Ferdinand I and the Siege of Vienna 1529

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 238: Never Bigger – The Habsburg Empire at its Zenith.

Today we celebrate the topping out of the Habsburg empire. By the middle of the 16^th century it reached its furthest extent as a political entity ruled by one man. Over the last 42 episodes we have seen this family of minor counts playing their game of snakes and ladders until they had amassed lordships over Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and large parts of Italy. Today we look at how they finally got hold of the last bits, Bohemia and Hungary.

The story features a dutiful younger brother, the most cruel execution I have ever heard of, a foolish duke and an even more foolish king, the collapse of a kingdom, a love story and the reason for the incessant Habsburg inbreeding. I hope that will be enough to fill the last episode of this season.

Ferdinands Upbringing

Our key protagonist for today is Ferdinand, the aforementioned dutiful younger brother of Charles V. Born 1503 he was 3 years younger than the emperor. Despite being full brothers, these two men met for the very first time in 1518 when they were 18 and 14 years old. I think this is important to remember when wondering why Charles was so hesitant to share power with his little brother. He simply did not know him.

Whilst Charles had grown up in the Netherlands under the tutelage of his aunt Margaret of Austria, Ferdinand had grown up at the court of his grandfather, Ferdinand II, with whom he shared not only the name, but also his birthday. So, in the same way Charles was a product of the Burgundian civilization, Ferdinand was deeply rooted in Spanish, specifically Aragonese culture. Throughout his life he preferred the austere Spanish court dress, comprising almost shimmering black clothes, layers of silk and velvet embroidered with silver or gold.

This black dye was a novelty. It was made with Logwood, a flowering tree from central America that combined with iron salts created this deep, luxurious black. People were amazed by the depth of this color and ditched the blues and purples in their clothes that had so far been the height of luxury. That is why suddenly people in portraits look so much more somber – it was a sign of wealth, not necessarily gloomy outlook on life.

Ferdinand’s youth at the court of Ferdinand II of Aragon provided him with a thorough education and a love of art and music. Languages were an important component of his schooling, unsurprising in as multilingual a monarchy as Spain. And Ferdinand was very good at languages, much better than his brother who never mustered more than French and Castilian properly.  In a matter of fact, Ferdinand was better in almost all other aspects as well. He was smart, intuitive and good with people. When Charles V would barely talk to anyone and leave much of the thinking to his advisers, Ferdinand was always rubbing shoulders with the potentates of whichever unruly place he was given to manage.  And what is so astounding is that despite the obvious intellectual gap and a sequence of broken commitments and even public humiliations, Ferdinand stayed resolutely loyal to his older brother as head of the House of Habsburg.

The Relationship Between Charles V and Ferdinand I

This loyalty was tested from the first moment the two boys first met. As you may remember, When Charles arrived in Spain, his ascension to the throne was not 100% smooth. Many of the Castilian and Aragonese nobles saw Charles as the foreigner that he obviously was, who brought along some bloodsucking Burgundian nobles who were taking up their lucrative offices of state. So there was almost immediately a political movement that tried to replace the Burgundian Charles with the born Spaniard Ferdinand. But Ferdinand turned down such suggestions and left for Flanders as soon as Charles had made it to Aragon. That was in line with the plans laid down for Charles inauguration, but many other men would have resisted a brother who he had never met before, who was awkward and not very impressive and was expelling him from the only home he had ever known.

Ferdinand obeyed and moved to the Netherlands to receive the final touches of his education at aunt Margaret’s home in Mechelen. Ferdinand quickly learned Flemish and German on top of the French he already spoke, and made himself popular with the people.

The next time his head appeared above the parapet was during Carles’ election campaign for Holy Roman Emperor. In early 1519 things looked dire for the Habsburgs due to the death of Maximilian, the lack of funds and the fact that Charles was far away. So when Margaret suggested to put Ferdinand up as the family candidate instead. The argument was that he was close by, had learned the language, was able to charm the electors and better him than Francois on the imperial throne. When he received the letter, Charles came down on him like a ton of bricks. No way this could happen. However, Ferdinand should rest assured that he, Charles, was looking out for his interests and was much focused on securing him a suitable inheritance. That was the dynamic we will see playing out again and again.

The Splitting of Maximilian’s Inheritance

The brothers met again when Charles was heading for his coronation in Aachen in 1520 and they stayed together for the Diet of Worms in 1521. It was the first time they spent a significant amount of time together and during a period when Charles no longer feared his brother could take any of his innumerable lands and titles off him. There they made a first settlement regarding their inheritance. Maximilian I never left instructions on how his inheritance should be shared amongst the brothers. There was however always an understanding that Ferdinand should have a significant patrimony, even a royal title. That had been necessary to bring the Hungarian double marriage of 1515 across the line. When it had been decided that Ferdinand should marry Anna, the daughter of the king of Hungary and Bohemia, one of the conditions was that Ferdinand had a suitable title and territory to take home such an illustrious bride. One of the plans was to elevate Austria to a kingdom, just to make it work.

Nevertheless, Charles was not too keen to give his little brother more territory than he absolutely had to and certainly not a royal title. Ferdinand had no claims in the Netherlands and Spain where the eldest son always inherited everything. What he could receive was a share in the Habsburg lands. As we have seen, divisions of the Habsburg lands had been a common occurrence in the past. The rule was that each archduke would have some lands to manage directly, but that all archdukes would work together to project a united front. Though this had proven to be completely unworkable over and over again, given the circumstances, the Habsburgs had stuck with it.

In the first allocation treaty in 1521, Charles was extremely stingy and gave Ferdinand only the inner Austrian duchies, minus the access to the Mediterranean. The rich mines of Tyrol, further Austria and the strategically relevant upper Austria remained with Charles. He still did not trust the little brother, so he gave him a territory marooned within Charles’ territory.

The Happy Marriage between Anna and Ferdinand

Still, this award allowed Ferdinand to finally marry Anna, the daughter of king Wladyslaw of Hungary and Bohemia. The wedding ceremony in Linz was attended by many of the princes who had come across from the Reichstag in Worms and featured a tournament where a cunning Austrian defeated a haughty Spaniard – a sign of things to come.

What nobody expected though was that Ferdinand and Anna turned out to be perfect for each other. They were almost the same age, he was 18, she 17, they were both smart and liked to party. Anna would act as his deputy when he was away, though he usually took her along, even on longish political journeys to the Netherlands or across the empire. When asked, he said the expense of taking his wife along was still less than the cost of a mistress. It seems they really loved each other. Ferdinand hired expensive Italian architects and artisans to build her the Belvedere palace in the gardens of Prague castle. The couple had 15 children, the last of these pregnancies she did not survive. After her death he allowed a massive beard to grow on his face, a surefire way to prevent any further interactions with the female of the species.

Breaking the Austrian Estates

After this most joyful event, Ferdinand went on to Vienna where he finally clocked, that what Charles had so generously passed on to him wasn’t a grand inheritance, but the mother of all hospital passes.

Do you remember the last days of Maximilian I? When he was chased out of Innsbruck by Innkeepers brandishing unpaid bills? That was Tyrol, where there was at least some income from the silver mines, in the lands that Ferdinand had received, the situation was even worse.

For the last two years, no member of the Habsburg family had shown his or her face in Austria. The official heir was way over there in Spain. And of course no formal allegiance had been sworn yet. So the estates concluded that – at least in the interim – management of the duchies was their job. They had sent a delegation to Charles way back in 1519 telling him as much and he had in his characteristic indecision, left them unsure whether he had agreed or not. So they came back and set up things the way they thought best. And that meant dismantling the administrative regime that Maximilian had installed over the previous decades, replacing it with a structure dominated by local nobles and the burghers of the cities.

That would have pushed the transition towards a territorial state back by 30 years. Whether that would be high treason as Ferdinand declared in the ensuing legal proceedings is a different question. In any event, that is what he did and his jury, made up entirely of foreigners, Burgundians, Spaniards and Bavarians found two nobles and 10 citizens of Vienna guilty. They were all executed.

Managing Maximilian’s Debt

One of the reasons Ferdinand needed full control over the administration of his duchies were the incredible debts that his Grandfather had settled him with. And though he had only received half of a third of the Habsburg possessions in the division, he had to take on more than half of the 6 million debt the brothers had inherited. That was ten times the annual income of all of the Austrian lands. And it included a big chunk of the costs of Charles’ election. Even Charles realized that this was not only grossly unfair but also impossible, so in 1522 he passed the rest of the Austrian lands, namely Tyrol and further Austria to Ferdinand, but that was in a secret treaty. Externally Ferdinand still acted as Charles deputy, not as direct ruler of these lands, making things that were hard to do even harder..

Ferdinand, as I mentioned, was a smart guy. So he did not get his own hands dirty in tackling the individual creditors. If there was to be any chance of getting numbers down, repayments had to be cut down to half or even less of their original claim. It was essentially some for of chapter 11 bankruptcy where the most powerful, namely the Fugger, Welser and other bankers were compensated in full and the smaller creditors had to take some massive cuts. A process that was not very popular. So Ferdinand got himself what my former boss called, a human airbag, Gabriel of Salamanca, a hard-nosed Spaniard who reveled in squeezing down claimants. Salamanca lasted just 4 years, but he got the debt down to something that could be handled over the subsequent 20 years, and became immensely rich himself in the process.

The Habsburg Rule in Württemberg

Another item on the ledger of the family debt that Ferdinand had to pick up was the cost of acquiring Württemberg. If you have a very strong memory, you may remember episode 192 where we talked about the history of Württemberg. This duchy had risen from modest beginnings into an powerful state just north east of Further Austria and also not too far from Tyrol. Hence it was strategically of huge importance to the Habsburgs.

It also had a peculiar system of government. The estates, the Landstände, of Württemberg were extremely powerful, even by the standards of the 16^th century. In 1498 the estates deposed their duke, Eberhard II for being too profligate. That was I think at that point unprecedented in the Holy Roman Empire. There would be cases later, in Saxony, Mecklenburg and East Frisia. But this was I think the first. Such decisions could be appealed to the emperor, namely to the Reichshofrat. When Eberhard II appealed to Maximilian I, he was turned down and had to go into exile with a pension. The new duke, Ulrich, was initially very close to the Habsburgs – no surprise given they had put him on the ducal throne. He fought for Maximilian in the War of the Landshut succession and just generally made himself useful around the house.

But he suffered the same bug as his uncle, the deposed Eberhard II. He loved the good life. And the good life was expensive, which means high taxes, which in his case led to a massive peasants revolt, the revolt of the Poor Conrad, which we will for sure talk about when we talk about the Peasants’ War. But this one wasn’t part of the Peasants’ War. It happened earlier, in 1514.

To suppress it, Ulrich had to once again ask the Landstände, the estates of Württemberg for money. That they granted, but only in exchange for even more constraints on princely power. This treaty of Tübingen became known as the Maga Carta of the Swabians, complete with ceding tax authority, the right to declare war and conclude peace given to the estates and the right to due process and free movement given to the ducal subjects.

That still did not save Ulrich. His idea of a good life included a revolving door of mistresses who he married to his courtiers. One of these courtiers was Hans von Hutten, brother of the famous poet Ulrich von Hutten. Hutten was clearly not aware of the fine print in this arrangement. When the duke demanded that Hutten would take a back seat in the marriage, Hutten refused. Hutten resigned his role at court and planned to leave Stuttgart with his wife. So, Ulrich invited him to come on one last hunting trip to reconcile their differences. Hutten could not refuse and arrived in light hunting gear, whilst the duke showed up in full armour. Once they reached the forest, the duke sent away his staff and went after von Hutten. He chased him around a tree, striking him with his sword seven times, five of which in the back. Then he strung him up with his own belt.

That was the scandal that broke the camel’s back. 18 of his vassals revoked their oaths, his wife left him. Hutten’s family sued him in the imperial courts. The poet Ulrich von Hutten wrote immensely powerful satirical pamphlets about the duke. Ulrich was placed under the imperial ban, the estates declared him deposed and in 1519 the Swabian League invaded Württemberg. Duke Ulrich fled into exile.

The Swabian league was largely an instrument of power for the Habsburgs. So once they had taken over the duchy, surveyed potential candidates for duke and found them wanting, they asked the Habsburgs whether they were interested in purchasing Württemberg. 800,000 florins for some prime real estate near their main territory – that sounded just perfect. So Charles added that to the tally he was running with the House of Fugger. And given he had no time to deal with the intricacy of the complex constitution of the place, he passed this hot potato on to his brother to manage. I can say potato now since they have now arrived in europe.

Ferdinand, as always, did a good job. The duchy calmed down, taxes could be reduced as there was no profligate duke to maintain. But given the constitutional structure, Württemberg was extremely difficult to integrate into the Habsburg administrative system. Moreover, duke Ulrich was unwilling to give up his claims. He found enthusiastic support in landgrave Philipp of Hesse who kept putting the Württemberg question on the agenda of every Reichstag. This whole idea that the emperor could depose a duke and take over his territory made the imperial princes, uneasy. Even if he was a murderous tyrant. There was constant pressure on the Habsburgs to hand back the duchy. And in 1534 Philipp and Ulrich seized the opportunity when Ferdinand and Charles were both busy with the many other challenges to their empire. They invaded, the small Habsburg force in Württemberg was easily defeated and Ulrich returned.

Losing Württemberg has been seen by some historians as another indication that the Habsburgs were turning their back on the empire and focused on their possessions in Southern and Eastern Europe. They had fought over Milan for nearly fifty years, but let Württemberg go after a first knock.

Elevation of Ferdinand as King of the Romans

These two issues, the rebellion of the Austrian estates and the mess that was Württemberg, turned out not to be the most unpleasant of the unpleasantnesses that Charles left his brother to deal with. 

The other, much bigger one was – the Holy Roman Empire. Like, all of it. Because you remember that Charles returned to Spain in 1522 and only left it in 1529 to go to Italy. He would not be seen in the empire before the diet of Augsburg in November 1530. For all this time Ferdinand was in charge of dealing with the affairs of the empire.

Was that a time of calm and easy living for an emperor’s deputy? Not exactly. Martin Luther, remember him? He had published his 95 theses in 1517, had made his famous stand in Worms in 1521 and ever since the empire was in massive turmoil. The Peasant War, the largest uprising before the French Revolution kicked off in 1525, That same year the Teutonic Knights in Prussia were turned into a secular Polish fief by their last grand master, and, and, and. We will dedicate most the autumn and next year to these events, so this is just for context. Ferdinand had to pick up the pieces here as well.

And he did not do this as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. He was only Charles’ deputy. Charles had promised to make him King of the Romans asap, but then took his sweet time. There was no real reason to delay. Charles had been granted the title of emperor already on his coronation in Aachen. None of the popes in this period was going to object to an election of a King of the Romans before a formal coronation of the emperor, as Leo X had done in 1519. Hadrian VI was Charles old tutor and friend and his successor, Clement VII ended up as Charles’ prisoner.

Still, Charles waited until after his imperial coronation in Bologna before he proposed his little brother as king of the romans. Only in 1531 was his brother was finally elected and crowned in Aachen. But even after Ferdinand got the title, Charles was still the more important one and he would occasionally refuse Ferdinand’s proposals, tell him what to do and even publicly reverse his decisions.

It is a miracle that Ferdinand did not stand up and said enough is enough. He remained the dutiful brother all throughout. 

When we discussed Charles V the last two weeks there were three overarching political themes that he wanted to tackle – the first was bringing peace to Christian Europe, which translates as keeping the French down, the second was resolving the crisis in the church triggered by Martin Luther and the third was fighting the Ottomans.

Item one consumed most of Charles’ bandwidth in the 1520s, so he left the other two issues to his little brother, together with most of the debt problem. And whilst Charles spent his time being negotiated out of his victory over Francois I, Ferdinand was facing into the abyss of an Ottoman army more than a 100,000 strong.

The Hungarians before the Battle of Mohacs – the Peasant Revolt

At least initially, he was not alone in having to fight the most powerful armies on the continent. He had the Hungarians to rely on. Hungary was at that time ruled by Louis II, Ferdinand’s adopted brother and brother in law.

But to quote Paul Lendvai in his book “The Hungarians” quote: “After the death of King Matthias an orgy of vainglory, power-hunger and rivalry descended on Hungary, and conflicts between the higher and lesser nobility brought the country close to disaster.” And I guess this might even be an understatement.

Louis’ father, king Wladislav had been a weak ruler, who the magnates called “Ok, Lazlo” on account of his willingness to consent to any and all of their suggestions.

As a consequence, Hungary was once again ruled by the magnates, which brought about an opposition movement amongst the middle and lesser nobility. It was one of the features of Hungarian society that it had a huge nobility. One in 20 Hungarians considered themselves nobles, whilst in the empire it was more like one in a hundred.

These lesser nobles coalesced around Szapolyai János (pronounced SAW-poh-yoy YAH-nosh). Just as an aside, I have taken your feedback into account and will try to improve my handling of Hungarian names. In Hungarian names are inverted, i.e., family name first, Christian name second. Which is one of the things the Hungarians have passed on to the Austrians. And second, I have found myself some pronunciation guides in the hope to do a little less butchery.

So, back to the story. Szapolyai János was the voivode or senior military leader and governor of Transsylvania and became the leader of the lesser nobility, who called themselves the national party as opposed to the magnates they called the court party.  

The magnates gathered around a man called Bakócz Tamás (pronounced: BAH-koh-ts TAW-mahsh), who had become archbishop of Esztergom (pronounced: ESS-ter-gom) and a cardinal. He was even briefly considered as a papal candidate in 1513. He had become the power behind the throne under king Wladislav and he headed the regency council when Louis II became king in 1516, at the age of 10. In 1514 Cardinal Bakócz made a major mistake that fatally weakened Hungary.

The success of Selim the Grim in Persia and Egypt had prompted pope Leo X to declare a crusade. And he tasked Bakócz as the most senior churchman in Hungary with gathering a military crusading force. Bakócz delegated some of this task to the Franciscans who recruited and armed about 20,000 peasants as an infantry militia. What nobody had realised was that these Franciscans were a lot more progressive and radical than the church leaders. Though we are still three years before Luther’s theses, these guys were criticising the deviation from scripture, the corruption of the church and the depravity of the nobility. Fiery speeches and armed peasants were an explosive mixture in the early 16^th century. There was clearly something in the water, as we hear about a string of peasant uprisings in the build up to the big one in the empire in 1525.

Fear of the peasants temporarily forced both national and court party into a coalition. The fighting was brief, fierce and the retributions brutal. The leader of the peasants, Dózsa György (pronounced DOH-shah DYUR-dy) was executed by burning him on a wooden throne, placing a red-hot crown on his head, whilst his followers, having been starved for two weeks  were forced to bite into his burning flesh and eat it.

Gruesome as this was, it was not the worst thing. As a punishment for the uprising, the Hungarian peasants were condemned to perpetual servitude, prohibited from owning land and henceforth no law or law court would protect them against their lord. These terms were enshrined in a codification of Hungarian customary law called the Tripartitum. This document goes even further, declaring that only nobles, from magnates to the poorest lesser noble a part of the mystical body and limb of the crown. By doing so, they excluded the peasantry from their country or crown. Paul Lendvai says that it quote: “drove a wedge between Hungarian society and the development of europe. Although the Tripartitium was not signed by the king and was therefore never formally promulgated, it became and remained the basis of legal practice until 1848. Indeed the political, social and psychological division between the nobility and the rest of the people remained entrenched until the radical social changes that followed the Second World War.” End quote.

The more immediate effect of the massacre and subsequent suppression of the peasantry was that they did not care much about who ruled their country, Hungarians, Habsburgs or Sultans. And since every noble could only ever be seen fighting on a horse, there was not enough infantry at the battle of Mohacs (MOH-hahch) that could square up to the Janissaries.

The Hungarians before the Battle of Mohacs – the Anti-German Legislations

Another issue that hampered the Hungarians was one we have encountered several times already – the often fraught relationship between the local population and the Germans who had migrated there.

There were two groups of Germans living in the kingdom of Hungary at the time. There were the German immigrants into Transylvania or what the Germans call Siebenbürgen. They had arrived from the 12th century onwards as part of the general German migration east and had found shelter in the first settlement of the Teutonic Order outside the Holy Land. They were farmers and townsfolk who lived in large rural communities like many of the other ethnic minorities in Hungary.

The second group of Germans in 16^th century Hungary and the one that found itself most under pressure were the city dwellers. In Hungary, like in many other parts of central and eastern Europe the king had granted German merchants the right to build their own cities. These cities were physically separated from their surroundings by the city walls. Inside they had their own laws, usually modelled on the laws of Magdeburg, the main language was German and the city council was dominated by Germans. If there were locals nearby, they lived in their own cities or villages under Hungarian law.

If these settlements were successful, they were often very successful. They became the commercial hub, buying in local produce or manufacturing and traded these across their network of German merchants all over Europe. We talked a lot about these networks and how they functioned in the Hanseatic League season, which is really worth listening to.

One of these German settlements was Buda, as opposed to the predominantly Hungarian city of Pest on the opposite side of the Danube. Buda was the commercial capital of the country, and in Buda, only a man with four German grandparents could be elected to the city council.

As one can imagine, these prosperous German merchants and their privileges drew a lot of ire from their Hungarian neighbours. This anger burned brightly during the early 16^th century, as concerns about Habsburg influence got linked with the economic power of the German minority. So the national party set out to dismantle the privileges and legal freedoms of the Germans in Hungary. Things ratcheted up a gear when they targeted the copper and silver mines the Fuggers had established in Hungary together with their business partner Hans Thurzo. These gigantic operations had become Europe’s most advanced industrial facility that together with a similar sized plant in Thuringia produced 40% of Europe’s copper.

When the Hungarians proceeded to nationalise the Thurzo-Fugger plant, they were facing an opponent they had completely underestimated. Jakob Fugger effectively owned Charles and Ferdinand, as well as any other prince, king or bishop east of Rhine. When he cut off credit, armies stopped marching. Which is what Fugger did in 1525. Plus he stopped paying the wages for his workers, who immediately went on a rampage.

The Battle of Mohacs, 1526

These two issues, the disaffection of the peasantry and the loss of credit with the Augsburg bankers were amongst the reasons that the army king Louis II of Hungary led into the fateful battle of Mohacz had neither sufficient infantry nor artillery. The infantry he did have had been sent and paid for by the pope, Clement VII, the self-same who found himself prisoner in the Castell Sant Angelo the year after.

It is not clear whether avoiding any of these pitfalls could have prevented the defeat against the army of Suleiman the Magnificent that was at least 70,000 strong, according to other sources even bigger, whilst Louis commanded 25,000. As it happened the actual battle on August 29, 1526 lasted barely 90 minutes and at the end of it, king Louis II lay dead on the battlefield.

This event is usually seen as the great Hungarian national catastrophe. There are so many controversies about how and why it happened, I have deliberately focused only on those that have a relationship to broader German History. But there are many more that I will not get into. Fortunately I know a way how to get deeper into Hungarian history – the History of the Hungarians Podcast. Last year Ferenc Hüvös has kicked off his grand project to take you through the long history of the Hungarian people from the nomadic origins to the present day and he is making great progress. Something to check out when I am off the  airwaves.

The Aftermath of Mohacs

The imminent result of the battle of Mohacz was of course a vacant throne, or more precisely, two vacant thrones, those of Hungary and of Bohemia.

Louis’ wife, the formidable Maria of Austria, sister of Ferdinand tried her best to shore up resistance against the victorious Ottomans who were marching on Buda. But with little success. The anti-German sentiment that associated with the Habsburgs and her in particular forced her out of the city. She withdrew to Western Hungary with her allies, most of them senior magnates. Meanwhile Suleiman the Magnificent proceeded to Buda, sacked the city, but did not establish a permanent presence there. Campaign season was over, supply lines were stretched and he had actually not yet intended to take Hungary. The campaign had been no more than a massive raid that was to improve his reputation and demonstrate Ottoman power. All that was achieved, so he went home.

Once the Ottomans had withdrawn from Hungary the national party, led by Szapolyai János took over. He had himself elected and crowned king of Hungary in November 1526.

Ferdinand becomes King of Bohemia

Meanwhile Ferdinand had gone to Bohemia. As we know too well from our season on the Hussite wars, Bohemia was an elective kingdom. The nobles chose who they wanted to be king. They had rejected Friedrich III way back when and they could have easily rejected Ferdinand.

There were a total of nine candidates, several German princes, including the elector of Saxony, several ambitious Bohemian barons and of course Francois I, the king of France. He seemingly pops up wherever there is an election going.  

A committee of the Bohemian royal assembly weighed the different options and decided ultimately for Ferdinand. One key reason was that he was believed to be able to defend the kingdom against the Ottomans. And, most crucially, he accepted d some tough conditions.

He confirmed the right of the Bohemian assembly to choose their king, irrespective of inheritance rights. The estates, not the king appointed the key offices of state and finally, Ferdinand promised to protect the religious freedom the Czechs had gained in the bloody Hussite Wars. About half the population of central Bohemia was Utraquists, aka moderate Hussites. There was also a large community of Bohemian brethren, who lived  more strict lifestyle. As you may know we have a whole season on this that could be worth listening to in reparation for the reformation season.  On top of these older heresies, as Ferdinand saw them, the Czechs were also now eagerly embracing Luther’s ideas. Signing on to the last commitment was a hard choice for Ferdinand, who had become ever more fervent in his support of the catholic church.

These concessions that Ferdinand made in 1526/27 will have long lasting and tragic consequences. They will be cited amongst the justifications for the second defenestration of Prague that kicked off the Thirty Years War. Still from this point forward, with a brief interlude in 1618/9 Bohemia remained in the Habsburg empire until 1918.

Ferdinands Succession in Hungary

If the Bohemian succession was considered hard bargaining, the Hungarian succession was even tougher to engineer. Ferdinand was not in a great position here. The Hungarians had noticed that Ferdinand, instead of supporting their king at Mohacs, had sent an army of Landsknechte to Italy. Moreover, he was a Habsburg, a natural ally of the magnates and the German commercial elite. His sister had not been popular as queen, and had to flee the country.

These challenges were however also advantages. The Magnates and the German merchants were more resourceful than Szapolyai János’s lesser nobles. As Ferdinand marched south, he took one piece of land after another. The noble diet of the kingdom of Croatia that had been associated with Hungary but so far had kept a significant degree of autonomy, accepted Ferdinand unconditionally as their king. The kingdom of Croatia would henceforth move through the Habsburg family without a hitch.

The Siege of Vienna 1529

Two years into this war, Szapolyai János found himself on the back foot. His only remaining options were to either recognise Ferdinand as the true king of Hungary or to bend the knee to the Ottoman sultan and become a vassal king. He chose the latter. In return, Suleiman the Magnificent mustered an army 60-80,000 strong, some said 200,000 when counting camp followers and auxiliaries. This unprecedented force marched through Hungary and took Buda once again. The next destination was Vienna. By the time they had reached Buda, summer had already progressed quite far. The march from Constantinople had been made difficult by heavy weather. Things did not improve from there. Though it was late August, according to historian Marc David Baer “the sultan’s own chroniclers recorded ‘snow from evening until noon the next day’, ‘much loss of horses and men in swamps’, many die of hunger’.”

It took until the end of September before the sultan’s main force of circa 100,000 soldiers plus roughly the same in camp followers reached Vienna.

Fear of an ottoman invasion had been present in Austria since the days of Friedrich III. Turkish marauders had gotten into Carinthia, Gorizia and Steiermark in several occasions. One of the reasons the Austrian lands struggled to provide Maximilian I with enough resources was down to these raids.

But never before had one of the cities been put under siege, let alone the capital. Vienna at the time had 20,000 inhabitants. Its fortifications had been hastily improved since the fall of Buda in 1526, but 3 years wasn’t a long time when it came to the construction of walls able to withstand artillery. Before the gros of the army reached Vienna, Ottoman light cavalry had been ravaging the countryside and the suburbs. Suleiman’s secretary noted that ‘Our warriors forced their way into a farmstead, sounding their Muslim battle cry they drew their sabres and cut down all the infidels, they seized the girls and boys and secured rich booty, this too is further proof of the grace of Allah’.

As a contemporary writer noted, quote: “Many thousands of people were murdered, or maltreated and dragged into slavery. Children were cut out of their mothers’ wombs and stuck on pikes ; young women abused to death, and their corpses left on the highway. God rest their souls, and grant vengeance on the bloodhounds who committed this evil.”

The peasants in the countryside either fled into the forests and mountains, or towards the city to find protection. By the 20^th of September every road leading from east and west towards the city were clogged up with refugees. Meanwhile the defenders decided to lay down the suburbs to deny the besiegers the protection of its walls and houses. The former inhabitants of these suburbs added to the densely packed humanity inside the walls.

All in, the defenders counted roughly 17-20,000 fighters, of which about 2,000 horse and the rest infantry, most of them trained mercenaries and militias. They had 74 cannons operated by experienced gun crews. Ferdinand himself was not present in Vienna, he was co-ordinating the relief efforts from Prague. That was moderately successful as he was able to raise an army that began marching on Vienna by the end of September.

The siege focused on the Kärntner Tor, the part of the defences that was identified as the weakest link. The defenders were extremely lucky that Suleiman only managed to bring along 2 of the massive siege cannons that  could have smashed the gate to pieces.

As a consequence the main Ottoman tactic was to undermine the defences by having sappers dig tunnels under the walls and blow up large quantities of gunpowder once they reached the walls. The defenders ran counter-tunnels to intercept the Turks. One way to detect sappers was to keep large vats of water near the walls and look out for ripples on the surface that may indicate activity below.

These counter tunnels were dug by a contingent of miners who had come up from Schwaz in Tyrol to help defend the city. Whenever the two sides met underground, fighting was mainly hand to hand, not with firearms for fear of igniting the gunpowder the Ottomans had brought along.

These efforts could delay but not prevent a breach of the walls. On October 11^th, a mine exploded between the Kärntner and Stuben gate. Heavy fighting ensued but the defenders could hold their positions, even after a second mine opened a further breach nearby.

The next day, October 12^th saw two massive attacks, each again repulsed. On the 13^th the Ottoman’s halted the attack to debate whether or not one last effort should be undertaken. The Janissaries in particular were unwilling to go home empty handed.

So, on the 14^th of October, the Ottoman army arrayed for one last, make or break push. But the Ottoman army, worn down by the unseasonably harsh weather and the obstinate resistance of the defenders failed to gain the momentum needed to break into the city.

By the afternoon of that same day it was all over. Much of Suleiman’s army consisted of land grant holders who owed only a limited number of months service. That, together with stretched supply lines, the ever more atrocious weather and floods left the sultan with no other option than to abandon the siege.

He returned to Constantinople. The campaign was however no failure. Most of Hungary was now in the hands of the Ottoman’s vassal king Szapolyai János. In 1540 the two rival kings of Hungary had a brief rapprochement, but when Suleiman heard about this, he had his forces occupy central Hungary and turn the Matthias church into a mosque. Hungary ended up being divided into three parts, the Ottomans occupied the centre including the capital, the son of Szapolyai János was allowed to keep a rump kingdom in Transylvania as an Ottoman vassal and Ferdinand held on to the western parts.

Despite Suleiman’s failure to gain Austria, the mere fact that Vienna was now within reach of an Ottoman army put the fear of god into Christendom. Ferdinand spent the next decades expanding and strengthening the defences of Vienna. What is now the famous Ringstrasse had once been the ramparts begun by Ferdinand. Moreover, he built and strengthened dozens, if not hundreds of forts and towns in the part of Hungary he was able to retain. The military doctrine resulting from the siege of Vienna was that Ottoman supply lines did not reach beyond 1500 km in either direction from Constantinople. Hence there could be raids, but a conquest could be prevented by simply slowing down the enemy progress with just one defensive position after another, until the weather and logistics forced their withdrawal. That strategy held until 1683 when Vienna came under siege once again.

The Habsburg empire at its largest extent

With the consolidation of Habsburg Hungary in the 1530s, our story arch about the Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg comes to an end. This is the point where arguably Habsburg power reached its zenith. 40% of Europe saw the emperor Charles V as its legitimate ruler. Not since Charlemagne had any one person gathered so much European territory in a single hand. Moreover, Spanish ships were ploughing the seas between Europe and the Americas bringing hitherto unknown plants and fruits to europe that will become a staple of our diet here, as well as gold and silver in quantities nobody could have ever imagined.

But it was also a most unusual structure. The various kingdoms, duchies, counties, baronetcies and colonies had very little in common. They spoke dozens of different languages, had a bewildering array of ancient institutions, rights and privileges that constrained their rulers, with the most complex of them all, the Holy Roman Empire at its centre. Logistics were complicated, as there was no land bridge connecting their various centres of power.

Almost from the beginning of Charles reign it had become obvious that this empire could not be managed by just one man. That is why Charles delegated responsibility for the Netherlands first to his aunt Margaret and later to his sister Maria, the widow of king Louis of Hungary. And then, as we have seen, reluctantly passed responsibility for Austria and the empire to his brother Ferdinand.

When Charles abdicated in 1555 having reached the end of his physical and mental capacity the division of responsibilities became permanent. The Habsburg empire was split into a Sanish and an Austrian part. His son Philipp II received the kingdoms of Spain, Sicily and Naples, the lordship over the Netherlands and Milan. With that came the dominance of the rest of Italy. Ferdinand and his descendants held on to what Ferdinand owned in his own right, the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary as well as the Habsburg lands in Austria, Tyrol and the upper Rhine.

I remember learning in school that this division was an unusual event and a sign of the foresight or foolishness of the emperor Charles V, depending on viewpoint. But it was obviously inevitable. Only Ferdinand had a claim on Bohemia and Hungary. Charles simply could not hand it to Philipp II, even if he had wanted to. As for the Austrian lands, Ferdinand had received them in his own right already in 1522 and it had been made public in 1530. Under Habsburg family laws and traditions, there was no legal way Charles could ask for them back. And finally, as for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand was already king of the Romans and hence the next emperor come what may. And with the Austrian branch being imperial princes and physically closer than Philip II in his Escorial Palace, it was only natural that this crown should stay with them.

So, not much generosity here.

That being said, the split meant that either Habsburg branch on its own would be materially weaker than their permanent opponent, the king of France. Therefore the co-operation between the two branches had to be institutionalised. The Habsburg family law did provide some mechanism. It set forth that though lands were divided, the various archdukes were supposed to work together and act as one against their foes. But as we have seen in the earlier episodes, this model had not worked on its own. The different branches, the Leopoldiner and Albertiner had been at each other’s throat for ages and Tyrolean archdukes were notoriously unco-operative. So to strengthen the system, the Habsburgs embarked on a fateful marriage strategy. They would marry each other to make sure the gigantic political complex remained together. The first to go down that route was Ferdinand’s son, Maximilian II who married Charles’ daughter Maria. This strategy did work in as much as it held the family union together, but had the predictable catastrophic impact on the family gene pool.  

It was a natural consequence of the fact that this was not an empire that had a ruler, but a family that ruled an empire. I cannot guarantee this statement to be right, but I think the Habsburg empire is the only political entity in history that has held together for centuries by nothing more than family ties. Some territories joined, others left over the centuries, but the one thing that remained was this family at its centre. Some of them impressive, in the way Rudolf I, Rudolf the Founder and Maximilian were. But in the main, they were adequate, occasionally outright incompetent. But they kept the engine running for – depending on how you count 500 or 700 years. Most of them dutiful servants of the House of Austria, forever trying to expand and hold together the family inheritance. You may not like them, and I am at best ambivalent, but they are unique and I hope you found them worth 43 episodes.

What happens next is the following. I have an interview with Katja Hoyer that I will drop in a few weeks, just to remind you that the show still exists. But apart from that, I fear it will be radio silence until September.

I would like to thank you all for your kind words and understanding for the need of a break. You are the best audience ever. I will post some links to shows I recommend you listen to in my absence so that you do not run out of historical content. And, just in case you have not listened to all 238 podcasts out there, I am sure there will be something you may enjoy here at the History of the Germans.

Last thing left to do is then to thank Konstantin K., Matthew B, Doctor Kai  R.,  James H., John H., Stephen G, J.C.W. VAN DE V., Robert L G., Adrian H., Lily E. and the delightful Barbara von H.

as well as all of you for your  incredible generosity.

See you on the other side.