Rudolf of Habsburg (1273-1291)

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Allezeit Mehrer des Reiches

Martin Rady in his highly amusing and exceptionally well written book on the Habsburg said quote “The remainder of Rudolf’s reign up to his death in 1291 was a failure. He did not manage to have himself crowned emperor by the pope and had to make do with the title of king…it was a false dawn, both for the Holy Roman empire and for the Habsburgs” end quote.

I most humbly disagree. The 13 years following the battle of Durnkrut are some of the most transformative for the Empire and the fledgling concept of German and Germany. This episode will try to make the case for Rudolf I, founder of the house of Habsburg and one of the most impactful medieval rulers of the empire.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans: Episode 141 – Rudolf I  Semper Augustus Allezeit Mehrer des Reiches.

Martin Rady in his highly amusing and exceptionally well written book on the Habsburg said quote “The remainder of Rudolf’s reign up to his death in 1291 was a failure. He did not manage to have himself crowned emperor by the pope and had to make do with the title of king…it was a false dawn, both for the Holy Roman empire and for the Habsburgs” end quote.

I most humbly disagree. The 13 years following the battle of Durnkrut are some of the most transformative for the Empire and the fledgling concept of German and Germany. This episode will try to make the case for Rudolf I, founder of the house of Habsburg and one of the most impactful medieval rulers of the empire.

Before we go into the story and the respective arguments, just a few words about the way the History of the Germans is run. This show is advertising free which means the only way I can get compensated is by the generosity of patrons. And I must say, your willingness to keep this show on the road is overwhelming – so thank you so much. And it is worth it. I recently listened to a podcast I hugely respect and that is with a network that had approached me to join a few months ago. This podcast was now featuring cryptocurrency advertising, something I personally would not want to be seen endorsing in any form. So a specially heartfelt thanks to William Schmidt, Jantje B., Donka P., Brian A., Moritz L. and Randy F. who have already signed up, saving your host from shame and embarrassment.

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Talking about shame and embarrassment, I have to make a correction. In the last episode I described the beginning of the battle of Durnkrut stating that Rudolf’s Flemish slingers hurled their stones at the Bohemians whose Cumans and Sarmatians responded with clouds of arrows. It was the other way around. The Flemish slingers fought for Ottokar whilst the Cumans and Sarmatians had joined Rudolf’s forces from Hungary. Apologies for that.

So now back to the show.

On 26th of August 1278 the body of Ottokar II, king of Bohemia is lies almost naked on the battlefield of Dürnkrut. Scavengers have stripped off his precious armor. The great golden king is no more.

His seven year old son, Wenceslaus comes to king Rudolf to sue for peace and the return of the body of his father that had been displayed in the Minoritenkirche in Vienna, a church Ottokar himself had founded in his heyday when he was duke of Austria. Wenceslaus was allowed to take his predecessor’s remains home and not only that. He was betrothed to Judith, the youngest of Rudolf’s surviving children. The marriage would take place seven years later when bride and groom had grown up to be at least teenagers.

Rudolf was on top of the world. His enemy and only serious rival for the crown was defeated and dead. He was in control of not just one, but three duchies, Austria, Styria and Carinthia. His policies to rebuild royal power in the empire were gaining traction and lands and rights lost to the crown during the interregnum were gradually returned.

For many in the German parts of the empire it seemed as if the golden days of the Hohenstaufen were about to return. For the cities in the south Rudolf’s reforms were of particular importance.

As we have seen in the series about the Hanseatic League, the 13th and14th century was a time during which new and extremely profitable trade routes opened up. Merchants handling these wares grew rich, artisans gained access to new customers and the city’s population found employment in the various workshops. Trade fairs, events that would attract merchants and dealers from across europe are flourishing. The Leipziger Messe can claim to be the oldest recorded trade fair still in operation, dating back to 1165. Frankfurt Messe was founded in 1240 and is also still going strong. Cities like Nördlingen, Donauwörth, Eichstätt, Regensburg, Schaffhausen, Worms, Speyer and Naumburg and further north, Cologne, Duisburg Aachen and Utrecht were connecting points in a pan-European trading system.

All of these cities had overlords. Some dated back to Roman times and were seats of bishops, others had been founded by emperors, dukes or counts. These overlords became increasingly a problem. For one, they regularly demanded some form of tax of other financial contribution. Moreover, these high and mighty lord and not so saintly bishops did not understand much about trade and the importance of reliable currencies, open transportation routes and the rule of law.

The rift between the city councils and the overlords deepened over time. The cities seized their opportunity during the interregnum when central authority weakened and several of the important principalities fragmented. Many threw off the yoke of their overlords. Having gained independence was certainly a great source of pride and joy, but also left them with a problem once things settled down again. How could they protect themselves against the new territorial lordships that were forming again all around them.

That is where Rudolf saw a way to further strengthen royal power. If he took some of these cities under his protection, he himself or his vogt could fend off rapacious lords and in return the cities would pay compensation for these efforts in the form of taxes. That is how in the late 13th century many cities, in particular in the south west of Germany became imperial cities. This alliance between the Imperial cities and the emperors became a building block of the Holy Roman empire.

Not all imperial cities paid though. Some were free cities, in particular large ones like Cologne, Mainz, Lubeck, Basel and Strasburg. A free city would not pay tax thanks to privileges they had obtained over the centuries. But it wasn’t just the paper that mattered here.  A great free city like Cologne simply did not need the protection of the vogt against some rapacious count in the neighborhood. Smaller places like Nördlingen or Memmingen did.

That also explains why there are so many more  imperial cities in the former lands of the Hohenstaufen, in Franconia and Swabia. That is where the royal power was more significant and where the Vogt could indeed command sufficient forces to ride to the rescue of a city under siege. In the north, the king had little influence and hence few cities were counting on a royal officer for protection. Only the largest and most powerful gained that status, Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen for example. But still important places like Rostock, Wismar or Stralsund, never obtained the status of a free or imperial city. The king or emperor was simply too far away…

The city taxes added a neat 8000 marks of silver to the royal budget, which was more than the Habsburg lands in Switzerland and Alsace provided. So nothing to be sniffed at.

During his remaining 13 years Rudolf expanded his system of Vogts covering large areas and working hard to regain royal possessions. South of the Main river that involved recruiting members of the local aristocracy and putting them in charge. They were deliberately chosen amongst the barons and counts and not amongst the Ministeriales or knightly class as they were increasingly called. Rudolf wanted to avoid the situation where the senior lords felt he was building up a bureaucracy of men tied to him be bonds of servitude as the Hohenstaufen and Salians had done. It was all part of the First amongst Equals approach.

When he looked to the northern part of his empire, this model did not quite work though. First, there were far fewer imperial possessions in what used to be the stem duchy of Saxony. And the territorial lords there were more powerful than in the South West. So instead of barons and counts, he appointed the dukes of Saxony and of Brunswick as the representatives of royal power in the north. These men could not be made to collect taxes, return royal lands or protect imperial cities against themselves, but they could, and would take on the role of judges under the Mainzer Landfrieden. That way Rudolf was able to curb some of the worst excesses in feuding even in the parts of the empire where his actual influence was modest.

One very significant feud he could however not prevent, the war of the Limburg succession. Limburg was a duchy roughly between Liege and Aachen. It was one of the successor principalities of the old duchy of Lothringia that played such an important role under the Ottonians and Salians but had gradually shifted out of the orbit of imperial policy under the Hohenstaufens. Being outside imperial direct control, several local powers dominated the region. These were the archbishops of Cologne, the dukes of Brabant and the House of Ardenne, the counts of Luxemburg. On the eastern side of the Rhine the counts of Berg had interest there as well.

When the last duke of Limburg passed away, these powers got into conflict over who should take over the territory. I spare you the genealogy but it ended up as a conflict between two sides, the count of Guelders who was supported by the archbishop of Cologne and the counts of Luxemburg on one hand. On the other side was count Adolf VII of Berg who could count on the duke of Brabant, the counts of Mark and Julich and importantly, the city of Cologne that had risen up against their archbishop.

This conflict culminated in the battle of Worringen on June 5, 1288. That was a pretty sizeable affair with about 4,000 men lining up on each side. It ended in a complete defeat of the archbishop of Cologne and his allies, the counts of Luxemburg as well as a minor count, Adolf von Nassau. In particular the Luxembourg suffered horrible losses, including several of the count’s brothers. It also re-arranged the whole regional politics. The city of Cologne shook off its archepiscopal overlord. The counts of Berg hugely expanded their territory which would later comprise Julich and Cleves as well, bringing them up into the rank of imperial princes and would even get them to furnish one of Henry VIII’s wives.

And – spoiler alert – the  battle of Worringen also featured some of the key protagonists in upcoming episodes, Adolf von Nassau, the archbishop of Cologne and the counts of Luxemburg.

Most importantly though the count of Berg rewarded some of his supporters, the inhabitants of a village where a brook, the Dussel flows into the Rhine with city rights. And because it was a village, a Dorf as it is in German on the Dussel, he called it Dusseldorf. Who ever claimed that medieval rulers lacked creativity?

It is said that the citizens and in particular the children of Düsseldorf were so excited about the count’s generosity, they spontaneously went on to do cartwheels on the presumably still muddy streets. Doing cartwheels became a symbol of the city of Düsseldorf and since I grew up there, I too learned to do cartwheels as a child, a skill I have now long lost. But my niece and nephew who still live there are impressive cartwheelers. You see, weird German customs are not confined to Bavaria. 

If you listened carefully you may notice that I use the words German and Germany much more regularly in this and the last two episodes. And that is deliberate. Unti the time of the Hohenstaufen, the history had been very much one of the empire and the empire in that era was perceived by its rulers and even by many in Europe as a universal empire. Its language was Latin and its politics were heavily focused on the papacy and Italy. Most of its rulers came from the German lands, but their ambitions went well beyond Germany. The reason this period is part of German history has more to do with the 19th and 20th century historians that incorporated it into the national narrative than the actual reality on the ground.

The story we are going through now, though still very much involved with the rest of europe, is more centered on the lands north of the alps, including what is today Germany. Its rulers were seeking their fortunes no longer in the south but within North and Eastern Europe – with exceptions obviously. And they became a lot more German. Frederick II preferred to write and speak Sicilian dialect and his chancery excelled in courtly Latin. Rudolf on the other hand spoke German and  changed the language of the royal administration to German. The culture of the royal court and the courts of the territorial princes culminated in the Minnesang, the German language version of courtly love. We are in a period of transition. I came across a book by Len Scales, professor for medieval history at the university of Durham talking about how the German identity was forged in the late Middle Ages between 1245 and 1414. I have listed it under the book recommendations for this season on the website. I am still working through it but what I have read so far resonates strongly with my own understanding, so expect more of that ilk as we go along.

But before we go there, we need to talk a bit more about cold hard power politics. And that is going through a transition as well. Though Rudolf heavily emphasizes the return of imperial lands and rights to the crown, he is also a ruler in the new mould. No longer is kingship or imperial power a function of the role alone, but it now rests more and more on the resources the ruler controls as his own fiefs or outright property. That concept is known as Hausmacht, probably best translated as the power of the imperial House.

Having started out as a powerful count in Swabia, but not as imperial princes and with an income that was dwarfed not just by Ottokar II but even by the archbishop of Cologne, Rudolf needed to elevate his and his a family’s  wealth if they wanted to hold on to the throne.

The first set of lands and rights he was eying up were the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia he had wrestled from Ottokar II. After the battle of Durnkrut he stayed there for another 3 years, bringing his whole stay in Vienna to five years, a very long time for a medieval king who was supposed to be peripatetic showing himself all over the empire.

The reason for the long stay was that he wasn’t yet duke of Austria, Styria and Carinthia. Yes he controlled them, but only in his role as king of the Romans, not as his own or his family’s fief. And that makes a huge difference. The difference being that if a new king of the Romans was elected upon his death, the duchies would go to him, not to his sons.

So what he needed to do was to enfeoff the duchies either to himself or to one of his sons. That should be easy, after all, Rudolf is the king of the Romans and as such should be able to grant fiefs to whoever he liked. That is how things worked in England or France or Poland or Hungary. But there was a problem, a problem he had created himself, at least to a degree.

When Rudolf set up the revindication policy, that is the program to return former imperial lands back to the royal purse, he stated that all lands have to be returned that had not been enfeoffed by the king and the electors acting together.

That requirement of having the electors signing off to the transfer was needed to overcome all those awards granted by the weak kings of the interregnum. For instance king Richard of Cornwall had confirmed Ottokar as duke of Austria in 1269. If that award had been valid, there would not have been grounds enough to throw Ottokar off the land.

The explicit proviso that the electors needed to sign off wasn’t entirely Rudolf’s invention. In the past most large scale enfeoffments, in particular the award of whole duchies happened at imperial diets which allowed for an involvement of the imperial princes in the decision. So it was an established process that the king could not just enfeoff someone all by himself. But up until Rudolf, the involvement of the imperial princes was not formalized. In particular there wasn’t a list of princes who needed to be consulted. An imperial diet was able to act even if some imperial lords had failed to attend. But now, Rudolf said that was not enough. All seven electors had have signed off.

To make clear what he meant, he also firmed up who these electors were. And these were the seven electors we know today, the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg and the Count Palatinate on the Rhine. Why those? Well, apart from the archbishops, they had all married daughters of Rudolf.

So what is the problem. Well the problem is that if all awards of lands and titles in the past are invalid without signatures from all seven electors, well then all future awards also require these signatures.

And so for Rudolf to become duke of Austria or at least one of his sons to get the title, Rudolf needed the consent of all seven electors. And that wasn’t so easy any more. As we heard last time, the imperial princes had initially supported Rudolf’s attack on Ottokar II. But once they realized that they had made the “poor count” into a powerful magnates, their enthusiasm waned. And so might have the lure of Rudolf’s daughters.

Negotiations dragged on until 1282 before he could cajole the electors into enfeoffing Austria, Styria and Carinthia to his two sons, Albert and Rudolf who were to hold the duchies in common. That was a somewhat unusual construct and probably came about because king Rudolf did not want to go through the process twice should one of his sons die in the still incessant warfare. But it also hints at a Habsburg specialty. The Habsburgs throughout their history acted as a clan. Yes, there was always an individual in charge, the emperor or the king of Spain etc. but all these archdukes and archduchesses kept working on supporting the success of the dynasty. Sure they had their squabbles and some will be extremely violent. But overall, they operated as a block. That was certainly a contributing factor in their success but also explains the need to bring the meandering branches of the family back together by marrying the cousins, which had some well known implications. This acting as one dynasty goes back to before Rudolf, but manifests itself on the imperial stage for the first time here.

Though Rudolf had been confident that Austria was in the bag after his victory over Ottokar, he did not believe this was enough. The electors had made it clear that he could not take Bohemia from Ottokar’s heir, so he started looking for alternative options.

His first target was the almost forgotten kingdom of the Arelat, the theoretical successor to the kingdom of Burgundy. The last emperor to have been crowned king of Burgundy had been Barbarossa who had received the crown in the city of Arles in Provence, hence the name of the kingdom, the Arelat. Rudolfs plan was to make his son Hartmann the king of Arelat. That would not require the agreement of the electors, which made it easier. What made it harder was that the Arelat was the property of Charles of Anjou, the king of Sicily, one of the most powerful men in Europe. But Rudolf had obtained the support of Pope Gregory X for this adventure as an inducement for him to go on crusade. That effort did end with 18-year old Hartmann being run through by a Savoyard nobleman in his attempt to get south. Rudolf was much aggrieved by the loss of this, his favorite son and intended successor.

Meanwhile He had opened up another frontier in Swabia where he tried to gain his son Rudolf the duchy of Swabia that was vacant since the fall of the Hohenstaufen and its lands had been distributed amongst whoever had been quickest with the sword. So to achieve the elevation of young Rudolf to duke of Swabia, some noble lords needed to be relieved from their properties. Egon, count of Freiburg was one of the targets, amongst others. But this effort ran into stiff resistance from another important Swabian lord, Count Eberhard of Württemberg. The Württemberg’s had been counts palatinate of Swabia since time immemorial and held a strong position controlled from their home in Tübingen. They gathered a coalition of Swabian lords unwilling to be expropriated in the interest of the House of Habsburg and after a half-decade of war, the two Rudolfs gave up on that project.

The other main objective for Rudolf and his sons was to obtain the imperial crown. And initially the chances were pretty good. After all it had been Pope Gregory X who had demanded that the electors choose a strong leader who would mount the much prophesied imperial crusade to the holy land. Pope and king met in Lausanne and agreed All Saints Day of 1275 as the date for the coronation in Rome. It was Rudolf who did not make it as he was tied up with the conflict over Austria. Pope Gregory X died in 1276.

Gregory’s successor, Innocent V was a lot less accommodating. He demanded that Rudolf gave up all imperial rights in the Romagna. That was a largely theoretical demand since the empire had very limited if any influence in Northern Italy at this stage. But Rudolf had just recently added the title Semper Augustus to the title of king of Rome. That refers back to the ancient titles of the Roman emperors and translates literally as “ever exalted”. But Rudolfs Chancery mistranslated it into German as “allezeit Mehrer des Reiches” which would be “forever augmentor of the realm” in English. Therefore giving away imperial rights felt hard to square with the claim to forever increasing the size of the empire.

Pope Innocent V died before negotiations could be concluded. The next two popes also lasted barely a few months, one of them, John XXI, the only Portuguese ever to become pope, was killed when the roof of his medical laboratory collapsed.

The next one, Nicolas III was of a more robust constitution. He lasted 2. ½ years, which seemed a lot compared to his predecessors. It was enough for Pope and king conclude their negotiations and even set another date, but then Nicolas III unexpectedly lost consciousness and died.

Entering stage left pope Martin IV who was another upgrade in the longevity stakes. He lasted 5 years. But that was no use to Rudolf since he was a strong supporter of Charles of Anjou, the king of Sicily who did not want any German ruler coming south and challenge his control of Italy.  Charles of Anjou and Martin IV died in 1285, which re-opened the possibility of an imperial coronation. Another date was set for 1287, but this time the roadblocks were up in Germany. The bishops refused to raise the funds for an Italian campaign, punishing Rudolf for his implicit support for the cities who were wriggling out of episcopal control.

Rudolf had survived 8 popes, who with only one exceptions were willing to crown him, but he still did not manage to get to Rome and become emperor.

The implications of that failure went well beyond having to live with the diminished prestige of being just a King of the Romans.

Under the previous three great dynasties, succession from father to son was usually achieved by having the son elected king of the Romans whilst the father was still alive. That allowed the ruling family to formally recognise the right of princes to elect the emperor whilst at the same time ensuring the succession.

But to be able to have the son elected king, the father has to first be upgraded to emperor. There has not been a precedent in the empire of having two Kings of the Romans in parallel. And even in France where such arrangements had been more typical, dual kingship had not been practiced since the 11th century.

So without an imperial coronation, the only way Rudolf could hope to ensure the continuation of his dynasty on the throne was by receiving firm commitments from the electors that they would choose one of his sons.

At which point there is the question, which of his three sons should be put forward. Albert was his eldest son and should have been the natural candidate. But two things made his candidature difficult. Albert had taken on the administration of the Austrian lands whilst his father and brothers pursued all these projects in the Arelat and in Swabia. And whilst a competent manager, he was also a harsh taskmaster who instilled little sympathy amongst the electors. And there was the problem that Austria was the immediate neighbour of the most important secular elector, the king of Bohemia which had historically been a source of constant conflict.

So king Rudolf tried to push his younger sons. First Hartmann who however died very young in 1281 and then the other, Rudolf. Rudolfs candidature was going reasonably well and king Wenceslaus II of Bohemia agreed to support young Rudolf in 1290, which would have brought the votes from Brandenburg and Saxony along. That was no mean feat given that king Rudolf had defeated Wenceslaus father in a battle where he had also perished.

But the premature death of young Rudolf in 1290 stopped this plan in its tracks. Albert, the duke of Austria was the only son left and the one nobody liked.

Sons wasn’t the only thing Rudolf was running out of, he was also running out of time. He had already been 55 years of age when he was elected in 1273. If the electors had hoped he would only last a few years, they must have been quite thoroughly disappointed. Rudolf stayed on for a full 18 years. But by 1291 he was seriously old. Medieval rulers who spent most of their life on horseback, interspersed with the occasional battle did not last to be 73. Even Frederick Barbarossa who contemporaries regarded as exceptionally long lived, expired aged 67 in a shallow river in Anatolia.

On July 14th, 1291 was the end of the road for Rudolf von Habsburg. Seeing his end approaching he had travelled to Speyer, the burial place of the great Salian emperors to die. 2 days later he was entombed next to Philipp of Swabia in Speyer Cathedral. His gravestone features an incredibly lifelike portrait of the King of the Romans holding his sceptre in his right hand and wearing a mantle featuring the imperial eagle and the Habsburg lion. You can see an image of it in this episode’s artwork though you have to be aware that the rather prominent nose had been added in the 19th century based on a chronicler who had described it as so large, it cast its own shadow.

So, was Rudolf’s reign a disappointment as Martin Rady stated?

I am not in the habit of evaluating or ranking medieval rulers, but what I find surprising is that Rudolf did not get anywhere as much airtime in the German national narrative as he may warrant.

Not only is he the founder of the House of Habsburg, arguably the most significant European dynasty. But he also made major contributions to the political structure of the Holy roman empire that would last for another 500plus years. He settled the list of electors, he established the system of the Landvogte that later transitioned into the imperial circles, he revived the Mainzer Landfriede that became one of the constitutional bases of the empire. He transitioned royal power into the Hausmacht model, where the emperor relied more on his personal possessions than the royal domain and he fostered the network of imperial cities that is the reason Germany today has multiple commercial, cultural and political centres, rather than being all focused on a capital city. 

For someone who had such a significant impact on history, he does get very little recognition in the national narrative and the school curriculum.

I think this may have happened not despite his achievements, but because of them.

When the historians of the 19th and early 20th century surveyed German history, Rudolf’s efforts to stabilise the realm were actions that had led to the structure of the Holy Roman empire of hundreds of principalities only loosely connected by weak institutions, a structure they blamed for the delayed formation of a nation state. Plus a Prussian-led Germany regarded the Habsburgs if not necessary as enemies, but still a force that led Germany towards a catholic, multinational historic cul-de-sac.

After the war when the narrative moved away from the nationalistic storyline and historians sought to frame the medieval empire as a European endeavour foreshadowing the European Union, Rudolf’s inward focus and fostering of a German identity did not resonate.

We will see whether Rudolf will gain more recognition in the future as a fundamental re-evaluation of the Holy Roman Empire gets under way.

The other thing we will see is whether Rudolf’s son Albert, the one nobody likes will become king and prolong the time of the Habsburgs on the throne. I hope you will join us again next week.

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From Revindication to the Battle of Dürnkrut

This week we will look at what the poor count Rudolf of Habsburg does once he had been elected King of the Romans. This is not the first time the electors have chosen a man of much more modest means than themselves. William of Holland and Hermann von Salm had failed to leverage their elevated status into tangible gains. But Rudolf is different. Through a combination of charm, cunning and fecundity he managed to wrestle the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia from its current owner, the immeasurably rich and profoundly vain king Ottokar II of Bohemia. A story of political acumen, personal bravery and dishonourable tactics.

Ep. 140: Rudolf of Habsburg (1273-1291) and the Golden King Ottokar of Bohemia
Ep. 140: Rudolf of Habsburg (1273-1291) and the Golden King Ottokar of Bohemia

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 140 – Rudolf von Habsburg and the Golden King Ottokar II of Bohemia

This week we will look at what the poor count Rudolf of Habsburg does once he had been elected King of the Romans. This is not the first time the electors have chosen a man of much more modest means than themselves. William of Holland and Hermann von Salm had failed to leverage their elevated status into tangible gains. But Rudolf is different. Through a combination of charm, cunning and fecundity he managed to wrestle the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia from its current owner, the immeasurably rich and profoundly vain king Ottokar II of Bohemia. A story of political acumen, personal bravery and dishonourable tactics.

But before we start, let me thank our patrons one more time. They are the ones who keep this show on the road. And they get mentioned  at the start of the podcast. As you may have noticed, I normally just read out first name and initial, but some have asked to have their full name read out. So I asked the whole Patreon community how you want me to proceed. That was a genuine question not just me fishing for compliments, but I must say I am bit overwhelmed by the nice things you guys had to say about the podcast. On the subject it seems views are very divided, some like the anonymised version, others really want me to read out their full name. So I have concluded to read out the names of those of you who really want me to and stick with the previous version for everyone else. I hope that works for you. So, if you want to hear your full name here and you are a patron or one-time donor above £20, message me, and if you are not yet, you can sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans and on historyofthegermans.com/support and your name will be heard of to eternity, or at least as long as there are podcast hosting platforms. And special thanks to Rory H-J,  Simon W., Melissa G., Brad and Barry M.

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And then just one more thing. As you know I do not do advertising here at the History of the Germans. However I occasionally highlight other history podcasters who make shows that I enjoy and believe you may enjoy as well. One of these is The Cold War Conversations Podcast by Ian Sanders. His show does exactly what it says in the title, he interviews people about the cold war. And, other than me, he is a gifted interviewer who gets his guests to truly open up, sometimes about very difficult subjects. He has talked to former Stasi officers, east German tank commanders, Mormon missionaries in Cottbus, a US soldier who defected to the GDR, various spies undertaking clandestine operations but also just regular people like Sabine who was 13 when the wall came down. They are all sharing their experiences, some for the very first time. The Cold War Conversations podcast has a solid 300 plus episodes under its belt and some are grouped in playlists, including one on the former GDR. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts from or on his website: coldwarconversations.com

Now let us get going.

Last week we ended on Rudolf von Habsburg being elected King of the Romans and future emperor. But apart from some basic biographical markers, we haven’t heard much about him.

So let’s dig into his background. The gigantic Habsburg propaganda machine had done its best to portray Rudolf as a poor count wearing a modest grey coat who rose up from humble beginnings to the crown, which can only have been down to divine providence rewarding his humility.

Well, that was not quite true.

Rudolf was born in 1218 the son of Albert, called the Wise of Habsburg. The Habsburgs were nobles based in the Aargau, which is today a region in the North of Switzerland. They were named after their ancestral castle, the Habichtsburg or castle of the hawk that still stands near the market town of Brugg.

At the time this was part of the duchy of Swabia and the Hohenstaufen had been the dukes of Swabia. As vassals of the emperors, the early Habsburgs were involved in many of Frederick Barbarossa’s and Frederick II’s campaigns.  One ancestor had been at the fateful siege of Rome in 1167 when the imperial army and with it all of Barbarossa’s political capital vanished. Episode 57 – The Hand of God if you are interested. During the civil war between Otto IV and Philipp of Schwaben, the Habsburgs were backing up their Hohenstaufen side. And in 1212 Rudolfs grandfather made an audacious and ultimately very profitable move. He joined the young king Frederick of Sicily who had come up to Germany on a desperate mission to oust his enemy the emperor Otto IV. That endeavour, despite papal support, was by no means a guaranteed success. Only by a stroke of luck did Frederick get into the city of Constance on time. That was in Episode 75 – Wet Pants and other Miracles.

Rudolf’s grandfather not only supported the future emperor Frederick II with his sword and his advice, he also provided some much needed funds. The Habsburgs contributed 1000 marks of silver to the subsequent campaigns of Frederick II more than the bishops of Worms and Mainz and the other four much more magnificent princes stumped up.

So not quite that poor a count after all. All these decades as loyal supporters to the house of Hohenstaufen had paid off quite handsomely. The family had been enfeoffed with various estates in the Alsace, the Black Forest and in the Aargau. Other bits were added by the usual combination of matrimony and murder. But what made the really rich was a much more mundane source, the construction of a bridge across the Schoellenen Gorge which opened up the Gotthard Pass. This provided a new route for goods from Northern Italy to come north and the Gotthard quickly became one of the busiest connections. And the Habsburgs by various means controlled the whole section from where the road comes down into the valleys of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden to the Rhine at Bad Saeckingen. The tolls on the bridges was what made the Habsburgs rich.

Later the Habsburgs will claim an even closer relationship with the Hohenstaufen, including asserting that Rudolf’s grandmother was a certain Agnes von Staufen and that Frederick II had stood godparent to Rudolf von Habsburg, all of which may or may not be true.

Rudolf comes into his inheritance when he was 22 and his father, Alber the Wise had died. Whilst his ancestors were mainly courtiers looking to progress by the generosity of their masters, Rudolf took a different approach. In his time there was no longer a powerful emperor to cosy up to. This was the Interregnum and it was dog eat dog time.

With imperial power waning, inheritances that in the past would have gone to the crown to be enfeoffed to a loyal vassal of the emperor were now divided up amongst the most aggressive of their relatives. And Rudolf was very good and very lucky at that game. He did benefit from the unusual fecundity of his family which had placed sons and daughters into the bloodlines of practically anyone who was anyone in the south west of the empire. Which meant that as other families, less blessed with powerful loins, expired, there is always a Habsburg claim in the mix. During his career as a serial heir, several important families were dying out or weakened. One was a lateral branch of the Habsburgs whose possessions he managed to consolidate. Then a number of neighbours suffered from extinction, The Lenzburgs, then the Kiburgs whose ancestor Werner von Kiburg was the friend of duke Ernst of Swabia from episode 23 and finally the mighty dukes of Zaehringen disappeared from natural causes. Whenever that happened, Rudolf of Habsburg was there, holding the marriage contract in on hand and the sword in the other, demanding his share of the spoils, until he was the most powerful lord in Swabia.

This kind of life is one of perennial warfare. The annals of Basel record that in 1268 he conquered Utzenberg and some other castles, in 1269 he takes Reichenstein, in 1270 he besieges the city of Basel for 3 days, in 1271 he burns down the monastery at Granfelden and several villages and that same year he also destroys the castle at Tiefenstein, in 1272 he goes after Freiburg and destroys the surroundings of the city, and so forth and so forth.

When the negotiations over the election of 1273 drew to a close and Frederick of Nurnberg thought it expedient to bring Rudolf up to Frankfurt for the formal election, he found him in the midst of a siege of the city of Basel where he conducted a feud against the bishop. Bishops were sort of a speciality of his. He made his name in a feud against the bishop of Strasburg who had refused to hand over another one of these inheritances. His retaliation was relentless. He did not stop until he had the bishop stripped of all his strongholds and cities, including Strasburg itself.

Once the bishop had been replaced and his successor had recognised Rudolf’s victory, all Rudolf asked for was his original demand. The cities and strongholds he handed back, allegedly without even asking for a ransom payment. According to the chronicler he did this to turn a foe into a friend and ally.

That kind of behaviour was extremely unusual in the Middle Ages. And it hints to a more general observation that Rudolf was a strategic thinker well ahead of his time.  Outwardly he was warm and affable. But his engaging friendliness and outward humility covered a steely determination  to win, and to win at all cost. Conventions of chivalry that ruled the behaviour of Europe’s elites to him were just that, conventions, guidelines to be observed in normal times but that could be broken if the occasion demanded it. The rules of feuding as laid down by the Mainzer Landfrieden he disregarded on several occasion, once by burning down a nunnery. It was for that that he was excommunicated and had to do penance by fighting with the Teutonic knights in Prussia.

His favourite pastime beyond stabbing people was chess, a game in which he gained something of a reputation. And like a good chess player, he was able to think several moves ahead, much further than his adversaries.

And the first move he made upon being elected was to reassure the electors that his days as an insatiable warrior – his own word – were now over. Shortly after his coronation he addressed the princes, nobles and the people saying: quote “Today I forgive all those wrongs that have been done to me, release the prisoners who are suffering in my gaols, and I promise from now on to be a defender of peace in the land, just as I was before a rapacious man of war” end quote.

We will see whether peace and justice were his main motivation to take the job, but he made the resurrection of the admittedly rickety but only available conflict resolution system, the Mainzer Landfriede the core of his political program. The Mainzer Landfried had determined that before any feud could be declared parties were to consult a judge who would be given time to find a compromise. And there was a code of conduct to be observed. Breaking the code was to be sanctioned by the imperial ban. A banned man was ostracised, could no longer own property and could be killed by anyone passing by.

The way Rudolf revived the old order was by appointing Landvogte, protectors of the land each looking after a district. There they were to resolve the disputes between feuding parties and enforce the limitations set by the Mainzer Landfriede. Whether this was successful or not is as always hard to determine. But the system of Landvogtes remained and their bailiwicks would later become the imperial circles.

Though the Landvogte were usually members of the local aristocracy, they pursued the role of Vogt on behalf of the king. Therefore they had to be remunerated. That remuneration was to come from two sources. One was a general tax levied twice during the Rudolf’s 17 year reign. The other, and more significant one was the income from the imperial lands.

But the imperial lands were all lost, weren’t they. Yes, they had been, at least in large parts. But part of the Landvogt’s job was to recover these lands. This process was called the revindication and formed Rudolf’s second most important policy.

It appeared that many of the lords and bishops recognised that the pendulum had swung too far away from central authority and were prepared to hand back at last some of the properties that had been lost. And so one by one towns and castles returned to the king. And that just shows the smart way Rudolf went about his program. By starting slowly and roping in local lords as Vogts, he created acceptance for his policy. Once established, it developed its own dynamic and the Vogts demanded more restitutions that became more difficult to resist as the central authority became stronger.

Peter Wilson has calculated that Rudolfs policy brought 66% of the imperial church fiefs back into royal control, 73% of the crown lands and even 68% of the Hohenstaufen family possessions. That is a truly remarkable success given that the family lands had been entirely lost. And just for the avoidance of doubt, the vast majority of these lands were in Franconia and Swabia. The north that used to be the stem duchy of Saxony remained distant from the king. Only 3% of all of Rudolf’s charters relate to the North.

The next thing that was needed was a flagship campaign that made it plain to see that times have changed and a new king is in charge. And that campaign was the cleaning out of the robber barons in the Rhine valley. The cities along the Rhine, Mainz, Worms, Cologne, Strasburg etc. had pooled their military forces and had tried to dislodge this menace to their trade in 1256 but had failed. Now, in 1273, Rudolf von Habsburg gathers an army, joins up with the city forces and takes and burns Soonegg and had the robber knights of Reichenstein hanged. Allegedly he then used the wood from their gallows to build a chapel.

In November 1274, about a year and a half into his rule, he takes another step to re-assert royal power. He calls an imperial diet in Nurenberg where he requires all the imperial princes who hold their fiefs directly from the emperor to renew their vows of allegiance. This had been a standard procedure under the Hohenstaufen. The feudal system in the empire perceived vassalage as a personal agreement between lord and vassal. Hence if either lord or vassal dies, the successor has to renew the arrangement. This ritual had however fallen into disuse during the ineffectual kings of the last 2 decades.

And in November 1274 all imperial princes gather or at least send emissaries who renew the vows as required. By now Rudolf had generously distributed five of his six daughters to various important princes, which made the whole thing a bit of a family affair.

Only one did not show, did not want a marriage alliance with Rudolf and was impervious to his charm, and that was Ottokar II of Bohemia, the richest and most powerful of the imperial princes. Ottokar had been a very strong contender for the crown but found himself outmanoeuvred by the princes, the archbishop of Mainz and the burgrave of Nurnberg for which he bore a grudge against all of them. And he had a point in as much that he was supposed to have been one of the seven electors but had been removed at the last minute for dubious reasons.

Otokar II not only failed to show, he also made clear that he did not recognise Rudolf as the true king. Instead he began to style himself as an independent king. We need to remember that the title of the king of Bohemia wasn’t a real royal title. It was purely honorific and other than a real king, Ottokar was the vassal of a another king, and that king was Rudolf of Habsburg, the king of the Romans. Or at least that is how things used to be.

Ottokar II added the imperial eagle to his coat of arms and issued charters in the style of the imperial chancellery referring to himself as king by the grace of god. No way was he to bow down before that little count.

This may depict Wenceslaus, the son of Ottokar II

When Rudolf called that diet in Nurnberg he must have known that Ottokar would not come. And he must have known that this would force a confrontation. And that this confrontation would be challenging because of a minor delta in income and hence ability to raise troops.

Rudolf’s own lands produced about 7,000 mark of silver a year. The imperial lands a further 8,000. Sounds like a lot, but you have to look at it in context. The archbishop of Cologne for instance enjoys an annual income of 50,000 mark of silver, three times that of his king.

But it pales into complete insignificance in comparison with Ottokar. Ottojar isn’t called the golden king for nothing. His homeland of Bohemia had struck gold, quite literally. The mines in the Ore mountains were rammed full of mainly silver, but also copper and other metals whilst there were gold mines in Jilove just outside Prague. Ottokar kept about 200,000 mark silver and 800 mark gold in four heavily fortified castles. His annual income from Bohemia alone was another 100,000 mark silver.

On top of that he had the income from his acquired duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia as well as adjacent lands in North West Italy and Slovenia, which might have been another 100,000 mark of silver.

No way that the little Habsburg count could ever successfully stand up or even attack king Ottokar II, the golden king in all his pomp and splendour. Or so Ottokar thought. And Rudolf probably knew that Ottokar would think that way and that was exactly why he staged that event at Nurnberg and why he had demanded Ottokar to come and swear allegiance.

Rudolf could not be an effective king with the Bohemian sniping from the sidelines, and how long would Ottokar be content with just sniping and when would he stage his own election and try to oust him. The conflict was inevitable and the only way Rudolf could win the conflict was if he gets the imperial princes to line up behind him.

And that is not easy. The imperial princes may not like Ottokar very much, but that is not the same as going out and fight him. Rudolf needed to create an incident that triggered them into action. Ottokar’s refusal to bow to him was that incident. It was not just an insult to him, but also to all the other imperial princes who had elected him and supported him. The honour of the empire, Barbarossa’s old war cry, is back in play.

And there is another dimension. When I talked about the borders of the empire, two episodes ago, I pointed out that whilst empire is universal and comprises all of Christendom, it also has an inner core which comprises those territories who accept the emperor as their direct overlord. The kings of Poland and Hungary no longer did that. If Ottokar II declared himself as a king by the grace of god, he thereby also declared his and his kingdom’s exit from the empire. And that was not acceptable, not to the king and not the princes.

Rudolf had his incident and the incident had created the support he needed. He mustered his armies, both secular and spiritual. The archbishop of Mainz kindly excommunicated Ottokar and issued an interdict that brought religious worship there to a standstill, which was a catastrophe in the eyes of the general population.

An imperial diet declared Ottokar’s acquisition of Austria, Styria and Carinthia illegal. The duchy of Austria had been ruled by the house of Babenberg  since the 10th century and when the last Babenberger duke, Frederick the Quarrelsome had died a prolonged war of succession ensued that involved the king of Bohemia, the Austrian nobles and nieces and sisters of the dead duke. The war ended when Ottokar had gained the support of the Austrian nobles and had married the sister of the last duke. Whether that gives him a legal right to the duchy is at least disputed and almost certainly  disappeared entirely when he divorced the much older woman that he had snatched from a monastery in the first place.

So when the imperial diet declared Ottokar’s rule in Austria unlawful, they had good arguments, but that does not make it any less of a political decision. And they not only called in the fiefs, they went one further and placed him under the imperial ban, making him an outlaw.

Otokar II is now excommunicated and banned, which isn’t comfortable for anyone. But even more uncomfortable must have been the realisation that he has been outmanoeuvred by the little count. And then he gets outmanoeuvred one more time. Ottokar had expected Rudolf to come after him personally in Prague and that is where he concentrated his forces. But he did not. Rudolf went instead to the barely defended Vienna and within the shortest time cleared the duchies from Ottokar’s supporters.

Ottokar then found himself unable to retaliate. His people did not like the interdict placed on them by the archbishop of Mainz. Rumours were going round the pope was to confirm the excommunication, that Ottokar had put his daughter away in a nunnery to stop her from marrying Rudolf’s son, that a hermit has seen a Sphinx who predicted his immediate defeat etc., etc.. Ah, and there is the fact that whilst abroad everybody called him the golden king, back home in Bohemia they called him the iron king for his tyrannical role. These 100s of marks of silver had to come from somewhere and best guess it were the aching backs of the miners and peasants.

Facing rebellion, Ottokar II gave up. He came to Rudolf to swear his allegiance. This image of the bejewelled golden king in all his pomp and splendour having to bow to Rudolf von Habsburg who had chosen his most humble coat for contrast has been retold and reproduced infinite times. As was Rudolf’s comment quote: “Often has he mocked my simple grey coat, let him mock it now” end quote.

Such humiliation cried out for revenge. No way is Ottokar, the golden king, the crusading hero of Prussia, going to let this stand. There will have to be a second round. And that second round came quite quickly, merely a year and a half later, in the summer of 1278.

This time Ottokar played his political cards a lot better. The key to Rudolf’s previous success had been the imperial princes. If he could split them away from Rudolf, his chances would improve immeasurably. That wasn’t particularly easy since Rudolf had formed a number of alliances with the main imperial princely houses backed up by marriages to 5 of his six daughters.

But on the other hand, Rudolfs revindication policy started to discomfort some powerful people who saw rights and lands being brought back into royal control. And then there was the issue about Austria and the other duchies. The princes were all for taking them away from Ottokar. But that does not mean they wanted it all to go to the Habsburgs. And where the princes would draw a firm line in the sand would be if Rudolf would take over the rest of Ottokar’s kingdom, Bohemia. If that happened, Rudolf would be as powerful as Ottokar had been in 1273 and the whole point of electing Rudolf was not to have a powerful Bohemian king in charge.

Playing on these cracks in the Rudolf’s alliances, Ottokar ensured that the rematch would take place without the imperial princes.

That was an improvement to last time, but the flipside was that Rudolf was now not just a lot, but an awful lot richer. Austria added a cool 100,000 marks of silver annually to his previous income of 15,000. Not quite as much as the king of Bohemia could raise, but a lot more balanced than last time.

As the two sides worked their way to the decisive battle, Rudolf managed to find a new ally, the king of Hungary. Ottokar had been in conflict with Hungary for most of his reign and for the Hungarians supporting Rudolf was a no-brainer.

Ottokar made the first move on July 20th 1278 and invaded Austria. Rudolf led his troops out of Vienna to confront him. However, his army was not yet fully assembled. The soldiers he had recruited in Alsace and the Aargau had to come a long way. The Hungarian allies too were delayed. All in it took three weeks before Rudolfs army could march on Ottokar’s position.

Ottokar had chosen the terrain, a large plain outside the market town of Dürnkrut, about 50km north-east from Vienna. He had chosen his position well. The battlefield was bordered on its eastern flank by the river March and on its western side by some hills forcing the battle to take place in the centre.

Rudolf had a slight numerical advantage, but a large part of his army was infantry and lightly armoured Hungarians. They were less effective in a heavy cavalry battle where two blocks of armoured knights crash into each other.

So Ottokar may be a touch more confident, but both kings knew that the outcome of a medieval battle was highly unpredictable and that the risk was not just political and military but intensely personal. Both were experienced warriors, veterans of dozens of battles and their men expected them to lead from the front.

On the morning of August 26, 1278. The two sides, separated by a small stretch of water were trading insults and chants not dissimilar to the crowds at a football match. The bohemian war cry of Praha, Praha was countered by Rudolfs armies reply Roma, Roma and Christ, Christ. There was a lot of rattling of shields and singing of songs as the knights mounted their steeds to form their line of attack.

Rudolf’s Flemish slingers hurled their stones at the Bohemians whose Cumans and Sarmatians responded with clouds of arrows. But the impatient knights weren’t prepared to leave the fighting to the great unwashed infantrymen. After barely a few minutes the armoured cavalry troops crashed into each other, and from then onwards the slingers, archers and bowmen could no longer distinguish between friend and foe and retreated to the grassy banks of the river to watch the spectacle unfold. They were fortunate that the great nobles hadn’t decided to just steamroll them under their horses as the French famously did at Poitiers.

What followed was a typical battle during the times of high chivalry. It was man against man and the two leaders, easily identifiable one by his crowned helmet and the red Lion of Habsburg and the other clad in the most splendid armour and flying S. Wenceslaus flaming eagle were found in the centre of the melee.

Knights on both sides vied for the opportunity to unseat the enemy king. Several knights got close to Rudolf but he fought them off, piercing one under the helmet with his lance. Then a gigantic Thuringian knight pushed his way to the king’s side and speared his horse in the shoulder. Rudolf fell to the ground. Contrary to the general trope, medieval armour wasn’t too heavy for a man to stand up again, even a 60-year old like Rudolf. But still, he was on the ground in the midst of fighting men on enormous horses and with his enemy in pursuit. His rescue came in the form of an Austrian knight who had seen him fall and charged his adversary and pulled his master up onto another horse.

Soon after Rudolf had fallen and recovered, the battle was decided. And it was decided, as ever so often with Rudolf of Habsburg, not by fair contest within the rules of chivalry, but by cunningly bending them. The chivalric code demanded that combatant fight fair and square. No hidden reserves in the woods or sudden flank attacks, that was dishonourable. Rudolf wasn’t a chivalric knight, but a wildly ambitious Swabian chess player who cared more about winning than honour.

He had kept a sizeable contingent of knights in reserve behind one of the hills. On his command, these knights appeared and charged the Bohemians who were now static and caught in fighting their opponents. The momentum of the assault broke the Bohemian lines and they fled.

King Ottokar who had been fighting on the front line was suddenly confronted by some of his personal enemies, a man whose family he had had executed. And that man did not do what would normally have happened at this stage, i.e., take the king hostage and demand an epically large ransom. No, this man wanted revenge and he killed King Ottokar II, the great golden king of Bohemia, crusader in Prussia and dominant figure in European politics for decades. Ottokar was striped of his rich armour and his body was left naked on the battlefield.

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Rudolf had the body eviscerated to prevent putrefaction and then displayed in Vienna for six months to make sure no fake Ottokars appeared. Only after that was his body brought to Prague and buried in St. Vitus’s cathedral where he still lies.

Rudolf used the victory to confirm the Habsburg rule of Austria, but he did not take over Bohemia. Bohemia was left to Ottokar’s son, Wenceslaus who married Rudolf’s last available daughter turning again a foe into a friend. Again the little count had prevailed and can move on to his next ambition, the imperial crown. How this pans out we will find out next week. I hope you will join us again.

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The Election of Rudolf von Habsburg in 1273

On October 1, 1273 seven princes elected a new king of the Romans. Their choice was a momentous one that set European history further down its path away from a universal empire to separate kingdoms and principalities. The pope had demanded that they come to a unanimous decision so that the empire could again participate in a crusade to stop the remains of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be swept away for good. So why did  they chose a modest count from what is now Northern Switzerland and not any of the kings, dukes and princes who had been vying for the job and who could count on support from Naples, Rome, Prague and Paris is what we will look into in this episode, the first of our new season “from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull – the Holy Roman empire 1250-1273.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 139 – The end of the Interregnum

On October 1, 1273 seven princes elected a new king of the Romans. Their choice was a momentous one that set European history further down its path away from a universal empire to separate kingdoms and principalities. The pope had demanded that they come to a unanimous decision so that the empire could again participate in a crusade to stop the remains of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to be swept away for good. So why did  they chose a modest count from what is now Northern Switzerland and not any of the kings, dukes and princes who had been vying for the job and who could count on support from Naples, Rome, Prague and Paris is what we will look into in this episode, the first of our new season “from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull – the Holy Roman empire 1250-1273.

But before we start let me run through the usual Spiel about the History of the Germans being advertising free. It matters. I guess you have seen the recent news about Google being fined §2.6bn  for market abuse as they pushed customers towards their own shopping platform. This used to be such an elegant machine providing super fast, uncluttered access to the information one wanted. Now it is like a shopping mall where you have to squeeze past shrieking billboard to find the little independent bookshop in the far corner. Since I am short a few billions to spend on fines, I rely on Patrons and one time supporters who can sign up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans and historyofthegermans.com/support. And thanks so much to Michael P., Krystian N., Sarah R., Steve M and geweinstein who have already signed up.

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On December 13, 1250 in Castel Fiorentino, near the small town of Torremaggiore in the northern part of his beloved Puglia, the emperor Frederick II, the Stupor Mundi, the Wonder of the World breathed his last. The official cause of death was dysentery, but at the time of his death he had been exhausted from decades of conflict with the Lombard cities, rebellious Sicilian nobles, the crusaders in the Holy Land, and above all, the papacy.  Whilst not defeated, his position was precarious, he had lost the crucial battle of Parma and with it his war chest. Most of his friends and advisers who had been by his side since he first set out to Germany to gain his imperial crown at the age of 16 were now dead, some by his own paranoia.

His death marked not just the end of the era of the Hohenstaufen as a major European dynasty but also the end of the high medieval empire that had begun with the coronation of Otto the Great in 962. What followed was a century of chaos and convulsions until a new political structure settles in, the Holy Roman empire with its electors, its prince-bishops, free imperial cities and its diets and courts as set out in the Golden Bull of 1356.

Or that is how the story is commonly told. But as we all know, history does not tip on the pin of a single event. Many of the structural pillars of the Holy Roman Empire date back long before the death of Frederick II and the ideal of a universal emperor crowned by the pope in Rome continued for several centuries after the light of the Stupor Mundi was extinguished.

The death of the last of the Hohenstaufen emperors created two separate sequences of events. One of those were the various attempts of the descendants of Frederick II to hold on to and then regain the kingdom of Sicily. We covered this in Episode 91 “Hohenstaufen epilogue” which is one of the most epic stories in German medieval history, but one that had limited repercussions for the narrative we want to follow here.

What we will focus on now is what happened North of the Alps.

In 1245 Pope Innocent IV had excommunicated and deposed Frederick II. In the wake of that decision some of the German princes elected anti-kings, first Heinrich Raspe, the Landgrave of Thuringia and once he had died, William Count of Holland. These anti-kings stood against Konrad IV, the son of Frederick II who had been elected King of the Romans way back in 1237, but had never been crowned. This civil war ended when Konrad IV decided to seek his fortunes in Sicily in 1251 where he died in 1254.

William of Holland was therefore King at least from 1251 to the day in the winter of 1256 when his horse broke through the Ice of a Frisian lake and his enemies clubbed him to death and concealed his body under the foundations of a house, not to found for 26 years.

William of Holland had two successors, in the loosest meaning of the word. One was Alfonso X, the Wise of Castile, a thoroughly well-educated man with some Hohenstaufen blood who took the crown proposed by the cities of Pisa and Marseille for reasons even his biographers cannot quite figure out. Alfonso never travelled north and remained very much a footnote in the History of the Empire. At the same time some of the electors raised Richard of Cornwall, the brother of king Henry III of England to be the future emperor. Richard was a bit more proactive than Alfonso, traveled to Aachen to be crowned king and visited the empire a subsequent three times, before he became so embroiled in English politics, his already modest role in German politics vanished completely.

Now here is the thing. None of these kings had much impact. They were absentee landlords who had taken the title to pursue narrow personal objectives. It was more vanity than a sincere ambition to take on the mantle of a universal emperor defending Christianity against its foes. And even more importantly, they were either unable or unwilling to assume their role in the emerging constitution of the realm as the provider of peace and justice.

The Mainzer Landfriede that formalized the relationship between the princes and the emperor and established rules for conflict resolution had been agreed upon in 1235. Under these rules the emperor had precious little left of the regalia, the fundamental expressions of medieval sovereignty which included the right to raise taxes, demand tolls, administer justice, mint coins, found cities, build castles and so on and so on.

Rather than being a monarch who could call upon all free men of the empire to go to war on his behalf, the emperor was an arbiter between the diverging interests of the princes. He was to resolve differences by offering compromises both parties could agree upon. And if one of the parties rejected the compromise, the resolution was to be found by force of arms. All the emperor could do at that point was to set the rules of feuding, demanding a 3 day cooling-off period and putting limits to the level of violence. For instance the parties were prohibited from burning down castles, houses and barns and should protect widows and orphans. It was apparently ok to produce widows and orphans, just not harm them beyond massacring their husbands and fathers.

Combatants who breached these limitations could be subjected to an imperial ban. An imperial ban strips a person of all their rights, namely the right to property and even to his or her own life. A person under the ban was “vogelfrei”, which translates as “free as a bird” but has a very different meaning. Like a wild bird that belongs to no one, anyone can trap it and kill it, or more precisely could at the time since this was before the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was established in 1889.

This level of imperial power is indeed a long way away from the crowned figure on the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes Leviathan that carried the quote from the book of Job: “There is no power on earth to be compared to him.”

But despite the narrowness of the imperial mandate, the absence of an effective King of the Romans during the period from 1245 to 1273 did have a major impact. Sure, during the time of the Hohenstaufen and even the previous dynasty, the Salians, emperors had been absent for extended periods of time. But they usually left behind some form of regency council or a caretaker to perform the duties to maintain peace and justice. And the emperors had influence far beyond their formal rights due to two things, their personal prestige and the resources coming from the combination of their family possessions and the imperial lands and estates.

When it comes to prestige Frederick II and his grandfather Frederick Barbarossa were hard to beat. Impressive personalities both, able to display imperial grandeur through elaborate displays combined with military prowess made their voices heard. It is always important to remember that the medieval political system was built on personal relationships, not the monopoly of power of the state. Hence a ruler who can impress his vassals has a huge room to maneuver, even if his formal powers are limited. On the flipside a ruler like William of Holland who ever so often had to remind his subjects that he “was appointed by the pope” quickly finds himself isolated and unable to drive policy.

As Theodore Roosevelt quibbed many centuries later, effective politics means to: “speak softly and carry a big stick”. And in the case of the emperors in the High Middle Ages, that big stick were the financial and military resources they commanded directly. The Hohenstaufen had accumulated quite a lot of those sticks. They had been the dukes of Swabia and hence held large sways of lands in what is now Alsace, the Palatinate and Wurttemberg. They had taken over the Welf lands in Swabia that was once a almost a duchy in its own right. They had taken possession of the Salian inheritance that stretched along the Main river and then further north into the Harz mountains, including Goslar. By their imperial role they controlled parts of Franconia, including the rapidly expanding city of Nurnberg. And then south of the Alps Frederick II possessed many a castle, some on the back of the inheritance of the countess Matilda of Tuscany, some thanks to his son in law, Ezzelino da Romano’s conquests. And then most importantly, there was the fantastically rich kingdom of Sicily. Few, if any princes could ignore an imperial order backed up by so much wealth and power.

Which gets us to the period from 1245 to 1273. None of the kings and anti-kings had enough personal standing or wealth or power to tell the princes what to do. Some, like Richard of Cornwall tried to bring their weight as great military leader and wealthiest man in England to bear, but he rarely stayed long enough to follow through with his decisions.

The conflict resolution process collapsed and imperial bans, if issued at all, were widely ignored. The traditional view is that the empire descended into chaos during this period. But modern historians like the great Peter H. Wilson dispute this, claiming that to be Habsburg propaganda.

When I look at what we have seen so far, some of the fiercest feuds were taking place during this period, such as the conflict between the Landgrave of Meissen, Albrecht the degenerate and his sons, namely Friedrich der Gebissene (Frederick the Bitten). We also have the rapid expansion of king Ottokar II into Austria, Styria, Friuli and Salzburg, most of which on the back of cold hard steel rather than marriage contracts. But then feuds and illicit acquisition of lands wasn’t anything new and the days of Henry VI and Frederick II had seen similar rough play.

But those large feuds of the previous century had taken place in the north where imperial power was already much weaker than it was in Swabia and Franconia. What was new and what brought about contemporary fears of the end of days was that this kind of violence had now engulfed the south as well.

One particular menace is now one of Germany’s most popular tourist attractions, the castles along the Rhine. Many of them like Rheinfels, Sooneck and Reichenstein had been built by actual robber barons who harassed trade along the river. Given the vital importance of the Rhine as a conveyer belt of goods from the south to the north, including supplying thirsty Englishmen with copious quantities of white wine, the cities along the river tried to bring the situation under control. In 1254, led by the cities of Mainz and Worms a league of Rhenish cities was founded. The purpose was to keep the trading channel open, smoke out the barons and protect the merchants. The league quickly attracted all the other major cities on the Rhine, Cologne, Oppenheim, Bingen, Speyer, Strasburg and Basel. They established a fleet of armored ships and besieged the Rheinfels. But they failed militarily, by 1257 the league dissolved and the Rhine trade kept suffering.

The other main event was the dismemberment of the Hohenstaufen and the imperial possessions. Once Konrad IV had disappeared down south in 1251, local lords began nibbling at the edges and when he died in 1254 the contest became ever more intense. When the last Hohenstaufen, Konradin, was executed in Naples in 1268, the final feeding frenzy set in.

Some of these properties had been imperial fiefs, others had been the private property of the Hohenstaufen family. But all of them were up for grabs. Imperial princes and lesser lords occupied castles and towns waving dubious charters and double handed swords. Within just a few years all of it was redistributed. Some may have believed they took it for safekeeping should a real emperor finally appear, some, like the landgrave of Thuringia claimed to be the true heir of the House of Hohenstaufen, but many just took it for themselves.

The regnum Teutonicum was not the only kingdom that was in trouble in the second half of the 13th century. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was on its last leg. The city of Jerusalem that Frederick II had regained for the crusaders was lost and had been sacked in 1244. A crusade led by Saint Louis into Egypt ended in another unmitigated catastrophe. The Mamluks of Egypt had now taken over Syria and the crusaders were again pushed back to a long strip of land along the coast. Baibars, the new sultan of Egypt picked off the great strongholds, the Krak des Chevaliers of the Hospitallers and Montfort of the Teutonic Knight in 1270. In 1272 another crusading effort fizzled out, leaving Accre as the very last outpost.

This impending collapse of the crusader states did occupy most of Europe but nobody more than the pope. As papal policy saw it, only a concerted effort of the whole of Western Christendom could turn things around. Experience of the preceding three decades had shown that efforts by just the French and the English weren’t enough. What was needed was a major contribution from the empire. These considerations weren’t just purely political and military. Mystics and holy men had been predicting for a century that only an emperor would be able to conquer Jerusalem and initiated the 1000 years of bliss, whilst the fall of the empire would bring about the collapse of the world.

The current king of the Romans and hence emperor in waiting, Richard of Cornwall could not lead the imperial forces to victory in the Holy land, in part because he was stuck with baronial insurrections and Simon de Montfort’s push for a proper parliament in England, but more crucially, because he had died on April 2, 1272.

Therefore, despite all the misgivings about overbearing emperors, Pope Gregory X demanded that the next King of the Romans should be elected unanimously and should be someone who could lead a crusade. And the man to make this happen was Werner von Eppstein, the archbishop of Mainz.

Werner’s first question that needed answering was, what does unanimous mean? In the early days of the empire, all elections had been unanimous, not because everyone agreed, but because all those who did not agree left the election diet and had to be convinced, aka bribed, one by one as the new emperor made his progress across his new realm.

That model began to fall apart with the election of Lothar III in 1125 where the Hohenstaufen brothers stormed out and went to war with the newly elected emperor. After that we had a whole string of contested elections where frustrated contenders claimed the election to be invalid on the grounds that not enough or not the right people had been at the election diet.

Who were the right people to elect a king of the Romans and future emperor?

When things kicked off in 919 at the election of Henry the Fowler, the idea was that the king was elected by the stem duchies, i.e., by the Swabians, Bavarians, Saxons and Franconians. These duchies were to be represented by their dukes and senior lords, which made sense when there were dukes for each of the duchies. But as the duchies fragmented, Franconia into lots and lots of little princes, Swabia into Swabia, Zaehringen and the Welfish lands, Saxony into Westphalia, Brunswick and Saxony and Bavaria into Austria, Andechs-Meranien and Bavaria that system had to be abandoned.

In 1152 at Barbarossa’s election, the general view was still that all lords, ecclesiastic and secular were allowed to participate, but that narrowed down rapidly. At Frederick II election in 1196 counts were excluded and in 1198 the abbots. Participation still fluctuated. In 1208, 1212 and 1220 elections were large gatherings whilst those of 1211, 1237, 1246 and 1247 were much smaller events.

At Konrad IV’s election, the last one that had been universally recognised as valid, only 11 electors were present. These were the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Salzburg, the bishops of Bamberg, Regensburg, Freising and Passau and amongst the secular lords, the Count Palatinate on the Rhine, the king of Bohemia, the landgrave of Thuringia and the duke of Carinthia. That election was described as unanimous, even though some important imperial princes like the dukes of Saxony, Zaehringen and Andechs-Meranien, the archbishop of Cologne and the margraves of Meissen and Brandenburg had not attended.

So this does not help. What we do know is that in 1273 when this momentous election happened it was broadly acknowledged that there were seven electors. But nobody has yet found a constitutional document that sets out when and why this was decided nor a logic that explains who was in and who was out.

The first legal text that states the election rights of the seven electors, the Schwabenspiegel of 1273 unhelpfully claims that it had always been thus, ever since Charlemagne had decreed it so.

This is a conundrum that has baffled medievalists for centuries now and I am afraid there is still no consensus. There are several competing theories.

The first one is the arch-offices theory. That theory says that the electors are those who hold the great offices of state, the three archchancellors of Germany, Italy and Burgundy, which are the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier. Then the Grand Marshall, which was the duke of Saxony, the High Stewart who was the Count Palatinate on the Rhine, the High Chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburg and Grand Cup Bearer, the king of Bohemia. That sounds sensible. Princes who take a major role in managing the empire should also be in charge of selecting the new emperor. The problem with that theory is that it just shifts the debate. These great offices of state for the secular princes come about around the same time the role of the electors is established, so it remains unclear why it was seven and why these seven.

Then we have the canon law theory which says that the legal framework of the electors was modelled on the college of cardinals who had the exclusive right to elect the pope since the 11th century. That too makes sense and explains why the number of electors was narrowed down, but again fails to explain why it was seven and why these seven. Eike von Repgow in his Sachsenspiegel had stated that there were 6 electors as early as 1237, but again nobody knows where he got that from.

Then recent elaborate studies were trying to prove that the underlying principle was that the seven electors are the direct descendants of the Ottonian family through the female line. Now I do not want to  offend anyone, but given the analysis identifies 3,400 descendants of the Ottonians alive in 1273 I am profoundly at a loss how this narrows it down in any meaningful way.

Call me a cynic, but if I had been in the position of archbishop Werner of Mainz and had been under strict instruction by my boss in Rome to organise an election that results in giving the empire a viable monarch, I would go and make sure I get all the most powerful people in the empire into a room and make them agree. And as it happened, nature had helped narrowing down the list of powerful princely families in the empire.  The Babenberger dukes of Austria, the Zaehringer, the dukes of Meranien and the Ludolfinger landgraves of Thuringia had all died out.

Which meant that if we go through the major clans, there is first and foremost the king of Bohemia, Ottokar II, the by far richest and most powerful of the imperial princes. He definitely deserves a seat. Then we have the Wittelsbachs who hold two major principalities, the duchy of Bavaria and the Palatinate. At least one of them should be on the list. Then there is the house of Anhalt who were dukes of Saxony and margraves of Brandenburg, no question, they should be there.

Then we get to the more difficult ones. The House of Wettin had inherited the Landgraviate of Thuringia but was in the middle of the feud and Frederick the Bitten was the grandson of emperor Frederick II which would be a good enough reason for the papal authorities to want him kept out. The house of Welf, dukes of Brunswick too were squabbling plus were far away so NFI.

And to represent the church the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier were materially richer than Hamburg and Magdeburg. Only Salzburg could compete but was outmanoeuvred by the other three.

There we have it. Seven votes are needed for a unanimous vote.

Now let’s go to the runners and riders, which is what made the election of 1273 one of these very rare events that could indeed have put European history on very different path.

The first one to put his hat in the ring was King Alfonco X of Castile. In fact he had been in the ring all this time since 1257 since he was elected at the same time as Richard of Cornwall. He just hadn’t done anything about it. He wrote to the pope asking for endorsement. That was immediately rebuffed. Pope Gregory X knew that Alfonso had no backing in Germany whatsoever plus he was another Hohenstaufen descendant in the female line which made him suspect.

Alfonso out, the next one bringing his weight to bear was King Ottokar II of Bohemia. Ottokar II commanded the resources not just of Bohemia with its rich silver mines and fertile lands. He also had taken over the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia, had put one of his followers on the seat of the archbishopric of Salzburg and expanded further south into Frioul and Aquilea.  Even more importantly, he had been a crusader up in the Baltic. We had met him in episode 131 when he rescued and then expanded the Teutonic Knight’s position in Prussia and had the city of Koenigsberg named after him in gratitude. His friends and his foes called him the Golden King for all the splendour of his dress, his castles and his entourage.

Ottokar was a perfect candidate as far as the papacy was concerned. Powerful and committed enough to lead the rescue of the Holy Land.

Though he looks like a shoe-in, there is a few small issue here.

Before Ottokar had decided to go after the imperial diadem, he had been very close to Frederick the Bitten, the landgrave of Thuringia and margrave of Meissen. Frederick’s mother had been the daughter of emperor Frederick II and – now that all the male Hohenstaufen were dead, he, Frederick saw himself as the true heir to the crowns of Sicily and Jerusalem, the duchy of Swabia and all the rest. The Ghibelline faction in Italy saw him as Frederick III, the promised emperor who would expel the Guelfs and bring back imperial order.

By the time old king Richard had died, Ottokar was still engaged to Frederick’s daughter and there had been rumours of Frederick and Ottokar would break into Northern Italian and ride all the way to Naples.

Though Ottokar had quickly ditched Frederick and all these plans to go south once he sensed he was in with a chance to gain papal support, but there was still a whiff of imperial overreach around him.

And that whiff was what the German princes felt in their nostrils too. They – quite rightly – worried that such a rich, powerful and ambitious prince could turn into an emperor who would curtail their rights and – shock horror – force them to hand back all the formerly imperial lands and castles they had so recently acquired.

And then a third international player registers an interest – Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily and count of Provence. Charles is the man who had wrestled Sicily from the heirs of Frederick II and just five years earlier had Konradin, the last Hohenstaufen prince executed on the market square of Naples. He did not want an emperor to come down and contest his rule claiming some imperial overlordship of Sicily as had happened several times before.

Charles could not stand himself as the blood of the teenage hero of the Ghibelline cause was still not dry on his hands, but he had a nephew, king Philipp III of France he decided to champion. Philipp, son of Saint Louis and inveterate crusader should again please the pope.  His nickname, le Hardi, the bold spoke to his determination to expand the royal domain which gained Toulouse and Alencon and to eradicate feuding in his kingdom.  He was by all accounts a great medieval ruler. And he was very keen on the imperial crown. As France had gained in standing, its rulers positioned themselves more and more as the true heirs to Charlemagne. Why, they asked with some justification, should the imperial crown be in the gift of the Germans with their fragmented kingdom and ineffectual rulers.

All good arguments though again from the papal perspective there was some fear that a linkup between Sicily and the empire was again on the cards, meaning the papacy could again be encircled by a powerful ruler which in turn would lead to a re-run of the epic battle between pope and emperor that had only just been brought to a close.

Then we have the homegrown princes. Federick the Bitten was obviously out as the Hohenstaufen continuity candidate. The Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria had his eye on the throne, but he would have to convince his brother, the Count Palatinate to endorse him, but that was impossible. The duke of Saxony briefly considered a candidature but gave up quickly being the poorest and most remote of the electors.

That was it. The pope had said he wanted a unanimous vote. He wanted the empire united so that the urgently needed crusade could get under way. He did have a preference for Ottokar, but in the end he left the decision to the electors.

Spoiler alert, the electorss did not choose Ottokar. Nor did they choose Philipp of France, nor did they choose anyone amongst their own number. They did choose a count from the Aargau who had become wealthy, if not rich on the disintegration of the Hohenstaufen and the demise of the Kiburgs and Zaehringer. A man 55 years of age, a renowned warrior, tall and manly, a name you may have heard before, Rudolf of Habsburg.

Before we get to how they arrived at this decision, let us just take a few moments and think about how European history had panned out if they had chosen either Ottokar or Philipp of France.

A king and later emperor Ottokar would have shifted the centre of gravity of the empire eastwards. His interests lay in Poland, Hungary and North-east Italy. He would in all likelihood have regained the Hohenstaufen possessions in Franconia and maybe Swabia. Bavaria and the Palatinate would have  become satellites of the Bohemian king.  In other words the Habsburg empire a two hundred years before it was actually created. And this could have been enough time to assert a more powerful central authority across the empire. It would also have given the Slavic components of the empire much more weight whilst the three archbishops of Cologne, Trier and Mainz would have ended up in the periphery.

Had Philipp III of France gained the crown, a quite different scenario would have emerged. The French monarchy was a lot more streamlined and focused on consolidating power and establishing a functioning royal bureaucracy. If gradually applied to the westernmost regions of the empire, France would have had more resources to rebuff the English in the 100 years war. From 1303 they also dominated the papacy and, in conjunction with the Anjou in Sicily could have dominated the wealth of Italy.  The empire would thus become again the universal empire of Charlemagne and Otto the Great, the central authority for the whole of western Europe. We may even had re-consolidated Germany, France, Burgundy and Italy and thereby sidestepped the nationalist wars of the 19th century. Ok. This is maybe pushing it a bit too far, but one fact is undeniable. Without this election, the counts of Habsburg would have remained in the second division as important princes in Swabia, and after the loss of Switzerland could have even faced relegation into the regionals.

Which gets us to the million dollar question, why Rudolf von Habsburg?

Usually this is all about friends in high places, but sometimes, rarely, but sometimes it is about just friends. And Rudolf’s friend was another Frederick, Frederick the burgrave of Nurnberg. This Frederick was not in contention for the crown but he was seen as an honest broker. Someone who had the ear of all the important people. And he convinced the electors, that Rudolf,a count from the Aargau with possessions in Alsace and the Black Forest was the perfect candidate. He was already old by the standards of the time and should hence not last for very long. He was rich but not so rich as to be a genuine threat. He was a warrior of some renown, someone who could lead an army on crusade. And he was already a crusader having fought with the Teutonic Knights alongside Ottokar. And he had been one of the great winners in the dismemberment of the Hohenstaufen lands which meant he was unlikely to force the other princes to hand back their gains. He had a brace of daughters he could marry to the remaining bachelors amongst the electors tying him to them and vice versa. He had been a supporter of the Staufers in the past, may even be the godson of the old emperor Frederick II, but was also loyal to the papacy. He was all around the solution to the problem.

And Fr4edrick Burggrave of Nurnberg convinced them. Ottokar II protested but the other electors removed him from the list and replaced him with duke of Bavaria. And so, after negotiations that had lasted 18 months from April 1272 to the 1st of October 1273 finally a unanimous decision was arrived on. Rudolf von Habsburg was to be king.

And here is the irony. Frederick, burgrave of Nurnberg who held the stirrups for the ascent of the House of Habsburg to become rulers of an empire where the sun never sets had been a member of the house of Hohenzollern, an ancestor to Frederick the great and Wilhelm I who would break the power of the Habsburgs almost exactly 600 years later. Now what is that for a coincidence!

Being elected to kingship of an empire that barely exists any more is not a straight road to world domination though. Many things Rudolf and his descendants will still have to do to get there. The very first step on this journey was the confrontation with Ottokar II, the golden king who is, as the English would say, a bit miffed about the outcome of the election. But that is a story for another time, next time to be precise. I hope you will come along again.

And before I go let me thank all the patrons and one-time supporters who have been so generous by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans and on historyofthegermans.com/support. Your help is really, really appreciated.

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