King Albrecht II

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 208: Boy meets princess, boy becomes king also Episode 6 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

Last week we saw the family slowly climbing out of the hole that Friedrich IV of the Tyrol had dug them. But despite all these consolidation efforts, the family was still in the second league of European princely families.

Then, just 25 years after Ernst the Iron married down into minor Polish royalty, his first cousin once removed, Albrecht V became King of Hungary, King of the Romans and King of Bohemia, all in one single year, 1438. 

How was that possible? Here is friend of the podcast, Eneas Silvio Piccolomini summarizing events: quote

Albrecht grew up and married Elizabeth, daughter of King Sigismund. She was a very beautiful woman, who lived with him most virtuously. After the Bohemians had turned to heresy and terrorised all their neighbours with wars, he alone, with great strength, protected Moravia and Austria, and the damage he inflicted upon the Bohemians was not less than the damage he took from them.

He was always in arms and, like the Bohemians, used waggon formations in battle. Making his soldiers undergo hard military training, Albrecht was the only one of all their neighbours whom the Bohemians feared, having been often defeated by him and put to flight.

When his father-in-law Sigismund died, the Hungarians soon called him to the kingship, and the Bohemians followed suit. Thus, in a very short time, he gained two large kingdoms. In the meantime, the electors of the Empire, having heard about Sigismund’s death, elected Albrecht as King of the Romans and sent their decree to him in Vienna.” End quote

Bish bash bosh – that is it, end of episode. Thanks for coming. OK, maybe we have to go with Skipper from the Penguins of Madagascar and demand: Kowalski- Analysis.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 208: Boy meets princess, boy becomes king also Episode 6 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

Last week we saw the family slowly climbing out of the hole that Friedrich IV of the Tyrol had dug them. But despite all these consolidation efforts, the family was still in the second league of European princely families.

Then, just 25 years after Ernst the Iron married down into minor Polish royalty, his first cousin once removed, Albrecht V became King of Hungary, King of the Romans and King of Bohemia, all in one single year, 1438. 

How was that possible? Here is friend of the podcast, Eneas Silvio Piccolomini summarizing events: quote

Albrecht grew up and married Elizabeth, daughter of King Sigismund. She was a very beautiful woman, who lived with him most virtuously. After the Bohemians had turned to heresy and terrorised all their neighbours with wars, he alone, with great strength, protected Moravia and Austria, and the damage he inflicted upon the Bohemians was not less than the damage he took from them.

He was always in arms and, like the Bohemians, used waggon formations in battle. Making his soldiers undergo hard military training, Albrecht was the only one of all their neighbours whom the Bohemians feared, having been often defeated by him and put to flight.

When his father-in-law Sigismund died, the Hungarians soon called him to the kingship, and the Bohemians followed suit. Thus, in a very short time, he gained two large kingdoms. In the meantime, the electors of the Empire, having heard about Sigismund’s death, elected Albrecht as King of the Romans and sent their decree to him in Vienna.” End quote

Bish bash bosh – that is it, end of episode. Thanks for coming.

OK, maybe we have to go with Skipper from the Penguins of Madagascar and demand: Kowalski- Analysis.

But before we dig into the reasons for Albrecht’s meteoric rise, let me tell you about something I noticed recently. Apple releases information’s to podcaster about the percentage of an episode listeners consume on average. This number is consistently above a 100% for episodes at the History of the Germans. I have been wrecking my brain how that can be the case. But I think I found the cause. Many people use podcasts to fall asleep to, I do it too. There is even a word for this, ASMR and people make shows specifically for that purpose. Now I have been told by listeners that they love falling asleep to the sound of my voice, which is a bit weird, but nothing to be ashamed of. And that may explain the 110% consumption rate as people doze off to an episode running the second time. And if you are one of them, you may enjoy the fact that my monotonous droning on is never interrupted by enthusiastic endorsements of random consumer goods and services.

Therefore as you now wake up, thank Colin G., Henrik F, Thies, Silke H., Fisherman’s Fencer, Kristian S. and Adrian H. who have gone to historyofthegermans.com/support and made a generous contribution to your undisturbed sleep. 

And with that, back to the show

This story of boy meets girl, boy becomes king fits just a bit too neatly into the “You Happy Austria marry” trope. Rising from middling prince in the empire to ruler of three kingdoms is a process much lengthier and much more complex than just saying “I do” to the most suitable spouse and then be extremely lucky – though I cannot recommend both of these highly enough.

Albrecht V of Austria succeeded the emperor Sigismund as King of the Romans, Hungary and Bohemia on the back of decades, if not centuries of negotiations, hard grind, ruthlessness and skill, plus the political necessities of the time.

To make it easier to understand I have broken it down into five components, namely

1. his legal claim
2. his personal relationship with Sigismund
3. a lot of money, some of it dirty,
4. the geostrategic situation, and
5. Albrecht II being the right person at the right time

The Erbverbrüderung

Lapsed lawyer that I am, I start with the fine print, the Habsburg family claim to be the rightful heirs to the imperial Luxemburg dynasty.

That goes back to 1364, when emperor Karl IV and duke Rudolf IV of Austria signed what is called an Erbverbrüderung, a treaty between both families whereby they designate each other as heirs to all their lands and title. Basically, if you no longer produce male heirs, then I will get all you got and in exchange, if my family dies out, your heirs get all of mine. That agreement was renewed several times and formed the legal basis for Albrecht inheriting the lands and titles of the emperor Sigismund in 1437 – alongside his marriage to Sigismund’s only child that is.

Such mutual designations are actually not that rare. They were basically insurance against the emperor swooping in and grabbing your lands if your family tree withered. Because normally if there were no heirs, their fiefs would become what is called vacant. These lands and titles would then revert to the emperor who then had one year to enfeoff it to someone else. In the olden days that someone else had been the most worthy of the nobles. Though nobody can tell when these Olden Days were, because ever since the starting point of this podcast the emperors regularly passed vacant fiefs on to friends and family. It was during the Interregnum that this process went into overdrive. Rudolf I took Austria, Adolf of Nassau tried Thuringia, Albrecht I yearned for Bohemia, Henry VII got Bohemia and Ludwig the Bavarian snatched Tyrol, Brandenburg and Holland. The imperial princes hated that. They came up with these agreements designating each other as heirs. That way there was always an heir, the fief would never become vacant and the emperor could not get his greasy paws on it – problem solved.

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

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

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

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

An amazing feat of negotiation. Rudolf IV had done it again, the great forger had outwitted the shrewd emperor Karl IV. Hang on, not so fast. We all know Karl IV and honestly, him being screwed over by a 25-year old duke with dubious classical knowledge, that was not likely.

And if you read the fine, fine print you see why it was Rudolf and the habsburgs who got the shrt straw, not the Luxemburgs. In the agreement the Habsburgs promised to give the Luxemburgs their duchies in case they died out, but the Luxemburgs would only hand over the goods if they died out and the Anjous of Hungary died out as well.

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

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

Well, we do know they did get the carrot in the end, but only after a whole lot of pulling and snapping.

The personal relationship

When the Erbverbrüderung that tied the Habsburgs to the Luxemburgs was signed, Sigismund was not even yet born. But throughout his career the Albertine line of the Habsburg had done its fair share of pulling and snapping at carrots.

There was a bit of a hiccup when Albrecht’s grandfather, Albrecht III, promised Sigismund a whopping sum of 100,000 florins for the crusade against the Turks in 1396.  The money never showed up. The crusade went ahead anyway and promptly ended in the disaster of Nikopol — not because of empty pockets, mind you, but because of knightly exuberance and arrogance (episode 168).

So despite the disappointment, the alliance held. Sigismund renewed the inheritance pact, this time with archdukes Wilhelm, Leopold IV and Albrecht IV. Plus, the deal was getting juicier for the Habsburgs. None of the current generation of Luxemburgers had managed to make any baby boys. Things got real and detailed provisions were made as to who gets what. Hungary, Sigismund’s crown jewel, was to go to Albrecht IV, the father of our Albrecht. Sigismund even got the Hungarian magnates to approve the succession and made Albrecht IV his viceroy in Hungary. Sadly, Albrecht IV wasn’t exactly a star hire. When Ladislaus of Naples invaded Hungary, he basically stood there holding Sigismund’s coat while things went sideways. (episode 169).

Things went further south when Sigismund’s brother Wenceslaus escaped from his Austrian prison under mysterious circumstances (episode 206). The Habsburg dukes, Leopold, Ernst and Albrecht’s father, duke Albrecht IV, came to Sigismund and said sorry. But only Albrecht meant it. When Sigismund asked his Habsburg allies to help him against some marauding robber barons in Moravia, only Albrecht IV showed up. The cousins stayed well back – with good reason.

The chronicler Thomas Ebendorfer tells us what happened next. While encamped before the robber’s castle, the duke and the king shared a cup of wine, a cup that contained poison. Sigismund survived thanks to the tried and tested method of being strung up by his feet which forced the poison out of his body. This method had once saved Albrecht’s ancestor, the king Albrecht I, even though it cost him an eye, but was not applied to duke Albrecht IV. Albrecht was left to digest the poison, which also came with a dose of dysentery, which finished him off.

That left behind a 7-year-old heir, the hero of our story, little Albrecht V. Given the circumstances one would hope that Sigismund felt some kind of responsibility for the orphaned son of his faithful ally. Whether or not he could afford such sensibilities or not, he came to young Albrecht’s aid, when the dukes Ernst the Iron and Leopold the Fat devastated his duchy of Austria in a feud over his guardianship – again episode 206 for more detail.

In 1408 Sigismund ordered Ernst and Albrecht to stop ruining their cousin’s land and also to let him rule his duchy when he turned 14. And to again quote Piccolomini: “ When he (that is Albrecht)  attained puberty and his subjects asked for him, Leopold put him under stricter guard and resisted his release, which gave rise to a serious conflict. In the end, the senior Lord of Walsee freed him from the hands of his guardian when, under the pretext of a hunt, he took Albrecht with him and brought him to Vienna. Thus the youth took up his rule, relying heavily on the advice of the man who had liberated him.”. As we mentioned in episode 206, this sequence of events made duke Leopold the Fat explode, or more accurately, implode in anger.

From then on, Sigismund and the Austrian dukes from the Leopoldine line, namely Ernst the Iron and Friedrich IV, were at each other’s throats. The wider Habsburg -Luxemburg Alliance had splintered.

Estranged from the rest of his family, still barely 15, Albrecht grew ever more attached to Sigismund. This link was further encouraged by the Austrian estates who had a strong influence over the young duke, not least because they had freed him from the control of his cousins.

In 1411, the year he took charge of his duchy was also the year he got engaged to Sigismund’s daughter, the 2-year old Elisabeth. Given this was Sigismund’s only child at the time, this looks like a major commitment on behalf of the King of Hungary and King of the Romans. Though again, by this time the Habsburgs are in a lower league of princes and engagements with them can be broken, should a more promising opportunity present itself. It was more a “save the date” than a formal invite.

In 1412 Albrecht and Sigismund meet at his grand gathering with the king of Poland at Buda where they both sign an agreement of mutual support against any and all adversaries, which angered the Austrian cousins, in particular Ernst the Iron. Albrecht now Team Sigismund all the way, even against his own family.

Then it seems they did not meet for quite some time. Albrecht V is not recorded as having taken part in the council of Constance, and if he did, he did not do anything of significance. This is odd given Constance is not that far from Vienna, it was the biggest party of the century and the political high point of his friend and mentor. But then it was also the place where Sigismund had humiliated his cousin and with him the family name.

Next thing we hear about him is in 1418 when he initiated a fundamental reform of monastic discipline. He started with the grandest monastery in his lands, the abbey of Melk, still one of the most impressive sights in Austria. These reforms were part of a broader European move to bring back the strict adherence to the rule of St. Benedict. As we have seen before, living by monastic rules is not just hard, it is pretty close to unbearable, which is why discipline kept deteriorating after every reform push. By the early 15^th century things had swung very far the other way and discipline in many monasteries had become exceedingly lax. This was one of the issues that Wycliff, Hus and his successors had highlighted and that animated the Hussite revolt.

Albrecht’s reforms were successful. The so-called melk reforms spread across Austria and Bavaria and monastic life flourished – at least for a while, before it became unbearable again. That was a great feather in the cap of our young and ambitious duke Albrecht.

In 1419, Albrecht gets another step closer to the dangling carrot. Sigismund came to visit him in Vienna they set a date for the wedding, the spring of 1422, when Elisabeth will reach the ripe old age of 12. We are moving from rather loose promise to serious commitment.

This decision cost Sigismund dearly. His wife, Barbara came from the family of the counts of Celje who had wriggled out of Habsburg overlordship and stood in firm opposition to the Austrian dukes, all three of them. Some argue that it was a disagreement about the Habsburg wedding of their only child that led to the serious marital rupture, though the gossip mills claimed infidelities on her part. In any event, the marriage was in dire straits which reduced the probability of the imperial couple producing another child, let alone a male heir. So Albrecht wins twice. Episode 184 if you are looking for more detail on the German Messalina”.

1419 is also the year when men fell out of windows in Prague and the Hussite revolt is getting going. This revolution is followed by a lengthy war which will be where Albrecht becomes not just a protégé but an indispensable ally to Sigismund.

As we have done a whole season on these dramatic events (episodes 164 to 184), we will only touch on the key moments and Albrecht’s role in them.

Albrecht participated in every one of Sigismund’s attempts to regain Bohemia. He came on the first crusade in 1420 (episode 177) .

Spring 1422, the date set for the nuptials with Elisabeth of Luxemburg came and went. What was going on? Given the convoluted situation in Bohemia, Sigismund’s advisers suggested very strongly to break the engagement with Albrecht and seek a marriage alliance with Poland. Poland was Bohemia’s neighbour to the North and East, a large and populous country and one of their princes had become a major force in Bohemian politics. In other words, Poland could offer a peaceful route back to Prague.  

Sigismund decided against the soft Polish option and honoured his commitment to Albrecht V. Though not for free. A loan of 400,000 florins, a truly astronomical sum was granted, enough to muster a huge army to take Bohemia back by force.

This may have been a political decision, but it was also a personal one. There is a personal warmth between them that went beyond the usual relationship between inlaws. Even before the marriage, Sigismund called him his “beloved son of Austria” and for the next decades builds him up as his heir and successor. He might have been the son he never had.

That being said, the two men were very different. Sigismund was often distracted and struggled to stick to his objectives, whilst Albrecht was clear, determined and focused on long term outcomes, Albrecht was a profoundly pious man who cared about the afterlife, whilst Sigismund was a cynic who used the schism as a tool to elevate his position, Sigismund was constantly chasing skirts, whilst Albrecht was a dedicated husband, and Albrecht was an able military commander much revered by his men, whilst Sigismund was a disaster.

And that he proved beyond doubt when he took Albrecht’s money and hired a massive army he led to wreck and ruin at Kutna Hora and Nemecki Brod (episode 181)

After that Sigismund would never again lead a major military action. Which meant he needed able military men who could keep the pressure on the Hussites, if not to defeat them.

One was the elector of Saxony in the North and the other one was his son-in-law, Albrecht, duke of Austria. Albrecht became first governor and in 1424, margrave of Moravia. For the next decade, Albrecht would hold this frontier against Hussite incursions and would stage the occasional attack into Bohemia.

Even though he lost battles more often than he won them, his military record stood head and shoulder above his peers. There were in total five crusades into Bohemia, some involving huge armies. And all of these armies literally ran away when they only heard the banging of the enemy drum, a drum the story goes was made from the skin of the genius Hussite commander Jan Zizka. Albrecht’s forces stood their ground. They learned to fight like the Hussites, with guns and wagenburgs. He trained his men so that he could coordinate between infantry, artillery and cavalry, making him one of the most admired commanders of his age.

Money, dirty money

Albrecht may have been a military prodigy, but genius does not pay the bills. Sigismund was always cash strapped and could never have have paid for the armies that held back the Hussites. All Sigismund could offer was titles and a promise of inheritance.

The money therefore had to come from Albrecht’s duchy of Austria. And just from the duchy of Austria. The silver mines of Schwaz, that fountain of ready cash was out of reach – in the hands of Albrecht’s cousin Friedrich IV who had no love lost for neither Sigismund nor for Albrecht.

So where did the money come from? Well, one chunk of cash came from the darkest chapter of Albrecht’s life – the Vienna Geserah of 1420/21.

On May 23^rd, 1420 Albrecht passed an order that all jews in Austria should be apprehended. Those who would accept baptism were freed, those who did not were to be expelled if they were poor and shoved onto rudderless boats floating down the Danube all the way to Bratislava.

The legal reason for these arrests shifted around a lot. Initially he claimed the Jews had sold weapons to the Hussites. Later he accused them of desecrating the Holy Host. The wealthy jews he had kept in prison were tortured, ostensibly to coerce them to get baptised, but in truth he was after their hidden treasures.

It got even uglier. He threatened to baptize children by force, which drove many to suicide. The rabbi himself killed children to spare them and then burned himself alive. Albrecht locked the remaining children in the synagogue, starving them while offering to sell them.

These atrocities were too much even for the pope, who declared all forced baptisms null and void and ordered Albrecht to stop. Still, at Easter 1421, Albrecht ordered the burning alive of 212 jews and another 21 were killed a few days later. They also burned the churchwarden who allegedly sold the jews the host they allegedly desecrated.

Such pogroms had been quite common in the wake of the Black Death almost a century earlier. But by the 15^th century they had become rarer, simply because there were a lot fewer Jewish communities still operating in the empire. Many had fled to Poland where they were welcomed with open arms.

What makes the Vienna Geserah unusual apart from the date was the allegation of co-operation with the enemy and the quite blatant financial motivation.  

Now, did this brutality make Albrecht rich? Not really. By the 15th century, Jewish communities had already been pushed out of big finance. Italian and German bankers had taken over lending to nobles, merchants, and princes with clever loopholes around the ban on usury. Jews were largely stuck with lending to the poor — a thankless and unprofitable job that made them easy scapegoats. So, whatever Albrecht squeezed out of Vienna’s Jews was a one-time payout and probably vanished quickly into military expenses.

So, where did the rest of the money come from? Well, where money for war comes from today, taxes. Albrecht called the estates of Austria almost every year, asking for more and more cash. And, they paid up. The Hussites were a real threat, regularly raiding Austria, and Albrecht had a reputation as a commander who could actually protect them.

The result? A stronger, more professional administration in Austria. Local troops were trained in Hussite-style tactics, robber barons were crushed, roads became safer, and despite constant war, the duchy flourished. More prosperity meant more taxes, which meant more soldiers, which allowed Albrecht to make himself ever more indispensable to his father-in-law.

The geostrategic logic

All that put Albrecht into pole position to inherit Sigismund’s lands and titles. He had the paperwork (the Erbverbrüderung), the marriage (Sigismund’s only daughter), the bromance (he and Sigismund were tight), and most importantly — the money that Sigismund always needed but never had. So just before Sigismund shuffled off this mortal coil in December 1437, he called on his nobles to recognise Albrecht as his heir.

But what was there to inherit? When Sigismund died in 1437 he had pawned off or lost the margraviate of Brandenburg and the duchy of Luxemburg, and had already given him the margraviate of Moravia. That leaves the three crowns, Hungary, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire.

Sounds fancy, but here’s the catch — none of those crowns were hereditary. They were all elective.

The crown of the Holy Roman Empire is awarded by the prince electors without any legal or traditional regard for the relationship to the previous incumbent.

As for Hungary, since the extinction of the original Arpad dynasty, the magnates have decided who wears the crown of St. Stephen. Sigismund himself had only gained the crown after years of fighting and by convincing a majority of senior nobles and then his first wife that he was the man for the job.  Episode 169 if you want to go through all that pain again.

Equally in Bohemia it was the diet that had called John of Luxemburg to the throne in 1310 and after the Hussite revolt it had become abundantly clear that the only way to become and to remain king of Bohemia was with the consent of the estates.

Meang that all that happened so far was to put Albrecht onto the shortlist. When Sigismund closed his eyes forever on December 9^th, 1437, it was down to Albrecht to turn his great starting position into a viable claim on the thrones.

And Albrecht wasted no time. A month later he was in Hungary and whoever amongst the magnates was there elected and crowned Elisabeth and him as queen and king of Hungary. As will become clear later, the loyalty of the magnates lay more with his wife Elisabeth than with him, but what counts for now is that he became king.

The imperial election was even easier. Albrecht did not even ask to be elected, and having seen how distracting it had been for Sigismund, his advisers strongly suggested that he rejected the honour. Albrecht shrugged and accepted in March 1438.

Bohemia was trickier. Albrecht had spent decades fighting the Hussites and was a hardcore Catholic, so plenty of Czechs weren’t thrilled to see him as king. They even had another option: Władysław III of Poland, a teenager who marched into Bohemia with an army. But when his forces faced Albrecht’s, no battle was fought — Władysław went home, and Albrecht took control.

That is what happened, but what was the logic behind it? Why did the three kingdoms accept Albrecht as their ruler?

The answer to that is the geostrategic challenge that will cast its long shadow over European politics for the next 250 years – the Ottomans.

Just take a look at the Atlas. And remember that your globe is based on a Mercator projection that makes europe look a lot bigger than it actually is. In terms of surface area it is less than  a quarter of the size of Asia. And by 1438 europe was in terms of population, economy, culture and military capability a lot less than a quarter of Asia.

And one of the great powers of Asia, the Ottomans was coming for Europe. They had already defeated one of the largest European armies of the Late Middle Ages at Nikopol in 1397 (episode 168). The only reason they had not overrun Constantinople right away and then marched on to Budapest, Prague and Vienna was a threat to their southern border.

Timur or Tamerlane as the English called him defeated Sultan Bayezid, the victor of Nikopol at Ankara in 1402. It took the Ottomans thirty years to recover and reconsolidate, but by 1438 they were back pushing up the Balkans. And from now on they would not stop again.

Europe’s defences were weak. Hungary and its allies, namely Serbia and Wallachia were no match for the concentrated might of the Ottomans. The lands that lay right behind Hungary, Austria, Bohemia and Poland, they knew they were next in line. So, over the 250 years that followed, they had to come closer together. There is a geostrategic logic behind what would later become the Austro-Hungarian empire. It wasn’t inevitable at all that it would be led by the Habsburgs, but there was a logic for its existence as a political entity, despite all its cultural differences.

And Albrecht was one of the first who benefitted from this logic. Once he was accepted as king of Hungary, the Bohemians had not much choice. The Ottomans were coming up the Balkans under their new sultan Murat II. He had thrown the Venetians out of the Peloponnese in 1432 and he was mustering his new model army to go after Serbia and Hungary.

Albrecht’s rival for the Bohemian crown, Wladyslaw III, was a 14-year old boy with no military experience, whilst Albrecht was a battle-hardened general. And Albrecht had already gained the Hungarian crown.

So, in June 1438 the Bohemian barons elected and crowned Albrecht of Habsburg, king of Bohemia.

Epilogue

The rest of the story is short and painful. I will leave it again to Eneas Silvio Piccolomin to bring the story to its conclusion: quote:

“After his stay in Bohemia, Albrecht returned to Vienna and afterwards continued to Hungary. When he stayed in Buda, there was a popular uprising against the Germans. The Hungarians took to weapons, went on a rampage through the city, and killed the Germans they found on the spot.1 Then they went on to attack the merchants’ houses. Great anxiety seized all the Germans. The king stayed in the castle, trembling with fear and rebuking the queen for having brought him to this. The Hungarian barons did not feel safe with the people. Thus they went on for several hours, plundering and murdering many Germans.2 But Ban Ladislas,3 a great baron in Hungary and related to the queen by marriage,4 mounted his horse and rode through the city, and with many entreaties he managed to soften the people’s fury, for he was popular with them because of his respect for and merits towards them. Afterwards, the Hungarians declared that it was necessary to fight the Turks who were tearing the whole kingdom apart. Albrecht offered to do it and call on the German and other Christian princes to more easily expel the enemies. However, the Hungarians said there was sufficient strength in Hungary; only order and leadership were lacking. But if the king himself went to war, there would be both order and leadership, and there would be no need to call in foreigners when their own people sufficed. This the Hungarians did because they feared that the Germans would grow too [strong] in their kingdom. The queen sided with them, being only too happy to be shown more honour than her husband. The Hungarians honoured her because she spoke their language and was the heir to the kingdom. They accepted Albrecht as her husband, but they did not like that he was a German and, moreover, did not speak Hungarian. The woman was clever and cunning. She had a man’s mind in a woman’s body,5 and she pushed her husband wherever she wanted to. Thus, she induced her husband to accept the Hungarians’ advice.

An army was gathered, and, moving towards the battlefield, they came to a marshy and foetid area, where there was not enough wine and food. A public announcement was made forbidding all to touch arriving provisions without the queen’s permission. There was no mention of the king. Then, when the enemies approached, the Hungarians fled in all directions, leaving the king with only a few men. He barely escaped, cursing his wife roundly. So great was the disorder that the Hungarians approached the queen even when she was lying in her bed.

Very upset, Albrecht decided to return to Vienna to gather an army and avenge the Hungarians’ betrayal. While travelling, he fell ill from the extraordinary heat and ate too many melons, which caused his death. Thus, he fell as quickly as he had risen.”

King Albrecht II died on October 27^th, 1439 near Esztergom in Hungary.

He had no son at the time, but his wife was pregnant. What happened next and whether the Habsburgs would now rule Bohemia and Hungary for good, well that will be revealed next week. I hope you come along.

And if you find all of this worth supporting, go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where you can find various options to keep this show on the road and advertising free.

How the habsburgs got their Chin

“The Habsburgs ruled half of Europe with a chin that entered the room five minutes before they did,” is one of those witticisms that made the 19^th century so amusing. But by then the Habsburg jaw had long receded.

It had its heyday in the 16^th and 17^th century when people in Spain called out to the future emperor Charles V: “Your majesty, shut your mouth! The flies of this country are very insolent.” And when they looked at his later descendant, king Charles II who was probably the worst affected, they said, he was “more Habsburg than human”.

But where is the Habsburg Jaw from? The view repeated again and again in history books is that it came from Cymburga of Masovia, the wife of duke Ernst the Iron, but was she really responsible? Or was it something quite different that caused that deformation, and what has it to do with the prostration of duke Friedrich IV before emperor Sigismund in 1415?

That is what we are looking at in this episode.

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Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 207 – Of Land and Lip – How the Habsburgs got their chin, which is also episode 5 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

“The Habsburgs ruled half of Europe with a chin that entered the room five minutes before they did,” is one of those witticisms that made the 19^th century so amusing. But by then the Habsburg jaw had long receded.

It had its heyday in the 16^th and 17^th century when people in Spain called out to the future emperor Charles V: “Your majesty, shut your mouth! The flies of this country are very insolent.” And when they looked at his later descendant, king Charles II who was probably the worst affected, they said, he was “more Habsburg than human”.

But where is the Habsburg Jaw from? The view repeated again and again in history books is that it came from Cymburga of Masovia, the wife of duke Ernst the Iron, but was she really responsible? Or was it something quite different that caused that deformation, and what has it to do with the prostration of duke Friedrich IV before emperor Sigismund in 1415?

That is what we are looking at in this episode.

But before we start just the usual handing round of the begging bowl. I guess you know the drill by now, but if you are still listening, maybe you feel it is time to make a contribution to the continued existence of the show, free of advertising. And if you do, go to historyofthegermans.com/support and choose one of the various options. Just do not get confused when the software asks you for your account details, even if you get here for the first time. Do not worry, all it is trying to do is to get you to open an account by providing an email and password, so that you can access the bonus episodes and the forum.

And special thanks go to Morera, Edward B., Derrick C, Derek Edmundson, Barry J. R., Joachim B., Lonhyn J., Steve and Stephen C. who have already signed up.  

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we ended with archduke Friedrich IV, count of Tyrol kneeling before emperor Sigismund and begging to be readmitted to his grace.

The kneeling was certainly humiliating, but the other conditions of his pardon were threatening the viability of the whole Habsburg project. Friedrich had to surrender all of his lands to the crown, keeping only those that Sigismund chose to return to him as a fief. And that return of the lands Sigismund had made dependent upon Friedrich standing trial in Constance for his treason and any other claims anyone else might be bringing.

In other words, the chance that Friedrich would be stripped of all his lands for good was pretty high. It is in this period that Friedrich IV gained his nickname, Friedel mit der leeren Tasche, Friedrich with the empty pockets.

A loss of his lands, in particular of the Tyrol, would have significantly altered the Habsburg trajectory; because of the silver mines of Schwaz. This “mother of all mines” grew to be the largest industrial complex in Europe, where 10,000 miners dug up silver ore, ore that acted as collateral for the immense loans granted by Jakob Fugger and others, which in turn funded the Burgundian wars of Maximilian and the election of Charles V as emperor. In other words, without the Tyrol, no loans, no Spanish Netherlands and hence no Habsburg empire.

The fate of the Habsburg family hung in the balance.

The one who put his considerable weight on to the scales was Ernst, the Iron, duke of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola and brother of Friedrich IV. Upon news of Friedrich’s surrender, he popped up in Meran and began organizing the resistance, and maybe his own takeover of the county.

Friedrich now had to decide. He could stay in Constance and bet on Sigismund’s mercy, or he could flee to Tyrol bringing the wrath of the emperor, an excommunication by the council and an invading army of princes down on him.

William Coxe described Friedrich’s situation in Constance as follows, quote: “Meanwhile Friedrich was detained at Constance, where he was treated like a culprit, and watched like a prisoner. He was brought into the courts of justice, to answer all the complaints which were preferred against him ; he was repeatedly excommunicated by the bishop of Trent, for not restoring the dominions of that see, and threatened with still severer punishments by the council; he was deserted by all, avoided as a heretic and a traitor, reduced to want, and deprived of all necessities of life. Malicious reports were industriously circulated that he was engaged in plots to assassinate Sigismund, and menaces were not withheld that he was destined to become a sacrifice to public justice.” End quote.

OK, so the imperial mercy option looks distinctly unpromising. Friedrich had to go for option 2. On March 1^st, 1416, he fled from Constance and returned to Tyrol via Feldkirch and the Arlberg pass.

When he arrived in Tyrol, he was warmly greeted by the estates of the county. Which must have been a great relief for Friedrich. Friend of the Podcast Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his gossipy biography reports that Friedrich was popular with the common people because; quote: “he would often change his dress and visit taverns and farmers unrecognised. There, he enquired, as if a stranger, what they thought about the country’s government and asked much about the dukes, the barons, and the prince. When he heard them praise the prince and criticise the barons, he was glad that he enjoyed the people’s favour”. End quote.

Hence his subjects preferred him to the emperor Sigismund, they preferred him to a Bavarian duke, they preferred him to his brother Ernst, the only thing they did not prefer him to, was death.

So, despite his jubilant reception in Meran, and Ernst subsequent withdrawal back to Styria, Friedrich was by no means out of the woods yet. If Sigismund could muster an army and go down to Tyrol, his vassals may not be as supportive as they appeared right now. His barons may rise up after all. Sigismund tried to encourage them to do exactly that. He even kept dangling the carrot of imperial immediacy before them, if only they would help him toppling the obstinate count of Tyrol and deliver him to Constance.

Throughout 1416, 17 and 18, Sigismund was trying to put together a force that could make an attempt at the topographically challenging Tyrol. He called on the Swiss Confederation, the German cities, the dukes of Bavaria, the Counts Palatine, even his friend and protégé, Friedrich of Hohenzollern, who he had just made margrave of Brandenburg.

But they all turned him down. The Swiss had already got what they wanted when they took the Aargau, the German cities had lost confidence in the constantly cash-strapped emperor, duke Ludwig the Bearded of Bavaria was disappointed when Sigismund first denied him satisfaction against his cousin who had tried to smash his head in, and then passed him over when it came to awarding the margraviate of Brandenburg (all that is in episode 172).

The imperial princes finally did not see much benefit in helping Sigismund expanding his empire through the acquisition of Tyrol. And on top of that, Sigismund had dozens of other matters to attend to, the two remaining renegade popes, the fallout from Teutonic Knights’ defeat at Tannenberg, issues in Hungary, a marital crisis, money problems etc., etc. pp. Sigismund was always frazzled, but never more so than during this period.

And so, in 1418, at the behest of the newly elected pope Martin V and under pressure of the mounting tensions in Bohemia following the trial and execution of Jan Hus (Episode 174) Sigismund made peace with Friedrich IV. They met in Merseburg on lake Constance and hashed out a deal.

And as always with Sigismund, when he realised his political options were exhausted, he sold out. So for the trifling sum of 50,000 florins, Friedrich was re-enfeoffed with the Tyrol. And he was given permission to pay out any of the other princes who had taken over his other lands in 1415.

Despite the vast amounts of silver coming out of Schwaz, It took Friedrich a decade plus to get all his former possessions back. Except for one, the Aargau, the ancient homeland of his family was not for sale. The Swiss Confederation could not be bought. The Castle of the Hawk would never return into the family possessions, all they kept was the name.

Friedrich IV ruled for another 21 years, and whilst he could not shake his nickname as Friedrich of the empty pocket, he became again one of the richest princes in the empire. That wealth came in part from the mines, but also from the fundamental changes he implemented in his lands.

Piccolomini had noted that when Friedrich took charge of Tyrol, the county was ruled by the barons and he had quote “no power by himself. And “he grew tired of it and wanted to change things.”

Before Friedrich IV moved to Meran in 1410, there had not been a continued presence of the Habsburgs in Tyrol. As so often, the constant shortage of cash compelled the princely rulers to mortgage their rights and lands to the local aristocrats and ultimately left the management of the county entirely to them.

In his first year as count, Friedrich established a register of ducal rights in the Tyrol. He hired administrators who began collecting on these rights, whilst his accountants kept track of money coming in and money going out. Friedrich moved the centre of the princely administration from Meran to Innsbruck where he established the Neuer Hof, which became the residence for the duke and the permanent seat of the government.

Innsbruck was a strategically better location, in particular because it was at the intersection of the East-West route between Austria and the ancestral lands on the upper Rhine and on the North-South Route across the Brenner Pass. And most importantly, Innsbruck is just 30 km from the silver mines of Schwaz.

Friedrich did not limit his activities to just enforcing or buying back of his existing rights, he also tried to actively expand them. And for that he used the Privililegium Maius, the forged list of ancient rights and titles his uncle Rudolph the Founder had bestowed on the family. And these rights were far reaching and in many ways unprecedented. They included, amongst other, a ban on any man within the geographic boundaries of the county to hold immediacy, aka report directly to the emperor. Further, all temporal courts, authority over the forests and game, waters and woods are subordinate to the duke. And, whatever the Duke shall ordain  or command in his lands and regions may not be changed in any manner, in any way, or at any future time, by the Emperor or any other authority. And best of all, these provisions were supposed to apply not just in Austria, but in any territory the house of Austria had already or would in the future acquire.

Sure, this is all made up, but then Friedrich IV made it reality.

The people must upset about these policies were the Tyrolean barons. They formed noble societies intended to oppose these changes. Friedrich neutralised these societies by asking to become a member himself, a demand the aristocrats could hardly refuse.

But the most powerful of these barons, Heinrich von Rottenburg, whose inherited title of Hofmeister had made his family the de facto rulers of Tyrol, kept the feud going. He called upon duke Stephan of Lower Bavaria and the bishop of Trient/Trento to help him put Friedrich back into his box.

This lord of Rottenburg was a tough nut and a famous duelist who had killed “many men” and according to Piccolomini “had a coffin with lighted candles carried with him” at all times as a courtesy to his victims.

Still the duke prevailed, mainly because he could rely on the support of the estates, specifically the cities and the gentry who were tired of the abuse by the constantly feuding barons. Rottenburg surrendered in 1410 and six months later he was dead. Whether he was put in his travel coffin, we will never know.

This success did much for the reputation of Friedrich which may explain why he was so enthusiastically received when he returned from his ill-fated adventure in Constance.

In 1419, the most serious of these baronial revolts kicked off. The lords of Starkenberg, of Spaur, the family of Oswald von Wolkenstein, ably supported by the bishop of Trient and the condottiere Pandolfo Malatesta, attacked Friedrich’s castles. Friedrich managed to withstand this first wave of attack. And then through a combination of diplomacy, legal action and occasional warfare, he managed to break the alliance of the barons.

The last of the barons to surrender was Oswald von Wolkenstein, the knight and poet. His life is such a riveting tale. He had started out as knight errand, travelling to Prussia, Russia, Tartary, Turkey, the near east, the Holy Land, Italy, France, the Black Sea and Aragon. He had gone to Konstanz with Friedrich IV but then changed sides and entered service with the emperor Sigismund. He was sent to England on a diplomatic mission, he was in Perpignan helping to bring the antipope Pedro da Luna to resign, he went on crusade in North Africa. Back home he feuded with his peers. One of these feuds went horribly wrong. He was captured by his opponent and extensively tortured, before ending up in one of Friedrich IV’s prisons.

His poetry ranges from tales of his travels, much self-deprecation, a heavy dose of sex, mixed with a religious poetry and just pure joie de vivre.

And he used his gift to have a go at Friedrich. Here is one of his complaints:

“I complain of the day,
that I first gave my faith
to a lord who keeps empty hands.
Though I served him long and well,
I find no thanks, no reward,
only sorrow, hunger, and grief.
He calls himself Duke,
yet leaves his men in want —
truly he is poor in purse and poorer in heart.”

This is also the oldest reference to Friedrich IV as being penniless.

I thought about creating a whole episode on Oswald von Wolkenstein, but I think we need to press on now. Maybe we can do it as a bonus episode, if you guys want me to.

Back to Friedrich IV. Our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini summarised his other feats and qualities as follows: quote: “He took a wife from the House of Braunschweig. She bore him a son whom she wanted to be named Sigismund. .Friedrich was a man of great sexual appetites and had affairs both with married women and married men but mostly with maidservants. He loved money, and therefore he never wanted to fight the Venetians since they assisted him financially.” End quote.

We will get back to Friedrich IV in a moment. First we need to talk about his elder brother, Ernst, his wife Cymburga and the reason you probably pressed play on this episode, the famous Habsburg Jaw.

The reason we talk about this now is that the eldest son of Ernst was the first of the Habsburg who is confirmed to have presented that famous feature, the Habsburg lip. Just have a look at the episode artwork. And based on a long tradition, last repeated by Andrew Wheatcroft in 1995, this son had quote “inherited his most striking characteristic, a fat and ponderous lower lip” from his mother, .

His mother, Cymburga of Masovia could probably take it. She was by most accounts a strong woman, as in strong enough to bend horseshoes and drive nails into walls with her bare hands. A most suitable companion for a duke who went by the name Ernst, the iron, or as others called him, the  “little robber with the giant beard”.

But did she really bring this world renowned trait into the family?  

Before we go there, let’s just define what exactly is the Habsburg Jaw? It is a hereditary deformation whereby the lower jaw outgrows the upper jaw, resulting in an extended chin and a crossbite. This Mandibular Prognathism is the result, not of just one genetic mutation, but multiple genes that add up together to create a particular trait. To get all these genes in the right order requires a seriously intense level of inbreeding, which is why these conditions are very rare. And in the case of the Habsburgs, there are some additional features like the pointy nose, thick lips and droopy eyes, all of similar provenance, aka requiring multiple genes acting in concert.

These features vary in degree and become ever more pronounced throughout the 16^th and 17^th century until we hit Charles II of Spain who was so deeply affected, he could neither speak nor chew normally.

So, let’s take a look at the alleged culprit, Cymburga. First up, we have no contemporary portrait of her. Polish and Austrian chroniclers who knew her, did not mention a protruding jaw.

Now let’s look at her genetic inheritance.

She was the daughter of the duke of Masovia, a cadet branch of the Piast family, the kings of Poland. Her mother was the sister of Jogaila, the grand duke of Lithuania and king of Poland who had defeated the Teutonic Knights at Tannenberg. There is little chance that her parents had much blood in common, given her mother’s family had only recently converted to Christianity and had hence not been suitable marriage material for European royalty.

Her father’s family had one ancestor with a jawline deformation, Boleslaw Wrymouth, the king of Poland who was born in 1086, aka 300 years before Cymburga. It is also not clear whether Wrymouth’s impairment had been genetic or had been caused by an injury.

The Poles are currently undertaking a broad analysis of the DNA of their Piast kings and dukes, none of which had noticed an anomaly linked to Mandibular Prognathism, though admittedly that is not what they were looking for. These studies are published in Polish, which is why I had to rely on Chat GPT to see whether there was anything in it, a notoriously unreliable source. So, if any of you can read Polish and can have a look, it would be much appreciated.

Let’s add all this together, (i) Cymberga’s parents were not closely related, (ii) there is no record of her having the feature and (iii) there is no record of anyone in her family having a Habsburg jaw, except for an ancestor who lived 300 years earlier. So simply on the basis of probability, Cymberga should not be on the top of the list. There were many more likely candidates amongst the Habsburg spouses of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th century, all of which came from the closely interrelated community of the imperial princes.

So, why would anyone single out Cymburga?

I spent a solid day trying to trace where the first mention of Cymburga as the origin of the Habsburg jaw came from. And this turned into a truly epic and pointless goose chase. I started with Andrew Wheatcroft who quoted a book by Friedrich Heer, which does not contain the claim that Cymburga was the source. Then I looked at William Coxe who made the same allegation. He just referenced “authorities” with no further detail.

Wikipedia then directed me to Robert Burtons, Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621.

I have not read the book, but Coleridge, Wordsworth, Herman Melville, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, John Keats and Philip Pullman clearly loved what medical researchers described as “that omniumgatherum of anecdotes of insanity whose burden was that mankind — including the author himself — was quite out of its mind”.

Not very reliable, but even stranger, at no point does Robert Burton even mention Cymburga. That did not stop Chat GPT and its ilk to hallucinate a detailed quote from Burton, which again, could not be found at the reference they give, nor anywhere else.

Then Wikipedia directed me to the history of Vienna by Wolfgang Lazius from the middle of the 16^th century. Again nothing at all. A run through the digitalised content of the Bavarian state library then brought up stories about Cymburga, just not ones about the Habsburg lip.

Instead the story goes that duke Ernst had met Cymburga at some event at the court of emperor Sigismund. And he was so struck by her extraordinary beauty, he travelled to Krakov in disguise to woo her. In one retelling he saved her from an attack by a brown bear, which is depicted in a 19^th century picture, today in the Belvedere. So unless Ernst had a strange penchant for chinful women, Cymburga was unlikely to be afflicted by a deformation of the jaw.

There is however a conceivable reason in this story that may explain why Cymburga was blamed.

Cymburga and Ernst were both members the high aristocracy, unmarried and a link between Habsburg and Poland was politically opportune. So why the cloak and dagger story and the bear thing.

The problem was that Cymberga’s existence reminded the family of another humiliation. Ernst’s older brother Wilhelm had been engaged to Hedwig, the daughter of king Louis of Hungary and Poland. Hedwig is better known to posterity as Jadwiga, the girl that was made king of Poland in 1384. Wilhelm and Jadwiga were apparently quite close and she had lived in Austria as a child. But in the complex negotiations following her father’s death, the Polish estates decided that the engagement to Wilhelm should be set aside and that Jadwiga should marry Jogaila, the grand duke of Lithuania instead. Jogaila, who was Cymburga’s uncle, leveraged this marriage into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that dominated much of central Europe. We covered this tumultuous process in episode 169.

Whilst the marriage to Jogaila made sense for the Poles, it was a massive snub to the Habsburgs. Breaking engagements was something a king or emperor could do to a burgrave of Nurnberg or a margrave of Baden, but not to an archduke of Austria. Well the Poles had done it and the Habsburgs had to face the fact that they had dropped back into second tier.

Cymburga’s presence in Vienna was a constant reminder that Habsburg power was much diminished, making her extremely unpopular with the family. So, if you look for a reason why she was singled out as the source of the Habsburg Jaw, that may be it. But then again nobody seems to have mentioned it until William Coxe in 1847, and god knows where he got it from.

So, if it definitely was not Cymburga, where did Habsburg Jaw come from then?

Well, there is one figure close to the house of Habsburg that had a confirmed deformation of the jaw, and that was the emperor Sigismund himself. In all his portraits you can see he could not fully close his mouth any more, something people remarked on at the time.

But there is no link between Sigismund and the surviving branches of the House of Habsburg, neither downstream from him, nor two or three generations before.

Then, maybe it was running in the family already for some time.

We have two depictions of early members of the house of Habsburg that are believed to be genuine portraits. And these are the tomb of King Rudolf I from about 1295, and an oil portrait of Rudolf IV, the founder from the mid-14^th century.

I am not sure I can detect anything on Rudolf I, whilst Rudolf IV does look as if he was a mouth breather. But I am not sure what that is worth.

Maybe the explanation is much simpler. The European high aristocracy had settled sometime in the 13^th century. Very few new families were able to enter the close circle of intermarried princes. Sure, there were the Italians, the Visconti of Milan, the Medici of Florence and then the Lithuanians and Russians, but most of the rest was basically the same set of cousins twice removed that made up the rather limited gene pool.

What tightened the pool further and may have given rise to their most prominent feature was the constant intermarriage between the Spanish and the Austrian branches during the 16^th and 17^th century. And why did they constantly intermarry? Did they not know about the impact of inbreeding. Oh sure they knew about this. This is an agricultural society where everyone understands what happens if a herd is left without fresh blood. Leaving aside the strict rules of the church about consanguinity.

But these marriages between often first cousins were a political necessity. Charles V had divided the Habsburg empire into two parts, the Austrian and the Spanish line. To keep the two parts of the empire acting in unison, the Habsburgs needed to renew the familial link at least every second generation, leading to a truly catastrophic level of inbreeding.

Only when Spain was lost to the Bourbons, the need for these intermarriages disappeared and with it the Habsburg Jaw. Maria Theresia had no visible Prognathism, nor had her children, in particular not Marie Antoinette, though French revolutionary propaganda kept adding the feature to her depictions.

In other words, the Habsburg jaw was the result of politics, of a fear that the coherence of the family could fall apart. And that fear of a breakup of the family goes back to the times we talk about right now.

Which is what gets us back to Ernst the Iron.

Ernst the Iron was last seen taking over the Tyrol whilst his brother was literally tied up in Konstanz. And when Friedrich re-appeared in 1415, Ernst returned to Styria without making a fuss.

That is quite a remarkable change of pattern. In the years before he had fought his brother Leopold over control of the duchy of Austria proper and had later on conspired with the barons of Tyrol to oust his younger brother. But now, at a time when Friedrich was on more than shaky ground, he did not pounce.

We do not know what had happened to him. He had done a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1414 where he was knighted as a member of the order of Holy Sepulchre. As such he had to commit to  a number of religious observances, maybe even the 10 commandments which have this clause about not coveting your neighbour’s house, fields, man and maidservant, or even ass or anything else..

Though I wonder whether the shock of seeing his brother and hence his family kneeling before Sigismund had triggered his change of heart. Had the family been united, Sigismund would have never gotten away with humiliating a senior member of the Habsburgs. Friedrich and Ernst were both powerful princes, and their cousin Albrecht V was equally rich and a very close ally of Sigismund. The fact that neither protested against Friedrich’s ban and its execution, is what made this possible. And when a year later, at least Friedrich and Ernst stood together, Sigismund stood no longer any chance of invading Tyrol.

This entente between the brothers seemed to have continued once the Tyrol was stabilised. And when Ernst died in 1424, his two sons, Friedrich and Albrecht were placed under the guardianship of Friedrich IV. And in turn, when Friedrich IV died, his former ward took over the guardianship of his son 12-year old Sigismund.

So, after all, the kneeling before Sigismund, painful as it certainly was, had a silver lining in as much as it shocked the Habsburgs out of their internecine warfare into finding a way to act more coherently. We are still a long way from the point where they are sacrificing their health and appearance for the sake of family coherence, and this was not yet the last war between brothers, but the understanding had set in, that they can either rule together or be dragged under divided.

One member of the family has taken very much of a back seat in this episode, and that is Ernst and Friedrich’s second cousin, duke Albrecht V of Austria. Now he is the one who will truly restore the fortunes of the family, bringing them back to the top table, ironically courtesy of the man who had just humiliated them. And that is that we will discuss next week, I hope you will join us again. And if you find all of this worth supporting, go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where you can find various options to kee

Albrecht III&IV, Wilhelm, Leopold IV, Ernst the Iron and Friedrich IV

Success for a princely family in the Late Middle Ages has a lot to do with reproductive luck. Not having any offspring, in particular no male offspring is a bit of a knockout. But having too many sons that could be a major issue too.

And in 1386 the Habsburgs struggled with exactly that problem. Their territory was already divided between an Albertine and a Leopoldine line. But then Leopold had four sons, bringing the number of archdukes of Austria to six, which is five too many.

In this episode we will discuss how they managed to muck it up quite bad, in fact so bad, one of their number had to fall to his knees before the emperor, not once, not twice, but three times…

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 206 – Division, Destruction and Degradation, also episode 4 of the Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

Success for a princely family in the Late Middle Ages has a lot to do with reproductive luck. Not having any offspring, in particular no male offspring is a bit of a knockout. But having too many sons that could be a major issue too.

And in 1386 the Habsburgs struggled with exactly that problem. Their territory was already divided between an Albertine and a Leopoldine line. But then Leopold had four sons, bringing the number of archdukes of Austria to six, which is five too many.

In this episode we will discuss how they managed to muck it up quite bad, in fact so bad, one of their number had to fall to his knees before the emperor, not once, not twice, but three times…

But before we start let me tell you a little bit about my research process. For almost a year now I do most of my research at the London Library. The London Library was founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle and counted great luminaries from Charles Darwin to Helena Bonham Carter amongst its members. What makes this place so special is not just its amazing history and the chance to bump into authors one has been admiring for decades, but the way it is organised. The London Library has a collection of books only rivalled by the British Library. But other than the British Library, the books are stacked by topics. So you can go to a section entitled History/Austria, or printing, or even one of history- Sigismund emperor. And that allows me to find books I would have never spotted in a library catalogue. For instance to prepare this episode I did borrow the books on the Habsburgs by Martyn Rady, Andrew Wheatcroft and Jean Berenger, but whilst picking them up, I came across William Coxe’s History of the House of Austria from 1847, that may not cover the latest research but is written so vividly, I borrowed a few phrases from him. Same goes for Hugo Hantsch’s Geschichte Österreichs and an anthology about Oswald von Wolkenstein.   So, if you are based in London and feel like joining a library that has over a million titles at hand and is organised for the needs of writers and creators, not librarians, check it out.

I am afraid membership is not cheap, but that is where some of your generous contributions go. So as I sink into the comfortable leather sofa in the reading room to indulge in William Coxe’s prose, my thanks go to Sven N, Torsten, Raymond F., Patrick M., Pim W., Gerald A. G. who made this happen by signing up at historyofthegermans.com/support.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we watched duke Lepold III of Austria sinking into the mud outside Sempach under the incessant blows of the Swiss halberds. There are dozens of battles that mark the end of the dominance of the armoured knight on horseback. And Sempach was one of them. Not the first, but a seminal one.

Leopold had been a seasoned military commander. He had defeated duke Stephan of Lower Bavaria when he was just 17. And since then he had spent his time in the saddle, riding from one conflict to the next. Holiday for him was a trip to Koenigsberg in Prussia to have a go at the Lithuanians. (check episode 133 if you want to hear what these trips were like). For a city militia and the forces of three rural cantons to defeat someone like that in an open battle where Leopold was able to deploy his army of knights and trained infantry as he wished, that was again proof that military tactics had to change.

Infantry was now more important, whilst cavalry, including heavy cavalry, remained an key military tool. So, coordination between these different forces  became the key to success, superseding the individual bravery that had been the most prized military skill up until then.

This transition should have translated into social and political change as well. If co-ordination was the key to success, then a system of clear hierarchies where orders are being followed was required.

Armies with effective chains of command require training, equipment and would ideally fight together as units for an extended period of time. And that costs money, hitherto unimaginable amounts of money. To raise funds on that scale, territories needed to be larger and have a proper administration, in particular tax collection systems. We have seen some princes working hard at establishing all of these things, like the Valois dukes of Burgundy, and be rewarded for it with an ever expanding power base.

But old habits die hard. And one of the old habits that had been engrained in chivalric society, was the idea that even princes would divide their property equally amongst their sons. Forward thinkers, like Rudolf IV and Karl IV had attempted to introduce primogeniture even for princely, as opposed to royal, territories. But in the end, both of them had failed.

By the end of the 14^th century, Karl IV’s sons Wenzeslaus and Sigismund were at each other’s throats, ably assisted by their cousins of Moravia and the Bohemian barons. And Rudolf’s brothers, Albrecht III and Leopold III had de facto divided the Habsburg possessions.

And when Leopold III was laid to rest at Koengsfelden, the process of fragmentation of the family territory went up a gear.

Leopold had left four sons – four. The legendary Habsburg fecundity was back on show.

But as we all know, one can have too much of a good thing, and princely sons in an already divided territory can be very much too much of a good thing.

Have you been counting? Let me do that for you. By 1386, we have six Austrian archdukes. There is Albrecht III, called with the Plait, the founder of the so-called Albertine line and his only son, Albrecht IV. Albrecht III was in his prime at 37 years of age. Then we have his nephews, the sons of Leopold III. The eldest, Wilhelm was 16 when his father died, followed by 15 year-old Leopold IV, and the younger two, Ernst 9 and then Friedrich IV, only 6.

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Previous generations of Habsburgs had signed family compacts and agreements to deal with exactly  such a situation. The problem was that there were so many of these compacts, and with such different provisions, that  any member of the family could claim more or less anything under one or other of these agreements. The only broad planks enshrined in all of them was that #1 – as a family – they should stick together, #2 that the two eldest male members of the family should direct overall policy and #3 that in case one line dies out, their lands were to go to the remaining members of the family.

Comparisons are always difficult, but the Habsburg at least on paper started with a bit more coherence than the Wittelsbachs, whose decline we have traced in episodes 196 and 197. But let’s see what that was worth in real life.

The two eldest at this point were Albrecht III, the head of the Albertine line and Wilhelm. Wilhelm was Albrecht’s junior by 20 years, so one would expect Albrecht to enjoy at least a few years of largely uncontested rule. A period he could use to consolidate power by pushing through the provisions of the Privilegium Maius.

But that would be a misunderstanding. Albrecht III was a feeble man. Whenever things got a bit dicey, he took refuge in a monastery to seek advice from his saviour. The other one of his obsessions was with the hair a woman. We do no longer know who this woman was, but she clearly meant a lot to him, since he had her tresses braided into his hair, which is why he was known as Albrecht with the Plait. On the positive side, he had a strong interest in science and theology, which came in handy for the university of Vienna that thrived thanks to Albrecht’s support.

To concentrate on these pursuits, he handed over the management of the duchies to his most trusted courtier, John I of Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein did a reasonable job at maintaining peace and keeping the robber barons down, which is why the rule of Albrecht III is often described as a benign one, in particular compared to what was to come.

In 1395 Liechtenstein was found with his hand in the till once too often and was toppled as de facto prime minister. Devoid of his counsel, the peace-loving Albrecht III found himself drawn into the conflict between his neighbour, King Wenceslaus and his barons. Wenceslaus was at this point still king of the Romans, though his authority in the Reich was almost non-existant. And his control of Bohemia was also slipping, so that he found himself captured and then incarcerated by his barons. The barons transferred Wenceslaus to Austria, to the castle of Wilsberg. Wenceslaus supporters then invaded Austria to free their king, which they managed. But that forced Albrecht III to get involved. Albrecht took the side of the barons against Wenceslaus and mustered an army. But before he could set off, he succumbed to an unknown illness, leaving behind only one son, Albrecht IV, aged 16.

With Albrecht III gone, the seniority system flipped. It was now Wilhelm, the eldest of the Leopoldine dukes who took the lead in family politics.

Under the previous regime, Albrecht III’s conciliatory nature and the age gap to Wilhelm meant that things could trundle along nicely. That was no longer the case.

Albrecht IV and Wilhelm were only 9 years apart in age. They were cousins, not uncle and nephew and they held different perspectives on the big political questions of the day.

The Habsburgs had hitched their cart to the Luxemburg bandwagon with Rudolph the Founder’s marriage to Katherina, the daughter of emperor Karl IV. On that occasion, the two families had made a pact that should either of them die out, the other was to inherit all their lands. When Rudolph the Founder had died without offspring, Albrecht III had then married another of Karl IV’s daughters and they renewed the alliance including the clause on inheritance. So it was Luxemburg all the way for the House of Habsburg.

It only became problematic when there was division within the house of Luxemburg. By 1402 the disagreements between the half-brothers Wenceslaus and Sigismund of Luxemburg had reached boiling point. Sigismund had captured Wenzeslaus and had sent him over to his friends and allies, the Habsburg dukes of Austria.

That was a sign of great trust, but also caused some major headaches for our two dukes.

Sure, the dukes had been close to Sigismund, but at least legally, Wenzeslaus was the head of his house and heir to Bohemia and the Luxemburg lands in the empire, territories of huge strategic importance to the Habsburgs. Therefore having king Wenzelaus in custody was a very, very hot potato, or, since potatoes had not yet made it across the Atlantic, a very hot parsnip. Nobody knew how the conflict between the brothers would end and so drawing Wenzeslaus’s wrath was not a good idea.

What exactly then happened, nobody knows. But one night, Wenzeslaus hopped the fence and legged it back to Prague.  Did Albrecht IV let him go, or was it his cousin Wilhelm who had unlocked the cell?  

Albrecht IV at least felt obliged to placate Sigismund by doing something he rarely did, he went to war. In 1404, the two princes were leading an expedition against a rebellious group of barons in Moravia, when they both fell violently ill. Sigismund recovered, Albrecht IV did not. As always there were rumours of poison everywhere…and again, who knows. But as far as Sigismund was concerned, he had more confidence in Albrecht’s loyalty than in Wilhelms. And he transferred this sympathy to Albrecht’s son, Albrecht V, who was just 7 years old at this point.

The question of who amongst the Luxemburg brothers to support was not the only thing Albrecht and Wilhelm had been at odds. Over the previous decades the two lines of the family had tried to find arrangements that balanced the demands of each member of the family to be a real prince with a territory to run and to keep the Habsburg united and hence in the Premier League of princes. Over time the egoistical urges outpaced the willingness to stick together.

When Albrecht IV died, the Habsburg lands were de facto split into three. The core duchy of Austria was held by the Albrechts, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola were now administered by Wilhelm and the Tyrol and the ancestral lands on the upper Rhine were managed by the second eldest brother, Leopold IV.

Given little Albrecht V was only 7 years old, Wilhelm assumed the guardianship, which would have put him in control of almost the whole lot. This concentration of power was unacceptable to the other three brothers. Which is why Wilhelm had to accept his brother Ernst as co-ruler of his territory and Leopold had to accept the youngest, Friedrich as his partner.

And that is when things started to go seriously south. The brothers not only did not get on, they also began to pursue different policies. Whilst Albrecht and Wilhelm had been firm supporters of the House of Luxemburg, Leopold sided with Ruprecht of the Palatinate, the archenemy of the Luxemburgs. Ruprecht had been elected king of the Romans after Wenzeslaus of Luxemburg had been deposed for incompetence (episode 165 if you want to know more). Leopold not only gave Ruprecht free passage through the Tyrol, he joined the king’s attempt to journey to Rome, which stalled in Milan. The political unity of the House of Habsburg was broken.

Things got even worse when Wilhelm died in 1406. It was now Leopold IV’s time as senior Habsburg. But whilst in previous arrangements the two joint rulers accepted the seniority of the elder, this was not the case any more. The two younger brothers demanded not just a share of Wilhelm’s lands, but also the guardianship over their cousin twice removed, little Albrecht V. The compromise they arrived at was that the youngest, Friedrich, would be the sole duke in Tyrol and the ancestral lands, whilst Leopold and Ernst would jointly administer Styria, Carinthia and Carniola and act as joint guardians over little Albrecht V. That arrangement was then further altered so that Leopold would administer Austria for Albrecht and Ernst would get Styria. And even that was not clear enough, because Leopold and Ernst began to quarrel over what land was Styria and what was Austria.

The four brothers were a rough lot, ready to raise a sword at the slightest provocation, seeking war and adventure wherever there was an opportunity. They were after all the sons of Leopold III, the martial hero and martyr of the battle of Sempach. But even within that lot, Ernst stood out. He would become known as Ernst “the Iron”. He was brutal and ruthless.

When the disagreement between him and Leopold over Austria and Styria turned violent, he did not hesitate to call on Hungarians and Bavarians to devastate his brother’s lands as well as the lands of his ward, young Albrecht V. Leopold in turn brought in one of the most feared Bohemian mercenary commander to do the same. The chronicler Thomas Ebendorfer bemoaned this upheaval as the worst in living memory, a timequote ”where the sons were forced to rob their fathers”. Ernst became known as the “tiny robber with the giant beard”. Things came to a temporary halt when their neighbour, the then not yet emperor Sigismund intervened. In 1409 he decreed that the brothers should cease hostilities and share the revenues of their lands and that of little Albrecht equally. And he set out that the guardianship should end on Albrecht’s 14^th birthday, aka by 1411.

By that point the Habsburg rule was in a very sorry state. The land has been devastated by the foreign armies the two brothers had called into Austria. But there had also been structural changes.

Some of the lords who had been vassals of the dukes of Austria were wiggling out of their subordination. Amongst them were the counts of Cilli, the family of Sigismund’s wife Barbara, whose life we looked at in episode 184.

Even more significantly, the ducal estates were taking more and more control of the finances and political direction. Each of the main territories, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Tyrol had a body representing the subjects, the estates. These consisted usually of three and sometimes four orders, the clergy, the nobles and the cities. In some places the nobles were divided into two, the rich barons and the gentry. The latter was a feature quite common in central Europe where the feudal system as we know it in the west, had only been imported quite late and had been overlaid over existing structures.

What would also often happen was that the voting pattern worked along economic lines rather than by estate. So the barons, abbots and bishops would act together whilst gentry, cities and lower clergy would be another unified block.

The estates could not assemble at will, but had to be called by the duke. That tended to happen when the duke was running out of cash and he wanted to raise taxes. Tax raising authority was not formally given to the estates, but from a purely practical point of view it was more effective when the taxed subjects had agreed to pay. As time went by, and demands for cash mounted, the estates were called more and more often until in many places the diet met once every year. And during times when a duchy was ruled by a minor, the estates often assembled to protect the rights of their lord against his guardians.

Alongside the regular assemblies, the estates also established their own administration. This dealt predominantly with taxation matters, apportioning the obligations amongst the different orders. Building from there they took an ever larger role in the administration of the state, for instance managing the courts. They built their own palaces, the Landhaus, often splendid buildings in the centre of town. In Vienna it is placed next to the Hofburg and in Graz the Landhaus is a spectacular affair with one of central Europe’s most impressive Renaissance courtyards and attached to it is the Landeszeughaus, the armoury of the duchy that contains 32,000 pieces of arms and armour.

These representative bodies would become an important restraint on the power of the Habsburg emperors. They existed all through to 1848 not just in Austria but also in Hungary and for a crucial time, in Bohemia.

In 1411, the two quarrelling brothers, Leopold and Ernst, will get more than a glimpse of the power of these ducal assemblies.

Albrecht V, the sole heir to the Albertine line had finally reached his 14^th year and as per Sigismund’s  ruling was to be declared an adult and given control of the duchy of Austria. Though Ernst and Leopold were constantly at each other’s throat, they agreed on one thing and one thing only, that Albrecht should remain a minor for as long as humanly possible. Because as long as that was the case, they, Ernst and Leopold would receive the revenues from the duchy, not the no longer little Albrecht V. So they blocked and tackled, and blocked, and tackled.

The estates of Austria got increasingly irate about this selfish behaviour. And even more importantly, they wanted to prevent another war between the brothers that would  decimate their home. So they applied an unusual method. Several members of the diet went to see Albrecht at the castle where he was living. They convinced him to leave and rode to Eggenburg where the diet declared him an adult and swore him allegiance. When Leopold and Ernst heard about the – as they called it , kidnapping, they got into such a rage, that Leopold, known as the Fat, had his long overdue coronary. And when the second oldest brother hit the floor with a massive thud, Albrecht V became the duke of Austria for real.

We will talk a whole lot more about Albrecht V in next week’s episode.

The time we have left today will be dedicated to the ingenious way in which the youngest of the brothers, Friedrich IV managed to sink the house of Habsburg even further.

Friedrich was in charge of the Tyrol and the ancestral lands on the upper Rhine. Following the battle of Sempach, the Habsburgs had lost significant territory in German speaking Switzerland, but Albrecht IV, Leopold IV and now Friedrich IV had managed to stabilise the situation, and even regaining some of the lost ground. Albrecht IV, or more accurately, his wife Mechthild of the Palatinate, even had time to found the University of Freiburg, my Alma mater.

And the legendary silver mines in Schwaz in Tyrol had begun operations. So for all intents and purposes, Friedrich IV should have been able to live the joyful life of a noble prince, hunting and shooting all day.

But not so our friend Friedrich. Friedrich had developed an appetite for high politics, in particular Italian politics. The Tyrol included what is now South Tyrol, or Alto Adige, meaning their southern neighbours were the duke of Milan and the Republic of Venice. And that is where he started to get into conflict with Sigismund. Their disagreements were mainly political rather than personal. In 1409 Sigismund had again confirmed the Erbverbrüderung, the commitment that either family would inherit the other’s territories should they die out. And that could at least theoretically include Friedrich IV.

That being said, the political differences between Friedrich and Sigismund kept mounting, in particular when  Friedrich linked up with Venice, one of Sigismund’s arch enemies. In 1413 Sigismund explored options for the Swiss Confederation to attack Friedrich, which they did refuse.

In 1414 the  emperor Sigismund called the great church Council of Constance to bring an end to the schism that had resulted in three competing popes. Episodes 171 to 174 if you want to get the full picture.

Of the three competing popes, only one, Pope John XXIII, was travelling across the Alps to be present at the largest gathering of the church in the Middle Ages. He travelled via the Tyrol where Friedrich IV was more than excited to meet the pope, who wouldn’t be. The two men got on extremely well and Pope John made Friedrich the commander of the papal army with a stipend of 6,000 ducats. This papal army was however BYO, bring your own. Friedrich gathered 500 lances and accompanied the pope to Constance, promising him safety and security.

Once Sigismund arrived in Constance and saw the papal bodyguard, he leant on Friedrich to disband his troops. After all, a pope with a small army was a lot harder to depose than one without.

Which is what was about to happen. Pope John XXIII had hoped that the council would make him the one and only pope, and depose his two rivals. But he was finding out quite quickly that the mood went a very different way. The council was planning to depose all the popes, including him.

In his predicament the pontiff decided to flee. If he left Constance, so he thought, the council would no longer be legitimate, and he could remain pope. And to organise his escape he relied on the commander of his armies, Friedrich IV of the Tyrol.

Friedrich organised a tournament – it seems every time something bad happens to the Habsburgs, it has something to do with tournaments –  anyway. Friedrich organised a tournament and everybody came. Well except for pope John XXIII, who pointed to the papal ban on tournaments that had been formally in place for centuries by now and had now been ignored for centuries.

So whilst everybody was watching grown man knocking each other unconscious for sport, John snuck out of the city and sought refuge in one of Friedrich’s castles. Friedrich too skipped town once the tournament was over and before anyone had noticed the missing pope. That happened on March 20^th, 1415. On March 22^nd, Sigismund accused Friedrich of treason against church and empire. Another week later, without observing the usual 45 day grace period, Friedrich was put in the imperial ban and declared an outlaw. The council excommunicated him as well.

Now anyone could kill Friedrich or occupy his lands without sanction. And to make this a reality, Sigismund declared all of Friedrich’s lands vacant fiefs and promised to grant them to anyone who could seize them.

Friedrich was completely stunned by this reaction. He had gone to Freiburg im Breisgau, waiting for the collapse of the council and the rewards from his papal benefactor/hostage.  

Instead he receives news that Zurich and Berne were sending troops into the Aargau, that the Count Palatine had taken his lands in Alsace, that Vorarlberg had fallen to his enemies and  that Sigismund’s agitators were working on the estates of Tyrol to throw him out. Against such an onslaught his spread out forces stood no chance. The mighty fortress of Baden in Switzerland fell, and then the Habsburg itself was occupied by the city of Berne.

Let me at this point hand over to William Coxe who described the scene in his inimitable 19^th century fashion as follows:

Friedrich quote “sunk under his multiplied disasters, and, refusing to listen to the exhortations of the pope and of his adherents, or to the voice of honour, yielded to the pusillanimous advice of Louie duke of Bavaria, and consented to deliver up the pope, and submit himself to the mercy of Sigismond.

No prince of the empire ever submitted to such indignities, or experienced such degradations, as Frederic. To grace and witness his triumph, Sigismond summoned the most considerable princes of the empire, and the ambassadors from the Italian states, with the chief fathers of the council, into the refectory of the Franciscan convent at Constance. The emperor, having seated himself on his throne, Frederic, accompanied by his nephew the burgrave of Nuremberg, and by his brother-in-law Louis of Bavaria, entered the apartment, and thrice prostrated himself. The eyes of the whole assembly were fixed on the unfortunate prince, and a dead silence prevailed, till Sigismond demanded, “What is your desire ?”

The burgrave replied, “ Most mighty king, this is duke Frederic of Austris, my uncle ; at his desire I implore your royal pardon, and that of the council, for his offences against you and the church , he surrenders himself and all his possessions to your mercy and pleasure, and offers to bring back the pope to Constance, on condition that his person and property shall remain inviolate.” The emperor, raising his voice, asked, “ Duke Frederic, do you engage to fulfil these promises ?” and the duke, in faltering accents, answered, “I do, and humbly implore your royal mercy.” At this reply a sensation of pity spread through the whole assembly; even Sigismond himself seemed to be affected, and said, “I am concerned that he has been guilty of such misdemeanours.” Frederic took the oath, by which he surrendered to Sigismond all his territories, from the Tyrol to the Breisgau, submitting to hold as a favour what the emperor should please to restore, and yielded himself as an hostage for the fulfilment of the conditions. Sigismond then took him by the hand, and concluded the ceremony by observing to the Italian prelates, “ You well know, reverend fathers, the power and consequence of the dukes of Austria ; learn, by this example, what a king of the Germans can accomplish.” End quote

As Coxe said, such elaborate humiliations were rare, in particular of a prince whose family had already furnished 2 plus one king of the Romans and not long ago had been on par with the House of Luxemburg. It was meant to demonstrate the power that Sigismund had garnered through his management of the Council of Constance, and may well be the high water mark of his political power.

At the end of this process, Friedrich had become effectively landless. All territory that wasn’t occupied by his enemies was now Sigismund’s direct possession. Alsace was gone, several towns were raised to cities and given immediacy, the Swiss cantons were confirmed in their possession of the lands south of the rhine, including the Habsburg and Baden. His subjects had sworn allegiance to the Luxemburger, except for one – the Tyrolians. The estates of Tyrol did not want to become part of a Luxemburg empire, or worse, be enfeoffed to a Bavarian duke. Instead they called on Friedrich’s brother, duke Ernst the Iron, to come and lead the resistance.

It was at this point that this once richest imperial prince, owner of the largest silver mine in Europe, became known as Friedrich with the Empty Pocket.

Given the family history I am unsure whose ambitions Friedrich feared more, Sigismund and his allies, or his brother’s…but he needed to act to protect his lands. So he fled from Constance, breaking his solemn oath. He was put back into the imperial ban. Sigismund called on his princes to muster an army to execute his ban.

I think this is where we are going to leave it for now. Friedrich IV, Count of Tyrol, prince of the house of Habsburg, kneeling before Sigismund of Luxemburg. The ancestral castle of the Hawk occupied by townsfolk from Berne and lost for ever.

Surprising as this sounds, this is still not the low point for the family. Friedrich will find his boulder to climb back up on to fight another day. Ernst the Iron will do unironic things and Albrecht V, well, he is set for greater things. And all that so they can tumble down again.

Something to look forward to next week. I hope you will join us again.

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