meet. And that meeting took place in the autumn of 1473 in the city of Trier.

Friedrich had come there with an entourage of Imperial Princes, including several Prince Electors, a total of about 2,000 men.

The Splendour of Charles the Bold

Charles “Le Temeraire” arrived with his own standing army of 15,000 and a full display of the wealth and power of the Grand Dukes of the West.

Charles had reached the pinnacle of his career. He had clapped his adversary, king Louis XI of France in irons, had brutally suppressed an uprising in his city of Liege, allowing his troops to plunder and burn the place so that the Austrian ambassador wrote back to his master that Liege was covered in a blanket of red snow, only the stumps of the church towers sticking out. After that the proud cities of Flanders, even the mighty and unruly Ghent submitted to the will of the duke. That was followed up with the annexation of the Duchy of Geldern and an agreement with the duke of Lorraine that turned that duchy into a protectorate of the Burgundians. With these acquisitions Charles had finally connected the family’s original possession, the duchy of Burgundy with their main power base, the low countries in one contiguous territory. And he was extending his tentacles further south by acquiring the Habsburg lands in Alsace from Friedrich’s dissolute cousin Sigismund of Tyrol.

When Charles rode into Trier at the head of the army that had burned Liege, had taken Geldern an intimidated the duke of Lorraine, he insisted on showing the other side of Burgundian power, the splendor of his court. He arrived wearing a cloak bedecked with 1,400 pearls and 23 rubies over his golden armor. He wore a hat, not yet his most famous golden hat, but still an ostentatious garment featuring a stork feather decorated all over with precious stones.

Charles had brought what looked to many his entire store of household goods, clothes in gold and ermine for himself and his entourage, the finest tapestries from the unsurpassed workshops in Arras, Tournai and Brussels, plates and cups made from gold and silver, the most dazzling armour from Milan, ,anuscripts lavishly decorated by the Limburg brothers and travel alters by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and, and, and whatever bling there was, Charles had it, and lots of it, and he was flaunting it.

The contrast to the austere and in comparison, penniless emperor was stark. And what made the whole thing even more awkward was that Friedrich as king and emperor ranked far above a mere duke, even one who had more land, more soldiers and a lot more money than he had.

The negotiations at Trier

The first few days were taken up with questions of etiquette, before negotiations could begin for real.

Charles opening bid was that he would like to be elected king of the Romans and thereby become Friedrich’s successor as emperor. He would then sponsor the election of Friedrich’s son Maximilian who would also become his heir by marrying the delightful Mary of Burgundy.

Friedrich very much liked that very last bit of the offer, but the other elements not so much. Friedrich was not at all willing to allow a King of the Romans to be elected during his lifetime who would then lead the imperial reform movement and sideline him. And that reluctance even extended to his own son, let alone the powerful duke of Burgundy.

Fortunately for Friedrich he could hide behind the reluctance of the Prince Electors to endorse Charles’ candidature. Friedrich still had a majority in the college of electors, having strong links to the archbishops of Mainz and Trier, the duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg.  But these links were not strong enough to convince them that they should elect someone with a standing army of 20,000, reckless ambition and a reputation for utmost brutality. Plus they had not enjoyed being upstaged by Burgundian glitz and glamour every single day of the 1 and a half month the gathering lasted.

A crown and an Engagement

Friedrich proposed an alternative option. What he could arrange was an elevation of the duke of Burgundy to king of Burgundy. That was an ancient title the empire had acquired (episode 24) but it had been a long time since anyone had been crowned king of Burgundy, I think the last one  was Karl IV. But the title had never formally disappeared.  

I could not find out what exactly the constitutional construct for Charles’ intended royal title had been. Was it a title like the king of Bohemia that gave a degree of independence but retained the bonds of vassalage to the empire, or was it meant to be an elevation to an independent royal title as it had been bestowed on Poland and Hungary in the 11^th century.

Even if this was a bit vague, Charles was keen. The royal title he was sure would help him to turn his various territories with their respective institutions and traditions into a more coherent political entity. And he really liked to wear a crown instead of just a ducal hat. So he had his goldsmiths produce such a crown and a sceptre, an orb and all the other accoutrements, all in the finest and latest Burgundian fashion.

He summoned the bishop of Metz to preside over the ceremony.

But before that went ahead, the last business end needed to be tied up. The engagement of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. As it happened, only Maximilian was present at Trier. Mary had stayed behind in Flanders depriving the Emperor from inspecting the merchandise, which irritated him no end. Charles seemed to have brought his entire household, just not its most important member. But even though she was sight unseen, still the engagement went ahead.

With all the agreements signed and completed, Charles spent his days devising ever more elaborate parades, rituals and costumes to display his soon to be elevated status. Whilst Friedrich had very different thoughts. Well, we do not know what his thoughts were and historians have debated them back and forth for a long time.

The flight of emperor friedrch III

What we do know is that in the middle of the night, the day before the intended coronation, Friedrich with his small entourage boarded a ship and slipped out of Trier. When Charles heard about it, he sent his trusted lieutenant and governor of upper Alsace, Peter von Hagenbach to intercept the emperor. Hagenbach and his men rode as fast as they could along the Mosel river. When their horses got tired, they swapped them for a rowing boat and they rowed as hard as they could. Finally, they caught up with the emperor. Here is historian Bart van Loo’s description what happened next: quote

Hagenbach who was fluent in French and German could address Friedrich III in his own language and asked whether his majesty wouldn’t wait a bit for the Burgundian duke.  Hagenbach said that Charles felt wretched because the emperor had risen so early. If it pleased Friedrich to exercise patience, the duke would be able to say farewell in a dignified manner. Even in delicate circumstances, courtesy remained an important consideration.

Friedrich agreed on condition that it would not take too long. When half an hour had passed and the vessels were still bobbing in the stream, a frown appeared on the emperor’s face. Hagenbach declared he would fetch his master. He could not be far away. Friedrich nodded. The Governor of Upper Alsace then jumped in his boat, but he was barely out of sight before the sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire gave the order to continue the journey. By the time Hagenbach reached the duke, the bird had flown.” End quote.

What followed was an epic tantrum. Charles the bold had already been famous for his outbursts, but what his courtiers observed on this day, November 25^th, 1473 went beyond what anyone had seen before. Charles locked himself into his room and smashed all his furniture’s like a 15^th century Keith Moon. This day that he had hoped would be one of glory and triumph, had become one of fury and shame. The duke of Burgundy had been played in the most outrageous fashion. His daughter, the greatest prize in the European marriage market had been given away for nothing. Breaking the engagement wasn’t an option because it would make his embarrassment even more obvious than it already was, and there was also no other means to acquire a royal title. The rage that he felt about this would send him on an ever more reckless path to achieve his dream of reviving the early medieval Burgundian kingdom or even the empire of Lothair.  

Outlook

And this path will lead him to a small town between Cologne and Dusseldorf, the city of Neuss and into one of the longest and most celebrated sieges of the Late Middle Ages, though celebrated more vigorously in the German Lands than in the dominions of the Burgundian dukes.

But this story and how that elevated both the sense of unity amongst the subjects of the empire and their emperor is what we will look at next week.

I hope you will come along again.

And if you feel the weight of a golden hat compressing your neck or you got tired of your thousands of pearls sewn into your ermine coat, you could augment your splendour by donating your fellow listeners a few more weeks of advertising free listening to the History of the Germans. You know where to go and you know what to do.