John the fearless and William of Holland

Today begins a two-part series about how the Low countries modern day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg shifted out of the Holy Empire. These lands, with the exception of Flanders, had been part of the empire for hundreds of years, ever since Henry the Fowler acquired Lothringia for east Francia in 925 – not by conquest but through diplomacy – as was his way.

There are two ways to tell the story of the split away from the empire, one is about the dynastic machinations, the marriages, poisonings and inability to produce male heirs, the other one is about economics and the rising power of the cities.

This, the first episode will look at the dynastic story, the pot luck and cunning plans that laid the groundworks for the entity that became known as the Low Countries to emerge, whilst the next one will look at the economic realities that thwarted the ambitions of one of the most remarkable women in late medieval history, Jacqueline of Bavaria, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault, and why that was ultimately a good thing, not for her and not for the empire, but for the people who lived in these lands.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 198 – How Holland Was Lost (Part 1), which is also Episode 14 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

Today begins a two-part series about how the Low countries modern day Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg shifted out of the Holy Empire. These lands, with the exception of Flanders, had been part of the empire for hundreds of years, ever since Henry the Fowler acquired Lothringia for east Francia in 925 – not by conquest but through diplomacy – as was his way.

There are two ways to tell the story of the split away from the empire, one is about the dynastic machinations, the marriages, poisonings and inability to produce male heirs, the other one is about economics and the rising power of the cities.

This, the first episode will look at the dynastic story, the pot luck and cunning plans that laid the groundworks for the entity that became known as the Low Countries to emerge, whilst the next one will look at the economic realities that thwarted the ambitions of one of the most remarkable women in late medieval history, Jacqueline of Bavaria, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault, and why that was ultimately a good thing, not for her and not for the empire, but for the people who lived in these lands.

But before we start the usual reminder that this show is advertising free. No frantic pressing of the forward button to evade some cringeworthy endorsement of products one could at least be skeptical about. Eschewing the corporate mammon may not be the most efficient way to organize things, but then I am absolutely overwhelmed by the generosity of so many of you, generosity not just directed at me, but mostly at you fellow listeners. This week’s special thanks go to Bradley M., Ute-of-Swabia, Stian R., Rob V., Kati B., Radiatore and Christian who have gone to historyofthegermans.com/support and have made their contribution.

And with that, back to the show.

One of my habits when travelling in the lands that had once been part of the Holy Roman Empire is to look out for imperial eagles, the signs of the authority of the emperors. I know, it is geeky, but what is a man to do?

Going to Belgium, you will see quite a few, on the grand Place in Brussels, the Town hall of Antwerp and in the basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges. But in the Netherlands, these are much rarer. The Stadhuis in Nijmegen proudly features Frederick Barbarossa and Karl IV and Deventer shows an imperial eagle on its flag and coat of arms. But otherwise, very little.

Which is very much at odds with the medieval political borders. Much of Belgium was in the county of Flanders, which belonged to the kingdom of France, whilst almost the entirety of the modern-day Netherlands had been firmly in the Holy Roman Empire, until the peace of Westphalia in 1648 that is.

Several Dutch cities played important roles in the medieval empire, hosting kings and emperors. Nijmegen saw the death of empress Theophanu and the birth of emperor Henry VI, Utrecht was where Henry IV’s campaign to have pope Gregory VII deposed fell apart and it is also where Henry V died and declared Frederick of Hohenstaufen his heir.

In other words, this was imperial heartland well into the time of the Hohenstaufen, it was one of the great stem duchies, the duchy of Lower Lothringia.

In this episode we will talk about how – in the late 14^th and early 15^th the counties and duchies that made up the Low Countries slowly slipped out of the grasp of the emperors. Because saying they were part of the HRE until 1648 is the same as claiming Robbie Williams was still in Take That in 2010 because he played the occasional gig with them.

Let’s go through the most important of these counties, duchies, and principalities.

The richest and most powerful of these was the county of Flanders that contained the economic heart of Northern Europe of the period, Bruges, Ghent and the other cloth cities. Flanders, as I said, was part of the kingdom of France, though a few bits and bobs stretched across the Scheldt into imperial territory.

Then there was the duchy of Brabant, which was the formal successor to the duchy of Lower Lothringia. Its most prominent centres were Brussels and Antwerp and since 1288 it also comprised the duchy of Limburg. The duchy of Luxemburg, home of the ruling imperial family, lay to the south of Brabant. Then there were several prince bishoprics, namely Liege/Lüttich, Utrecht and Cambrai. And there were the three counties, Holland, Seeland and Hainault, united under one umbrella that held the coast from the mouth of the Scheldt all the way to the Frisian islands.

Holland and the Netherlands is often used simultaneously, though Holland is only a province, or more accurately two provinces of the Netherlands. That being said, the three largest Dutch cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague are all in Holland.

The county of Holland goes back to the 9^th century and had been ruled by the same family until 1299, a family that had the incredibly good taste of calling their eldest sons Dirk, counting up all the way to Dirk VIII. Once they shifted their naming preference to Floris and William, the inevitable happened, their wives, appalled by the cowardly shift to such common names refused to produce male offspring and the counts died out.

The county, which in the meantime had added the county of Zeeland and some vague claim on Friesland was inherited by the counts of Hennegau or Hainault as it is called in French. These three counties would become one entity that passed through the generations.

Now in 1345 this line of counts of Holland died out too. The last count had no children at all. All the family now consisted off were his two aunts, the younger one, Philippa who was married to Edward III, king of England, whilst the elder one, Margaret, had been married to Ludwig the Bavarian, Holy Roman Emperor, heavily featured in episodes 149-156.

So, who will win? Given the gap in wealth and resources and the trifling matters of geography and economy, the three counties should have gone to the king of England. But that did not happen. Instead, Holland, Seeland and Hainault went to one of the younger sons of Ludwig the Bavarian and Margaret.

The reasons for that were in part political. When the previous count died in 1345, Edward III had already kicked off the Hundred Years’ war against France, which focused his efforts and resources. Crecy was just one year later. There was simply not enough bandwidth to send a force to Holland to take control of the counties. Ludwig the Bavarian on the other hand did have the bandwidth and the ambition to get hold of these lands for his copious gaggle of sons. When the nobles of Holland asked for Margaret to come up and take possession, he sent her, together with several of his younger sons. They quickly took the levers of control and when Edward III tried his luck again a few years later he did not get through.

But what would be touted as decisive was not just the swiftness of the military and political action, but the legal argument. The counties, namely Holland and Seeland were subject to the rules of the Holy Roman Empire and based on these, the counties had become vacant fiefs when the last male ruler had died without issue. Which meant it was the emperor’s job to appoint a new count, and the most suitable candidates were, surprise, surprise, his sons, specifically two of the younger ones, William and Albert.

This legal structure will matter a lot in a moment, but as for 1345, Ludwig the Bavarian did win the fight over Holland. Though, as it happened, he had to pay a huge price for it. If you remember episode 156, it was this award of the counties of Hainault, Holland and Seeland to his own sons, that pushed the princes of the empire into opposition and brought about the candidacy of Karl IV. This struggle ended with the victory for Karl IV and the loss of the imperial crown for the house of Wittelsbach. A very high price indeed.

Fast forward 40 years, the Wittelsbachs are broadly recognised as the lords of the three counties. The current title holder is Albert, who had taken over when his brother William succumbed to severe mental illness and spent his remaining 30 years incarcerated and bound on hand and feet.

It is then, in the year 1385 that one of the most consequential events for the Low Countries is taking place. Around a table in city of Cambrai sat the representatives of the three most significant principalities in the Northwestern corner of the empire. Representing Holland, Seeland and Hainault were Albert and his Wife, Margaret of Brieg. Facing him was one of the great winners of the 14^th century, Philipp, younger son of King John the Good of France, member of the French regency council on behalf of the child-king Charles VI, duke of Burgundy and his wife, Margaret Countess of Flanders.  As the impressive list of titles suggests, Philipp was a big deal. He not only de facto controlled France at this point, he was also busy building up his own semi-independent principality based on his duchy of Burgundy the incredibly wealthy county of Flanders, the inheritance of his wife.

Philipp was not only incredibly ambitious for himself and the dynasty he was to found, but also someone able to play a very, very long game. And his long, long game aimed to bring all the lands of Flanders and ultimately all of Lothringia under his control in an attempt to resurrect the ancient kingdom of Lothar, the Middle kingdom between France and Germany that had been created in the treaty of Verdun of 843.

Holland, Seeland and Hainault were key to achieving this objective, they were the “string of pearls” around his county of Flanders.

And of the two ways to acquire lands, war or marriage, Philipp was not shy of the former but very much preferred the latter. Which meant he was happy to invest one of his daughters, his eldest no less, in an option to gain Holland, Seeland and Hainault. So, he offered her as a bride to marry Albert’s eldest son and heir, William. That looked like a sensible investment. Marguerite was one of three daughters he had at the time, plus he had two surviving sons, so Marguerite was a valuable pawn, but not an irreplaceable one.

Marrying his son to a prince of the blood was certainly a great honour for count Albert, but not an unwarranted one. The hundred years war was still going on which meant France and England were both trying to lure Holland into their camp. That meant, if Albert rejected Philipp, he could have easily made a similar deal with the English.

Which is why Albert’s wife, Margaret of Brieg felt emboldened to throw a curved ball. Sure, the count and countess would be most honoured to receive the most noble Marguerite into her family as the future countess, but what would be even more beneficial, for both sides, would be an even closer alliance, underpinned by one more marriage, that of Philipp’s heir, John the fearless to their daughter, who for the purposes of maximum confusion was also called Margaret.  

Basically, a double wedding, the heir of Holland marries the eldest daughter of the duke of Burgundy and the heir to Burgundy marries the eldest available daughter of the count of Holland.

The historian Bart van Loo wrote that “Philipp, experienced diplomat that he was, did not say a word and made a movement with his head that lay somewhere between nodding yes and shaking his head no.”

In 1385 the position of the wife of the heir to Burgundy was one of the major political assets in europe. Philipp had intended to use that as a tool to forge even deeper relations with the French court, for instance a marriage to a French princess. Spending all that firepower on a still quite remote chance of acquiring Holland, Zeeland and Hainault at a point of time far out in the future, aka a bet on the Wittelsbach’s dying out, that was not straightforward.

On the other hand, rejecting this offer could mean that Albert turned to the English, giving them another beachhead and open up a new frontier in the Hundred-Years war.

Into these calculations dropped an offer from the third party that sat around this table in Cambrai, Joanna of Brabant. As I mentioned, Brabant was the third powerful player in the low countries, their dukes were the legal successors of the old dukes of Lower Lothringia.

As it happened, the ducal family had come to the end of the line. Joanna had inherited the duchy from her father, but her marriages had failed to produce an heir. By 1385 she had turned 60 and her last husband, the duke Wenceslaus of Luxemburg had just died. A major succession crisis was looming. Moreover, Brabant was allied to France, whilst their next-door neighbour, the duke of Gelders, was friends with the English. If Albert walked away from the Burgundian alliance and shacked up with the perfidious Albion, then Brabant would be surrounded by enemies and might be overrun.

So, Joanna threw another pawn into the negotiation. She offered the duchy of Brabant to Philipp’s second son, should he agree on the double wedding with the count of Holland.

That was a prize Philip of Burgundy believed was worth having, Brabant guaranteed and an option on Holland, plus an alliance that kept the English out. Done.

So on April 12^th, 1385, these consequential weddings were celebrated over eight days with 20,000 guests, including king Charles VI of France. We mentioned the follow-on wedding of that self-same French King Charles VI to Isabeau of Bavaria, a cousin of Albert, which was also at least partially motivated by this alliance between Burgundy and Holland.

All this could have been not much more than a splendid feast that would not have had any material consequences for the counties of Holland, Zeeland and Hennegau. After all, the groom, count William was 20 years old, fit and healthy, a mighty warrior and all that. Little Margaret was only 11 years old at her wedding, but in a few years, she would certainly start to have children. And William had a brother, John, who was heading for an episcopal career, for which he was utterly unsuited. John got himself elected prince bishop of Liege, but avoided taking holy orders, meaning he could return to civil life any time if needed.

As I said, Philipp of Burgundy, known as the Bold, played a long game, a very long game indeed. When he passed in 1404, Joanna of Brabant was still alive and kicking. But 2 years later, as planned, Brabant went to Philipp’s younger son and from that point onward was firmly in the Burgundy orbit.

Where is the empire in all this? Brabant is after all an imperial fief. So how come the duchess can just willy nilly pass her lands on to whoever she thinks is most suitable?

The previous transition, when Joanna inherited the duchy from her father had happened with the consent of the emperor, Karl IV, since her husband was the emperor’s half-brother, Wenceslaus, duke of Luxembourg. In 1385, when Joanna made her offer, her husband was already dead. There was no emperor at the time, only a king of the Romans, and that king of the romans was Wenceslaus the Lazy, who had little capacity to deal with even issues right on his doorstep.

And at the time the actual transaction occurred, in 1406, the ruler of the empire was Ruprecht of the Palatinate, he of the empty pocket. Ruprecht must count as one of the empire’s least effectual rulers, and hence in no way able to stand up to the wealthy Burgundian duke.

So, the Burgundians got away with this and the duchy of Brabant came under Burgundian control. However, not under the direct control of Philipp’s eldest son and successor, but under that of his younger son Anthony.

Philipp’s successor as duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders was, John the Fearless, he of the disastrous attack at the battle of Nikopol (episode 168). Whilst his father was a bold but calculating risk taker, John was outright reckless.

When his father died, the regency of France and hence the access to the French treasury fell into the hands of the mad king’s brother Louis of Orleans. That so irritated John the Fearless that he in 1407 had Louis of Orleans murdered in the open, on the streets of Paris.

The net result of that was a civil war between the family and supporters of the dead duke of Orleans, led by the psychopathically cruel count Bernard of Armagnac. This civil war was only briefly interrupted to give the English a chance to comprehensively rout the French at Agincourt in 1415.

But even such a comprehensive defeat did not stop the Armagnacs and Burgundians to go at each other with the utmost brutality.

In May 1418, the Burgundians under John the fearless entered Paris and staged a massacre during which the count of Armagnac was skinned alive. Which then led to the second murder John the Fearless is famous for, his own. The dauphin, i.e., the son and heir of the mad king Charles VI lured John on to the bridge of Montereau and watched as his henchmen planted an axe into the head of the duke of Burgundy.

This murder pushed the son of John the Fearless. Philipp the Good, over the edge. Though he was still a prince of France, he decided to sell the kingdom out to the English. He brought the queen, Isabeau, over to his side, which was no mean feat given she had been closely attached to Louis of Orleans, the man Philipp’s father had murdered. Together they signed the treaty of Troyes with king Henry V of England. In this treaty, the mad king agreed to marry his daughter Catherine to king Henry V of England and to make him his heir and successor. To get rid of any potential claims of his own children, the queen Isabeau declared that her only surviving son, the dauphin Charles VII, was a bastard, and not the son of a king.

When a hundred years later the King Francois I of France visited the grave of John the Fearless, he was shown the shattered skull of the great duke. The monk who had led him there explained that this “was the opening through which the English came into France”.

But it was not only the route for the English into France, it was also the event that shifted the interest of the dukes of Burgundy firmly away from French domestic politics towards the creation of their own kingdom.

John the Fearless may have spent most of his blood and treasure on the French civil war, but he still kept a wary eye on goings-on in the Low Countries.

One key event was the battle of Othee in 1408. This was a battle between the citizens of Liege and their bishop. This bishop was none other than John of Bavaria, the brother of count William VI of Holland, Seeland and Hainault. John, as I mentioned had managed to get himself elected prince bishop of Liege at the rather early age of 17. He had never taken any holy orders, nor did he show even the slightest sign of spiritual aptitude. He had taken the job for the simple reason that the prince bishop of Liege controlled a large territory adjacent to his brother’s counties. And rather than having it administered by strawmen as had been the habit so far, the family had decided to place one of their own on the episcopal throne.

John had an incredible talent to rub up the locals in the wrong way. He kept pushing the citizens of Liege to give up their liberties, which they did not like. So, they threw him out. He was admitted back upon promising to stop being such a nuisance, a promise he then ignored, etc., etc., This had happened for the first time in 1390 and repeated several times over the next 15 years.

By 1408 the citizens of Liege had enough. They threw him out for good and elected a new bishop. John asked his brother William of Holland and his friend, the duke John the Fearless of Burgundy for help.

And John responded. He brought his battle-hardened Burgundian soldiers and lined them up against the city’s militia. This time John acted more thoughtful than at the fateful battle of Nikopol almost exactly 12 years earlier.  He held his cavalry forces together and made good use of the infantry and the Scottish archers he had hired. Despite their heroic resistance the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers of liege did not stand a chance. The defeat turned into a rout and then into a massacre. The two Johns and William of Holland had decided that they would not take any prisoners, since this was an uprising against the God-given universal order, not a battle between gentlemen.  John of bishop elect of Liege returned triumphant into his capital and had all the rebels who had not died in the field, hanged or thrown into the river, including the widow of the ringleader. This event gained John the moniker, John the Pitiless, which makes it a lot easier to keep him apart from all the other Johns.

What it also did was put John the Pitiless deep into debt with the dukes of Burgundy. From now on, John the Pitiless loyalty was split between his family and the Burgundians, though that was only a small commitment, since most of his loyalty was to himself.

Having secured a hold over Liege, his next move was to become a major stepping stone towards the big prize, control of Brabant, Limburg, Holland, Seeland and Hainault.

Because the options that his father had acquired with the double wedding of Cambrai were gradually moving into the money.

First up, the marriage between William of Holland and Margaret of Burgundy had not been particularly fruitful. I could not find any mention that the couple hated each other, but they preferred other people’s company to each other’s. William, who had a soft spot for Dutch girls, preferred to live in Holland. And in order to avoid conflict with Margaret, he installed her as governor of his county of Hainault. This arrangement suited both of them, and even more their cousins of Burgundy. Because distance made procreation hard. They did produce only one surviving child, after 16 years of marriage, a daughter, by the name of Jacqueline of Jacoba.

Jacqueline became a super famous figure in Dutch history due to her great struggle, her four marriages and for being much more than the usual pawn in the game of aristocratic marriages.

Jacqueline’s father, count William of Holland had resigned himself to never having a legitimate male heir, despite an impressive number of illegitimate offspring he had produced so far. At which point the question was whether he would name either his brother, the bishop elect John the Pitiless, or any of his Bavarian cousins to become his heir. Or, alternatively, he could try to keep his lands in the hands of his daughter. This latter route was definitely a lot harder to push through and required her to be married to a powerful and well-connected husband – or at least that is what everyone said.

William decided to go for option 2, passing it all to his beloved Jacqueline, even against all the odds. When he touched on the subject with the emperor Sigismund, he was asked, whether he does not have a suitable brother or cousin…

So, William went to the other side and in 1406 he betrothed little Jacqueline to one of the younger sons of King Charles VI, the Mad of France. This boy, John, duke of Touraine, was then 8 years old. As the future count of Holland and Hainault and to protect him from the chaos in Paris, he grew up at the court of his mother-in-law together with his future bride. The two only married in 1415 after the pope had given his dispensation for the marriage of these two closely related kids.

1415 was an eventful year. It was not only the year the battle of Agincourt happened, but also the year Louis, the dauphin of France died, making the 17-year-old husband of Jacqueline, the dauphin and future king of France.

And as such he had to go to Paris where the civil war was still raging, and the English were coming up the road. The young prince may have learned many things in the relative safety of his in-law’s castles, but not enough to survive the rough and tumble of French politics of the time. He barely lasted 2 years before he died, presumably from poisoning.

That was a blow for Jacqueline and for her father. One moment she was the future queen of France, her lands protected by the might of the largest kingdom in europe, and the next she was a vulnerable widow.

Her father and mother had at least to an extent planned for this eventuality. Jacqueline had received a very thorough education. The historian Bart van Loo described her as follows quote: “she was given a solid education: from botany through biblical history, mathematics and languages to the rules of etiquette. As a young girl she was just as good at analysing medicinal herbs as she was at knowing the correct way to wear a train. She was bright, inquisitive, and not especially pretty at first glance.” End quote. She loved riding, hunting and was no stranger to wearing armour.

But still, she was “just a mere woman” and as such she needed a husband, and soon. Into this predicament stepped William’s most helpful brother-in law and friend, John the Fearless of Burgundy. John had a suggestion that was just so appealing, it was hard to resist.

John’s nephew, the duke of Brabant, who was called again, John, was in need of a bride. This John’s father, Anthony had died at the battle of Agincourt, which had made John the Fearless the guardian of little John of Brabant.

This was – at least from a dynastic perspective – a perfect match. Bringing together Brabant and Limburg on the one hand and Holland, Seeland and Hainault on the other would create a huge contiguous territory stretching from the North See coast to Maastricht. That would definitely be a nice chunk for William’s beloved daughter and potential grandchildren. Moreover, Little John was 14 and no match for Jacqueline, now 17, well-educated and forged in the fire of French politics.

We will get to John the Fearless’ considerations in a minute.

Before that we should spare a thought for another key player in this – who inherits what – game, the emperor. It is now 1418 and the emperor is Sigismund, a much more energetic man than his two predecessors, as we have seen in the last season. And in 1418 he is at the top of his game. He had just closed the council of Constance that had brought an end to the schism, and he was travelling across europe as if he were indeed the head of all Christendom, mediating conflicts, even attempting to end the hundred-years war.

And when he saw the chips on the table in the western border of the empire, the homeland of his dynasty, he bought a seat in the game. He married his niece, Elizabeth of Görlitz to Anthony, the duke of Brabant and father of young John. And Elisabeth brought with her another big piece of the jigsaw, the duchy of Luxemburg.

What is now in the pot of this mother of all poker games are three duchies, Brabant, Limburg and Luxemburg and three counties, Holland, Seeland and Hainault, and given the episcopal power was waning here as it did in the rest of the empire, a few prince bishoprics as well. Geographically that is the Netherlands, Luxemburg and chunks of Belgium.

And all that was to go to little John of Brabant and his bride, the formidable Jacqueline of Holland and Hainault.

Which leaves just one question, why did John the Fearless think this was a good idea. Sure, little John is his nephew and one of his next of kin, but if he ruled such a huge landmass, it was only a question of time before he would challenge his uncle.

John the Fearless did not leave notes, so all this is speculation. He did know both Jacqueline and John and if he knew them, he must have known that these two would not get on. Jacqueline was smart and headstrong, John was truly gormless, so gormless, he wouldn’t recognise a gorm if it jumped at him. This marriage was never going to work out, meaning the couple would not have children. If that was the case, all of John’s property, which by law now included Jacqueline’s would go to his closest living male relative, who happened to be, yes, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy. Slowly, slowly the option shifts further in to the money.

The duke of Burgundy was right. His nephew Brabant was what my son calls an NPC, a non-player character in a video game. Someone who is just there and can be moved to wherever the dominant player wants him to stand. He may have all the glittering titles and hundreds of noble lords in his retinue, but he had no urge to use them to his advantage. He failed in the one key criterion that Jacqueline’s father should have focused on – ability to protect her inheritance.

Maybe William thought he still had a few more years and maybe more children in him. He was 52 years old, not exactly young, but also not ready for the scrapheap just yet. But that is where he ended up, in May 1417, from the most ignominious of reasons, a bite from one of his dogs. The wound got infected and, since Jacqueline’s knowledge of medicinal herbs did no yet comprise Penicillin, this minor injury became fatal.

Once William had moved up to sing with the angels, Jacqueline and John of Brabant had to act swiftly. They had to progress through all of Jacqueline’s lands, collect oaths of allegiance and take hold of the leavers of power.

Things worked out fine in Hainault, where the couple started out. But when they got into Holland, things were a lot dicier. Holland had been riven between two factions, the Cods and the Hooks for decades. We will talk more about them next episode, but in a very broad sense, the Cods represented the more progressive, business-oriented city dwellers whilst the Hooks represented the feudal, land-based aristocracy. Jacquleine and her father had been aligned with the Hooks, making it hard for them to get into the towns held by the Cods.

And remember, there were several other players on that poker table eying this mother of all pots.

One of them was Jacqueline’s uncle, John the Pitiless, the bishop elect of Liege. John immediately shed his belief that the universal order had placed the cities beneath his feet and he lined up with the Cods.

And there is the emperor Sigismund. Sigismund was not at all happy with all that backroom dealing. He was after all the emperor and as such was the one to decide what happened to Holland, Seeland and Hainault.

Sigismund concluded that the best way forward was to urge John the Pitiless to ditch the episcopal pallium, marry his recently widowed niece Elisabeth of Gorlitz and get enfeoffed with the three counties. That at least looked as if he was in charge here.

The next thing he did was to lean on pope Martin V, the man he had more or less lifted to the papal throne, to block the marriage of Jacqueline and John.

Things came to a head when Jacqueline and her Hooks pursued John the Pitiless behind the walls of Dordrecht. They put Dordrecht under siege, which, as we now know in the early 15^th century was an arduous task. Jacqueline’s husband, little John of Brabant came to support her, and they could surround the city. Now it was a question of waiting until hunger forced Dordrecht to hand over John the Pitiless to be be locked up somewhere safe, and Jacqueline be recognised as countess across all her lands.

But it never got there. After 6 weeks John and his Brabanters returned home. The city could no longer be fully enveloped, so Jacqueline’s allies gave up too.

The countess had to sit down to negotiate with her uncle. Mediating the whole process was the invisible hand in the background. Not John the Fearless who was riding hard and fast towards the bridge of Montereau to get his head kicked in. Instead, he sent his son and heir, Philipp, soon to the Philipp the Good, duke of Burgundy. Philipp was much more like his grandfather, calculating, patient and cunning playing the long, long game.

He looked at the state of affairs and realised that Jacqueline’s position was hopeless. He convinced her that she had to allow John the Pitiless to keep what he had already conquered and make him governor of the rest of the counties of Holland and Seeland for five years. He was also made her heir in case she died without offspring. In return, John the Pitiless gave up claims on Hainault. And finally, they bought off the enfeoffment by the emperor Sigismund for 100,000 florins. When that sum wasn’t paid, John the Pitiless swapped the claim for an extension of his governorship to 12 years.

Jacqueline was already seething that her gormless husband had left her before Dordrecht. The pitiful outcome of the negotiations with John the Pitiless did not help either. And the extension, which was kept concealed from her added even more fire to the flames.

The animosity between husband and wife mounted and mounted as time went by. John’s Burgundian advisors kept dripping poison into his ears, setting him against his wife. Jacqueline reacted rather impetuously and one of these advisors choked on something unhealthy. He was quickly replaced by another who strengthened his hold over gormless John with the aid of his beautiful and open-minded wife.

Jacqueline found herself more and more ostracised at court. John the Gormless took revenge for the death of his advisor by cutting off Jacqueline’s ladies in waiting, even going so far as not the serve them any food during the easter celebrations.

Jacqueline was so humiliated watching her ladies going hungry in full view of everyone, she ran out of the hall, across town and sought refuge with her mother at an inn. With that the marriage was effectively over.

Jacqueline fled from Brussels and went to her county of Hainault. She declared to the estates of Hainault that she believed her marriage to the gormless John of Brabant was null and void. They were cousins and as such too closely related to get married. Though the pope had revoked his initial ban of the marriage, he had as of now not provided a formal dispensation. A case, initiated by the emperor Sigismund was pending in Rome and as long as that was the case, she was not married. Her cousin of Brabant had no authority here in Hainault or in her other counties of Holland and Seeland.

The nobles and churchmen of Hainault listened and performed that same movement we have seen Philipp the Bold do, sort of nodding and sort of shaking their heads. Whatever this was, this was not good news for Hainault. The most likely outcome of her staying here was war, and war was painful. So, they let her know that if she stayed and Brabant and Burgundy invaded, they would find little resistance.

Jacqueline needed a new supporter. But who. France was broken. Its mad king was in the hands of Burgundy, and the dauphin was fighting a war for survival against the English. Emperor Sigismund was opposed to her inheriting anything. So, England was the only option, even though King Henry V was an ally of Philipp the Good of Burgundy.

When she arrived in 1421 at Dover she was welcomed by the king’s younger brother, the dashing Humphrey of Gloucester. Humphrey was exactly the kind of man she liked, she needed. Handsome, warlike but also interested in art and well educated.

He kept a huge library by the standards of the time which he left to the university of Oxford. Fans of Harry Potter will immediately recognise the Duke Humfrey library as Hermione’s favourite haunt.

Much has been made of the passion Jacqueline had allegedly felt for Humphrey, but there is no denying that he was also the perfect candidate for the Job. A younger brother of the king, which should give him access to military resources and cash, and a desire to own lands in his own right, not just on behalf of the crown.

So, in September 1422, Jacqueline, countess of Holland, Seeland and Hainault married Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, his first and her third marriage. With the added frisson that in the mind of much of Europe Jacqueline was still married to John of Brabant. A scandal of epic proportions, but taking place in a period of dramatic upheaval, the Hundred year’s war in its final throws and the War of the Roses looming. Chances aren’t great that Jacqueline can get away with it, but definitely not zero.

Whether she does or does not is what we are going to discuss next week. I hope you will tune in again.

And as usual, if you feel this is a worthwhile effort, make a contribution to the show at historyofthegermans.com/support.

Ludwig the Rich and Albrecht IV

On November 14^th and 15^th 1475 one of the grandest events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire took place, the Landshuter Hochzeit, the nuptials of Georg, the Rich, son of Ludwig, the Rich and grandson of Heinrich, the Rich, all of them dukes of Bayern-Landshut, and Hedwig, the daughter of king Kasimir IV of Poland and Lithuania.

The event attracted 10,000 guests, amongst them the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Dukes of Württemberg, the archduke Maximilian of Austria and the emperor Friedrich III himself. It lasted several days during which the eminent invitees as well as the citizens of Landshut ate, drank, danced and watched an endless row of tournaments, plays and musical performances.

The fame of these festivities reverberated through the ages, so that in the 19^th century the burghers of the town decided to stage the event again, initially annually and nowadays every 4 years. The reenactment involves over 2,000 participants, and culminates in a procession through the city, complete with bridal carriage, musicians and Landsknechte, all in splendid historical costumes.

Which leaves us with more questions than answers. How come the most powerful ruler of central Europe, Kasimir King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania married one of his precious daughters to the son of the ruler of half a duchy, hundreds of miles from his capital; secondly, how such a duke became so rich he could afford to stage an event that counted amongst the grandest weddings of this already very ostentatious century; and lastly, why Landshut is today a gorgeous, but only medium sized country town, and by no means the beating heart of Bavarian commerce, culture and politics.

That is what we are going to explore in this episode.

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Transcript

On November 14^th and 15^th 1475 one of the grandest events in the history of the Holy Roman Empire took place, the Landshuter Hochzeit, the nuptials of Georg, the Rich, son of Ludwig, the Rich and grandson of Heinrich, the Rich, all of them dukes of Bayern-Landshut, and Hedwig, the daughter of king Kasimir IV of Poland and Lithuania.

The event attracted 10,000 guests, amongst them the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Dukes of Württemberg, the archduke Maximilian of Austria and the emperor Friedrich III himself. It lasted several days during which the eminent invitees as well as the citizens of Landshut ate, drank, danced and watched an endless row of tournaments, plays and musical performances.

The fame of these festivities reverberated through the ages, so that in the 19^th century the burghers of the town decided to stage the event again, initially annually and nowadays every 4 years. The reenactment involves over 2,000 participants, and culminates in a procession through the city, complete with bridal carriage, musicians and Landsknechte, all in splendid historical costumes.

Which leaves us with more questions than answers. How come the most powerful ruler of central Europe, Kasimir King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania married one of his precious daughters to the son of the ruler of half a duchy, hundreds of miles from his capital; secondly, how such a duke became so rich he could afford to stage an event that counted amongst the grandest weddings of this already very ostentatious century; and lastly, why Landshut is today a gorgeous, but only medium sized country town, and by no means the beating heart of Bavarian commerce, culture and politics.

That is what we are going to explore in this episode.

But before we start just a brief thank you for sticking around during this period of nasal congestion that made it hard and at times impossible to record the show. As you may hear, I have now at least partially recovered and hope to record this without the crutches of artificial intelligence. Let’s see. If you find this nasal sound irritating, I will produce a separate AI version that will be made available on the historyofthegermans.com website in the membership section. To become a member, just head to historyofthegermans.com/support.

And special thanks go to Lincoln B., Stephen, Palle H., the always supportive Tom B., Schlager-H., Georgi Nikolaev and Matthew V. who have already signed up.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we lived through the tragic end of Agnes Bernauer, the love interest of the wayward only son and heir to the duchy of Bavaria-Munich. Sad as her violent demise was, politically it put an end to the potential succession crisis. Albrecht III, the young duke who had once been prepared to give it all up for love, retuned to the straight and narrow and married a suitable princess. As our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini described it quote: “She was a beautiful woman with exquisite manners and knew how to rule a man with sweet words and womanly arts. Albrecht sired children from her.” (end quote) The fact that it was a whole brace of sons has its own issues we will get to in time, but for now, Bavaria-Munich is stable.

And 12 years after the death of Agnes Bernauer, another of the protagonists of last week’s episode, Ludwig the Bearded, the duke of Bavaria-Ingolstadt, the third of the Bavarian duchies, died after a life of feuds, violence and betrayal. This large and wealthy part of the duchy went in its entirety to the Landshut branch of the family. Since the fourth branch, Bavaria-Straubing, had already gone extinct in 1425, the duchy of Bavaria was now shared amongst just two sets of cousins, the dukes of Bavaria-Munich and the dukes of Bavaria-Landshut.

Which gets us to the first question we raised in the introduction, why were the dukes of Bavaria-Landshut so rich when they only held a part of the former duchy of Bavaria?

One key asset was ownership of Kitzbühel and Kufstein. These two places are still very wealthy today, but not for the same reason. Kitzbühel is the skiing suburb of Munich, the place where the Schickeria who cannot be bothered to press on to Lech, goes skiing, or goes out parading their fur coats.

If by the way you want to go to Kitzbühel and enjoy the brilliant ski resort without having to mortgage one of your villages, stay at the top of the Hahnenkamm at the Hocheckhütte. No luxury, bunk beds in shared accommodation, showers across the corridor, but lovely hosts, a wood paneled dining room and you are guaranteed to be the first one up on the piste in the morning and also the first at the Après Ski at the Hahnenkammbar.

During the days of the rich dukes of Bavaria-Landshut, the delights of bombing down the Streif followed by even deadlier Jagerbombs had yet been unknown, nor had it occurred to anyone that they could lure human ATMs to come up to their remote valleys all under their own steam.

But what Kitzbühel and Kufstein offered were silver mines. The seam that had turned Schwaz and the Tyrol into the greatest source of silver in the pre-modern period had an extension that filled the pockets of our Landshuter dukes.

As much as this was an appreciated contribution, the mines were only a partial driver of the wealth of the dukes.

As we have heard in the last few episodes, the 15^th century was a period when long distance trading and banking services made many of the cities in the South of Germany very, very, very rich. So, did these Bavarian dukes control any one of those centers?

The four largest cities in modern day Bavaria are Munich, Nürnberg, Augsburg and Regensburg. Munich in the 15^th century was on a rising tide, being the residence of the dukes of Bavaria-Munich and having recently received a boost in the form of a road down to Innsbruck, but in the 15^th century, it was still just a medium sized town, if that. Nürnberg was in Franconia, not in Bavaria, and a free and imperial city, unwilling to yield to anyone. Augsburg, home to the Fugger, Welser and Hochstetter, too wasn’t part of the medieval duchy of Bavaria, but part of upper Swabia, plus also a free and imperial city.

Regensburg was surrounded by Bavarian territory and the dukes had some influence in the city despite its status as a free and imperial city. But Regensburg had been outmaneuvered by the likes of Augsburg, Vienna, Nürnberg and the other Swabian cities, had lost its central role in long distance trade and had gone effectively bankrupt as the patricians had been extracting cash the same way we had seen it happening in Mainz.

So no, the cities and towns of Bavaria, Ingolstadt, Landshut, Freising, Straubing, Dachau etc, were country towns. Important local centers where local farmers brought their produce to market and bought the cloth and tools they could not get back home in their villages. Some of the excess agricultural production was exported, but there was not much in terms of specialized trades sending luxury goods all across europe, like the armorers of Augsburg or the cartographers of Nürnberg did.

So, what was it that made this otherwise unremarkable economic system so successful?

The answer is – law and order.

With the demise of central authority in the empire, responsibility for keeping the roads safe from bandits had gone to the local princes. And the Bavarian dukes, both those in Landshut and those in Munich took this responsibility seriously. They smoked out the robber barons and hanged the highwaymen. They strengthened the system of courts and local mediators that gave people reassurance that their property was protected and that contracts would be honored.

This policy benefitted considerably from the fact that the ducal territory was largely contiguous, i.e., there were only very few exclaves sprinkled inside it, and most of those were bishoprics which had submitted to ducal power fairly early on. Ludwig IV, the second of the rich dukes, who ruled Bavaria-Landshut from 1450 to 1479 pushed this policy beyond the confines of his own principality.

He agreed a Landfrieden, a common peace with his cousin, Albrecht III of Bavaria-Munich. Such an arrangement included both a commitment to refrain from mutual attacks, but also to support efforts to maintain law and order, apprehend wrongdoers who had fled across the border and recognize court orders. That meant from 1451 onwards the old duchy of Bavaria had again a common legal framework and enforcement mechanism.

And because both Ludwig the Rich and Albrecht III were so good at this, more local lords joined their arrangement. First, their cousin Friedrich der Siegreiche  (the Victorious) of the Palatinate, our friend from episode 189 came in, then a number of the Swabian free and imperial cities we met in episode 193 joined, followed by some of the independent knights and counts of the area, and finally in 1455 Sigismund of the Tyrol joined.

We have met Sigismund before. He was the dissolute ruler of Tyrol who came to depend on the Fugger loans to keep his extravagant court, rapacious mistresses and pointless wars going. Even the Habsburg dukes further east showed an interest.

What this meant was a number of things.

First, it meant that Ludwig the Rich, as leader of this consortium was now in charge and able to keep the roads across the Brenner pass and through southern Germany safe. That significantly increased the volume and value of goods travelling along those roads, which in turn allowed Ludwig to collect more tolls, tolls merchants were happy to pay as it saved them the much higher expense of armed guards – it was a win-win for all concerned.

The third source of wealth for both duchies was a fundamental transformation of the state apparatus. When the previous generation, represented in its purest form by Ludwig the Bearded, cared about personal honor, representations and fighting in full armor for both business and pleasure, this new crop of princes were prepared to do the drudgework, scrutinising bills, reclaiming lost property, building infrastructure, resolving disputes, not as a means to collect bribes, but as a way to provide fair justice, and all the other stuff that comes with actual administration.

By those means Ludwig the Rich improved the yield on his estates and manors, and was able to acquire ownership of the salt production at Bad Reichenhall, the largest industrial enterprise in his lands. Bad Reichenhaller salt is still one of the leading brands in Germany.  

Having a prince who secured law and order, kept the roads safe, stopped the incessant feuding and spent money on building infrastructure, such a prince gained the right to do the most profitable thing a prince could do – tax his subjects. Sure princes have tried to tax their subjects for a long time, but usually the estates limited or blocked these attempts, citizens hid their wealth or bribed the tax collectors, meaning the tax raised was always disappointing. In the states of Ludwig the Rich, the subjects saw some value in paying the tax, which must have made collection easier. Add to that the build out of a professional bureaucracy staffed with lawyers trained at the newly founded universities, and you get the beginnings of a modern state. Such a state needed a university, which is why in 1472, Ludwig founded the university of Ingolstadt, which would later morph into the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

Ludwig the Rich hired one of the first professional prime ministers in German history, Dr. Martin Mayr. Mayr had studied law in Heidelberg and immediately after graduation he was hired by the city of Nürnberg as a city chancellor and senior diplomat. Almost over night Mayr became a hugely influential figure within the complex political system of the Holy Roman Empire. Practically on his first day he was sent out to rally support amongst various princely courts for the city in its conflict with the Hohenzollern. That brought him, amongst other things to the court of the emperor Friedrich III in Vienna. Friedrich III who took an interest in the young lawyer and engaged him to prepare the Reichstag of 1454 where the defense against the Turks was to be discussed.

This imperial favor was not rewarded with Mayr’s appreciation of the sovereign. Mayr concluded a) that the empire urgently needed reform to halt the decay and to defend Christendom against the Turks, and b) that Friedrich III was not the man to deliver this kind of reform. He became a one man machine seeking to elevate a proactive and capable prince who could bring about this change. In 1457 he rallied several prince electors around the idea of putting Friedrich the Victorious, Count Palatine on the Rhine, onto the imperial throne. And he nearly succeeded, his plans only been thwarted at the very last minute.

Mayr’s machinations did force the various princes in southern Germany to take sides, either for the elected emperor Friedrich III or for the challenger, Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate.

The supporters on the imperial side were obviously the members of the Habsburg family, as well as the Margraves of Baden and the Dukes of Württemberg. The leader of this faction was however not the emperor, a man history remembers as the Reichserzschlafmütze, the imperial arch-sleepyhead. Instead it was Albrecht, margrave of Brandenburg, who the inevitable Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini described as follows: quote

“How great isn’t the glory of Albrecht, margrave of Brandenburg, whether you consider his strength or prudence? From childhood, he was trained in the use of weapons, and he has participated in more wars than others have read about. He has fought in Poland, Silesia, Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. In all of Germany, there is almost no area where he has not marched under arms. He has led large armies and defeated ferocious enemies. He has fought nine wars against the people of Nürnberg – the victor in eight and the loser in one, in which he was betrayed and almost caught by treason but was saved from the threatening danger by a sudden energetic effort. In battles, it was he who opened the fight and was the last to leave, as a victor. Often challenged to duels, he always defeated his enemy.

He ran 17 times in tournaments, where they attack with sharp lances and are only protected by a shield, and was always victorious. When storming cities, he was often the first to climb the wall. Therefore, he is justly called the German Achilles, and, indeed, we know of nobody whom this age could prefer to him or even consider as an equal. Military skills and talents of leadership shine forth in this man, but also his family’s nobility, his physical stature, his handsomeness of face, his eloquence, and his strength make him admirable.” (unquote)

What a nice guy, as long as he is on your side.

As it happened, he wasn’t on the side of the duke of Bavaria Landshut. Our man Ludwig the Rich had shifted to the anti-imperial side, because after all, Friedrich the Victorious was his cousin and a key member of his Landfrieden Consortium. And Michael Mayr, the instigator of it all, had become his prime minister. One ally they thought they could count on was their cousin Albrecht III of the Munich branch. Bur before we get too excited, here is what Piccolomini had to say about him (quote): “loved music and greatly enjoyed singing, but his greatest pleasure was hunting. He is a veritable enemy of wolves. He has huts built in trees, furnished as a chamber. There he lies concealed, and when he has lured the wolves there with food and sees a number of them, he draws the bowstring and shoots the animals. Thus, he spends the whole winter, when there is snow and horrible cold.” (end quote). The other problem with Albrecht III was that he died in 1460, just when the conflict reached boiling point.

What really helped Ludwig the Rich and his friends was that Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg had made a lot of enemies with all this marching of armies back and forth across the German lands and the spearing opponents at tournaments.

Furthermore, Albrecht Achilles long term plan was to revive the old stem duchy of Franconia, with him as duke, obviously. That irritated the current theoretical holder of that largely defunct title, the prince bishop of Würzburg. Then there were his constant wars with the city of Nürnberg. After eight wars it was quite clear where he stood and where the city stood, so Nürnberg joined the Palatine-Bavarian coalition.

Things ratchet up one level further when Albrecht Achilles declared that his lawcourt was to become the imperial court, as in the highest court for the duchies of Swabia, Franconia and Bavaria. That lined up a whole cohort of minor princes, bishops and cities against the imperial side. Because if they had to submit to a court of the margrave of Brandenburg, their chances of forming their own viable states were gone for good.   

And finally, incoming stage right, was the most improbable of allies. Georg of Podiebrad.

Georg who?

If you have followed season 9 on the Hussite wars, the name may ring a bell. Georg of Podiebrad had become king of Bohemia in 1458, though not everyone recognised him as such, certainly not the pope and not emperor Friedrich III. Pope and emperor believed, the previous king of Bohemia, the emperor Sigismund had passed the Bohemian crown to the Habsburgs, which by now meant emperor Friedrich III himself. Georg of Podiebrad had been raised to the throne not by inheritance but by the decision of the estates of Bohemia, most of whom were Hussites and hence – if no longer explicitly heretics – were still a deeply suspect lot.

By bringing Georg of Podiebrad into the fold of the princely fronde against the emperor, the Bohemians and their Hussite faith was readmitted into polite society. So much so that Dr. Martin Mayr at a later stage proposed Georg as a future emperor.

But before we move any further, let’s just recognise something quite fundamental here: The Wittelsbachs are back on the national stage. Last episode they were nothing than a babbling, squabbling bunch of baboons, burning each other’s villages, and now they find themselves once again in the running for the imperial title, able to bring Bohemia back from the cold and just generally being important again. Not bad for a young prince who took over only a few years after the last of the wars between the Wittelsbach cousins.

Avoiding war between cousins did however not prevent war entirely. The two sides, the imperial faction lead by Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg and the reform-oriented grouping put together by Ludwig the Rich and Dr. Martin Mayr were set to clash.

The conflict escalated when Ludwig the Rich decided to incorporate the free imperial city of Donauwörth into his territory. The constitutional status of Donauwörth was at least doubtful, due to some financial machinations under emperor Karl IV. This uncertainty had already triggered the 1376 war between the Swabian cities and king Wenceslaus the Lazy and will continue being a flashpoint well into the 30-years war.

In October 1458, Ludwig the Rich occupied Donauwörth. The  citizens call upon the emperor to come to their aid. Friedrich III declares the occupation illegal and places Ludwig in the imperial ban, and instructs Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg to execute this order.

Ludwig’s response was to make a pact with his cousin Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate “for life”. Immediately thereafter the imperial faction too agrees a pact, this one only for 10 years. At the end of 1459, the imperial faction declares war on Ludwig and Friedrich.

One leg of this war we have already discussed. This is the same war we have encountered as the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, when Baden, Württemberg, Mainz and Metz set out to smash up Heidelberg. And as we remember, their effort came to a dramatic and unexpected halt when Friedrich the Victorious was – well – victorious at the battle of Seckenheim.

A few weeks later it is Ludwig the Rich who scores a modest win, but a win nevertheless. Albrecht Achilles has to come to the negotiation table and give up his ambitions to become duke of Franconia and have his law court lording it over everyone. In exchange, Ludwig returns Donauwörth. So, on paper it seems as if nothing had happened, but in reality, a whole lot has happened. Ludwig and his cousin Friedrich have become the most important political axis in Southern Germany. The Wittelsbachs are again at the top table. Their system of common peace sweeps up most of Swabia and Bavaria, making them, not Achilles the highest legal authority in the south.

Towards the end of his reign, Ludwig the Rich makes one last major move. As Georg of Podiebrad’s finds it harder and harder to resist the pressure from the papacy, Ludwig swapped sides. He makes peace with the emperor Friedrich III, who by now is no longer a viable threat to him. 

And all that explains why in 1475 Ludwig the Rich is able to host the wedding of the century. Arguably now the most important prince in the empire, his son is a coveted son-in-law, in particular for the king of Poland, who had just positioned his son as king of Bohemia and potential successor to Georg of Podiebrad.

And it explains the presence of so many important princes including the emperor Friedrich III and his son Maximilian, confirming their recent alliance.

As for the splendour of the event, Piccolomini offers an explanation that went beyond the usual “keeping up with the Jones”. (quote): “While his father lived, he [Ludwig] was given a strict upbringing and was allowed neither to consort with harlots and prostitutes nor to have feasts. He had little money to spend and was continuously urged to be virtuous. He did not render his father’s labour vain, for when he took up the reins of government, he became an excellent prince, even though he did not imitate his father’s frugality (some say his avarice).” (end quote). In other words, Ludwig loved luxury and splendour because his daddy had been mean to him, preventing him for consorting with harlots, as had seemingly been the right of any young prince.

Ludwig the Rich died in 1479, his cousin Friedrich the Victorious had already passed away in 1476. Ludwig’s only son Georg, the one who had married Hedwiga of Poland at that splendid wedding, was an ok ruler. He continued the build-out of the state and diligently managed the finances. But he completely lacked the diplomatic skill and standing of his father. Though the duchy’s resources were undiminished, Georg was by no means the most important prince in the empire.

The same could be said for the successor of Friedrich the Victorious, his nephew Philipp, “der Aufrichtige”, which translates as Philipp the Honest. Being called honest is rarely the kind of moniker that is given to a ruler who is pushing hard to get to the top.

Basically, it looked as if the Wittelsbachs were about to slide back into the second league.

But there is one more branch we have not talked about much, the dukes of Bavaria-Munich. Last we heard was that Albrecht III, former lover of Agnes Bernauer, liked to hunt wolves by hiding in trees. Which is pretty much all he did, apart from bringing in similar reforms to his state that his cousin in Landshut had done. When Albrecht III breathed his last in 1460, he left behind a well-ordered but largely harmless political entity. What he also left behind was an abundance of sons, seven in total. The silver lining was that he ordered that always only the two eldest sons should rule, whilst the others were to receive pensions and live the quiet life.

The eldest, Ernst had died even before his father, so that sons number two and three, John and Sigismund, took over in 1460. John had the decency to die in 1463, which meant the fourth brother, Albrecht, moved on to the list. Sigismund and Albrecht ruled together until 1465 when Sigismund formally resigned his position.

Sigismund was a friend of the arts, not a man of action. By his own admission, he was not designed for  the daily grind. So he happily retired to his castle to paint watercolours or some such thing and left the running of the duchy to his younger brother. Albrecht IV neglected to elevate his next youngest brother to co-rulership which caused no end of headaches and chivalric tales, but made him the sole duke.

And when Ludwig the Rich was already a new kind of ruler, Albrecht IV is even more firmly in the modern world. He was unbelievably ambitious and prepared to take the pain. Not the pain that comes from being knocked off a horse in a tournament, but the pain that one endures during an all-nighter with accountants. His contemporaries laughed at him, called him a Federfuchser, a pen pusher. His richer cousins in Landshut looked down on him, his modest court and lack of bling.

Amongst the reforms he introduced, beyond administration and taxation, was a fundamental cleanup of the church. He went through monasteries, parishes and bishoprics, removed dissolute prelates and replaced them with pious, learned monks and priests. He restricted the excesses of the indulgences to a minimum, and limited the flow of cash out to Rome. This not only improved the spiritual well-being of his subjects, but also gave him access to the vast wealth and resources of the church.

If he had anything in common with anyone in this period, it was probably with Jakob Fugger. The two men shared the commercial acumen and the burning ambition. Where Fugger wanted to become the richest man who ever lived, Albrecht wanted to bring the old stem duchy of Bavaria back together. And that meant not just taking over the lands of the Landshut cousins, but also the source of all the coin in Europe, the Tyrol and its silver mines. The Tyrol had once been part of the stem duchy of Bavaria and been a Wittelsbach possession in the golden days of the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian.

It sounds ambitious, but not impossible. The Tyrol had its great vulnerability in the form of its ruler, Sigismund, he of the magnificent manors, pretentious paramours and fruitless fighting. And for all these pastimes, Sigismund needed money, a huge amount of money.

By 1479, after 10 years of toiling with accountants, tax managers and investment advisors, Albrecht IV had become rich, almost as rich as his cousins in Landshut. Rich enough to help out poor Sigismund of the Tyrol. But he did not want to do this alone. Albrecht IV, as we need to remember, wanted to bring the House of Wittelsbach back to power, not just his little statelet. So he made a huge effort to cut his cousin Georg in on the deal.

And Georg could see the great opportunity that was appearing before their eyes. They pooled their money and started lending to their distant cousin Sigismund in exchange for mortgages over his lands. In 1482 one of these mortgages, over the county of Burgau, was turned into an outright sale to Georg. In 1487, Sigmund handed over the whole of Further Austria, meaning the south west corner of modern day Germany, as well as half of Alsace and the Sundgau to be administered by the Wittelsbach cousins for 10 years. And in the same year, they seal the final deal, the big one. Sigismund and Albrecht make each other the heirs to their respective fortunes, should they die without legitimate male offspring. That seemed an ok deal given Sigismund was childless and Albrecht IV unmarried.

That latter state of affairs did however not last very long. Amongst the guests at Sigismund’s grand court in Innsbruck was the emperor’s only daughter, Kunigunde. Kunigunde had grown up in a more liberal environment than was common. She had acquired not just the usual skills of reading, writing and embroidery but had learned to ride, to hunt as well as mathematics and astronomy. She was the apple of her father’s eye and had been brought to Innsbruck to be kept safe. Instead, she fell for Albrecht IV, who must have displayed some alluring attributes beyond pen pushing.

The emperor Friedrich III was already pretty annoyed with Albrecht’s expansion plans, in particular since he intended to take over the Tyrol himself upon Sigmund’s demise. So one would think this unplanned liaison was the thing that broke the camels back. But it wasn’t.

Where Friedrich III drew the line was when Albrecht IV tried to buy the free imperial city of Regensburg. As mentioned before, Regensburg was essentially bankrupt due to declining trade and a rapacious upper class. Albrecht IV did what he always did, he offered money. He promised to wipe out their debt in exchange for submitting to his authority. The burghers wrote to Friedrich III and told him that unless he could rustle up a few hundred thousand gulden, they would have to take that deal. Friedrich III did not have a few hundred thousand gulden and so Regensburg signed on the dotted line.

But what Fridrich had was that he now really had it. The Regensburg deal was a breach of imperial law, or so he declared and he called for an imperial war against Albrecht and his cousin Georg. Albrecht’s response was to swiftly marry Kunigunde, against her father’s explicit wishes.

This could have been the high point of the house of Wittelsbach. Friedrich III was not a powerful prince any more. His hold on the Habsburg positions was fragile, he had been defeated in his war against the king of Hungary and was in no position to take on the Wittelsbach cousins and their vast financial resources.

If it had been just Friedrich III, the Wittelsbachs would have taken over the Tyrol, would have gained the imperial crown and Munich would have indeed become the capital of Germany.

But Friedrich III was not alone. He had a son, Maximilian. Maximilian had not only been elected and crowned King of the Romans, more importantly, he had married Marie of Burgundy and subsequently inherited and then defended a large part of her immense wealth. This marriage, gave him the resources to rebuild the Habsburg position in the empire as we will see in the upcoming Habsburg series. And one of these recovery actions was to use Fugger money and personal charm he convinced the estates of Tyrol to depose Sigismund and to hand over the county to him, not to Albrecht IV.

That would have just evened out the respective positions given the range of issues Friedrich III and Maximilian had to deal with at the same time. But the reason the balance ultimately tilted against the House of Wittelsbach was a self-inflicted issue.

Did I mention that cousin Georg from Landshut had some  deficits when it came to diplomacy? Well, that deficit turned out to be massive. In the years since his father’s passing, Georg had managed to not just irritate but enrage the free imperial cities of Swabia who had once been part of the Landfrieden consortium. Ulm and others were so upset, they decided to take up the mantle of executor of Friedrich’s demand to wage war against the Wittelsbachs.

This renewed Swabian league immediately attracted other members of the former “imperial faction”, like the dukes of Württemberg the margraves of Brandenburg and Baden, the archbishop of Mainz and even Sigismund of the Tyrol himself. The Wittelsbachs were isolated and outnumbered. It wasn’t even necessary to go to war after all. Cousin Georg caved almost immediately. He paid 36,000 gulden as a fine, handed back all he had gained in the previous decade and it seems wrote off a lot of the debts Sigismund of Tyrol had piled up.

His cousin gone, Albrecht IV was now all alone in the field. He was a steadfast man and kept going, but in the end could not hold. A combination of a rebellion by some of his nobles, the threat of a Swabian Bund army marching in and a further upswing in the Habsburg fortunes forced him to submit to Maximilian. He gave up Regensburg and some of the territorial gains he had so patiently worked for.

The rise of the Wittelsbachs was again cut short.

The last act of the drama came when cousin Georg died in 1503. According to the family pact that underpinned the various divisions of the Wittelsbach territories, every time one of the branches died out in the male line, the lands had to return to the remaining lines. That is what happened with Straubing and Ingolstadt and that was what should now happen with Landshut, since Georg and his Polish bride did not have any male children. In other words, the duchy of Landshut was to go in its entirety to Albrecht IV.

But when Georg passed, his testament was unveiled and the last of the Landshut dukes had determined that all his lands and wealth were to go, not to Albrecht IV, but to his daughter and her husband, Ruprecht of the Palatinate, youngest son of the ruling Count Palatine, Philipp.

This was a scandal that went against some of the fundamental rules that underpinned the functioning of the Holy Roman Empire. Why Georg did that is unclear, but likely the relationship between the cousins had suffered during the recent setbacks and the Landshut duke blamed Albrecht IV for having lured him into this dangerous adventure that had brought him close to ruin.

With two pretenders for the riches of Landshut in play, war was inevitable. And given that it was again, two branches of the Wittelsbach family fighting each other, it was clear who would win, whatever the outcome, and that was the house of Habsburg, the dukes of Württemberg and any other neighbouring statelet with an axe to grind.

The war, as most of these events was just a continued sequence of raids into each other’s territory with few, if any battles. For two years, the war of the Landshut succession devastated Bavaria, undoing much of the good work done by the last generation of Bavarian dukes. By 1505 both sides reached the necessary level of exhaustion to come to an arrangement.

The Palatinate had to give back a lot of the gains made by Friedrich the Victorious in the Mainzer Stiftsfehde 40 years earlier. The Landshut territory was to be divided up, with a northern part forming a new principality of Pfalz-Neuburg given to the sons of Ruprecht of the Palatinate; the central part was granted to Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich, and the southern bit, with the lucrative silver mines of Kitzbühel, was going to emperor Maximilian of Habsburg.

This still hurts, not because of the silver mines, which have long closed, but because with it the fastest downhill slope on the FIS world cup circuit came to the Austrians…

For the Bavarian Wittelsbachs the outcome was a mixed one. On the one hand Albrecht IV was able to put the duchy of Bavaria back together, and by introducing primogeniture, prevented any further divisions of the territory. The internal reforms, the build out of the administrative state and the reform of the church held, making Bavaria one of the most stable princely territories in the upcoming storm of the Reformation.

On the other hand the territorial losses reduced the duchy to a scale that it was no longer able to compete with the Habsburgs for predominance in the Holy Roman Empire. Bavaria became a reluctant ally of the House of Habsburg, usually marching to the Viennese tune, except for the occasional bouts of rebellion.

I initially planned to move on with our circular motion around the empire and head for Saxony next, but several of you asked about the fate of the fourth branch of the Wittelsbachs, the counts of Hennegau, Seeland, Friesland and Holland. That is another story full of romance and the smell of gnpowder, and it is also the story of how the Netherlands moved out of the orbit of the Holy Roman Empire. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, if you enjoy the show and want it to continue to be advertising free, head over to historyofthegermans.com/support where you find various options to make a contribution. Or, take to social media and tell the world how the History of the Germans Podcast is either making your life so infinitely better or at least helps you to fall asleep….

Ludwig der Gebartete And Agnes Bernauer

As you can hear from my voice, I am still all bunged up. I tried to record this episode in the usual way and quite frankly it was horrible. But the show has to go on. So I did have to resort to other means. I cloned my voice with elevenlabs and what you will hear now is not me, but bionic me. If that is not for you, just wait, maybe a week, hopefully no longer and I will record the episode again, this time in the traditional good old human way.

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Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 196 – Love and War in Bavaria – Part 1, which is also episode 12 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15th Century.

As you can hear from my voice, I am still all bunged up. I tried to record this episode in the usual way and quite frankly it was horrible. But the show has to go on. So I did have to resort to other means. I cloned my voice with elevenlabs and what you will hear now is not me, but bionic me. If that is not for you, just wait, maybe a week, hopefully no longer and I will record the episode again, this time in the traditional good old human way.

And with that, on to the show.

Bavaria is a truly unique place. And that is not only because it has become the cultural touchpoint for foreigners who associate Germans with the Lederhosen and Octoberfest. I may not see these things as particularly German, but at least it is one up from goosestepping and “don’t mention the war”.

By the 15th century all the original stem duchies of the Holy Roman Empire: Swabia, Franconia, Lorraine, even Saxony had vanished as political entities, except for Bavaria. Sure, it had lost large sways of land to Austria, Carinthia and Tyrol, but it was still there.

And since its ducal family, the house of Wittelsbach had kept its position all through the upheavals of the Hohenstaufen and Interregnum periods, it was a remarkably coherent structure. There was only one free imperial city within its confines, Regensburg, and three dioceses, again, Regensburg, Freising and Passau, all of which were under more or less tight control of the dukes.

This contiguous territory had been the reason the Wittelsbachs had risen to being one of the top three families in the empire alongside the Habsburgs and Luxembourger. As we discussed in season 8 – From the Interregnum to the Golden Bull, for about a 100 years period power had shifted back and forth between these three families.

For the Wittelsbachs this period was a time of material expansion. They had already captured the Palatinate in the later stages of the reign of the Hohenstaufen but when Ludwig the Bavarian became emperor, things accelerated rapidly. In 1323 Ludwig enfeoffed the vacant margraviate of Brandenburg to his son Ludwig. And in 1342 they gained the Tyrol in an audacious move, as we discussed in episode 152 – The not so ugly Duchess Margarete Maultasch. The last acquisition were the counties of Holland, Seeland & Hennegau in 1347.

In aggregate, this was real estate that could rival the wealth of the Luxemburgers and certainly outshone the Habsburgs. And some of these places were already very rich, like the Palatinate and others had a great future ahead, like the Tyrol where the largest silver mines in Europe were discovered in 1409, and even more so, Holland with its great cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Dordrecht, Delft, Haarlem etc.

If the Wittelsbachs had been able to hold on to these gains and then translate them into a permanent claim on the imperial title, Germany’s capital might have been Munich, Landshut or Ingolstadt, rather than Berlin.

But as we know, that is not what happened. Somehow the Wittelsbachs lost their way.

The decline had already set in during the reign of Ludwig the Bavarian. Ludwig had gained control of the Palatinate not in his own right, but as guardian of his nephew. That nephew survived and when he became an adult, demanded his lands back. In 1329 the treaty of Pavia established two separate Wittelsbach lines, one for the Palatinate, one for the Bavarian possessions. These two territories would remain seperate, except for temporary occupations, until in 1777 Count Palatine Karl Theodor inherited both.

When Ludwig the Bavarian died in 1347, he left behind six sons who each received one bit of the great inheritance. The eldest, Ludwig V received the lion’s share, Brandenburg, Tyrol and Upper Bavaria, the second eldest, Stephen received Lower Bavaria and the two younger ones succeeded each other as dukes of Holland, Seeland and Hennegau.

The Tyrol was lost to the Habsburgs in 1363, when Margarete Maultasch in a last swipe at her husband passed it on to the Habsburgs. Duke Stephen II marched into Tyrol to claim it back, but found such resistance that he conceded the transfer to the Habsburgs in 1369.

The Wittelsbachs also proved unable to tame the chaotic situation in Brandenburg and sold it to the Luxemburgs in 1373.

The silver lining was that the sons of Ludwig the Bavarians prove largely unable to produce heirs, so that the second eldest, Stephen II could reconsolidate at least Bavaria proper. The payments he had received from the sale of Brandenburg allowed him to buy up some of the remaining independent territories inside and adjacent to his lands. He was also a decent steward of his patrimony, smoked out robber barons and organized key industries, like the salt production in Bad Reichenhall.

Though diminished, the wealth and importance of the house of Wittelsbach was still such that Stephen II secured marriages for two of his two sons, Stephen III and Friedrich to the immensely rich family of the Visconti dukes of Milan. Their extraordinarily lavish dowries were again resources to further expand and consolidate their territory.

When Stephen II died in 1375, he urged his three sons to keep peace and harmony amongst themselves and to rule the duchy jointly, so as to preserve the standing of the family. And that is what they did until 1392.

And if they had held on to that communal rulership, they could easily have risen to the top again. By the 1390s the Luxembourgers were engaged in almost continual internecine warfare between the hapless King Wenceslaus, the wily Sigismund and the rich brothers Jobst and Prokop of Moravia, see episodes 165 and 169. And the Habsburgs had been hitting a rough patch as well. In 1379 they had split their lands into two, later three separate principalities, and in 1386 they had suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Swiss Cantons at the battle of Sempach.

This would have left the Wittelsbachs as the last man standing and natural candidates for the imperial title. And indeed when the prince electors discussed replacements for the incompetent king Wenceslaus, either of the Bavarian Wittelsbachs were mentioned.

But this model of joint rulership had its drawbacks. In the chaotic years of the Western Schism and the vacuum left by Wenceslaus, princes were constantly required to make quick, difficult and far reaching decisions. Doing that in agreement with all three brothers was already difficult. But by 1392 each of the three brothers had sons of their own. And these sons had grown up and demanded their share in the decision making.

In 1392, following a couple of bad strategic decisions, the joint government had become untenable. Bavaria was divided up into three, later four separate duchies, Bayern-Munich, Bayern-Ingolstadt, Bayern-Landshut and Bayern-Straubing. Each one of these entities were still sizeable principalities within the context of the Holy Roman Empire, but no longer powerful enough to play on a national, let alone an international scale. The Wittelsbachs became what so many German princely families became in the centuries that followed, providers of wives and occasionally husbands to much more powerful royal houses, not as a way to forge alliances, but for other reasons.

Let me explain what I mean. Kings, emperors and truly powerful dukes married either the daughters of other kings, emperors and truly powerful dukes to cement some new alliance or to underpin a peace agreement. For instance the marriage of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI was a direct result of the strategic realignment of Austria and France during the seven years war.

Another reason could be simply breeding purposes. What the German princes lacked in power and wealth, they could easily make up in lineage, tracing their ancestry back to Carolingian or even Merovingian rulers. Moreover, because they were politically insignificant in say a Russian, Swedish or even English context, they were the neutral choice of spouse.

And finally, though their territory may be small, if it was strategically important and the fecundity of the ruling prince in doubt, marrying down a rank may be worthwhile.

And that is how the Wittelsbachs got involved with the Valois, the royal family of France.

In 1385 John the Fearless, the heir to Burgundy and Flanders married Margaret of Bavaria from the branch of the family that ruled Holland, Seeland and Friesland, whilst his sister married her brother. Given the dukes of Burgundy were immensely rich and powerful, almost kings in their own right, that was a big step up for secondary branch of a declining princely family of the empire.

The idea of this alliance was to set the stage for a takeover of Holland, Seeland and Friesland, aka modern day Netherlands, by Burgundy, something that actually happened in 1433. We may get back to that story in a later episode, since it involves death by dog bite, a war between cods and hooks and another alleged love story.

This double marriage then paved the way for an even more prestigious marriage, that of the daughter of Stephen III, the eldest of the three Bavarian dukes to king Charles the sixth of France.

This girl, who came to France aged 13 or 14 quickly seduced the young king with her beauty and spirit, which is why she became known to history as Isabeau of Bavaria. Despite this auspicious start and the 12 children she bore him, her story took a very dark turn.

Her husband, Charles VI was prone to mental illness. In 1393 he held a masked ball where the king and his friends dressed up as savages, as Wild Men. Their costumes were made from linen soaked in resin and covered with flax, a getup that made them appear shaggy and hairy from head to foot. And since the zipper had not yet been invented, the king and his friends were sown into these costumes.

The only problem was that this combination of linen, resin and flax is extremely flammable. Orders had been given not to bring any torches in during the performance. But,…the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans, however appeared drunk, carrying a torch. And since he was the king’s brother, nobody stopped him, not even when he was holding the torch over one of the dancers to be better able to identify who was behind the mask.

Putting a drunken torchbearer and an inflammable dancer together had the entirely predictable effect; one of the dancer’s costumes caught fire, sparks jumped from one to the next and within seconds, quote: “four men were burned alive, their flaming genitals dropping to the floor … releasing a stream of blood”. The king only survived because his aunt shielded him from the flames under the cover of her voluminous skirt.

This horrific event triggered the final descent of King Charles VI into outright insanity, probably paranoid schizophrenia. On occasion he believed himself to be made of glass and feared that even the slightest touch would made him break into a thousand pieces. At other times he would not wash nor change his clothes for months, so that he was covered in sores and scabs. Still Isabeau had more of his children.

As you can imagine, having a largely incapacitated king in the midst of the Hundred-Years War was not necessarily to France’s advantage. The country was ruled by regency councils, which quickly fractured into two parties, the Burgundians, led by Philip the Bold the duke of Burgundy, the uncle of king Charles VI, and the Armagnacs, led by Louis of Orleans, the brother of the king. Isabeau was a crucial element in this game of thrones, since she had been given sole charge of the royal children, including the dauphin.

Historians have not always been kind to Isabeau and her role; traitorous, wanton, frivolous, foreign and deceitful were accusations levelled at her at the time and later. She was accused of having caused the king’s illness through witchcraft in order to pursue an affair with the king’s dashing brother, the duke of Orleans. She became known as the most detested queen of France, blamed for the near complete defeat and capitulation of Charles VI to king Henry V of England.

I guess I do not have to say that none of these allegations hold much water, though one wonders how a 22 year old woman, married to a madman is supposed to navigate the deadly politics of the Valois court.

Anyway, where this all intersects with Bavarian history, is in her brother, Ludwig the Bearded, duke of Bayern-Ingolstadt.

For obvious reasons, this young duke, handsome, a great dancer and mighty warrior felt much more at home in the corridors of the French royal palaces of St. Pol and the Louvre, than in his tiny castle at Ingolstadt. And his sister was able to pass him attractive commissions, commands in the ongoing wars and rich heiresses. Ludwig the Bearded became a sort of royal brother in law slash condottiere slash ambassador during these tumultuous years. At times he represented his sister on the regency council, though claims he “ruled France” are a massive exaggeration. He was a player though.

Whilst at court, he witnessed the utter brutality of French politics at the time. In 1407 John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy had his rival and cousin, the duke of Orleans murdered, allegedly to protect the honor of the king, whose honor that had suffered due to the alleged adultery between Orleans and Isabeau. The ensuing civil war was exceptionally ferocious and culminated in the Dauphin, the future king Charles VII, luring the duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless into a trap and hacking him to pieces.

That was followed by a condemnation of the Dauphin, the battle of Agincourt and the Treaty of Troyes whereby king Charles VI of France disinherited his only surviving son and appointed Henry V of England as his successor. A policy Isabeau supported. As a consequence, the whole of Northern France was occupied by the English and the Dauphin barely held out in Bourges and Orleans. France would have fallen had not a farmer’s girl called Joan appeared out of nowhere….which is an entirely different story.

It seems that all that Isabeau’s brother, Ludwig the Bearded took away from his experience in France was that it was acceptable to put personal interest ahead of the interest of the state. He looked at the dukes of Burgundy, the true winners of all this mayhem and concluded that relentless pursuit of one’s own advantage and the defense of one’s honor was the route to success – and forget about the rest.

When he returned to the empire, he applied this logic to Bavarian politics. The division of territories in 1392 had not resolved the conflict between the three brothers and their respective sons. In particular Ludwig the Bearded and his father felt they had been taken advantage of. Though their share of the duchy, Bayern-Ingolstadt did include some of the richest parts, including Kufstein and Kitzbuhel with its mining operations, it was also fragmented into 9 disjointed exclaves. Meanwhile their cousins in Munich and Landshut had more contiguous and hence much easier to manage and to defend lands.

The conflict between the different branches of the family escalated when in 1397 the artisans of Munich rose up against the patricians. Ludwig and his father immediately threw their weight behind the rebels in the hope of stealing the city from their cousins the dukes of Bavaria-Munich. This turned into an armed conflict, which Ludwig and his father lost.

The net effect was that when once more a Wittelsbach became king, the Count Palatine Ruprecht, he could not rely on the combined might of the House of Wittelsbach, but only on the Ingolstadt dukes. This lack of a power base was one of the reasons Ruprecht’s reign was remarkable ineffective, even by the standards of the empire at the time. When Ruprecht died in 1410, neither his son, nor anyone else from the Wittelsbach family made any attempt to keep the crown in the family. The Wittelsbachs would only once more rise to the imperial honor, in 1742, which turned into a pretty much unmitigated disaster.

Having buggered that up, Ludwig was by no means done. He now focused on his cousin Heinrich the Bavarian duke of Landshut. Heinrich was the exact opposite of Ludwig. Where Ludwig was a party prince, generous to the point of financial ruin and always looking for ways to outshine his peers, in clothing, horses, houses and prowess in tournament and war, Heinrich was from a new era. He was a cold calculating prince, patiently gathering resources, forming viable alliances, expanding his reach. He was a shrewd player of the complex legal system of the empire, calling for justice and equity, whilst being occasionally brutal inenforcing his will on his lands. When in 1408 the citizens of Landshut protested against higher taxes, he had them incarcerated, and when they still did not consent, beheaded and their houses burned down.

Ludwig and Heinrich met and then clashed at the Council of Constance, not for the first time, but this time it was serious. Ludwig publicly claimed that Heinrich was a bastard, the son of a cook, which, if true would have left the duchy of Bavaria-Landshut without a legitimate ruler, and him, Ludwig, at least as partial owner. Heinrich responded to this attack on his honor by having his thugs roughing up Ludwig. Ludwig did sustain some serious wounds but recovered. When Ludwig demanded satisfaction before the court of emperor Sigismund, he was denied. His enemy, Heinrich of Landshut had build up a coalition of Southern German princes and cities that was too powerful for the emperor to ignore, and Heinrich also paid him 6,000 gulden.

It took a few more years, but Ludwig ultimately got his war with Heinrich. This was a war over honor, standing and land, pretty much in this order. Ludwig stood barely a chance. He was completely isolated. Heinrich’s patient alliance building had brought almost everyone who was anyone onto his side; the cousins in Munich, the Margraves of Brandenburg, the emperor, the free Imperial cities, everyone.

Ludwig still managed to burn down the famous castle above Nürnberg, but in turn his cousins devastated much of his lands. Running out of cash to pay his mercenaries, Ludwig had to concede. He had to give up some land to Heinrich, though the major payday was three years later. The fourth and smallest of the Bavarian duchy, the land around Straubing had come free as the last male heir had died from poison. Under the terms of the agreement by which the three brothers had divided the duchy in 1392, any vacant principality should be shared equally amongst the remaining branches of the family. Ludwig had to accept that his share was cut from one third to just one quarter.

Despite all these setbacks, Ludwig remained stubborn to the end. He kept seeking ways to attack his cousins in Lands-hut and in Munich, though chances of success had declined and declined. His only son felt that his father was about to lose it all. So he teamed up with Heinrich of Lands-hut and besieged Ludwig in his castle at Neuburg am Inn. The siege was successful and Ludwig was kept in prison until he died. His son, who was a more conciliatory type died before him, which brought the line of Bayern-Ingol-stadt to an end. Most of Ludwig’s lands went to his arch enemy, Heinrich von Lands-hut, who became known as the Rich.

Which begs the question, where was the third branch of the Bavarian dukes, those of Bayern-München? Why did they not get a share in the Ingolstadt inheritance?

As it happened, one of them had also decided to “do what I want and to hell with the consequences”, thereby knocking himself and his family out of the game. But this time it wasn’t about honor or glory, or land or greed, but love.

The Munich branch was probably the most sober and harmonious of this lot, at least until 1435. It was initially run jointly by two brothers, Wilhelm and Ernst. Having been attacked by Ludwig the Bearded and his father early on, they decided to support everyone who was opposed to these two. Sort of, my cousin’s enemy is my friend.

Hence when Ludwig supported Ruprecht of the Palatinate as king, the Munich brothers supported king Wenceslaus and the Luxembourgers, even though Ruprecht was their distant cousin. And as Wenceslaus deteriorated, they were linking up with the successor to both, the emperor Sigismund.

Wilhelm in particular was a gifted operator and became Sigismund’s representative at the Council of Basel, where he amongst other things facilitated the peace with the Hussites we discussed in episode 182.

It appears that the two brothers, Wilhelm and Ernst had decided that only one of them should go out and father legitimate children, so as to avoid a split of their already rather tiny principality. Wilhelm drew the short straw, or maybe the long straw, since Wilhelm lived with a woman he chose for reasons other than politics for most of his life.

But in 1433 Wilhelm changed his mind and married 17-year-old Elisabeth of Cleves who gave him two sons in quick succession, before Wilhelm himself died in 1435.

What brought about this sudden change in approach? A breakdown of brotherly unity?

No, what got in the way was one of Bavaria’s most famous love stories.

You see, the plan that Wilhelm and Ernst had to keep the land united had initially worked out brilliantly. Ernst had married Elisabetta Visconti from Milan in 1396 who brought him a huge dowry and bore him a son, Albrecht. Albrecht lived to adulthood and all the other children were girls. Brilliant, the continued existence of an undivided principality of Bayern-München was assured.

But then, in 1428, Albrecht went to a great tournament in Augsburg. And there, the son and heir to the duchy met a girl, Agnes Bernauer. Agnes was the daughter, not of an imperial prince, or at least of a mighty and rich nobleman, not even of one of the super-rich patricians of the city, but of a humble barber-surgeon. A barber surgeon usually worked out of a bathhouse, some of which were entirely respectable institutions where men and women went to wash off the grime of the road, but others were less so….

What exactly the circumstances of their encounter were is shrouded in mystery, but Albrecht was clearly smitten with the gorgeous Agnes. He took her home to Munich and she became his mistress. So far, so not a problem.

But it seems Agnes had a stronger hold over Albrecht than most other companions. She got involved in Bavarian politics, such as they were, and helped Albrecht to set up his own court, separate from his father.

That was a bit more worrying. And then rumors were going round that the couple were in fact living as man and wife, and that they had gotten married in secret.

For Wilhelm and Ernst this was a serious issue. Albrecht was their sole heir, and if he died without legitimate offspring – and no offspring of an Agnes Bernauer was ever going to be legitimate – their duchy would in the end go to the hated cousins in Ingolstadt and Lands-hut. Which was a total nono.

So they took a two-fronted approach. Wilhelm though already in his sixties got married and got busy making babies. Meanwhile Ernst tried to convince his son to let go of the alluring Agnes and get married properly. Albrecht stood by his girl.

We have no idea what Agnes Bernauer looked like, we do not even know her hair color. One chronicler claimed that her skin was so translucent that one could see the red wine going down her throat when she drank, which apparently was extremely attractive at the time.

When Wilhelm died in September 1435, Ernst was 63 years old and he realized the seriousness of the situation. His brother’s son, a baby called Adolf, was barely 2 years old. His own, grown-up son was unwilling to leave Agnes, and he himself was well past his sell-by date. If he was to die tomorrow, his little state would quickly fall prey to his ambitious cousins. They would claim guardianship of little Adolf and start a war with Albrecht, that he was unlikely to win. And once they had gotten hold of Munich, little Adolf would experience some unexpected mishap, allowing the cousins to cut up the land he and his brother had cared about for so long.

Ernst could not see any other way out than getting rid of Agnes Bernauer. In October 1435, when his son was away hunting with cousins in Lands hut, Ernst rode into Straubing and had Agnes Bernauer arrested. She was quickly convicted of some unknown crime and her execution by drowning in the Danube was ordered for the same day. She was thrown into the river and when she tried to swim back to shore the executioner pushed her back and then back under, until she was dead.

Albrecht was of course very upset about the killing of his partner, potentially his wife. So he went to Ingolstadt and sat down with guess who – Ludwig the Bearded. At that point Ludwig was still in charge of his lands and armies. They planned a campaign, besieged Munich and in the end Albrecht prevailed over his cruel father, let him rot in jail whilst building a shrine to his dead lover…

Ah – no. That is not how 15th century dukes operate.

Albrecht and his father reconciled quickly, astonishingly quickly to be frank. Just 13 months after Agnes had been cruelly put to death, Albrecht married another princess and had the requisite dozens of children. Father and son were seen out hunting in the best of spirits in 1437.

Sure, the two dukes commissioned a chapel for Agnes Bernauer in Straubing where we can now find her elaborate tombstone which shows her in the habit of a Carmelite nun. Albrecht made a generous donation to the local monastery to sing mass for her to eternity, a performance that continues to this day.

Agnes Bernauer became super famous. Her chapel turned into a major tourist destination in the 19th century, the Bavarian king Ludwig I composed a poem in her honor when he visited. Friedrich Hebbel wrote a tragedy and Carl Orff an opera about Agnes Bernauer. Every four years Straubing holds the Agnes Bernauer Festspiele where new and revised versions of the story are staged.

But as much as the adventures of Ludwig the Bearded and the tragedy of Agnes Bernauer are fascinating stories, they are also not really that relevant in a broader context of German history. What they tell us about is how a once powerful family could decline to petty squabbles between cousins, burning down each other’s villages in the name of honor, whilst out there other, truly powerful men were writing European history.

These years, from 1392 to 1450 were the low point for the house of Wittelsbach, but not its end. And the one to pull them out of the quagmire was the eldest son of Agnes’ lover, Albrecht. Not a son by Agnes, but a son from his second marriage to the proper princess. This son will unify all the Bavarian lands, improve its infrastructure, bring about law and order and put an end to the eternal divisions of territories, in short, he brought Bavaria back to the high table, even though by then, it was already too late.

I hope you will join us again next week for Part Two of Love and War in Bavaria when you will also be introduced to the correct pronunciation of Landshut, Ingolstadt, Freising, Orleans, Heinrich and probably a few dozens more.

Dürer, Burgkmair, Holbein, Schongauer

Last year I went to an exhibition at the Städel museum in Frankfurt that was entitled Holbein and the Renaissance in the North. That is the elder Holbein, the father of the Holbein who came to England. This exhibition has now ended, but there is still a great summary available on the Städel website.

Though obviously not present at the exhibition, one key focus was the Fugger chapel in the church of St. Anne in Augsburg, one of the earliest and most significant Renaissance building north of the Alps.

I wanted to kick off this episode with this chapel and then move on to Holbein, Burgkmair etc. But as I dug deeper and deeper into the late 15^th and early 16^th century art in Southern Germany, the more connections and links emerged that I hope you will find as fascinating as I did.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the history of the Germans: Episode 195 – Engraving the German Renaissance, also episode 11 of Season 10: The Empire in the 15^th Century.

Last year I went to an exhibition at the Städel museum in Frankfurt that was entitled Holbein and the Renaissance in the North. That is the elder Holbein, the father of the Holbein who came to England. This exhibition has now ended, but there is still a great summary available on the Städel website.

Though obviously not present at the exhibition, one key focus was the Fugger chapel in the church of St. Anne in Augsburg, one of the earliest and most significant Renaissance building north of the Alps.

I wanted to kick off this episode with this chapel and then move on to Holbein, Burgkmair etc. But as I dug deeper and deeper into the late 15^th and early 16^th century art in Southern Germany, the more connections and links emerged that I hope you will find as fascinating as I did.

But before we start another call to contribute to the show on historyofthegermans.com/support. In this episode we will encounter my pre, pre, pred, predecessor, Conrad Celtis who tried, but failed to complete a history of the Germans. Still he was crowned Poet Laureate and was given a generous pension by the emperor. So, just in case you wish to have your own poet laureate and want to see the History of the Germans  to go all the way to its conclusion – probably in the 2030s – do not hesitate to follow Linda D., Lorenzo C., Jonathan. Lincoln B.  and the seriously generous Ed H. Sean P. B and Palle H.

And with that, back to the show

As we heard last week, by 1500 the house of Fugger had risen to the top of the mining, banking and trading world of the 15^th century. Jakob and his brothers Ulrich and Georg were indeed so rich and powerful they decided to build their own chapel, a burial place for the family. Having your own burial chapel was not something unique for a successful merchant in a free city, but the chapel that the Fugger built exceeded all that had gone before in scale and decoration. This was a chapel that rivalled those of their clients, the princes and the bishops and was designed to show off their wealth and sophistication.

And they found the perfect place, the church of the Carmelite nuns of St. Anne in Augsburg. The nuns urgently needed help to bring their church up to the standard of the city that has rapidly become one of the commercial, cultural and political centers of the Holy Roman empire.

In 1506 the Fuggers signed an agreement with the nuns that they would quote “build and construct a very beautiful chapel in our church — by means of which the church is significantly enlarged — with great and notable expense, and to adorn and erect it in the most precious manner in which it is customary” And that  they would “have in the aforementioned chapel a burial place for themselves, their heirs, and successors, in whatever part they find fitting and suitable” end quote. This agreement was another example of the deal making skills of the Fuggers, making it an entirely one-sided document. Though the nuns remained the mistresses of the church, they had to give Jakob and his brothers entirely free reign as to the style and use of the chapel, even committing not to change anything at a later stage and to maintain it essentially forever.

This chapel in St. Anne is one of Germany’s most significant Renaissance buildings. And if you enter the chapel you are struck by the light and airy space, its white walls, round arches, columns and pilasters that recall the Italian renaissance churches of Venice or Rome. For someone who visited the chapel in the year of its completion in 1518, emerging from then central nave of St. Anne, likely covered in frescoes and dimly lit through stained glass windows, this was step into a new, modern world of clarity, of rationality, of the spirit of an early modernity. A place befitting a family who had branches from Antwerp to Rome, who lent to popes and emperors and whose silver was shipped as far as Calicut in India and beyond the Great Wall of China. 

At the far end of the chapel you can see the epitaphs of the Fugger family, Ulrich and Georg, the elder brothers who had died in 1506 and 1510, their younger brother Jakob and his nephews Raymond and Hieronymus. All these made of shining white marble, arranged in a half circle, framed by Italianate round arches and featuring roman columns.

But then there is something else here, something that one would not find in a renaissance church in Venice of Florence. If you look up, the ceiling is not the rounded vault adding to the geometric forms that abound everywhere else, this is a rib-vaulted ceiling, something you are more likely to see in Ghent, Bruges or Antwerp.

And then, above the alter and the epitaphs rises a pipe organ, one of the largest, of its time. Pipe organs are northern European, one of the oldest accounts come from the cathedral of Winchester and from the Renaissance period onwards German organ builders took a lead. The organ wings are painted with stories about music, using perfect perspective from the point of the viewer below the picture.

And then there is the central sculptural group of the lamentation of Christ. And, though it is made of marble, it has the highly expressive, dramatic gestures you find in the wooden sculptures of a Tilman Riemenschneider or the Alsatian masters working in Strasbourg or Colmar at the same time.

What is going on here?

Well, most of what is going on here has to do with geography and trade. Augsburg looked as much to Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp as it did to Venice and Florence. And it is up there in Flanders that another, a Northern Renaissance is taking shape.

The great Italian contributions of geometry, perspective and the return to the ancient Roman and Greek past was only one component of this artistic movement. The great painters of Flanders, Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van er Weyden brought new techniques and ideas to the European renaissance art. The first of these inventions was oil painting. Up until the 1450s the Italian artists worked mainly in tempura and fresco, which produces this gorgeous slightly fainted look of blocks of colour set against each other. Oil paint can be applied in multiple layers giving the colour more depth and sometimes that jewel-like lustre you can see for instance in the Ghent altarpiece or Hans Memling’s Last Judgement.

In 1483 Tommaso Portinari, the branch manager of the Medici bank in Bruges whose reckless lending drove a nail in the coffin of the family’s wealth, sent a Flemish altarpiece to Florence. The picture, the Adoration of the Shepherds by Hugo van der Goes, caused a stir. Not so much because it was painted in oil, that technique had already come to Italy a few decades earlier, but because of the depiction of the shepherds. Rather than showing them as clean and clean shaven, saint-like figures, Hugo van der Goes, had painted them as real people, calloused hands, bad teeth, torn clothes and all. And not just that, their expressive faces and gestures went against the measured, controlled movements of the likes of a Piero della Francesca.

These two innovations, oil painting and the depiction of the lower classes percolated through Italian art, until they broke through in the calloused feet of Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto.

So, when the man who sat in the centre of the trade between North and South and east and west commissioned a chapel, it was only natural that it would reflect both influences. And the artist who worked on it, some, like Burgkmair had apprenticed to painters in Italy, whilst other, like Hans Holbein the elder had gone to the Netherlands. And the greatest of them all, Albrecht Dürer had gone to both.

But when you look closer, there is a third influence, beyond Italian and Flemish here. The statues of the lamentation of Christ, that is neither Italian, nor is it Flemish. If it reminds me of anything, it reminds me of the works of Tilman Riemenschneider, a sculptor from Wurzburg who produced works in stone and wood that were highly expressive and usually left in their natural colour, rather than being painted. Though they are often called Gothic in style, and their exaggerated movements do pay homage to what came before, they aren’t really. They depict genuine individuals, people who look like men and women you can see in the streets outside the church, wearing the clothes of the time. They are not avatars of saints and kings as gothic art tended to do. And, being deprived of colour, they have some of the austere greatness of Greek and Roman statues.

Hans Daucher, the artist of the lamentation in Fugger chapel has no direct link to Riemenschneider, but both go back to a sculptural tradition based around Ulm and Strasburg that developed into these unique expressions of late medieval sentiment and renaissance technique.

If you like, the mixture of Flemish and Italian influences, plus the home-grown sculptural tradition meant that at the time it was completed, in 1518, there was nothing like it in the world.

Which begs one question, was it intentional? Did the Fuggers not know how to build a renaissance chapel in the fashionable Italian style? Or were they dependent on local artists who simply weren’t a Raphael or Michelangelo. Or was it something the Fuggers really wanted?

Jakob Fugger had lived in Venice for several years and had seen the great renaissance palaces going up along the grand canal, churches being rebuilt in the new style, and he had funded the rebuilding of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in 1505. So, Jakob Fugger knew exactly what an Italian renaissance church was supposed to look like.

So, he must have been constrained by the availability of local talent? Seriously? The richest man in Europe would not have been able to hire any of the dozens of talented Italian architects to come to Augsburg? No, seriously, the Fuggers had the money. More money than the Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara, the Gonzaga of Mantua or any of the great Venetian families. Enough money and enough influence over the papacy to hire a Raphael, Michelangelo even a Leonardo.

So, Jakob Fugger and his brothers did want it to look like this, to be something that was neither Flemish, nor Italian, nor traditional Swabian, something new, but also something that was uniquely German. They were after all not Italians or Flemings, they were citizens of Augsburg in the German lands. And whilst they wanted to show how cosmopolitan they were with all the Italian and Flemish renaissance elements, they also want to convey the message that they are rooted here, in the city of Augsburg, in the Holy Roman Empire of their major client.

And all that fits very much into the spirit of the times. You know that I have been reluctant to talk about national sentiment for neigh on 200 episodes, but it had begun building up in the 14^th century. We have heard that since the reign of Rudolf of Habsburg charters and legal proceedings had regularly been written up in the vernacular rather than Latin. We heard about the importance of Low German as the glue that held the Hanse system together. The advent of printing turbocharged this development. Sure, the bibles and theological writings, the indulgences and schoolbooks, were still printed in Latin, but the material that normal people wanted to read for fun, things like the ship of fools and the pamphlets, bawdy rhymes and public announcements, all these were in German, High or Low. And the exact same thing, the rise of the vernacular happened in Italy, in France, in Bohemia and to some degree in Poland and Hungary at the same time.

And with a language that differs quite fundamentally from the French, Italian, Polish and Hungarian of its neighbours, the Germans sensed themselves more and more a people apart.

And into this dropped a surprise find in the monastery of Hersfeld, the only surviving copy of Tacitus’ Germania.

And if you remember all the way back to the prologue, you may remember three things, first, that Tacitus had never been to Germany, second, that he wrote it as a critique of Roman society and, thirdly, that he described the Germans as noble savages who valued simplicity, freedom and virtue. But he also ascribed to them “drunkenness, cruelty, savagery and other vice bordering on bestiality and excess”. 

The first to use Tacitus to define Germany and the Germans was our old friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini, the future pope Pius II who had spent over 20 years in Germany. We have gone almost 3 episodes without mentioning him, so his appearance is more than overdue.  Piccolomini wrote up his experiences in the land north of the Alps. He used Tacitus as a foil to highlight how far the Germans had come, their well-ordered cities, successful trade and industry, and thriving universities. What he also did was ascribe all this progress to the civilising effects of Christianity and the ceaseless work of the curia. And then he praised the warlike nature of the Germans they had preserved since the days of ancient Rome, as a way to convince them to join the war against the Ottomans. It all sounds a bit too self-serving, but it appears that Piccolinin did genuinely enjoy his time in Germany.

But Piccolomini was the exception. Another Italian churchman, Gianantonio Campano made also gave lots of flattering speeches whilst in Regensburg on an imperial diet. But at the same time, he was writing letters home where he described the Germans as dirty barbarians without any style and culture, smelly and always drunk. After his death these letters were then published to predictable reaction in the German lands.

That is where Conrad Celtis comes in. Despite his Latin sounding name, he was the son of a vintner from near Würzburg. He was one of these people who could take advantage of the proliferation of universities. He studied and then taught in Cologne, Buda, Heidelberg, Padua, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Erfurt, Rostock, Leipzig and Krakow. He became best known as a poet and in 1487 was crowned poet laureate by the emperor Friedrich III, the first person ever to be honoured in that way. His fame as a writer and scientist was such, he became known as the Archhumanist.

But what got him really passionate was not the theology and science that he saw at the universities or the poetry, it was the way the world saw the Germans, and in particular the Italians writing nasty letters, holding up their Tacitus looking down on him. He did a famous speech when he took up a post at the university of Ingolstadt. He urged the students quote: “Consider it a great disgrace to be ignorant of the histories of the Greeks and Latins, and the height of shame to know nothing about the topography, the climate, the rivers, the mountains, the antiquities and the peoples of our region and our own country, in short all those facts which foreigners have so cleverly collected concerning us.” And then “To them our characters are always suspect and dangerous. Let us be ashamed, noble gentleman, that certain modern historians [..] should speak of our most famous leaders merely as “the barbarians” and suppress their proper native title, in order to belabour and bitterly disparage the reputation of us Germans.”

And then he goes all out: “Assume, O men of Germany, that ancient spirit of yours, with which you so often confounded and terrified the Romans and turn your eyes to the frontiers of Germany; collect together her torn and broken territories. Let us be ashamed, ashamed, I say, to have placed upon our nation the yoke of slavery, and to be paying tributes and taxes to foreign and barbarian kings. O free and powerful people, O noble and valiant race, plainly worthy of the Roman empire, our famous harbour is held by the Pole and the gateway of our ocean by the Dane!” end quote.

You get the drift. I cannot say for a fact that this is the first expression of that national stereotype of complaining that our neighbours see us as barbaric, boorish and uneducated, followed by a call to arms, that proves all three accusations.

Celtis himself sticks to fiery rhetoric and intellectual arguments. He gathers other humanists to write the Germania Illustra, a comprehensive history of the Germans. He highlights the empire’s achievements in the days of the Ottonians, Salians and Hohenstaufen to justify the elevated status of Germany’s rulers. On the plus side, he rediscovers Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, the first female German writer who had produced a life of Otto the Great.

This rising national sentiment is then picked up by the emperor Maximilian for his own political purposes, something we will no doubt discuss in quite some detail when we get there.

But again, for Jakob Fugger, banker to Maximilian, the design of his chapel had to reflect an element of Germanness, and in all likelihood, he did share the sentiment that Celtis was articulating.

As I said before, Germany was not the only place that developed a stronger and stronger notion of its national identity in that period. England is likely to have got there earlier, if simply for the fact that it was an island and in constant war with France. France in turn had found its rallying point in Joan of Ark and its recovering monarchy. Italy was coming closer together, at least intellectually as the invasions by foreigners battered them. Bohemia had struggled free during the Hussite war and was just nominally still part of the empire. We will discuss Hungarian and Polish developments again during the next season.

And all that manifests in art and architecture. Hampton Court could only ever be built in England, Chambord is unmistakeably French and the Palazzo del Te in Mantua is quintessentially Italian. And hence the Fugger chapel is profoundly German, as is the Schloss in Heidelberg, the archepiscopal palace in Aschaffenburg and the city hall of Bremen.

But neither these castles, churches and city halls, nor even Timan Riemenschneider’s delightful altars are the German Renaissance’ greatest achievements. Its foremost contribution we have already discussed, and that is without any doubt, the printing press. But a close second is the art of engraving.

If I were to show you 20 of the most famous works of the German Renaissance, chances are the one you would recognise immediately is not a bright oil painting or a dramatic sculpture, but it would be a simple sheet of paper, black and white, showing a young hare, Albrecht Dürer’s young hare to be precise, followed right behind by the woodcut of a Rhinocerus, an animal Dürer had never seen. And the third might be Ritter, Tod und Teufel, the Knight, the Death and the Devil engraving.

As the Flemish brough oil painting and the Italians the perspective to the great European endeavour we call renaissance art, it is the humble works on paper, the drawings, woodcuts and above all engraving that are the great contributions of the German artists.

Just a quick word about the difference between woodblock printing and engraving. Woodblock printing is in relief, meaning the artists cuts out the white bits of the image and the ink is applied to the parts that stick out. That is obviously a lot easier to do in wood than in metal, which is why relief printing in metal is quite rare. Engraving is the opposite. The engraver creates a line by cutting into a plate of metal. That line is then filled with ink, the remaining paint is wiped off the plate and the press then transfers the ink from the line in the plate to the paper. Sounds easy, is anything but.

Woodcut was already widespread before engraving started, used in particular in putting patterns on clothing. Woodcut is also what printers mainly used when they wanted images to accompany their text. Woodcuts and moveable type were both in relief, i.e., the black bits were sticking out. Putting an engraving and moveable type on the same page would not normally work because engraving needs much more pressure from the press to transfer the image, than type. If you find engravings in books, they tend to have their own page and be printed in a separate process after the text, sometimes even requiring different types of paper.

Engraving as a technique to mass produce artworks on paper only really kicked off in 15^th century Germany and Alsace. When exactly is hard to say, probably around 1430 and most likely on the upper Rhine, Strasburg probably. Engraving predates the printing press by 30 years.

So, why is it that engraving really kicked off in Germany rather than anywhere else?

There are a few things that changed in the 15^th century. One was the availability of paper in significant quantities. As we have heard in the Gutenberg episode paper had been introduced in the 12^th and 13^th century, but it took until the 15^th century that it was produced in large enough quantities and to a sufficiently high standard. Gutenberg insisted on Italian paper, but we already know that the Ravensburgers maintained a highly regarded paper mill, as did Nürnberg.

The next component was engraving skills. Woodcutters came usually from the guild of carpenters. They had the knowledge and tools to manipulate wood proficiently. Engravers tended to be metalworker, and most often gold or silversmiths. They had been engraving cups and rings and armour for a long time. So, drawing lines on a copper plate was right up their street. The free imperial cities, in particular Strasburg, Augsburg and Nürnberg were full of goldsmiths.

Copper was the preferred material for engravings. Copper was expensive and strategically important, but thanks to the efforts of first the Nürnbergers and then the Fuggers, Southern Germany was literally swimming in it. Jakob Fugger even covered the roof of his townhouse with the material, a truly extravagant move.

And finally, one needed a bit of an innovative streak. Engraving as a way to create prints had not been done before, at least not at scale. So, the early engravers had to deal with some of the issues that Gutenberg wrestled with, namely which metal to use for the plate, the kinds of tools to manipulate it most effectively, the type of ink most suitable to the process, the preparation of the paper, the correct calibration of the press etc., etc., etc.,

But all that, paper, goldsmiths and innovative streak were available in Italy or France as well. So why the German lands?

The earliest engravings were playing cards, where it mattered to see clearly which card one was holding. So, it may well be the propensity to gambling, the love of Skat and Doppelhkopf and the accompanying excessive alcohol consumption that gave the Germans an edge here. But there is something else as well.

If you look at Renaissance art in Italy, its purpose and consumption was determined by the state, or more precisely by the rulers of the state. Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino, Florence and all the others were ruled by tyrants, i.e., men who had acquired their position not through the line of succession but by brute force or skilful manipulation of city politics. None of them could claim an ancient lineage that legitimised their existence as rulers.

And therefore, art became one of the ways to justify their rule. If you were a Medici you could point to the cupola of the Duomo or the statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi and say, look, this is what I have done for this city, be grateful. The same could be said for the decorations of the churches or the great displays during weddings and visits of great dignitaries.

Some artwork was kept inside the palaces of the rulers, but there they would be shown to guests, both local and foreign, leaving them in awe of the wealth and sophistication of the master of the state. That effect was probably exacerbated by letting rumours run round the city that exaggerated the wonders of these pieces, which again made clear how superior the ruler was.

That also affected the content of the art. By referring back to ancient Rome where emperors were chosen more often on merit than on lineage was an ideal vehicle to explain why Frederico Sforza was a suitable heir to the Visconti.  

In the German lands, the rulers, the princes and bishops all had ancient lineages coming out of their ears. That was often pretty much the only thing they had. Sure, they did want to project wealth and power, in particular those who had neither, but they did not need the reference to ancient Rome. Hence the inherent conservativism of much of the art made for princely rulers.

Where there was a lot of interest in the ancient world was in the cities and universities. The audience for art in these places did not look for legitimacy, but for information and above all, the sheer joy that comes from seeing something beautiful. Like the picture of a hare whose fur one can feel. 

The problem for the artists was that these kinds of people, the burghers, the university doctors had no way to pay for marble statues or frescoes of Galatea riding across the loggias of their villas.

Engraving was the answer to this conundrum. A skilfully executed engraving could produce a few hundred good, early impressions and if reused, a lot more less clear versions. And then the design could be redone to make even more. And that made these very, very affordable. Dürer records that he sold his engravings for 2 to 4 stuivers a piece in the Netherlands, which comes to about half a day’s wages for a labourer. These were in other words extremely affordable works. And given there was no such thing as copyright, clever entrepreneurs copied the most popular engravings from artists like Schongauer and Dürer and sold them even cheaper.

The topics of these images varied across the board. The very first engravings as I said were playing cards but were soon overtaken by religious images. Monks and cannons had been selling woodcuts of saints and miracles to pilgrims at the shrines for decades already. Now the engravers wanted to get in on that trade.

Artists like Martin Schongauer specialised on these small devotional pictures. What set them apart from the woodcuts was their sophistication, not just in printing quality, drawing and composition, but also in their meaning. Engravers were goldsmiths and hence ranked at the top of the hierarchy of guilds. They often had a middle-class background, and some had been to university. The greatest of the early engravers, Martin Schongauer was the son of a well to do goldsmith who had moved from Augsburg to Colmar in Alsace. In 1465, aged maybe 12-15 he went to study in Leipzig, though he did not graduate. On his return he settled down in Colmar as an engraver and painter. He produced some wonderful works in oil, including the altar of the Dominicans that is one of my family’s perennial favourites.

But where he came to prominence well beyond the walls of Colmar was as a printmaker. A.M. Hind argues that quote “little by little Schongauer rises above the Gothic limitations both of setting and of type. Ornament and Architecture are simplified and everything is concentrated on the expression of the central idea.“ end quote. Schongauer’s masterpiece is an image of the temptation of St. Antony where the saint seems to serenely float in space, attacked by a menagerie of monsters that would give Hieronymous Bosch some inspiration. Vasari records that Michelangelo had his first breakthrough with “the portrait he did from an engraving by Martin the German”. And then continues: “Since a scene by this same Martin, which was engraved in copper and showed Saint Anthony being beaten by devils, had reached Florence, Michelangelo drew it with his pen in such a way that it was not recognized as his, and he painted it with colours; in order to copy the strange forms of some of the devils, he went to buy fish that had scales of unusual colours and showed so much talent in this work that he acquired from it both credit and renown.” End quote.

No faint praise for an artist who spent all his life in the mid-sized city of Colmar.

Schongauer died in 1491, very much to Albrecht Dürer’s chagrin who had travelled to Colmar to meet the famous engraver and learn from him. But even without Schongauer’s instruction, Albrecht Dürer brought renaissance engraving to its highest achievement. Many of his prints are instantly recognisable, like Saint Eustace, Nemesis or Good Fortune, Adam and Eve, Melencolia, Knight, Death and the Devil, St. Jerome in his Study and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

These are works that go well beyond the mere depiction of saints as aids for prayer. They convey messages about theology, philosophy and humanist learning. They are made not as ways to retell bible stories to the masses as altarpieces and stained-glass windows do, but as images for intellectuals and interested laymen to contemplate. Some are religious, but others go into platonic ideas and esoteric symbolism.

What they bring is a shift in the way art is experienced by most people. Before engravings flooded Europe, art was a collective experience. You saw the altarpieces and sculptures on the grand cathedrals in a public space; you shared the experience with other people. The engravings were designed to be appreciated individually or with a small group of family and friends at home. That not only widened the potential subjects beyond the common denominator acceptable in a public space. It also played into the Renaissance ideal of the individual with its individual thoughts, beliefs, aspirations and tastes. If printing was one of the tools that triggered the intellectual desire to find one’s own way to God or any other belief system, the engravings created the emotional pathways to the self.

Ok, apologies, I think I went a little bit off the reservation here. But even if engravings did not create the individual, they were and are fabulous works of art. Though often neglected in the darker corners of museums outshone by the bright colours of the altarpieces and the smoothness of the marble sculptures, they are worth more than a cursory look.

As for looks, next week we will gaze upon the stunning looks of a certain Agnes Bernauer whose story of love and murder caused much of a ruckus amongst the already fractious Bavarian Wittelsbachs. I hope you will join us again.

And in the meantime, if you liked this and have not yet listened to the two episodes on the printing press, i.e., 187 and 188, go there. Or, if you want to look into a much earlier period where German artists achieved world class standards of works on paper,  check out episode 16 where we talk – amongst other things – about the art of 10^th century illuminations. And finally, do not forget that you can support the show by going to historyofthegermans.com/support where for an admittedly very generous contribution you can be elevated all the way to Prince Elector or you can make a one-time contribution that keeps this show advertising free.