Louis II of Hungary (1506-1526)

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 231 – Marrying Bohemia and Hungary

You have almost certainly seen the image in today’s episode artwork before. It is a family portrait showing Maximilian, his first wife Marie of Burgundy, his son, Philip the Handsome and three children. When Bernhard Strigel painted this image in around the year 1516, Philip the Handsome was already dead for 10 years and Marie of Burgundy had gone more than 30 years before. Then there are the inscriptions over the heads of these well-known and easily identifiable figures. There is a lot of Habsburg chin on show here. But they do not describe Maximilian as emperor, but as Cleophas, blood brother of Joseph, husband of the divine Virgin Mary, Marie of Burgundy is Mary Cleophas, sister of the Virgin Mary, and Philip the Handsome as James the Lesser, apostle and son of the other two. Two of the three little boys are named as Joseph the Just and Simon the Zealot, the cousin of the lord. Who are these saints? Well they do appear in the bible, so they are real, but in very minor roles. One of them was even rejected as an apostle. But they do have something special, they are Jesus’ aunt, uncle, nephews and cousin. And since he had died without offspring, his heirs. So this is a picture about succession and inheritance, not necessarily about family love.

Ok, making the emperor the brother in law of Joseph is quite odd already, but let’s talk about the three children. They were all alive when this picture was painted and roughly the age they are depicted as. The one in the middle is Charles, the future emperor Charles V. And the little boy cuddling up to Maximilian is his brother Ferdinand, the future emperor Ferdinand I., again identified as holy nephew and cousin. But who is the third child? Well, that is Louis, the future king Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia, son of king Wladislav II and his French wife Anne de Foix. So no close blood relation. What does he do in one of the most famous Habsburg family portraits? It must have something to do with succession and inheritance.

That is indeed what we are going to talk about today. Little Louis will be the key to the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this agglomeration of lands centered around Austria, Czechia and Hungary that stayed or was made to stay together for nearly 400 years.

But before we start let me tell you about my revamped website historyofthegermans.com. It has been quite a project, but I must say it now looks stunning. Big thanks to Andrew from haradigital who did all the hard work. One of the reasons I wanted to make changes was that with 231 episodes out and probably another 400 to come, the previous search function was simply overwhelmed. If you go to the website now and look in the episodes section you find three search functions, one by season, one by king or emperor and one by broad topic. Clicking on any one of these you get shown all the episodes relating to the season, ruler or theme and you can click through to the episode webpage where you can either listen or read the transcript. There are also occasionally maps and images on these pages that help illustrating events.

And then there are a few fancy design tweaks, you can get you DIY merchandise, check out travel advice or, if you are a patron, chat with others on the Forum. Talking about patrons, it is time to say a big thank you to Louis R., Stefan J. (G), Jacqueline R, Deborah F. Engineer Carlos R and Alejandro Padre, who gets Mika and Inti to keep listening and learning the history of their “motherland,”

And with that, back to the show.

The creation of the Austro-Hungarian empire is usually traced back no further than the double wedding of 1515 when the aforementioned Louis married the archduchess Marie of Austria and her brother Ferdinand married Louis’ sister Anna.

But that is not even a 10^th of the story. This was absolutely not their first rodeo. The Habsburgs had thrown their hat in the ring for the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns many times before. They may have not gone as many rounds as Andy Bowen had gone against Jack Burge in the Southern States lightweight championship of 1892, but as far as dynastic tilts go, should qualify for the Guinness Book of Records. 250 years they ran up that hill until they finally succeeded in 1526. And marriage was only one component in this acquisition. Once again, “tu felix Austria” is more propaganda than reality.

If we go back from 1526 by 250 years, we get to 1276 and the ruler of the Holy Roman empire is Rudolf of Habsburg, the man who rose from not quite so poor count to the throne, because the electors believed him to be old and short of resources. As it happened, Rudolf lived a lot longer than anyone expected and turned out to be a man of infinite-resource-and-sagacity.

Rudolf used his title and the support he had gained to remove Ottokar Premysl II, the golden king of Bohemia from the duchies of Austria, Styria and. In 1278 Ottokar returned with a massive army, which Rudolf defeated in a not very gentlemanly manner at the battle of Dürnkrut, August 26, 1278. Episode 140 if you want more detail.

Ottokar II lay dead on the field and his son, Wenceslaus II was allowed to take him home on condition that he took a wife from Rudolf’s near inexhaustible stable of daughters. The next king of Bohemia, Wenceslaus III was the result of this union, giving the Habsburgs their first in with the Bohemian royal family. This boy-king who also held claims on Poland and Hungary was murdered by an unknown assassin in 1306, bringing the ancient and glorious dynasty of the Premyslids to an end.

Once the last of the Premyslid’s had died, Bohemia reverted into an elective kingdom. Which is how king Albrecht I – the second of the Habsburgs in charge of the empire – could push his son Rudolf onto the Bohemian throne. However, the young man could literally not stomach Bohemian politics and died. So Albrecht tried again, and just when he was assembling an army to go to Prague and capture the Bohemian crown again, Albrecht was assassinated by his nephew, John Parricida – that was episode 143.

With the Habsburgs literally knocked out, the counts of Luxemburg overtook them on the inside lane. Bohemia chose the son of the new emperor, Herny VII who became the famous Blind King John of Bohemia (episode 154) followed by his infinitely more competent son Karl or as the Czechs call him affectionately, Karel IV (episode 155 to 163).

Meanwhile Hungary’s ancient dynasty, the Arpads had died out too, in 1303. After some tussle, which included Albrecht I this kingdom had come under the control of the Angevins, the cadet branch of the French royal family that ruled the kingdom of Naples since the expulsion of the Hohenstaufen (Episode 91).

In the period following the death of Albrecht I, the Habsburgs were too busy fighting relegation to make any aggressive moves on Bohemia and Hungary. Still Rudolf IV, he who forged the Privilegium Maius and invented the title of Archduke, married Catherine of Luxemburg, the daughter of Karl IV in 1364.

Part of this marriage was an agreement between Rudolf and Karl IV that became known as the Erbverbrüderung, a treaty whereby the Habsburgs and the Luxemburgs invested each other as heirs, should one of their dynasties go extinct. Basically, if your descendants no longer produce male heirs, then my descendants will get all you got and in exchange, if my family dies out, your heirs get all of mine. 

Such mutual designations were actually not that rare. They were insurance against the emperor swooping in and grabbing your inheritance if your family tree withered. Because normally if there were no heirs, a fief would become what is called vacant. Meaning these lands and titles reverted to the emperor who then had one year to enfeoff it to someone else. In the olden days that someone else had been the most worthy of the nobles. But then nobody can tell when exactly these Olden Days were, because ever since the starting point of this podcast the emperors regularly passed vacant fiefs on to friends and family. It was during the Interregnum that this process went into overdrive. Rudolf I passed Austria to his sons, Adolf of Nassau tried Thuringia, emperor Henry VII got Bohemia for his son and Ludwig the Bavarian snatched Tyrol, Brandenburg and Holland.

Understandably the imperial princes hated that. So they came up with these agreements designating each other’s families as heirs. That way there was always an heir, the fief would never become vacant and the emperor could not get his greasy paws on it – problem solved.

Eventually, princes realized these pacts were even better as political currency. Promising your land to another dynasty in some distant, heirless future didn’t cost you a thing. But it bought you an ally right now. Plus an option to get hold of your neighbours territory. No surprise then that there were Erbverbrüderungen  everywhere, between Brandenburg and Poland, between Hessen and Thuringia, between Kleve, Julich and Berg and this one, between the Habsburgs and the Luxemburgs.

Sometimes these deals paid off big time. Sometimes they fizzled out. Sometimes they sparked wars when other claimants (cadet branches, sons-in-law, or the estates who thought they should have a say) got fed up with being shunted aside.

As always with these kinds of documents: they provided legitimacy, but they only mattered in the real world if you could back them up with either cold hard steel or the warm glow of gold, or both..

Back to the 1364 arrangement between Luxemburgs and Habsburgs. At first glance it looks like a fantastic deal for the Habsburgs. The Luxemburgs were Kings of Bohemia, dukes of Luxemburg, about to become margraves of Brandenburg and held a string of possessions all the way from Prague to the French border, whilst the Habsburgs had just Austria, Styria, Carinthia  and their homeland on the Rhine. Moreover, there were three Habsburgs signing the Agreement, Rudolf IV and his brothers Leopold III and Albrecht III, and all three of them were young and as it turns out, able to produce sons in as we saw unhealthy quantities. Meanwhile the Luxemburgs were Karl IV and his brother Johann-Heinrich, who at that time had produced only one male heir so far, the future Wenceslaus the Lazy. And they were both in their forties, comparatively old for the age.

But if you read the fine, fine print you see why it was Rudolf and the Habsburgs who got the short straw, not the Luxemburgs. In the agreement the Habsburgs promised to give the Luxemburgs their duchies in case they died out, but the Luxemburgs had already signed a similar agreement with the Anjous of Hungary & Poland who had first call on the Luxemburg lands. So only in case the Luxemburgs and the Anjou died out would the Habsburgs get anything.

And then there was another snag. The most valuable piece of the Luxemburg inheritance was the kingdom of Bohemia. Now Bohemia had an ancient right to choose its own king, a right that Karl IV had to formally acknowledge (see episode 154 and 158 for more detail). And these ancient rights superseded not just legally but also practically any arrangement about mutual inheritance Karl IV may have entered into.

So, net, net, the Luxemburgs offered no more than a vague chance of getting back to the top, whilst the Habsburgs, were they to die out, which had almost happened just 20 years earlier, Karl IV’s family would get Austria, Styria, Carinthia etc., no questions asked. And best of all, the Habsburgs, once a powerful player in the three body problem of the 14^th century were now put before the Luxemburg bandwagon, forever snapping at that elusive carrot.

But, against all the odds, this deal did come good for the house of Habsburg in a truly epic fashion.

First off, the Anjous died out in the male line and emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg – after some twisted trials and tribulations became king of Hungary in episode 169. And then, after a religious war that took us 9 episodes to untangle, Sigismund took back control of Bohemia (that was episodes 175 to 183).

And when Sigismund despite his vigour did not father a legitimate heir, 150 years after Rudolf I kicked off the struggle, Albrecht II became the first Habsburg king of Bohemia and king of Hungary. (Episode 208)

Albrecht II however died after barely a year and a half in power, leaving his kingdoms to his son, Ladislaus Postumus, who was crowned king of Bohemia and king of Hungary. But, as we have seen in episode 210, his reign was short and utterly unsuccessful. His guardian, the emperor Friedrich III frittered away the kingdoms for the family.

The Bohemian and Hungarian thrones were taken by local leaders who were elected and supported by the noble families. Georg of Podiebrad ruled Bohemia together with the barons from 1451 to 1471 and the Hunyadis controlled Hungary from 1446 to 1490.

In this phase both Podiebrad and Corvinus exerted enormous influence over Austria, in particular pushed old Friedrich III around. Matthias Corvinus even occupied Vienna in 1487 and made the old emperor homeless. The Habsburgs only returned to Austria in 1490 when Matthias Corvinus had died, that was episode 221.

I do apologise for this exceedingly long recap, but to be honest, I had to look through the old transcripts myself to remind me of the details of events that got us almost there.

And where are we now?

If there is a common thread in this story, it is that Central Europe Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and Lithuania had a tendency to clump together. First Wenceslaus II of Bohemia tried to capture both the Polish and the Hungarian crown. Than Louis the Great of Hungary became king of Poland and had first dibs on Bohemia if the Luxemburgs had died out without an heir. Then Sigismund, Albrecht II and Ladislaus Postumus ruled both Bohemia andHungary.

One of the reasons, apart from cultural affinity that lasts to this day in the form of the Visegrad group, the three kingdoms shared a number of common political interests and challenges.

First off, they were all three neighbours of the Holy Roman Empire and princely and imperial forces regularly interfered with their domestic affairs. The Poles had to deal with an expansive margraviate of Brandenburg and of course the Teutonic Knights as we discussed in episodes 128 to 137. Bohemia, as an Electorate, was a part of the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary too had been ruled by the Luxemburgs and were in the Habsburg’s sights. Beyond the fear of political domination, there was also the economic dependency on the empire. Poland and Lithuania had become the main providers of grain, wood and other foodstuff for the Rhineland and the Low Countries. These shipments were managed by the Hanse merchants in Riga and Danzig or German traders from Leipzig and Magdeburg. The proceeds from the sale of the vast herds of cattle the Hungarians drove west every year filled the pockets of city merchants who mainly spoke German. But the biggest drain were the natural resources, in particular gold, silver and copper that the Fuggers and their associates mined and processed in Hungary and Bohemia, making them immensely, immensely rich, multiples wealthier than their emperor or the kings.

The other major political threat were the Ottomans whose armies stood at the Hungarian, Polish and Lithuanian borders. Matthias Corvinus had already styled himself as the Sword of Christendom, holding back the tide of scimitar yielding hordes. Poland fought a war against the Ottomans over Moldova between 1485 and 1498. The idea that the three Slavic kingdoms as the protectors against pagan or infidel invasion became the intellectual glue that justified their integration. Martin Rady argues that they took on the mantle of the crusaders from the now obsolete Teutonic knights.

The third common enemy is one who is only slowly climbing on to the chessboard of European politics, the grand duke of Muscovy or, as he now starts to call himself, the Zsar of all the Russians. Vassili III had consolidated the various Russian principalities that had survived the Mongol invasions and under him Russia embarked on a sequence of wars with Lithuania that flared up regularly between 1487 and 1537.

Bottom line, there is a certain logic for a close collaboration between the three kingdoms that fostered shared rulership. Which is exactly what happened after the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490. All three kingdoms plus the grand duchy of Lithuania ended up in the hands of just one family, the Jagiellons.  Let me explain.

The Jagiellons entered the European political stage for real when Jogaila, the grand duke of Lithuania converted from paganism to Christianity in 1386 and married the heiress to the kingdom of Poland Jadwiga. Matters we discussed in episodes 134 and 169. His descendants ruled Poland and Lithuania until 1587.

Casimir IV, the youngest son of Jogaila had become Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1440 and king of Poland in 1447. He married Elizabeth of Austria, the daughter of Albrecht II in 1454. At that point Albrecht II was long dead, but her brother Ladislaus Postumus was still at least nominally king of Bohemia and Hungary. Hence this marriage was meant to once again tighten the links between the kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and the grand duchy of Lithuania.  

This link, together with a proactive Polish policy into Bohemia bore fruit when their eldest son, Vladislav was elected as king of Bohemia in 1471. His position was challenged by the king of Hungary Matthias Corvinus. After a prolonged war Vladislav and Matthias Corvinus split the kingdom of Bohemia between each other.

When Matthias Corvinus died in 1490, he left a vacuum in Hungary. Matthias had no legitimate heir. He had tried to build up his natural son John as his successor, but the Hungarian nobles rejected the idea.

That left two contenders, Vladislav and our friend Maximilian I.

As far as legal claims go, Maximilian had the by far strongest position. They go way back to the Erverbrüderung of 1364 that made him the heir to king Sigismund of Hungary, he was also the closest male relative and heir of Ladislaus Postumus. And finally, his father had made a deal with Matthias Corvinus in 1463 whereby they too promised their inheritance to each other, should one of them go without legitimate male offspring. In other words, Maximilian got into the ring with all the belts and braces. By law, the crown was his.

Vladislav could point to his mother as the sister of king Ladislaus Postumus. That was a bit meagre. So he offered to marry the widow of Matthias Crovinus, Beatrice of Naples. Beatrice had no strong claim to the throne, but she was extremely wealthy and had gained a large followership amongst the magnates of Hungary.

The latter point mattered a lot. Hungary was an elective not an inherited kingdom. The 60 or so magnates that ruled and owned 50 to 60% of the land decided who became king and who did not. And after the tight rule of Matthias Corvinus they wanted a king who did not interfere much with their business. On that front Vladislav was the more attractive option compared to Maximilian. Vladislav was known as king “Good, Good”, because he did say good, good, whenever his barons demanded something from him. That was the kind of king the Hungarian high aristocracy wanted. They elected him and scheduled his coronation for autumn 1490.

Maximilian did not want to leave that standing and led his army of Landsknechte into Hungary in 1490. In his words, he was going to be the uninvited guest at the coronation ceremony.  The campaign went extremely well. One city after another opened its gates. Many Hungarian nobles joined the Habsburg side in this conflict. Things improved even further when one of Vladislav’s brothers, King John Albert of Poland showed up on the scene with an army, putting his own name up for the throne of Hungary. In September Maximilian took Fehérvár, the ancient coronation and burial place of the Hungarian monarchs.

This was the high point of the campaign, but also in many ways the low point. The Landsknechte ransacked the ancient and rich city. They had found the stores of wine and once terrifyingly drunk raped and killed anyone in their way. They even spilled blood inside the cathedral and over the royal graves.

And then something happened I had not yet heard before. When Maximilian put out orders to muster again and march on Buda to take the kingdom for good, his soldiers mutinied. They were so laden with booty, they feared if they kept going, they risked losing it again. They insisted in guarded transports home for their ill-gotten gains. Maximilian refused, and once again his army dissolved.

The following year he was torn between issues on the Western and the Eastern front. This was the year when Anne of Brittany was made to rescind her marriage to Maximilian and got betrothed to Charles VIII of France. So it was either war against France or war against Hungary. As always there was not enough money or support from the imperial princes to fight one campaign, let alone two.

Maximilian opted for war with France and agreed the treaty of Bratislava with king Vladislav in 1491. In many ways it was a renewal of the treaty his father had signed in 1463 with Matthias Corvinus.

Vladislav was recognised as king of Hungary and even be able to pass the crown on to any legitimate male descendant. But in case Vladislav ended up without male heir, the crown should finally, finally pass to the Habsburgs.

Given we have been here before Maximilian insisted on some further guarantees. He received a material chunk of the western side of Hungary as his own lands and he could call himself king of Hungary already. And, under the agreement Vladislav got the magnates to commit to a Habsburg succession. After all, Hungary was an elective monarchy and whatever the two kings negotiated, the magnates could disregard and elect someone else. So this commitment by the magnates was a major step towards the Habsburg succession.

What made it easier for Maximilian to accept this was Vladislav’s marital position.

As mentioned above, one of the reasons Vladislav found favour with the magnates was his marriage to the widow of his predecessor, Beatrice of Naples. Beatrice and Matthias had been married for 14 years and there is no pregnancy recorded. It was therefore assumed that Beatrice could not have children. And since Vladislav and Beatrice were both in their late 30s, there was a good chance Vladislav would die without heirs, paving Maximilian’s way to the throne of Hungary and Bohemia.

And that is also why Vladislav, as soon as Maximilian had signed the agreement, began lobbying the pope for an annulment. And the argument was brilliant – the marriage he argued was bigamy, not because Beatrice was married already, but because Vladislav was. Vladislav had married a certain Barbara of Brandenburg way back in 1476, but that marriage had never been consummated. It had also never been formally dissolved. Vladislav had tried to get out of that marriage too, but his first wife and her friends and family had prevented a dissolution. So purely legally he was indeed still married to Barbara when he married Beatrice. What Vladislav was trying to do was getting both marriages annulled by playing them one against the other.

As every schoolchild in England knows, only a pope can dissolve royal marriages. And the pope refused for a long time to do so, almost exactly the length of time Maximilian had any influence over the pope. And Maximilian had influence over the pope as long as the pope believed he could help or hurt him in the Italian wars. As we have seen, this belief faded away when Maximilian did not show during the 1495 campaign to throw out Charles VIII, made a shambles out of the siege of Livorno, was stabbed in the back by his son Philip during the campaign in Burgundy, got mullered in the Swabian war and was de facto deposed at the Reichstag of Augsburg in 1500.

So, no surprise that in 1500 pope Alexander Borgia granted Vladislav II the divorces he so desperately sought. Barbara of Brandenburg tried to find consolation in the arms of a strapping knight but was forced to give up that relationship and ended her life as a prisoner. Beatrice of Naples retired to Ischia, and in 1502 Vladislav II married his first or third wife, Anne de Foix, a relative of king Louis XII of France.

That was another sucker punch for poor Maximilian in his years in the wilderness. For one, the 18-year old bride of Vladislav was likely to bring him the much desired heir delaying if not preventing the Habsburg succession. And secondly it dawned on Maximilian that his arch enemy, Louis XII was about to do to him what he had tried to do to the king of France in 1496.  Maximilian was about to be encircled by France and its allies. In the west was France itself, in the south Milan and Venice. And now Louis was building relationships with the kings of Poland and of Hungary , closing the ring in the east.

Maximilian’s response was threefold.

For one he used his son Philip to improve relations with the French which resulted in this weird idea of a marriage of his grandson Charles to Louis’ daughter Claude and the creation of a consolidated European empire. This was always a pie in the sky, but for a time kept trouble from knocking.

Part two was to use the war of the Landshut succession to regain at least some control over imperial politics, which he achieved at the Reichstag of Cologne in 1505.

And lastly, he tried to keep the Poles and Lituanians occupied by setting the Teutonic Knights and the grand prince of Muscovy, now Zsar of all the Russians on them. Meanwhile the Ottomans had become more aggressive, resulting in wars against Poland, Venice and Hungary. Rumours spread that Maximilian had encouraged the Ottomans to attack, but that is so far unproven. 

Bottom line, by 1505 Maximilian’s diplomacy had broken the French encirclement. His politics became once again expansionist. One leg of that policy was the renewed involvement in Italian affairs we discussed last week. The other was dealing with Hungary.

Matters at the Hungarian court had progressed as one could expect. Anne de Foix, Vladislav’s new wife had given him a daughter in 1503 and even instilling a bit more backbone in this rather weak man. Being French and hence aligned with Louis’ broader politics, she convinced Vladislav to support the Venetians in their war against the Ottomans and generally pursue a pro-French line.

And then, in 1505, Vladislav suffered a stroke. This was initially feared to be a severe stroke and the death of the king was considered imminent. And that should mean under the treaty of 1491 that Maximilian was to follow as king of Bohemia and Hungary. This must surely be the moment now!

After all the magnates of Hungary had sworn to accept the Habsburg succession. The day to cash in the cheque was here. But in 1505, the Hungarian assembly said – nah. Whatever had been sworn then no longer mattered. They passed a law that only someone born in Hungary could be king of Hungary. Maximilian responded that he was born in the Hungarian tower of Wiener Neustadt and was hence a born Hungarian. Not sure that cut it.

The leader of the Hungarian magnates was John Zápolya. The Zapolyas had risen to wealth and prominence under Matthias Corvinus and possessed vast territories in Dalmatia. John’s ambition was to become king of Hungary and to give his claim legitimacy was willing to marry Vladislav’s daughter, Anna, at this point a mere 2 years old.

Once again, a military resolution was required. Maximilian raised an army of 7,000, pretty much all he could afford at the time. As we heard last week, despite his improved standing in the empire, the princes and cities would still not provide him with money or soldiers.

This lot was a particularly poor set of fighters. In the main local lads from Styria and Austria they were promised plunder and adventure in lieu of pay. This rubble lined up on the Hungarian border spring 1506.

Vladislav had meanwhile recovered, but still the decision of the Hungarian assembly stood that blocked the Habsburg succession. Maximilian demanded that it was overturned and the provisions of the 1491 treaty reconfirmed. The magnates refused and they forced Vladislav to muster an army to protect the border.

Meanwhile Maximilian’s position was getting uncomfortable. His unpaid marauders were living of the land, and that land happened to be his own land. If he wanted to prevent further damage he had to either send them home or march into Hungary.

I guess we know enough about Maximilian to predict his next move. Of course he is going to invade. He never missed an opportunity to wage war. And again, this campaign was going well. There was nothing left of Matthias Corvinus amazing military infrastructure. There was no standing army and the precious artillery was dispersed and outdated. And it seems that not many Hungarian nobles were willing to die for John Zápolya’s ambitions.

Once again Maximilian could have made it to Buda, but this time his progress was interrupted by a joyous event. Vladislav had not only risen from his presumed deathbed, but had used his renewed vigour to father – a son. Little Louis was born on July 1, 1506.

This more or less removed the reasons for this war. Both Maximilian and John Zápolya had always recognised Vladislav as king and his ability to pass the kingdom on to a son, should he have one. And there he was, the long desired heir to the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary.

But something had shifted here. Vladislav and his wife realised that they could not rely on their magnates, that indeed the magnates could turn on them at any moment. Hungarian politics were notoriously brutal, just check out episode 169. So they sought protection from the man who was after all their heir and kinsman, Maximilian. Even before Louis was born, they agreed in a secret compact, that Anna of Bohemia and Hungary would marry either Charles or Ferdinand of Austria and that should a son be born to them, that son would marry Marie of Austria, the youngest sister of Charles and Ferdinand.

The famous double wedding was hence agreed already in 1506, nine years before it actually took place. And it took place during the first congress of Vienna in July 1515 when Maximilian received King Vladislav of Bohemia and Hungary and king Sigismund of Poland and Lithuania. The purpose of the meeting was to seal a permanent peace between the Habsburgs and the Jagiellons. Maximilan promised to drop his support for the Russians and urge the Teutonic Knights to accept allegiance to Poland. And in return the two families agreed one more Erbeverbruderung, agreeing that if either family went extinct in the male line, the other was to inherit everything. With it the three kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, the grand duchy of Lithuania and the archduchy of Austria were forged into one political entity. This was not always a close union, in particular Poland and Lithuania remained separate for much of their history, nor was it a union of always willing participants. But they did come together when it mattered. When Vienna was besieged by the Ottomans, the winged hussars saved the day.

It can be argued and some have argued that this had always been a geopolitical inevitability. The dynastic question whether the descendants of Jogaila or those of Rudolf of Habsburg were to take charge of central europe, that was the bit driven by coincidence, but not the coalition itself.

As if he knew how significant this would be, this First Congress of Vienna was the most splendid event Maximilian ever hosted. It cost him as much as a military campaign. Albrecht Dürer designed the costumes and festivities. Its stunning triumphal processions can still be admired in the form of monumental woodcut prints. It’s centrepiece was of course the marriage of the heir of Bohemia and Hungary, Louis II to archduchess Mary of Austria and archduke Ferdinand to Anna of Bohemia and Hungary.

And as the fates willed it, Louis II died at the battle of Mohacz in 1526, leaving his kingdoms to his brother-in-law Ferdinand of Austria, who after defeating the magnates brought about 250 years of Habsburg efforts to its conclusion.

That leaves only one question. Why is Louis II in that picture of the Habsburg family from 1515. Well, the Jagiellonians did not want to leave any gaps in their potential claim on the Habsburg inheritance. So they got Maximilian to adopt Louis II as his son, placing him formally into his line of succession. But not fully. He was not given an inscription describing him as member of Jesus’ wider family. All he has is a piece of paper in his hand, interpreted to be the treaty of Vienna of 1515, a mere manmade paper that placed him amongst this august company making me wonder whether the Habsburgs ever planned to honour their commitment.

This gets us close to the conclusion of our season about the Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg. In the last episode we will talk about the election of Charles V to the imperial throne. That will give us a good picture of the political situation at the dawn of the Reformation. The Italian wars, the conflict between France and the Habsburgs and the integration of Central Europe. But we are still lacking one key storyline. Where are the Ottomans in all this? Why have they not intervened when the European powers were slashing each other’s throats. Their empire could easily muster armies of 100,000 well trained and disciplined fighters, double of what France or Spain could field at the height of the Italian wars. Matthias Corvinus and his Black Army were gone. Europe should be ripe for the plucking. They did come up in 1526 and got to Vienna in 1529. But why did they not show in 1500? That is what we will discuss next week. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, do not miss out on my beautiful new website – historyofthegermans.com. I hope you like it, and let me know if you do and/or if you have suggestions.