Albrecht I von Habsburg

The late 13^th century was the sniper’s alley for many a powerful family. The disappearance of great dynasties, the Arpads of Hungary, the Premyslids of Bohemia, the Zaehringer, Babenbergs, the counts of Holland to name just a few wasn’t down to lack of fertility but down to violence. Murder became so common, even those who did not have swords sticking out of their chest were presumed poisoned. To save them, some were suspended from the ceiling to flush out harmful substances. Violence was not limited to temporal princes, even the pope was getting slapped down for declaring that every Christian ruler was subject to the Roman Pontiff.

The fact that Albrecht I von Habsburg the new King of the Romans is murdered is therefore not the most interesting thing about him. What is astonishing is how far this man “with only one eye and a look that made you sick” got in his ambitions. Pressured from all sides, the Prince Electors, his own vassals in Austria, the Pope, the Bohemians, still he ploughed on, picking up principalities like others picking daisies. And a wrath of daisies is what did for him in the end…

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 143 – The Murder of a King – Albrecht I von Habsburg.

The late 13^th century was the sniper’s alley for many a powerful family. The disappearance of great dynasties, the Arpads of Hungary, the Premyslids of Bohemia, the Zaehringer, Babenbergs, the counts of Holland to name just a few wasn’t down to lack of fertility but down to violence. Murder became so common, even those who did not have swords sticking out of their chest were presumed poisoned. To save them, some were suspended from the ceiling to flush out harmful substances. Violence was not limited to temporal princes, even the pope was getting slapped down for declaring that every Christian ruler was subject to the Roman Pontiff.

The fact that Albrecht I von Habsburg the new King of the Romans is murdered is therefore not the most interesting thing about him. What is astonishing is how far this man “with only one eye and a look that made you sick” got in his ambitions. Pressured from all sides, the Prince Electors, his own vassals in Austria, the Pope, the Bohemians, still he ploughed on, picking up principalities like others picking daisies. And a wrath of daisies is what did for him in the end…

Before we start the story proper I want to thank not only the patrons who keep this show on the road by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or by making a one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com/support, but I want to break a lance for all of you who keep supporting the show by telling friends and family about it, by posting on social media, in particular Facebook and Twitter, or by reading and commenting on my website. A podcast like the History of the Germans experiences some serious levels of attrition. Of the 70,000 people who have listened to the first episode, only about half are still on board by episode 4 and by episode 17 that has halved again to 20,000. In the long run, less than 17% stick around.  That is about 11,000 people now. And of those an estimated 20% drop out every 6 months. That means, just to stay level, the show needs to bring in 4,000 new listeners per year, which means we need almost 30,000 people trying the History of the Germans for the first time every year. I do my very best to drum up listeners by posting on Facebook @HotgPOd and on twitter @germanshistory but I am struggling to find new audiences there. I tried the other platforms, but had little success so far. Cross-promotion with other podcasters helps a bit, but is sporadic and limited by the fact that I only recommend podcasts I listen to myself.

In other words, I need your help. If every one of you gets 3 people to try the History of the Germans, that would translate into 4,000 new permanent listeners, enough to cover the ongoing attrition.  As a special inducement, in two episodes time I will call out the five fans who send me the longest list of friends, family, acquaintances and random people of the street they have asked to listen to the show. If you do take part, let me know whether I should call out your full name or just name and initial.

Talking about calling out names, I want to say special thanks to my patrons, Larry A., Paul Caldwell, Miriam A., Matt H., Emily P and Ben S. who have already signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans

Now, finally, back to the show.

Last week we ended with the battle of Göllheim on July 2^nd, 1298. The deposed king Adolf von Nassau was dead. Albrecht I, oldest son of king Rudolf von Habsburg was finally elected King of the Romans. 6 weeks later he was crowned in Aachen by the archbishop of Cologne.

Albrecht was supposed to become king seven years earlier, upon the death of his father, king Rudolf. But that did not happen, in part because the prince electors, the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier and the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg and the Count Palatinate on the Rhine had entered into a new mode of operation, where the son of a king was not to become king, full stop.

But in 1298 they had no option to deny Albrecht the crown any longer. It was either that or leaving Adolf of Nassau in charge. And Adolf had become unacceptable to the electors. Adolf had broken all the promises he had made to them in the runup to his election, promises that tied him down to be nothing but a tool in the hands of the Electors. Not only that, his successful campaigns in Thuringia and Meissen had made it likely that he too would elevate his family to become imperial princes – and where would that end.

So Albrecht became the electors champion in removing Adolf von Nassau.

Their champion he may have been, but whether they really liked, or actually supported him was a different question.

Past historians had often ascribed Albrecht’s difficulty first to be elected and then to gather support for his policies to his appearance and personality. He was described as “a boorish man with only one eye and a look that made you sick…a miser who kept his money and gave nothing to the empire, except for children of which he had many.”

He indeed had only one eye. In 1295 his physicians had taken an illness for poisoning and had suspended him upside down from the ceiling to flush out the concerning substance. As it happened, Albrecht had not been poisoned, and even more miraculously, he survived the treatment. At least most of him. The compression to the skull popped out an eyeball – so key learning from history: do not suspend yourself from the ceiling for extended periods of time unless you are certain you have been poisoned.

Apart from the loss of an eye, the time he was suspended from the ceiling had also been one of the politically most difficult periods for Albrecht. Why that was, we have to go back to his relative youth, when his father still sat on the throne.

Albrecht had become duke of Austria and Styria in 1282, initially jointly with his brother Rudolf and from 1283 on his own. Even though he was the eldest son of the reigning monarch, he pursued the same territorial strategy, many other imperial princes engaged in. His policy was to centralize ducal power. That meant removing all these special rights and privileges, the towns, cities and nobles held independently from the duke, either due to full unencumbered ownership or by grant from the emperor. And like every other prince, he faced some serious opposition to his efforts. Neither the cities, nor the nobles were prepared to hand back their hard earned rights.

The first to stand up to Albrecht were the citizens of Vienna. Hey had demanded that Albrecht confirms their ancient privileges and threatened to declare themselves as an free imperial city if he failed to do so.

Albrecht did not yield. Instead he had his soldiers close the bridges across the Danube, effectively closing the city off from trade and supply of food. The economy of Vienna took a severe hit. The artisans, blacksmiths, bowyers, locksmiths, goldsmiths, harness makers and knifemakers, saddlers, shoemakers, needle makers, butchers, bakers, furriers, tailors, wood turners, weavers, wool and loden cloth makers, parchment makers and tanners, hatters, tailers, shield makers and binders, silk spinners, tinkers and bell founders, carpenters and stonemasons, brick makers, glaziers and mirror makers, carpenters and barrel makers, belt makers and white tanners, glovemakers, producers of horn and bone goods, coin makers, stove makers and basket weavers, they all suffered from rising prices for materials and declining demand from the impoverished citizens.

As the blockade continued the price for wood and coal increased and finally food prices exploded. Hungry and losing faith in the patrician leadership, the lower classes took to the streets, demanding an end to the hardship. The local clergy negotiated a compromise. The patricians were to go and negotiate with the duke and unless they found a compromise within 6 days, the plebs would hand them over to the ducal soldiers.

There was nothing to negotiate here. Albrecht dictated the terms. He took the ancient charters and cut out all the passages he did not like with a knife and confirmed the rest. The city walls were breached at strategic points and the city returned under the now even firmer control of the duke.

Another uprising occurred in 1291/92 following king Rudolf’s death, which Albrecht was again able to put down.

A further challenge to his rule came at the election of the new king, Adolf of Nassau. King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia had been one of the electors of Adolf of Nassau. And his father had held the duchies of Austria and Styria until Albrecht’s father had ousted him from there. Wenceslaus wanted the duchies back. So, in exchange for his vote, Wenceslaus demanded that Adolf would declare the elevation of Albrecht to duke of Austria illegal and return the duchies to Wenceslaus II. Adolf’s key skill in the run-up to his election had been his ability to sign any piece of paper the electors put before him and so he committed to Wenceslaus that he would get rid of Albrecht.

Albrecht managed that latter curveball well. He met with the new king Adolf, handed over the imperial regalia Adolf needed to make his coronation valid and in exchange, Adolf suspended any action against Albrecht. But still his situation remained precarious.

The real crisis happened in 1295 during the illness that would cost him an eye. Many believed that Albrecht was at death’s door. King Adolf von Nassau thought that this was the moment to finally honor his promise to king Wenceslaus of Bohemia and ordered Austria and Styria to be returned to the crown, presumably to then pass it on to Wenceslaus II. Wenceslaus II then funded another uprising of the nobility in preparation of his return to Vienna.

But Albrecht was finally lowered from the ceiling, got into and then rose from his sickbed. He gathered his forces and put down the uprising. In his victory he was however magnanimous. He left the rebellious nobles in possession of most of their wealth and privileges in exchange for a vow of support in the now inevitable military conflict with King Adolf von Nassau.

It was this policy of stick and carrot that allowed Albrecht to remain in control of the newly acquired duchies of Austria and Styria and to finally overcome the opposition from the electors, the king of the Romans and the King of Bohemia.

So, in respect of strategy and political nous, Albrecht was very much his father’s son. I have not found a reference to him playing chess, but even if he didn’t, he was still always a few steps ahead of his adversaries. But what he lacked was Rudolf’s interpersonal skills. Contemporaries praised Rudolf’s friendliness, his affable manner and humility that camouflaged his ruthlessness. In Albrecht, his ambition and severity were very much out in the open. Maybe his lack of attractive features even before the loss of his eye had made it difficult for him to relate to others, or reports of his tight rule in Austria shaped the views of his contemporaries, but it is quite clear that nobody very much liked him. Maybe his wife liked him. She gave him 21 children, though on second thoughts, she may have had even more reason to resent him than the Austrian nobles.

But whether they liked him or not, the Austrians and other Habsburg forces did follow him in his pursuit of King Adolf that ended in his victory at Göllheim. And the Electors too got over their reservations and elected him king just before the battle.

But astute politician that he was, he did not insist on that this election made under duress and in the presence of only some of the electors was the final one. A second election took place on July 27^th, 1298 now in the presence of all electors, minus the Bohemian king. Albrecht was unanimously chosen, and like his predecessor, he had signed all sorts of commitments to each of the electors promising support in lawsuits, imperial lands, money and just general compliance. And like his predecessor, he believed that paper was patient.

Who was not very patient was pope Boniface VIII back in, well not Rome, but in Anagni. The pope had to – as was now regularly the case – flee from the eternal city and established his court in the small but gorgeous town of Anagni.

These rather reduced circumstances did not stop Boniface VIII to drive the concept of the imperial papacy to its absolute zenith. In his bull Unam Sanctam he stated that quote “it is necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff”. And that meant he yielded not just the spiritual sword, but also the temporal. Kings are to be subordinates to the Holy Father and  in fact an emperor was no longer needed.

For Boniface to depose Adolf von Nassau and elect Albrecht von Habsburg was an affront. Not that he had a particular fondness for Adolf or an animosity towards Albrecht. It was a question of rank and protocol. The electors should have first asked for papal permission before making the move. When Albrecht’s ambassadors humbly asked for confirmation of his new honor, Boniface responded quote: “I am the king of the Romans, I am Emperor”.

Albrecht, the actual King of the Roman did not have either the resources or the political capital to refute the pope’s claims. He was dependent on the pope, because only the pope could crown him emperor, and only as emperor could he get his son elected and thereby ensure the continuation of his dynasty on the imperial throne.

So, he sent another set of ambassadors asking most humbly what would appease his holiness. And the answer was simple, the whole of Tuscany. The famous inheritance of the great countess Matilda was still in dispute. And the pope thought now was the time to put this one to bed. A high price indeed.

Being bullied by the pope was only one of Albrecht’s preoccupations at this time. Albrecht was very much his father’s son and he was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to expand his and his family’s lands. And this was a time where long standing dynasties had a habit of dying out or falling apart, creating opportunities for an ambitious Habsburg to pick up some more lands.

The first opportunity was up in the far north. In 1296 Count Floris V of Holland, the son of one of the previous Kings of the Romans, William of Holland, was murdered by the nobles of his county. Floris’ support for the peasants and his opposition to the aristocracy made him a folk hero, but also a dead folk hero. His son, John died just 3 years later, aged just 15 allegedly from dysentery. The county of Holland together with Seeland and Friesland were now vacant fiefs. Instead of handing them to the closest relatives of the young count, Albrecht decided to take them all for himself.

Then there was still the whole Thuringia affair. Albrecht’s predecessor Adolf von Nassau had called in the margraviate of Meissen and had bought the Landgraviate of Thuringia from a guy aptly named Albrecht the Degenerate who had been at war with all his relatives. Albrecht had not much of a legal claim in that game, but still went for it, demanding the whole of the Wettiner lands for himself.

None of that made him popular with the electors. And he also now had to deal with a new archbishop of Trier who happened to be the brother of the deposed king Adolf of Nassau, who had died in a battle against Albrecht.

Mounting opposition from the Electors and outlandish demands from the pope meant Albrecht needed an ally. And that ally was the king Philipp the Fair of France. Abrecht had become close to the handsome Philipp at the time king Adolf of Nassau had allied with king Edward of England to attack the French. The initial, my enemy’s enemy is my friend relationship warmed further when Albrecht became king.

The two kings met on the border between their realms and agreed an alliance and Albrecht’s son Rudolf who we will call Rudolf III to distinguish him from his uncle and grandfather, was to marry Blanche, the daughter of king Philipp. Now normally the bride was to bring the dowry, but the relative power between the two monarchs meant, it was the groom’s father who had to put up the goods. The Landgraviate of upper Alsace and the county of Fribourg in modern day Switzerland were to be given to Blanche as an apanage. And the county of Burgundy, the Franche Comte was to become French. That was a major concession. The county of Burgundy had been part of the empire since the days of Konrad II and the county had become imperial land when Barbarossa married Beatrix of Burgundy. Giving this up was not exactly a way to be a Semper Augustus, an always augmentor of the realm as his title proclaimed. Moreover, a new border between France and the Empire was agreed which followed the Maas river, which again handed over some imperial territory to France.

Albrecht had brought the electors along for the negotiations to legitimise this transfer of imperial territory. But he failed to get them on board. They left the conference in protest, claiming Albrecht was throwing away imperial lands for his own purposes.

Albrecht still went ahead and ratified the treaty with or without electors.

At which point another war between king and electors was unavoidable. But this time the electors did not depose the king and elect a new challenger. As it happened, they could not muster much resistance after all. Albrecht quickly mobilised his imperial forces and most importantly the free and imperial cities who became more and more the key to royal power.

Ironically the reason the Electors could not muster much resistance was because their resources had been depleted during the fight against Adolf von Nassau that had brought Albrecht to power.

And the French alliance worked out like a dream as well.

Pope Boniface’ assertion that all power lay with the papacy and every king was to bow to him did go down like a lead balloon with king Philip the Fair of France. And other than Albrecht, he was able to do something about it. He sent 2,000 mercenaries under the command of his close advisor Guillaume de Nogent to Italy. His troops stormed the papal palace at Anagni and arrested the pope. In some accounts the mercenary commander Sciarra Colonna slapped the pope, though this is not confirmed. What is true is that the pope was made a prisoner and only came free when the citizens of Anagni put pressure on the French garrison. The French withdrew.

But Boniface VIII and the imperial church were shaken to the core. Boniface VIII died a few months later from the aftershock. A few years later the papacy moved to Avignon to spend the next century under the watchful eye of a French garrison in the opposite shore of the Rhone river.

And Boniface VIII relented on the question of the imperial succession. He confirmed Albrecht’s election and coronation as valid and promised to have him crowned, should he make it to Rome.

As it happened, that never happened.

Albrecht was instead occupied with another set of opportunities. And these were really big opportunities, far larger than the county of Holland or the margraviate of Meissen.  

The first was the kingdom of Hungary. The dynasty that had started with Arpad who led the Hungarians into the Pannonian basin in the 9^th century had finally gone extinct. Royal power in Hungary had been eroded for some time and the last two kings, Ladislaus IV and Anrew III had lived a peripatetic life whilst the great noble clans controlled the kingdom. Still Hungary was a rich and historically, a hugely powerful kingdom.

Albrecht had been involved in Hungarian affairs for decades already as he captured castles and territories along the Austro-Hungarian border from rebellious nobles. In the civil war that followed the death of the last descendant of Arpad, Albrecht was initially a contender alongside the Anjou of Sicily and our old friend, Wenceslaus II, the king of Bohemia. However, he had to realize that he was unlikely to ever capture Hungary against the opposition of both of them. So he sided with the Anjou, almost certainly in the hope of being rewarded should his side ultimately win.

Whilst Hungary became less of an opportunity, another prospect appeared due to a series of freak events.

King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia has been looming large over imperial politics since the death of Rudolf I. But the empire was only one of his areas of interest. Another one was Hungary, as we have just heard. And finally there was Poland. In Poland the Piast dynasty had fragmented into a dozen duchies under a purely formal overlordship of the ruler of Krakow. Wenceslaus like his father Ottokar took a strong interest in Polish affairs. I will not even try to untangle the immensely complex political maneuvers amongst the various Piast dukes here, I did some of it in episode 134 if you are interested.

What matters here is that Wenceslaus had managed to build a dominant position inside Poland, which included the duchy of Krakow. He also married the daughter of the previous Polish king Premysl II, which allowed him to get crowned king of Poland in 1300.

He also achieved the coronation of his son, the future Wenceslaus III as king of Hungary, though he only controlled part of that country..

Still, by 1303 the power of the Bohemian ruler had become deeply uncomfortable not just for Albrecht, but also for some of the imperial princes and the Pope. Boniface declared for the house of Anjou as kings of Hungary. And even though Boniface died shortly afterwards, papal support for the Anjou as kings of Hungary remained firm.

Albrecht then attacked Wenceslaus in Moravia with Hungarian support. This campaign was unsuccessful, allegedly because the miners of Kutna Hora poisoned the water with silver dust. Still Wenceslaus II needed to open negotiations with Albrecht to break him out of the coalition with the pope and the Anjou. Albrecht entered the negotiations with excessive demands, but still ended with the return of the region around Eger, Cheb in Czech and the Pleissenland. Not exactly a crown, but not a bad addition to his bulging property portfolio.

Wenceslaus II did not see the final signing of the peace agreement. He died after a prolonged illness in June 1305.

His crowns went to his son, Wenceslaus III. Wenceslaus III immediately gave up on Hungary and focused on Poland. There he faced opposition of Wladyslaw the Elbow-High, one of the Piast dukes and the man who, together with his son Casimir III would reunite Poland. So a mighty foe.

Wenceslaus was also a sort of party prince who surrounded himself with young men of a similar disposition whilst leaving the management of the kingdom to his brother-in-law, the duke Henry of Carinthia.

And on August 4, 1306 a mystery took place. King Wenceslaus III of Bohemia and Poland was stabbed by an unknown assassin at Olomouc. The assassin was never found. And with this freak event the Premyslid dynasty that had ruled Bohemia for more than 400 years was no more.

Nobody had counted on this to happen. The Premyslid kings of Bohemia had been a huge force in imperial politics for centuries and none more so than in the time of Ottokar II and Wenceslaus II. Bohemia was an immeasurably rich and tightly run political entity. No question, whichever clan was to gain possession of it would dominate imperial politics from this point forward.

The first to seize the opportunity was a man we have not yet heard of at all. How is that possible? 143 episodes with names after names. And you tell me there is a new one? Well there is.

Henry duke of Carinthia. The reason you have not heard of him so far is that up until now, Henry of Carinthia was a sort of appendage to the Habsburgs. He was born the younger son of the counts of Tyrol who controlled the Brenner pass from their castles in Innsbruck and Meran. Henry’s  sister was married to, yes, to Albrecht I of Habsburg. And that came in very handy when in 1286 the decision about the duchy of Carinthia came up.  As you may remember, Carinthia had come under the control of Rudolf von Habsburg after his victory at Dürnkrut. Rudolf would have loved to pass Carinthia to his sons as he had done with Austria and Syria, but found strong opposition amongst the electors. So he gave it to this young guy Henry on the proviso that he would do whatever the Habsburgs wanted him to do. And that Henry did. He fought with Albrecht at Gollheim and just generally made himself useful around the house.

But then he was given the opportunity of a lifetime. He got to marry Anne, the daughter of king Wenceslaus II of Bohemia. And with it came the governorship of Bohemia on behalf of the dissolute Wenceslaus III. And then the most unlikely thing happened, Wenceslaus III was murdered by an unknown assassin.

Henry just happened to be the right man in the right place. There are no male members of the royal line left. He is married to one of the female members of the family, and he is in Prague and already in charge of the place. So the Bohemian nobles elect him to be the new king.

This royal bliss lasted only a few months though.  His brother-in-law and former friend Albrecht of Habsburg invades Bohemia, besieges Henry and he and his wife flee back to Carinthia.

Albrecht now forces the Bohemians to elect his son Rudolf III to be king of Bohemia. To add to the  rather flimsy legitimacy of his ascension, young Rudolf married the widow of old king Wenceslaus III. But things did not go smoothly. Some of the Bohemian nobles were reluctant to accept Rudolph who they called king Porridge for his sensitive digestive system. They denied him access to the silver mines of Kutna Hora and forced him into a siege. And it was at the siege that Rudolf III’s stomach finally burst and with it ended the first attempt of the Habsburgs to capture the Bohemian crown.

Henry of Carinthia was recalled and this time was better prepared to repel the subsequent attack by Albrecht I.

At that point Albrecht’s forces were stretched mightily thin. Whilst his son was trying to gain control of Bohemia, the Wettins back up in Thuringia had regained their fighting spirit and inflicted a severe defeat on Albrecht’s forces.

But Albrecht was only 53, younger than his father when he took the throne. He may not have been pretty or charming, but he has been a very successful ruler in the chaotic context of his times, ruthlessly expanding the Habsburg lands. Give him another 10 years and the Habsburgs are in charge of all territory between Strasburg, Vienna, Dresden and Frankfurt plus Holland, more territory than any of his predecessors held and containing the largest known reserves of precious metal in Europe.

But as we know Albrecht wasn’t given another 10 years. I think I did say a few episodes back that part of the success of the Habsburgs was that they would act as a unit. Everyone, not just the ruler, but all the archdukes and archduchesses were working on the great project of Habsburg power. But I also said that there were exceptions, where rivalry and mistrust blew out into violent conflict. And that is what happened on May 1^st, 1308.

You remember that Albrecht had a brother called Rudolf. Rudolf was their father’s preferred son. It was Rudolf who initially was to become King of the Romans, not Albrecht. And his father had tried to make him a duke, ideally the duke of Swabia. But both projects failed, mainly since Rudolf died in 1290.

Rudolf had initially been made joint duke of Austria and Styria but in 1283 the two duchies became Albrecht’s sole possessions. And with Rudolf’s death, so did the original Habsburg Possessions in Swabia.

Now this Rudolf had a son, called Johann. Johann was born shortly before his father’s death and so by 1308 he is 18 years old. And he has neither a title nor land. His mother had been the daughter of king Ottokar II of Bohemia, so if anyone in the Habsburg family had a legitimate claim on the Bohemian crown it was Johann, not Albrecht’s son Rudolf III, he of the frail stomach.

Johann was not happy about how things were taking shape. Albrecht still had five surviving sons. That meant, there was one last cane for Johann, and that was if Albrecht would make him his Bohemian candidate, now that Rudolph III was dead.

On April 30^th, 1308 Albrecht came to Winterthur in the Habsburg lands. A great banquet was held and to honor his nephew, Albrecht offered Johann a floral wrath. That tipped Johann over the edge. He was expecting a crown of silver, gold and precious stones and instead all he got was some daisies. He rose up and declared he would not be fobbed off with some flowers and ran out.

The next day, when Albrecht was on his way home he crossed the river Reuss near Windisch. There Johann and his friends attacked. Johann rode up to the king and split his head without saying a word. The murderers escaped and Johann, now known as Johann Parricida was never heard of again. He made appearances in literature, even gets to meet Wilhelm Tell in Schiller’s play, but for history he is lost.

And so is Albrecht I von Habsburg, King of the Romans. He had never become emperor, which meant he had not been able to ensure the continuation of his dynasty. the electors were free to do what they now always did, deny the succession to the son of the latest incumbent. Instead, they chose another impecunious count. Will they ever learn?

I hope you will tune in again next week.

And I also hope you can find me these three friends or family members, acquaintances or just people on the street you can turn into fans of the History of the Germans. Ideally send them to the main podcast, but if they are only interested in some parts of the story, I have sperate playlists about the Ottonians, the Hanseatic League, the Teutonic Knights and for the current series, all released as separate podcasts. The links are in the shownotes.