The Siege of Neuss and the trial of Peter von Hagenbach 1474/1475

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Transcript

Introduction

The venerable city of Neuss between Cologne and Düsseldorf was founded in 16 BC as a Roman army camp, making it one of the oldest in Germany. Its history is marked by the usual mix of feuds with its archepiscopal overlord and the establishment of a trading and pilgrimage hub. Despite its Roman remains, the impressive church of St. Quirinius, and proximity to where I grew up, Neuss may never have appeared on the History of the Germans Podcast, had it not sustained a 10 month long siege in 1474/1475.

A siege, even a brutal and prolonged one is not sufficiently unusual to be included in the show. But this one merits almost a whole episode. Tales of the heroic defense of a small town on the Rhine against an overbearing foe intent on wiping out their way of life, coalesced the empire in a way it had not come together since the days of Frederick Barbarossa. A watershed was crossed, under the leadership of an emperor who was more surprised than anyone to be put at the head of the resistance.

And that is not all, in this episode we will also cover the very first trial for war crimes ever that took place in another small town in the same year 1474.

Christmas Present

But before we start a quick update on the Christmas Special. Over a hundred of you have already cast their vote.  The survey is still open, so the final result will be announced next week. There is still room to sway the outcome. And by the way I am confident I have sent an invitation to vote to all patrons on all platforms.

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And with that, back to the show.

Recap

Last week we ended with the emperor Friedrich III and his son Maximilian making a hasty retreat from Trier, leaving behind an enraged, furious, angry, incensed, hopping mad duke of Burgundy.

Charles “Le Temeraire”, called the Bold in English, who should be named “the reckless” had good reason to be upset. Instead of a coronation as king of Burgundy, complete with crown, sceptre and splendid procession, he had been made a fool of by the penniless Austrians.

I do not have the time to give you a full psychological assessment of Charles the Bold, but if you are a little bit patient and you tune into the Grand Dukes of the West Podcast, Josh will give you a much more rounded picture than I could ever provide provide here.

And you can get the full backstory of the Burgundians.

Trouble in the Archbishopric of Cologne

Whatever his psychological make-up, an angry Charles of Burgundy, ruler of a dozen or so duchies and counties, overlord of the richest cities north of the Alps can be a problem, in particular, if one happens to live within crossbow shot of his borders.

After Charles had taken over the duchy of Guelders, it was the revered archbishopric of Cologne that had come within crossbow shot. And to make things worse, the Archbishopric of Cologne, had few shields left to fend off incoming projectiles.

Ever since the battle of Worringen in 1288, the Prince Electors of Cologne had been on the back foot. Their dominance in the Rhineland was crushed by a coalition made up of the city of Cologne, the dukes of Brabant and the counts of Berg. The archbishops had to retreat to – as John the Carre called it – a Small Town in Germany. Their once tight grip on their vassals, the noble lords and cities of the territory along the Rhine between Neuss and Andernach had loosened. The archbishops’ political standing locally and on the level of the empire was fading, territories were lost or pawned off.

Dietrich of Moers who held the post for almost fifty years, from 1414 to 1463, had attempted to consolidate the archbishopric into a coherent territorial state, whilst at the same time install his brothers and cousins on the thrones of the neighbouring bishoprics. That got the see of Cologne involved in several major feuds, including one with the city of Soest and one over who would become the prince bishop of Munster. These wars were extremely expensive and yielded little tangible benefit to the inhabitants of the archdiocese, except for members of the von Moers family. When Dietrich von Moers died in 1463, the archbishopric was technically bankrupt.

The estates of the various territories that made up the worldly possessions of the archbishop then forced the cathedral chapter and every future archbishop to sign an agreement, the Erblandvereiningung. This was another one of these agreements that granted the representatives of the local nobility and the cities decision rights on political, financial and military matters, including the decisions to raise taxes or go to war.

The gathering storm – Ruprecht of the Palatinate

Dietrich von Moers successor, Ruprecht of the Palatinate had signed off on this agreement, but almost immediately breached its provisions. He hired soldiers from his brother, Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate, and put them to good use. He regained some of the territories his predecessor had pawned away and bullied the estates. But soldiers are expensive. The archbishop needed cash and so introduced a flat tax per head and per head of cattle. That was pretty bad, but when he tried to snatch the customs station at Zons away from his own cathedral chapter, the cauldron boiled over.

The estates, supported by the cathedral chapter, referred to the right of resistance included in the Erblandvereingung, and deposed Ruprecht of the Palatinate. They elected Hermann of Hesse, a younger son of the Landgrave of Hesse as temporary administrator of the archbishopric. The rebellion was supported wholeheartedly by the cities of Cologne and Neuss.

In response the archbishop Ruprecht of the Palatinate gathered allies, which included his brother, Friedrich the Victorious and – most crucially – Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, Luxemburg, Brabant, Gelders, count of Holland, Seeland, Hainault, Flanders and Namur, advocate of the bishoprics of Liege and Utrecht etc., etc. With Charles the Bold came the duke of Cleves, another neighbour and battle hardened warrior.

On the face of it this rebellion was doomed.

Friedrich the Victorious – as his name suggests – had a reputation for being, well, victorious. He had fought in both the Mainzer Stiftsfehde and in the Princes wars and had been successful. He had captured his adversaries at the battle of Seckenheim and forced them to pay ransom large enough to sustain his powerful army.

But even this imperial war hero paled into insignificance compared to Charles the Bold. The richest territorial ruler north of the Alps had built up a standing army, equipped with the latest artillery pieces the masters in Bruges, Ghent, Mechelen, Milan, Venice and Augsburg could provide. He had issued detailed ordinances that set out the size of squadrons and companies, detailed rules on pay, leave, uniforms, equipment, the frequency of inspections, training and promotion of officers. He commanded a professional army, and one more heavily reliant on artillery than any other, safe for the army of Matthias Hunyadi in Hungary.

The siege of Neuss begins

In July 1474 this army, in total more than 14,000 men, entered the archbishopric of Cologne to put an end to this silly uprising. The estimate was for a campaign of a few weeks, at the end of which Charles would become the hereditary advocate of the archbishopric, aka the home of the imperial coronation chapel in Aachen would become a Burgundian protectorate.

The first place the mighty host encountered was the ancient city of Neuss. Neuss lies 35km north of Cologne and was one of the more important cities in the archbishopric. Its walls date back to the ancient Romans but had recently been reinforced. It was surrounded by water, its moat fed by three rivers, the Rhine, the Erft and the Krur.

Hermann of Hesse, the administrator and protector of the archbishopric appointed by the estates had come into Neuss with a force of maybe 3,500 men, bringing the total number of the defenders to 4,000.

The Burgundian army arrived at the southern gate of Neuss on July 29, 1474. They set up their headquarters in an abandoned monastery on an island in the watery marshes, positioned military units blocking each of the 6 city gates and the shelling began. Ten bombards, six mortars, and a large number of culverins, serpentines and other pieces of artillery fired at the walls almost constantly.

This was not just a siege, this was a Duke of Burgundy siege. Olivier de la Marche, one of Charles’ courtiers remarked: “It was one of the most beautiful and most generously supplied sieges one had ever seen. Our camp was like a city. There were craftsmen, wholesalers, textile merchants, fish mongers, grocers, barbers, carpenters, knife makers, labourers, lamplighters,  [..] everyone fulfilled their own calling and lived with dignity in fine tents, that seemed to be have been set up to last forever. Some looked like towers, others had moats and drawbridges around them. There were also windmills, inns, taverns, cabarets and tennis courts, and anything else one’s heart could desire. As for desire that could be covered by the 4,000 ladies of flexible morals who had come along as well.

Inside the city of Neuss, the opportunity to play tennis or go to the cabaret was limited, nor were there fishmongers, grocers or barbers galore. The city was small, billeted with almost as many soldiers as it had inhabitants and supplies were hard to come by. With gates blocked by Burgundian soldiers, the only way to get things in and out was under the cover of darkness or during sorties.

These occasional sorties by the Hessian troops were surprisingly successful. More than once these fierce fighters managed to sneak amongst the Burgundian troops and caused utter havoc. Presumably Charles’ soldiers were too busy playing tennis or frolicking with camp followers in their fine tents to keep a proper lookout. Meanwhile the militia from Cologne would attack the Burgundian camp from the rear.

Charles grew increasingly frustrated with the slow progress. He was an enormously energetic man and he was constantly appearing in the different sections of the siege, encouraging his men, until they called him the flying duke as they could not figure out how he could be in so many places at the same time. And he did not spare his resources. He tried to divert the river Erft to drain the moat around the city and when that failed sank earth-laden barges to build a dam.

We are now 2 months into the siege and Neuss showed little signs of giving up, even though conditions inside the walls must already have been appalling. Ammunition was running low and casualty numbers were rising, whilst food was scarce. Still Neuss held out and will hold out for a further 8 months, outnumbered 4 to 1, an almost unimaginable feat of resistance.

why Defending Neuss – or the harsh rule of the Burgindians

Which leads to the question, why they were so stubbornly resisting. On the face of it this was a conflict about taxation and decision rights between the upper classes of the archbishopric of Cologne, not something your average Joe should be laying his life on the line for, let alone the life of his wife and children.

One reason for their resistance had to do with the reputation Charles “le Temeraire” of Burgundy had acquired in his still fairly young reign.

In 1467 he had burnt down the city of Dinant, and when I say burnt down, I mean burnt down, so that nothing was left. The reason was that Dinant had not only rebelled against the oppressive taxation by the Burgundian dukes, but had called Charles a bastard, the result of a tryst between his mother and the bishop of Liege. For this insult 800 citizens of Dinant had their hands tied up behind their backs and were thrown into the Meuse river. Dinant, once an important centre for the manufacturing of cannon and other metallurgy never recovered.

In 1468 -as we mentioned last week– he did the same to the even larger city of Liege that had rebelled for a second time. Again, total destruction, fire raging through the streets of wooden houses and citizens executed by the dozens, if not hundreds.

The inhabitants of Neuss were well aware of these events and they must have expected similar treatment should they let Charles the Bold enter their city. As far as they were concerned they had the choice of dying with a sword in their hand and taking some Burgundians with them, or drowning with their hands tied behind their backs.

So far, so comparatively normal. But in many respects events occurring before and during the siege of Neuss had developed an unusual, much more modern rather than medieval dynamic that explained the stubbornness of the defenders. And one of these events in the run-up to the siege of Neuss took place in Further Austria, the ancient homeland of the House of Habsburg, roughly modern day southern Alsace and Baden.

The Reign of Peter von hagenbach in Alsace

In 1469 Charles the Bold had acquired Further Austria as a pawn from Sigismund of Tyrol. Sigismund received 50,000 Rhenish Florins and Charles was given control over the territory in Alsace and the upper Rhine. I mentioned this last week saying that these lands in Alsace were an extension southward of the Burgundian territory, which is obviously geographical nonsense. It was an extension eastwards. Apologies for that. If you live in London, everywhere that has sunshine and wine is south.

Charles appointed one of his most loyal military commanders, Peter von Hagenbach as his governor for these lands. We have met Peter von Hagenbach already. He was the man who caught up with Friedrich III on his flight down the Mosel river. What Hagenbach did not know was that he had barely a year left to live after his epic row downriver.

Hagenbach was almost perfect for the job. He was originally from this part of Alsace, was completely bilingual in German and French and had spent most of his career in the service of the Burgundian dukes.

Hagenbach was a harsh man, very much like his master. He had commanded the artillery at Dinant and at Liege and had participated in the massacres. In his youth he had abducted a local merchant he had dined with the evening before, to extract a ransom payment. In other words an aristocratic hardman with scant regard for bourgeois city dwellers.

Hagenbach’s set objectives were to streamline these territories where the loose Habsburg rule had let things slip. The cities had gained a lot of freedom, revenue sources had dried up and taxes had not been collected. Hagenbach got to work. He replaced the independent city councils in  Mühlhausen and Breisach, installed new toll booths on the Rhine and introduced a tax of one penny on each bottle of wine.

Tales of his excessive cruelty made the rounds. He had people killed without even giving the slightest clue as to why—many of them with his own hand. The slightest refusal to satisfy his whims was tantamount to a death sentence. In particular sexual depravity was placed at his door. He regularly raped nuns. Another alleged incident involved Hagenbach inviting a town’s married couples to his residence for a party. Once all were assembled, he removed the husbands from his residence and forced the wives to strip naked. Following this, he placed a covering over the head of each woman. The husbands were then ordered to return and inspect the naked bodies of the masked women. Those who were not able to identify their wives in this state were thrown down a long flight of stairs. Those who recognized their wives were rewarded by being forced to ingest copious amounts of alcohol that rendered them fatally ill.

The result was disquiet that gradually turned into rebellion. The rebellion was supported by the Swiss Confederacy who felt increasingly uncomfortable with the Burgundian presence right outside the gates of Basel. The tensions mounted to a point where the Swiss Confederacy and the regional free cities, Strasburg, Basel, Colmar and Selestat entered into the league of Constance. They went to Sigismund of Tyrol and offered to give him the money to redeem his lands from Charles the Bold. Sigismund sent 60,000 gold florins to Dijon, reclaimed Further Austria and appointed a new governor. Hagenbach refused to yield and took his stand in the city of Breisach. But he could not hold it. His soldiers mutinied and the city he had stripped of their civic institutions and liberties supported them.

The trial of Peter von hagenbach

In May 1474 Hagenbach was arrested. He was subjected to torture 6 times in the dungeons of the public prison before he was brought across town for a further set of torture sessions. By then his body was already so broken, he could no longer walk and had to be pushed across in a wheelbarrow.

What followed was one of the most unusual trials of the late medieval period. It would have not been unusual for Hagenbach who had confessed under torture to be immediately lynched by the populace. But instead, he was given a trial to take place in public on the main square of Breisach . The court comprised 28 judges, representatives of the cities of Further Austria, as well as the league of Constance. Hagenbach was represented by first one and then three attorneys of his own choosing, who put up a vigorous defence.

Many modern historians had tried to debunk the stories of the atrocities that Hagenbach had allegedly committed and indeed much had been reported long after the event. And it is notable that some of these, specifically the story about the married couples, did not make it on the list of accusations. The prosecution focused on four specific allegations, namely

1. that he had four citizens of Thann summarily executed without trial,
2. that he had broken his promise to protect the ancient laws and privileges of the city of Breisach by stripping the city of its self-governing institutions, illegally quartering soldiers, pillaging and plundering property and imposing onerous taxes,
3. that he planned to expel and then exterminate the citizens of Breisach, and
4. that he raped numerous women and girls in the region, including nuns.

Hagenbach argued as follows:

On item 1, the killing of the citizens of Thann, that these were rebels against Burgundian rule,

On item 2, the violation of the rights of Breisach, he believed the city had sworn a new oath to Charles the Bold and with that had given up their ancient rights,

On item 3, the planned expulsion and killing of the inhabitants of Breisach, what was there to say, so he said nothing,

On item 4, the rape of women and girls, he said everybody did that anyway and that he usually paid for it, which made it consensual.

To be frank, not all of these arguments cut it, not even in the 5^th century. But one argument his lawyers brought forward got the judges attention. They argued that the court had no right to judge him. He was a servant of the Duke of Burgundy, had acted on his orders and hence only the duke of Burgundy had the right to judge him. “Is it not known that soldiers owe absolute obedience to their superiors?” he asked.

The prosecution countered that this defence was inadmissible. The acts he committed were acts against the laws of God and men. There was no need to ask the duke of Burgundy whether he had issued these orders since by claiming he acted under illegal orders, he was committing lese majeste.

The judges asked to be allowed to retire and deliberate on the weighty issue they were asked to resolve. Deliberations took a long time, but when the judges returned, one after the other declared Peter von Hagenbach guilty and condemned him to death.

Hagenbach was formally stripped of his knightly status, but allowed the privilege of execution by the sword. His last words were “please forgive what I have done through lack of wisdom or through malice. I was only human. Please pray for me”.

How the first conviction for war crimes affected the Nurnberg tribunals

This judgement has entered not just the history book but also legal textbooks. This was the very first trial for war crimes. By rejecting the defence of “I was just following orders” the judges in Breisach created the idea that there were acts that cannot be justified, crimes against humanity or as they called it acts against the law of God and men.

This case became important in the Nurnberg trials where some of the defendants argued that they had only followed orders. Convicting them for acts that were formally legal under German law would be a retroactive application of new criminal sanctions. The Anglo German lawyer Georg Schwarzenberger pointed to this judgment as proof that there was already an old tradition in German law that sanctioned crimes against humanity even if formally covered by statute.

To this day the Hagenbach trial is still occasionally cited by the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

And just in case you wonder how come you did not know this, let me tell you, you are not alone. I studied law in Freiburg, half an hour’s drive away from Breisach and I had never heard about this until I looked it up yesterday.

What the trial meant for the Empire in 1474

Apart from breaking new ground in legal theory reverberating for centuries, the execution of one of Charles the Bold’s most senior officers also had more immediate consequences. Once more Charles is found by his courtiers smashing furniture and shouting obscenities. He did swear revenge, but he could not immediately take action in Alsace since his army was already on its way to Neuss.

On the other hand, the League of Constance was aware that a confrontation with the duke of Burgundy was only a question of time, which made them natural allies of the brave defenders of Neuss.

And then the story of Peter von Hagenbach, his atrocities and trial spread rapidly across the empire. The trial and execution had drawn 4,000 people to Breisach. There is a letter in the Nurnberg archives that contains a detailed eyewitness report of these events. Strasburg and Colmar were shipping their wine to Cologne for distribution, accompanied by letters. Cologne in turn was a senior member of the Hanseatic League, one of the densest information networks of the period. Why that was, check out the episodes on the Hanseatic league. The important point is that by the late 15^th century information travelled infinitely faster and to a broader audience than it had ever done in western europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. And we now have 16 printing presses running, including ones in Strasburg, Basel and Cologne. Nobody has found a pamphlet yet that talks about the Hagenbach trial or the siege of Neuss, but I would not be surprised if one turned up. We know that the bread and butter for 15^th century printers wasn’t the great bibles and psalters, but schoolbooks, indulgences and public announcements. Very few of these survived, much like my copy of the Financial Times from last week. But that does not mean they had never existed. And as we will find out in the upcoming episodes, printers, engravers and woodcutters played a huge role in shaping views and opinions.

Whichever way news of the Hagenbach trial circulated, they did. This trial was important because it showed something new and fundamental, that the forces of the empire could come together and repel an intruder. An intruder who planned to attack their way of life.

the freedoms of the imperial estates versus the Modern state

Peter von Hagenbach may have been a particularly boorish and brutal man, but he was indeed following the orders of Charles the Bold. Charles wanted to force not just Alsace, but the entirety of his possessions into what we might call a modern state. A modern state where there was only one law, one court system, person that was allowed to use force. What he wanted to do away with were all these complex laws and privileges that granted cities or lords the right to dispense justice, condemn wrongdoers to death or engage in feuds.

When he burned Liege and Dinant, when he let Peter of Hagenbach loose on Alsace, he did not act as just some sadistic raging bull. He believed that this brutality was necessary to get the  great cities of Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Hainault to give up these ancient privileges, their right to arm themselves and to resist ducal orders.

And he offered an alternative to the old system of confusing and contradicting individual freedoms. He set up the court in Mechelen, the sole court of appeal for all his territories. He passed a wide range of legal ordinances in an attempt to bring clarity and consistency to the practice of the lower courts as well. He consolidated the fiscal administration for the individual duchies to standardise taxation, and, if he had received his much coveted crown of Burgundy, he might have set up the estates of his kingdom, replacing the various representative bodies in place in each of his duchies, counties and bishoprics.

In this objective he was no different to most princes in the empire, only in the scale, speed, intensity and brutality he pursued it. And that put the fear of god into all these dukes, counts, cities, bishops and abbots on the western side of the empire. If the Burgundian juggernaut were to swallow them up, put new Hagenbachs in as governors and systematically dismantle their institutions and then,  what would be left of what they called their freedoms?

News of Hagenbach’s acts is Alsace  changed the way people saw the siege of Neuss. This was no longer a local power struggle between the archbishop and his estates, but a fight for the heart and soul of the empire. Despite all the talk about the urgency of imperial reform, the elites of this empire did like this complex system of interactions between the emperor, the prince electors, princes, bishops, abbots, imperial cities, free cities, immediate counts and knights, and within them the estates, guilds, councils and so forth. Yes it was unwieldy, ineffective but it had been created by their ancestors over centuries, one privilege and one charter at the time. They called it their freedoms, which is not the same as freedom, but still very different to the cities and nobles in France or England who were slowly but surely brought under the royal yoke.

At the same time the dozens of universities that had opened in the empire, produced a new elite of lawyers and humanists. Men sometimes from sometimes modest backgrounds rose to senior roles within the chanceries of all these dukes, electors and archbishops. And they rarely stayed with just one university or one employer. They had usually been to several academic institutions before passing their degrees. And once qualified they may work a few years for the emperor before moving on to a more generous or more interesting prince elector or duke. By constantly moving around they build relationships that spanned the empire from north to south and east to west. These networks exchanged information, views, ideas and occasionally coordinated to line up their masters behind a project they all supported.

The Glorious german Nation

Meanwhile the imperial lands were booming. New industries were emerging or taking the lead for the whole of Europe. Arms and Armour from Nürnberg, Augsburg and a dozen other places took over from the masters of Milan and Brescia, new techniques allowed German engineers and entrepreneurs to dominate European mining and manufacturing. The financial centre of the continent moved from Florence, Milan and Venice to Augsburg. What these innovations meant for people is best expressed in this 1460s printer’s colophon quote: “This excellent book, Catholicon, has been printed in the goodly city of Mainz, in the glorious German nation (which, by the Grace of God, the Almighty has deigned to prefer and exalt above other nations of the earth by gracious gift and so lofty a light of genius).”  

There was huge pride in these achievements, in the way things were and were organised. And this pride was no longer reserved to a small elite of aristocrats, as it had been in the days of Frederick Barbarossa, this sense of being in it together was shared much wider.

The historian Len Scales places the Shaping of the German identity into the 14^th century but it is in the 15^th century that it is breaking through to the surface. The term “the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” appeared a few years later, in 1486. But the Gravamina Germaniae, the complaints of the Germans about the role of the church were already read and discussed widely. Konrad Celtis, the arch humanist who would attempt a comprehensive Germania Illustrata by the end of the century had just embarked on his university career. It is now, in the second half of the 15^th century that the idea of being part of a German culture, of sharing in the great innovations of the time and living in a unique system of government takes on political significance. The most influential historian of this period, Peter Moraw called this process Verdichtung, the densification or intensification of the constitution of the empire.

Freidrich III before neuss

And who do you think has been swept along with all this enthusiasm for the empire and its defence? The most unlikely of them all, the emperor Friedrich III.

Already in March 1474, so months before Charles the Bold arrives before Neuss did he demand the princes raise 20,000 troops to defend the archbishopric of Cologne. At the same gathering he banned Friedrich the Victorious, brother of the deposed archbishop of Cologne and called on his allies, Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg and Albrecht of Saxony to lead an army west.

Initially reactions were lukewarm. But when Neuss refused to surrender, and held out month after month, the idea that the all-powerful Burgundian duke could actually be defeated was gaining traction. Enthusiasm built and built. Friedrich III, who had gone to Cologne, received offers for help from ever more far flung places. He was probably as surprised about this as we are.  Even the Swiss Confederation, the arch enemy of the Habsburg for 200 years, offered to march under his banner.

He went to Andernach where in January 1475 he took command of a force of 20,000. He formally declared war against Charles the Bold in one of the first such modern declarations of war. He had to break a number of fortresses along the way, which is why it took him until March before he arrived in Neuss.

By then Charles’ forces had been pounding the walls for 10 months. Inside the city of Neuss the situation has become utterly desperate. They sent word to the imperial forces that they could not hold out for more than a few days, unless they get relieved.

Charles did not know that and his own situation had also become untenable. Some of his troops had mutinied and nearly shot him. He was due in Calais with his forces to help the English in renewed hostilities with the French. In Lorraine the duke Rene had called off the protectorate. The death of Peter von Hagenbach was as yet unrevenged.

Charles and Friedrich met and signed a truce. And they renewed their commitment for the marriage between Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. The great dynastic link that would change the face of Europe is still on, even though the fathers of the happy couple had lined up their armies against each other.

Next week we will follow this leg of the story, find out what happened to Charles the Bold and the seminal engagement. But that is only one short story, the other, the bigger one about how the empire came to be what it became is gong to be with us or a very long time. I hope you will join us again.

And if you feel that it is time for you to stand up for your freedoms, for your ancient privilege of listening to the History of the Germans without the atrocities committed by advertisers, you can do so by strengthening the war chest of your favourite podcaster at historyofthegermans.com/support

The Gathering at trier in 1473

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Transcript

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 213 – Duping a Grand Duke or the Awakening of Friedrich III, which is also episode 11 of season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

How long can an emperor not be an emperor? The official record stands at 25 years, that is how long Friedrich III had stayed out of the core areas of the Holy Roman Empire. That meant 25 ears of Imperial Diets without the presence of an Emperor, 25 years of stasis on the challenges of the time, the reform of the empire and the defense against the Ottoman expansion.

But sometime in the late 1460s the apathic emperor Friedrich III, dubbed the Imperial Arch Sleepyhead awakes and does what he had never done before – something. And that something turned into a lot of things, some related to imperial reform, but the most significant something for European history was a marriage, well, an engagement for now, followed by a flight down the river Mosel away from the intended father of the bride.

Yes, it is that famous marriage, just not in the way you may have thought it happened.

Christmas Present

But before we start I wanted to ask you what you want for Christmas. There are so many of you who contribute to the show either financially or by telling their friends and family about the History of the Germans. I had originally thought I would provide a regular flow of bonus episodes for you, but this was ultimately not feasible. As we moved out of the early and high middle ages into the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, the sheer volume of information and the quite frankly bewildering complexity of the period has made demands on my time that left no room for bonus episodes. But you surely deserve more. So I am going to produce a Christmas special, and if you are a patron or one time donor to the show, you can choose what this Christmas special is going to be. Here are the options based on proposals I have received over time:

• A classic Q&A episode where I will try to answer all your questions,
• A travel itinerary through Germany where I give you 5 to 10 places I think you should see and that are not on the classic route, or
• A maximum five minute recording of me butchering German Christmas songs.

I will send you an email in the next few days from my email address historyofthegermans@gmail.com with a poll. Just click on what you prefer and I will deliver, but please do not make me sing….

And if you want to participate in the poll but have not yet signed up as a patron, you can do so at historyofthegermans.com/support as Ulrik M., Nathalie W. , Christopher T., Noel F. and Stepan C. have already done

And with that, back to the show.

What could Have Been…

We are in the 1460s and it is make or break time for the emperor Friedrich III. The head of the house of Habsburg was a case of terrible miscasting. For all we know, he would have been much happier as a simple imperial prince living in his castle in Wiener Neustadt and tending to his garden and his beloved wife Eleanor. If that had been his fate, he might have ended up as Friedrich the Fruitful, last mentioned in an 1878 biography by a renowned medievalist at the university of Graz, appreciated for his tasteful late gothic funeral monument, but otherwise completely forgotten.

But that was not his destiny. Instead the electors, believing he was the foretold last Emperor who would finally bring peace and justice to the land, if not ring in a 1000 years of bliss, had elevated him to king of the Romans.

They were sorely disappointed. Friedrich was apathic, always looking for compromise and happy to step back his ambitions. He had kept away from the issues of the empire, not even shown himself there for 25 long years. This long period of inertia had gained him the nickname the Imperial Arch Sleepyhead.

A.E.I.O.U.

But he was also an intelligent and a genuinely serious person. We do not know whether he realized his shortcomings, but he believed profoundly in the sanctity of the office he had taken on. Even though he had neither the resources nor the charisma to enforce the imperial rights, he never abandoned them. He was, if anything, a staggeringly stubborn man. The kind of doggedly tenacious person who would let his family be bombed to smithereens in the Hofburg rather than giving up his rights to the duchy of Austria.

Even before he had been elected he had devised his personal motto, the letter A.E.I.O.U. Like his ancestor Rudolf the Founder who had devised his own secret script, Friedrich was into astrology, puzzles and mysticism. So he never declared officially what this was supposed to mean, leaving everybody guessing.

When he first mentions it in his notebook in 1437, it might have meant “Amor electis, iniustis ordinor ultor”, which means something like “friend of the chosen and avenger to the unjust”. But then it could also mean, “Alle ere is ob uns” = all honour is for us or Aquila electa iusta omnia vincit = the chosen and just eagle conqueres all.

Friedrich not only saw the empire as eternal and superior to all other princes, he also firmly believed that the House of Austria was exceptional. He had fully bought into the Privilegium Maius, the great forgery of his ancestor, including the fake letters by Caesar and Nero granting Austria preeminent status in the Roman empire.

He took as gospel the “Austrian Chronicle of the 95 Rulers” that had emerged around the same time as the Privilegium Maius. We talked about that in episode 204. This was the story of the rulers of Austria going back to the year 1,500 BC. Here we are reliably informed that this glorious land, once founded by Hercules’ son Norix, had been ruled first by Jewish patriarchs, then Roman emperors and Babenberger dukes, before its great mission was taken up by the Habsburgs.

Friedrich had the coats of arms of these 95 imaginary predecessors immortalised in stone in the courtyard of his castle at Wiener Neustadt. He confirmed the validity of the fake Privilegium Maius in his function as emperor.

And somehow in his head and then in his propaganda, these two strains merged into a narrative whereby Austria was the natural inheritor of the imperial title and predestined to unite Europe. That is when the most common interpretation of AEIOU took hold: “Austriae est imperare orbi universo” or in German: “Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan”, both of which mean All the world is subject to Austria.

It is from here onwards that the members of the house of Habsburgs, even when they were ruling far flung lands in Spain or Naples or Flanders, referred to themselves as members of the Casa di Austria, the House of Austria, the dynasty that was predestined to rule over the whole world.

But in 1470, this idea of an all powerful Austria could not be further from reality.

the threat from Matthias Hunyadi

As we heard last week, Friedrich’s neighbour to the south, Matthias Hunyadi, the king of Hungary was reorganizing his kingdom along the lines of a modern Renaissance state, complete with humanists, libraries and a standing army. A standing army strong enough to hold back the mighty Ottoman empire and hence infinitely more powerful than any levy Friedrich could muster in Austria.

And the man who had so often come to Friedrich’s rescue, Georg of Podiebrad, had himself come under a lot of pressure. His past as a leader of the Utraquists had finally caught up with him. Pope Paul II had revoked the Compacta that had readmitted the Utraquists into the Catholic Church and in 1466 excommunicated and deposed the king. Matthias Hunyadi found it in his heart that he, as the shield of Christendom, had to pick up the burden of stealing Georg of Podiebrad’s crown.

As it turned out, Matthias wasn’t as good a general as he was an organizer and book collector. So, despite his extraordinarily well trained and well equipped army, his progress against Georg was slow. But as far as Friedrich was concerned, Podiebrad could no longer be relied upon to come and take the conkers out of the fire as the Germans would say. And the big question was what Matthias would do once he was finished with Bohemia.

Strengthening of the Wittelsbach opposition

Next up the alliance of imperial princes who had already tried to replace Friedrich twice, had become even more powerful. They had won the Mainzer Stiftsfehde and the Princes War. Friedrich’s allies, the margraves of Baden, the duke of Wurttemberg and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg were licking their wounds. And then the Wittelsbachs had added another Prince Elector to their list. In 1463 the canons of Cologne had elected the brother of Friedrich the Victorious as their new archbishop and Prince Elector. They might have lost Georg of Podiebrad as a candidate for the title of king of the Romans following the latter’s excommunication, but they were now talking to the richer and more powerful Matthias Hunyadi who was contemplating a bid for the imperial throne, not a man with modest ambitions was he.

But that was still not all. The empire had not only to deal with a resurgent Hungary looking north, but also with a duchy of Burgundy that was disentangling itself from France and was looking to expand eastwards.

Teh expansion of Burgundy into the Empire

The duchy of Burgundy as an independent state had come about initially because king John the Good of France who wasn’t very good as a king, had given the French Burgundy to his beloved youngest son Philipp.

Burgundy is one of those confusing places and political entities. The name goes back to a Germanic kingdom created in the 5^th century. It was absorbed into the Merovingian kingdom and broke up into several parts in the 10^th century.

There is the duchy of Burgundy, roughly equivalent to the French region of Burgundy around Dijon and Beaune. Then the free county of Burgundy around Besancon, known as the Franche Comte. The kingdom of Upper Burgundy, roughly today’s French Speaking Switzerland with its centers in Geneva and Lausanne and finally lower Burgundy covering the Rhone river from Lyon to Arles and the French Alps. This Burgundy that we are talking about today has its nucleus in the duchy of Burgundy, nothing to do with these other Burgundies.

After Philipp, called Philipp the Bold had received the duchy of Burgundy from his father, he married the heiress of the immensely rich county of Flanders, who also brought Brabant and Limburg into the family. There was one duke in the middle called John the Fearless, but it was under the third duke, Philipp the Good who ruled from 1419 to 1467, that the Burgundians expanded aggressively into the empire.

We did already discuss the acquisition of Hainault, Holland and Seeland in episodes 198 and 199. But Philipp the Good wasn’t done with that. Throughout his reign he added Luxemburg, Namur and Liege, making him truly the Grand Duke in the West.

The Burgundian rulers were immensely wealthy because they owned the great Flemish trading and cloth-making towns of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, Ypres, and, and, and…. For a long time the Burgundians had been focused on French politics where they were the deciding force in the Hundred Years’ War. I was Burgundian support for the English that forced the French into the treaty of Troyes that brought the soin of Henry V to the French Throne.

But when Henry V died and England was careering towards the War of the Roses, the Burgundians were in a bit of a pickle. Though they were originally French princes, the French did not like them very much anymore – something about burning a virgin in Rouen. So as much for self-preservation as for self-aggrandization, the grand Dukes of the West needed a new title and a new positioning. And that title and that positioning was in or in conjunction with the empire.

The son of Philipp the Good, Charles who we call the Bold, but which the French call Le Temeraire, the Reckless, built a huge standing army and ordered tapestries that depicted Gundobad, the fifth century king of the Burgundians, and he would often talk about the lands of the emperor Lothar that covered a broad stretch of territory from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

All things that made many people inside the empire nervous, including the emperor Friedrich III, who as we have just heard, already had a long list of things to be nervous about.  

The Awakening of friedrich III

He was actually so nervous he did something he had not done before, which was – to do something. As I said, he wasn’t stupid or a total pushover, just slow, deliberate and keen on the quit life. But a quiet life was no longer on the card, If he wanted to get out of this situation, and most importantly for him, preserve the honor of the House of Austria as well as the Imperial crown, he needed to find new allies and approaches.

The first thing he did was to go to Rome and reconfirm his close relationship with the papacy now that his friend and former chancellor pope Pius II was dead. What he got from this meeting with pope Paul II apart from promises of support and friendship was the approval of separate bishoprics for Vienna, Wiener Neustadt, Ljubljana and I think one more, important steps that allowed him to deepen and consolidate his power at home.

A renewed Approach

But that was no longer enough. The powers arrayed against him had grown far beyond the once important powerbase of his family.

So, in 1470 Friedrich III completely reverses his policy stance. It is as if he had listened to a poem by Janos Pannonius, the great Hungarian Humanist who wrote:

Rome was once saved by Fabius’ delaying

But your delays, Friedrich have brought it to breaking.

You’re always consulting and never quite doing.

Couldn’t you act for once and stop all that chewing

You harken to Saturn, the most frozen of stars;

Far better if emperors were guided by Mars

After 25 years of not setting foot into the empire, of calling diets and assemblies he did not attend and eternal dithering and debating and delaying, Friedrich III took off his imperial arch sleepy head.

The solution to his problems lay in the empire. If he could harness the power of the imperial princes in the defense of his homelands, then he may be able to face off against Matthias Hunyadi. And how can he get that done – by finally delivering on Imperial reform.

The Landfrieden of 1467

In 1467 he issued another common peace, this time including an outright ban on feuding. Anyone pursuing a feud without authorization was guilty, not just of a breach of an imperial order, but was guilty of lèse-majesté.

That was significant in two ways. First, the concept of lèse-majesté is part of Roman Law, the famous laws of the Justinian which granted the emperor in essence absolute power over legislation and execution. These powers have been circulating and have been claimed by the emperors since Barbarossa. We discussed them extensively in episode 55. That was 3 and a half years ago in podcast time and 300 years in actual historical time.

In the meantime, Roman law had permeated so much of European, specifically continental European jurisprudence. What appealed was that Roman law was structured and comprehensive. Justinian had made sure that this great opus had an inherent logic where each element connected with the other in the creation of one coherent legal philosophy, the exact opposite of the Germanic laws built on tradition and precedent.

It was Roman Law that was taught at the universities across Europe making sure that lawyers from different legal traditions and speaking different languages could still understand each other, negotiate agreements and argue cases before each other’s courts.

And it was immensely popular with kings and princes as it cut through the messy set of ancient rights and privileges, the estates and other representative bodies that pointed to tradition and long practice to hem in the ruler.

Whether it was the Renaissance states of Italy, the grand kingdoms of France and Hungary or the German territorial princes, everyone was busy implementing Roman Law principles.

Friedrich III jumped on the bandwagon when he added the lèse-majesté to the arsenal of the fight against feuds. And he did implement these rules, at least to the extent he was able to. When his mercenary captain, Andreas Baumkirchner declared a feud against the emperor over unpaid bills, Friedrich lured him to Wiener Neustadt, and had him and two of his colleagues executed – for lèse-majesté. He had learned to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The Chancery under Adolf of Nassau

In 1470 he had a visit from Adolf of Nassau, the archbishop of Mainz. We have met him in episode 191 and 186 already. Not a nice guy, but Friedrich is no longer mister Nice Guy either. He needed to get stuff done and Adolf was a guy who could get stuff done. Adolf took charge of the imperial chancery and the Kammergericht, the redesigned professional court system that Friedrich had established in 1442, but that had fallen into disuse.

The Imperial Diet of 1471

And Friedrich showed himself again in the Empire. In 1471 he called the princes of Christendom to Regensburg for a grand assembly to discuss what to do about the Ottomans. Admittedly that was a bit late, a touch self-serving as Ottoman raiders had been penetrating into Styria and yielded the usual zero result, but at least Friedrich was breaking the ice, no longer Saturn, the most frozen of stars.

And Mars was on its way.

Build-up to The Burgundian Engagement

But before he got there, he took a detour to see Mars’ lover, Venus. Not for himself obviously. Since his wife Eleanor had died in 1467, he had not shown any interest in other women, either out of his natural inertia or in an attempt to create another holy imperial couple like Henry II and Kunigunde.

No, Venus was reserved for his one and only son, Maximilian. Last time he had appeared on the scene was in 1463 when he was a four year-old hiding in the cellars of the Hofburg. But by now, i.e., the year 1473, he had grown up to be a strapping lad of 14, ready to take on his duties as son and potential successor to the Holy Roman Emperor.

And his father had an idea, or more precisely his former chancellor Aeneas Piccolomini had  had that idea a long time ago. An idea so cunning, it would change the history of Europe quite fundamentally.

And that idea was for Friedrich to take a leaf out of the book of his ancestor Rudolf I and finally properly leverage his imperial title, not by calling in vacant fiefs, that he would do later, but by offering crowns in exchange of marriage. And the person he was offering the crown to was Charles “Le Temeraire”, the Reckless, the Grand Duke in the West, duke of Burgundy, Luxemburg, Limburg, Geldern, count of Flanders and Namur, advocate of the prince bishoprics of Liege and Utrecht, etc., etc. pp. And in exchange Charles would offer the hand of Mary, his only daughter and only child, in marriage to Maximilian of Austria.

What an amazing deal! Charles gets what he always wanted and the House of Habsburg brings home the richest heiress in Europe. But before you go, ah hurrah we are finally getting into how the Habsburg had married their way to the top, let’s hear what actually happened.

Such a seminal transaction could not be done over the phone or by messenger, the two principal actors – no not Maximilian and Mary – but Friedrich and Charles needed to meet. And that meeting took place in the autumn of 1473 in the city of Trier.

Friedrich had come there with an entourage of Imperial Princes, including several Prince Electors, a total of about 2,000 men.

The Splendour of Charles the Bold

Charles “Le Temeraire” arrived with his own standing army of 15,000 and a full display of the wealth and power of the Grand Dukes of the West.

Charles had reached the pinnacle of his career. He had clapped his adversary, king Louis XI of France in irons, had brutally suppressed an uprising in his city of Liege, allowing his troops to plunder and burn the place so that the Austrian ambassador wrote back to his master that Liege was covered in a blanket of red snow, only the stumps of the church towers sticking out. After that the proud cities of Flanders, even the mighty and unruly Ghent submitted to the will of the duke. That was followed up with the annexation of the Duchy of Geldern and an agreement with the duke of Lorraine that turned that duchy into a protectorate of the Burgundians. With these acquisitions Charles had finally connected the family’s original possession, the duchy of Burgundy with their main power base, the low countries in one contiguous territory. And he was extending his tentacles further south by acquiring the Habsburg lands in Alsace from Friedrich’s dissolute cousin Sigismund of Tyrol.

When Charles rode into Trier at the head of the army that had burned Liege, had taken Geldern an intimidated the duke of Lorraine, he insisted on showing the other side of Burgundian power, the splendor of his court. He arrived wearing a cloak bedecked with 1,400 pearls and 23 rubies over his golden armor. He wore a hat, not yet his most famous golden hat, but still an ostentatious garment featuring a stork feather decorated all over with precious stones.

Charles had brought what looked to many his entire store of household goods, clothes in gold and ermine for himself and his entourage, the finest tapestries from the unsurpassed workshops in Arras, Tournai and Brussels, plates and cups made from gold and silver, the most dazzling armour from Milan, ,anuscripts lavishly decorated by the Limburg brothers and travel alters by Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden and, and, and whatever bling there was, Charles had it, and lots of it, and he was flaunting it.

The contrast to the austere and in comparison, penniless emperor was stark. And what made the whole thing even more awkward was that Friedrich as king and emperor ranked far above a mere duke, even one who had more land, more soldiers and a lot more money than he had.

The negotiations at Trier

The first few days were taken up with questions of etiquette, before negotiations could begin for real.

Charles opening bid was that he would like to be elected king of the Romans and thereby become Friedrich’s successor as emperor. He would then sponsor the election of Friedrich’s son Maximilian who would also become his heir by marrying the delightful Mary of Burgundy.

Friedrich very much liked that very last bit of the offer, but the other elements not so much. Friedrich was not at all willing to allow a King of the Romans to be elected during his lifetime who would then lead the imperial reform movement and sideline him. And that reluctance even extended to his own son, let alone the powerful duke of Burgundy.

Fortunately for Friedrich he could hide behind the reluctance of the Prince Electors to endorse Charles’ candidature. Friedrich still had a majority in the college of electors, having strong links to the archbishops of Mainz and Trier, the duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Brandenburg.  But these links were not strong enough to convince them that they should elect someone with a standing army of 20,000, reckless ambition and a reputation for utmost brutality. Plus they had not enjoyed being upstaged by Burgundian glitz and glamour every single day of the 1 and a half month the gathering lasted.

A crown and an Engagement

Friedrich proposed an alternative option. What he could arrange was an elevation of the duke of Burgundy to king of Burgundy. That was an ancient title the empire had acquired (episode 24) but it had been a long time since anyone had been crowned king of Burgundy, I think the last one  was Karl IV. But the title had never formally disappeared.  

I could not find out what exactly the constitutional construct for Charles’ intended royal title had been. Was it a title like the king of Bohemia that gave a degree of independence but retained the bonds of vassalage to the empire, or was it meant to be an elevation to an independent royal title as it had been bestowed on Poland and Hungary in the 11^th century.

Even if this was a bit vague, Charles was keen. The royal title he was sure would help him to turn his various territories with their respective institutions and traditions into a more coherent political entity. And he really liked to wear a crown instead of just a ducal hat. So he had his goldsmiths produce such a crown and a sceptre, an orb and all the other accoutrements, all in the finest and latest Burgundian fashion.

He summoned the bishop of Metz to preside over the ceremony.

But before that went ahead, the last business end needed to be tied up. The engagement of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. As it happened, only Maximilian was present at Trier. Mary had stayed behind in Flanders depriving the Emperor from inspecting the merchandise, which irritated him no end. Charles seemed to have brought his entire household, just not its most important member. But even though she was sight unseen, still the engagement went ahead.

With all the agreements signed and completed, Charles spent his days devising ever more elaborate parades, rituals and costumes to display his soon to be elevated status. Whilst Friedrich had very different thoughts. Well, we do not know what his thoughts were and historians have debated them back and forth for a long time.

The flight of emperor friedrch III

What we do know is that in the middle of the night, the day before the intended coronation, Friedrich with his small entourage boarded a ship and slipped out of Trier. When Charles heard about it, he sent his trusted lieutenant and governor of upper Alsace, Peter von Hagenbach to intercept the emperor. Hagenbach and his men rode as fast as they could along the Mosel river. When their horses got tired, they swapped them for a rowing boat and they rowed as hard as they could. Finally, they caught up with the emperor. Here is historian Bart van Loo’s description what happened next: quote

Hagenbach who was fluent in French and German could address Friedrich III in his own language and asked whether his majesty wouldn’t wait a bit for the Burgundian duke.  Hagenbach said that Charles felt wretched because the emperor had risen so early. If it pleased Friedrich to exercise patience, the duke would be able to say farewell in a dignified manner. Even in delicate circumstances, courtesy remained an important consideration.

Friedrich agreed on condition that it would not take too long. When half an hour had passed and the vessels were still bobbing in the stream, a frown appeared on the emperor’s face. Hagenbach declared he would fetch his master. He could not be far away. Friedrich nodded. The Governor of Upper Alsace then jumped in his boat, but he was barely out of sight before the sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire gave the order to continue the journey. By the time Hagenbach reached the duke, the bird had flown.” End quote.

What followed was an epic tantrum. Charles the bold had already been famous for his outbursts, but what his courtiers observed on this day, November 25^th, 1473 went beyond what anyone had seen before. Charles locked himself into his room and smashed all his furniture’s like a 15^th century Keith Moon. This day that he had hoped would be one of glory and triumph, had become one of fury and shame. The duke of Burgundy had been played in the most outrageous fashion. His daughter, the greatest prize in the European marriage market had been given away for nothing. Breaking the engagement wasn’t an option because it would make his embarrassment even more obvious than it already was, and there was also no other means to acquire a royal title. The rage that he felt about this would send him on an ever more reckless path to achieve his dream of reviving the early medieval Burgundian kingdom or even the empire of Lothair.  

Outlook

And this path will lead him to a small town between Cologne and Dusseldorf, the city of Neuss and into one of the longest and most celebrated sieges of the Late Middle Ages, though celebrated more vigorously in the German Lands than in the dominions of the Burgundian dukes.

But this story and how that elevated both the sense of unity amongst the subjects of the empire and their emperor is what we will look at next week.

I hope you will come along again.

And if you feel the weight of a golden hat compressing your neck or you got tired of your thousands of pearls sewn into your ermine coat, you could augment your splendour by donating your fellow listeners a few more weeks of advertising free listening to the History of the Germans. You know where to go and you know what to do.

Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary

Today we will talk a lot about Matthias Corvinus, the legendary renaissance king of Hungary whose library outshone that of the Medici in Florence and whose standing army was one of the greatest – and most expensive – military forces in 15^th century Europe.

Why are we talking about a Hungarian ruler in a series about the Habsburgs? Trust me, there is a good reason beyond it being a fascinating life story.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 212 – The Library of the Raven King, also Episode 10 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

Today we will talk a lot about Matthias Corvinus, the legendary renaissance king of Hungary whose library outshone that of the Medici in Florence and whose standing army was one of the greatest – and most expensive – military forces in 15^th century Europe.

Why are we talking about a Hungarian ruler in a series about the Habsburgs? Trust me, there is a good reason beyond it being a fascinating life story.

But before we start, it is just me in my saffron robes holding out my begging bowl. I cannot offer the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha nor can I explain the principles that help you live a fulfilling life. All I can offer in return is the absence of ever more hyperbolic praise for humdrum consumer products, let alone promotion of sports betting sites, which is today the #2 podcast advertiser. If that is enough for you and you want to drop your grains of rice into my bowl, you can do so at historyofthegermans.com/support. And there you can join the immensely generous: Kliment M., Michael N., Sofia G., Tobias P., Ben H., Paul-James V. and Scott P.

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we ended on a cliffhanger. Emperor Friedrich III and his young family were huddling together in the cellars of the Hofburg as cannon pounded the ancient fortress. Walls and towers were crumbling and one errant projectile, one falling piece of masonry or the simple lack of food could have wiped out the dynasty that was destined to rule half of Europe.

How did they get out? Was it the citizens of Vienna realizing they had gone too far? Or the emperor’s brother, the archduke Albrecht VI putting family ahead of personal ambition?

No, help came from one of the least probable corners, from Georg of Podiebrad, the king of Bohemia. Georg, you may remember, had put his name forward as King of the Romans in an attempt to fill the vacuum the 15 year absence of the emperor from the Reich had created. And in this attempt to rise to the title, Georg had allied with Friedrich’s arch enemies, the Wittelsbachs, namely Ludwig the Rich of Bayern-Landshut and Friedrich the Victorious, Count Palatine on the Rhine, and – who would believe it – the emperor’s brother and besieger.

Still, in December 1462 Georg or more precisely his Victorin showed up outside Vienna with of a force of his dreaded Bohemian fighters and demanded that Friederich and Albrecht made peace. Under the watchful eye of the Bohemians, the brothers signed an agreement whereby Albrecht was given control of the whole of the duchy Austria including the city of Vienna for eight years in exchange for a substantial annual payment to Friedrich.

And so the emperor Friedrich III, his wife Eleanor and his son Maximilian were allowed to leave the smoldering ruins of the Hofburg. Teeth clenched and full of anger and hatred, they had to walk the gauntlet of the citizens of Vienna who hissed at them, saying, go back to Graz, seemingly a place so barbarous, no upstanding Viennese felt was fit for human habitation.

Friedrich immediately swore revenge and the war of the brothers continued for another 12 months. In these 12 months Friedrich made some progress, as usual not  through action, but through the actions of his enemies. Albrecht VI managed to irritate the Viennese in record time, so that the mayor, Wolfgang Holzer opened secret negotiations inviting Friedrich III to return. Albrecht got wind of that and had Holzer and two of his colleagues torn limb from limb. A move that was not universally popular in the capital. Before the Viennese could gather their spikes and pitchforks to take revenge on their ungraceful lord, Albrecht VI died, of an infection, the bubonic plague or poison, whatever – he was dead.

By 1464 Friedrich III was back in Vienna, as if nothing had happened, well, he did not go back to Vienna obviously since the Hofburg was still in ruins and memories were fresh, but metaphorically and politically, yes, he was back.

But that does not answer the more fundamental question, why did Georg of Podiebrad help Friedrich III? Why did he not just let the stubborn emperor get buried under the rubble of his superannuated castle?

Episode 210 – Ladislaus PostumusThat gets us back to the circumstances that had brought Georg of Podiebrad to the throne of Bohemia. Georg, as we have heard, had not an ounce of royal blood in his veins. He had been elevated to the title because he had exercised de facto control of Bohemia for more than a decade already. When the nominal king of Bohemia, Ladislaus Postumus, died, the estates of Bohemia preferred the devil they knew to some hereditary claimant like Friedrich III, Kasimir of Poland or the duke of Saxony they didn’t.

Podiebrad had managed to walk a thin tightrope between the two main political factions, the moderate Hussites, known as the Utraquists, and the old school Catholics. The Utraquists had emerged from the heretical Hussite movement that had taken control of the kingdom in 1420 and that no catholic army could overthrow. In 1436 the council of Basel had agreed the Compacta with the Hussites, an agreement that readmitted them into the church, and allowed them certain Hussite practices, such as the eucharist in the form of bread and wine. Hence the name Utraquists, which translates as “under both kinds”.

Georg had been the leader of the Utraquists but through a sequence of military successes and subsequent compromises had gained acceptance by the Catholics in Bohemia as well.  By 1462, when Podiebrad appeared before Vienna, this political construct had come under ever increasing pressure, not from the emperor or any of the other frustrated candidates, or from within, but from the papacy.

Ever since Friedrich had signed the concordat of Vienna, the papacy had gained the upper hand over the conciliar movement. The Roman Curia began to systematically dismantle the reforms that had been agreed at Basel. One of the decisions the popes, in particular pope Pius II, aka Silvio Piccolomini, wanted to reverse was the compacta that allowed Hussitism to exist, even in its massively watered down form.

Before his coronation, the papal nuncio had made Georg of Podiebrad swear a secret oath that he would suppress the Hussite religion. Georg did swear the oath but crossed his fingers behind his back, since executing the wish of the Roman pontiff would have been obvious political suicide.

Georg needed to find a way to legitimize his rule without suppressing his own people, the Utraquists. Which is why he became keen to be elected King of the Romans. If that had worked out, he would have been largely immune from papal excommunication. I have not done the numbers, but by my estimate, more than half of the rulers of the empire since Henry IV had been excommunicated at one point or another, and all of them had held on to their crowns, except for Otto IV.

The other way he hoped to inveigle  his way into the hearts of the Roman prelates was by promising to fight against the Turks. Bohemia had at the time the most effective war machine in western europe making this a valuable offer.

And then there was another player who could provide Georg with his much needed air cover, and that was the emperor Friedrich III himself. For one, Friedrich III was the emperor and Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire. As long as Friedrich recognized Georg as king, Georg was the legitimate king. Moreover, in 1462 the pope was Pius II, aka the former chief secretary of the emperor, Silvio Piccolomini. Doing the emperor a big favour might keep the pope from going all guns blazing after the Hussites and after himself.

And the other question is, what happened if Friedrich managed to get out of Vienna under his own steam? If he found Georg on the side of his enemies, he would almost certainly ban him and encourage the pope to excommunicate him and depose him. And that could easily lead to an uprising of the Catholics inside Bohemia, plus an invasion by his rapacious catholic neighbors.

So, much better to gain eternal imperial gratitude as the white knight who had come to the rescue. And that is why Friedrich III did not end up dead under a pile of rubble.

Georg’s search for legitimacy of his kingship stayed within the established legal and cultural frameworks of the Late Middle Ages. As far as he could make out, it was the Popes and emperors who ultimately decided what was right in the eyes of god, and hence what was right in the eyes of men.

But we are in the year 1462, the year when Piero della Francesco painted his Madonna della Misericordia,  Mantegna began work on the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, Botticelli was apprenticed to Filippo Lippi and Leon Battista Alberti had published his book on architecture. The Humanists had learned Greek from the envoys of the emperor of Constantinople and were compiling the definitive versions of the works of the great philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus and all the others. And these definitive versions were coming off the printing presses that had been running for a decade now. The world was changing. The Renaissance was not just coming, it was here.

Which gets us to Georg’s colleague, Matthias Hunyadi, the 15 year-old who had been made king of Hungary about the same time as Georg had become king of Bohemia.

And when Georg had an issue with legitimacy, young Hunyadi had the same problem, but tenfold.

When Georg became king he had ruled Bohemia already for a decade. Matthias on the other hand was a boy of 15 with no experience or track record. His only claim to fame was descent from Janos Hunyadi, the hero of Belgrade. It was his uncle, the commander of the Belgrade garrison, who used his substantial influence to get the magnates to elect him. This uncle may have believed he would be rewarded with at lest a few years of regency on behalf of his nephew, but found himself instead confronted with the harshness of Matthias character. The young king sent him off to defend the border in Serbia where the Ottomans promptly captured and decapitated him.

In light of these events, several senior magnates became unsure about young Matthias, left Buda and elected of all people, Friedrich III as king of Hungary. What made this an even more serious challenge to the son of Janos Hunyadi was that Friedrich had the crown of St. Steven. You may remember that 28 years earlier the mother of the boy king Ladislaus Postumus got her lady in waiting to steal the crown of St. Steven to prevent the coronation of the Polish king as king of Hungary. That particular part of the plot failed, but the crown of St. Steven had remained in Vienna all that time. Friedrich III now had it and used it to get crowned as king of Hungary.

As usual, this was the maximum extent of Friedrich’s activity as king of Hungary. He fortified the castles he already held in the west of the country and went home to Wiener Neustadt for more gardening.

That allowed Matthias and his advisers to stabilize the situation and regain the confidence of several of the magnates who had rebelled.  But the issue of the crown remained.

These crowns were not just decorative objects, but spiritual ones as well. They contained relics, they were linked to saints, in this case Saint Steven of Hungary, and over the long period that Hungary was ruled by foreign families, had become the symbol of the state itself.

We have already seen that Karl IV had quite deliberately made the Crown of St. Wenceslaus the object that the Kingdom of Bohemia rallied around, rather than the person of the king. In Hungary that process had not been that deliberate, but the result was similar. Only a king who walked under the crown of St. Steven was the real king.

And that applied even more to a king who had no royal blood. Matthias needed the crown of St. Steven if he wanted to make sure his kingdom and his dynasty would endure.

And in 1463 he got it back. Matthias had been negotiating with Friedrich III for years over his claim to be king of Hungary and the crown. And as always, Friedrich had blocked and insisted on his rights, even when he had no chance at all of turning them into tangible power. But when Friedrich returned from his ordeal in the Hofburg he was ready to trade. For the right sum, a sum large enough to muster an army against his hated brother, he would hand over the saintly headgear. 80,000 gulden was the price, and some minor small print. Friedrich was allowed to retain a few Hungarian counties and castles, places he had held since 1440 anyway. And just one minor thing – Friedrich was allowed to retain the title of a king of Hungary and if Matthias would die without heir, Friedrich would inherit Hungary.

That should have been one of those completely out of the money options that were practically worthless. Matthias was 20 years old, Friedrich was 48. Matthias had just got engaged to Catherine, the daughter of Georg of Podiebrad, 14 years old and ready to produce heirs. What were the chances that Friedrich would outlive Matthias and that Matthias would have no legitimate children. Yeah, what were the chances indeed?

The crown of St. Stephen did help Matthias to establish his right to rule Hungary, but that was by no means enough.

The Magnates of Hungary, the 60 families that controlled this enormous kingdom that at the time comprised not just modern day Hungary, but also Slovakia, Croatia and Transylvania, they did not regard the Hunyadis as equals. Matthias had not been born in a massive castle in the Hungarian plain, but in the house of a well-to-do wine grower in a city that is now in Romania where it is called Cluj-Napoco, but is known to Hungarians as Kolozsvár and to Germans as Klausenburg. This was and is one of these regions of Europe that are heavily contested between various ethnic groups, including the Siebenbürger Sachsen who had come there in the 13th century. There is no way I can get through this story as a sidebar in this episode, so we just leave it at that.

Matthias Hunyadi was born in Transsylvania. His father, though a great hero, had come from a family of lower nobility who had risen to prominence and enormous wealth under Sigismund’s reign as king of Hungary. A hero, sure, but still, not exactly the right sort of chap. Even if his son now carried the most holy crown of St. Stephen on his head underneath it he was still the same old chav.

What Matthias needed was a way to bend the magnates to his will. And not just one way, but preferably a whole set of tools. And since Matthias was a very smart guy, educated by one of Hungary’s most learned and most astute churchmen, he came up with several.

The first one was to style himself as Europe’s bulwark against the infidels. In 1456 Hungary had – again – stood alone against the Ottomans coming up the Balkans. And since the empire was unable to get its act together and neither Bohemia nor Poland really helped, Matthias could quite credibly claim that he, and only he, was the shield of Christendom. And that was a claim that resonated very strongly in Italy.

We tend to forget how close the Ottoman empire was to Italy, in particular southern Italy. The Straight of Otranto is the narrowest point of the Adriatic where just 45 miles separate the coast of Italy from Albania. I have been to Otranto and you can actually see the mountains of Albania from there. For now Skanderbeg, the most successful Albanian leader of the period was winning his battles against Mehmed II, but he died in 1468 and from then onwards an Ottoman invasion into Italy became a possibility, a possibility that  materialised in 1480, when Ottoman troops took the city of Otranto in Puglia.

Long story short, the Italians were a lot more concerned about an Ottoman invasion than the rest of Western Europe. Byzantine exiles from Constantinople had been stirring up fear of the alleged barbaric turks for decades. Their pupils, the Italian humanists would write long elegies about the Hunyadis and their valiant defence of Christendom against these vicious fiends. The popes in particular bought into that sentiment and supported a united and powerful Hungary. And as long as Matthias was the most likely person to keep Hungary together and ready to fight, the popes held their hand over the young king, come what may.

The second pillar of his regime was the army. And what an army it was. Matthias had inherited his father’s mercenary force of 6,000 to 8,000 men, kept under arms at all times. Over his 32 year reign he wil expand this force to its peak of 28,000 men, making it the by far largest standing army in christian europe, twice as large as the standing army of Louis XII of France. This army consisted of four main forces, the heavy cavalry, infantry and the light cavalry, the famous hussars and finally regiments of field artillery, used in the early stages of battle and during sieges.

The regular use of artillery was not the only innovation. A quarter of Matthias’ infantry men was equipped with an arquebuse, a type of early musket, more than any other army at the time. Their fighting tactics took some inspiration from Jan Zizka’s Hussite wagenburgs. Though instead of bringing along carts, his infantry used pikemen to form defensive squares allowing the arquebusiers and crossbowmen to shoot at the enemy from inside this square, very much like Zizka’s fighters shot from inside their wagenburgs. Light cavalry too was an innovation, likely inspired by Ottoman warfare. These forces were highly mobile, brilliant at raids and surprise attacks.

What made this force the most powerful fighting force in europe though was that key ingredient of modern warfare, discipline. The soldiers in the Black Army were professional soldiers who fought for money. Matthias paid them well. His heavy cavalry men were paid five florins a month, well above the usual 3 florins, light cavalry revceived 3 florins a month, again sustantially more than normal. Within the infantry pay varied between simple pikemen and the crssbowmen and arquebusiers and the most specialised, the gunners, operating the field cannon. But all were paid a lot more than anyone else would. And in return they had to follow orders, train, work together across cavalry and infantry and accept that their officers were chosen on merit, not on who their dad was. Compare that to the battle of Nicopol 70 years earlier where the arrogance and stupidity of the Burgundian and French high aristicrats led to the annihilation of the Christian forces by the Ottomans.

When Matthias army reached its maximum size of 28,000, the cost of keeping it in the field is estimated at 300,000 to 350,000 florins per quarter. To put that in context, Matthias paid Friedrich III 80,000 ducats for the crown of St. Stephen, basically a month’s wages. When Albrecht II paid up for the privilege to marry the daughter of emperor Sigismund and with her the right to the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns, he paid 400,000 florins, again, the equivalent of four months of Matthias’ army.

And this was not the only standing army in Hungary at the time. Apart from the mobile Black Army, Matthias furnished the fortresses along the southern border with permanent garrisons, equipped with cannon and trained in defensive siege warfare. These fortresses covered an unbroken line stretching 500km from the Adriatic see to Wallachia, almost five times the length of Hadrain’s wall.

Bottom line, we are talking an absolutely unprecedented expenditure here. Now where did the money for all that come from?

Certainly not from the royal purse. The magnates controlled 2/3rds of the land directly and another quarter through the church. The king himself owned only about 5%. Nowhere near enough revenue to cover even a week of the army’s cost.

Then we have the Hunyadi’s personal fortune. Matthias Hunyadi had inherited 2.3 million hectares, 28 castles, 57 towns and 1,000 villages from his father. Now we are talking. But again, how long would that last?

Then there were the mines in what is now Slovakia. These were famous for their silver and copper and one of them, Neusohl, provided the Fugger’s with a virtual monopoly in copper after Matthias was dead. But as we have heard in the epsiodes about Nurnberg, in the 15th century the Hungarians never saw the true benefit of their copper. The copper seams in Slovakia were heavily mixed with silver, but it was the Nurnberger smelters who had the technique to extract the silver from the copper ore, making them immensely rich, whilst the king of Hungary and the local mining operators saw only a fraction of the value.

Now what? There is a reason we associate the appearance of standing armies with the establishment of modern states. General taxation was the only way such forces could be built, equipped and maintained. And the ability to set and collect general taxes required a large and  powerful bureaucracy, the kind of bureaucracy normally assocoiated with a modern state.

Matthias stablished a bureacracy across Hungary, though it is doubtful it had the same breadth and depth as a modern state. The true reason his people were prepared to pay his general tax of 1 gold florin for each household, was his army. These soldiers were not just permanently under arms, but they were also utterly loyal to the king. In particular in the beginning, the vast majority of them weren’t Hungarins, but Bohemians, Germans, Croats and Poles. They didn’t have any links to the peasants and minor nobles who they made to pay. Faced with a professional army even the great Hungarian magnates coughed up their due.

The Black Army and the line of fortresses along the border turned Matthias’ Hungary into a major European power, a power that could defend itself and the lands behind it against an Otttoman invasion. But it wasn’t powerful enough to take the offense to sultan Mehmet’s 60,000 cavalry and 10,000 Janissaries. Which explains Matthias’ rather lacklustre attempts to join the crusades the popes kept calling for. In fact he only pursued one major campaign, in 1464 in Bosnia where he recaptured an important fortress. But that was as far as it went.

When his ally, Vlad III, Voivode of Vallachia stood up against the Ottoman sultan and raided across Ottoman Bulgaria, Matthias not only left him hanging out to dry, but took him prisoner. We know Vlad III by his epithet Vlad the Impaler, or even better by his other nckname, Dracula, the little dragon. I am not going to discuss the contested question whether or not he was indeed a monster who had 10s of thousands of men, women and children, even babies impaled. What matters here is that Matthias used these stories to paint Vlad as a psychpath, which justified his decision to not support his crusade, to lock him up and thereby appease the Sultan.

Which gets us to the third leg of his power, a tremendous public relations machine. Matthias had enjoyed a very thorough education. His tutor was Janos Vitez, one of the early Humanists in Hungary. Vitez had studied in Vienna and had risen to prominece in the service of emperor Sigismund. In 1445 he became the bishop of Oradea where he built one of the earliest Renaissance palaces in central Europe. That palace held a great library that contained the latest editions of the Latin and Greek classics, to be perused by his circle of Humanist friends, many of them Italians, but also Germans, Poles and obviously locals. He sponsored many young Hunagrians to study in Italy, including his nephew, Janos Pannonius, who became the best known Hungarian writer of this period.

Matthias, who had grown up in this environment was naturally drawn to the new ideas about architecture and culture that came over from Italy. It is again important to understand that Hungary at the time had access to the Adriatic and connections to Italy were close and well established. After all, the dynasty that ruled Hungary before Sigismund had been the Anjou of Naples. It is therefore not at all surprising that Italian Humanists, architects and artists were attracted by offers from Hungarian courts.

But there was also a political dimension to these cultural exchanges that Matthias sought to benefit from. Let’s take a look at who was in charge of the major Italian states in 1460/1470. Florence was ruled by the Medici, a family of bankers, Venice by an oligarchy of traders, Mantua, Bologna, Rimini, Perugia by local strongmen who had risen as condottiere, and then most of Northern Italy was under the control of Francesco Sforza, the greatest mercenary captain of his age. Very few of these were held by ancient aristocratic families, and even those like for instance Naples were held by rulers of dubious legality.

And one way in which these commoners justified their rule was through art and architecture. Brunelleschi’s cupola of the duomo in Florence was not just an engineering marvel, it was also a symbol of the effectiveness of the Medici rule. Leonardo’s last supper was not just a masterpiece, but also a sign that the Sforza were ruling with god’s blessing. But the biggest propaganda value lay in the references back to the ancient Romans. The great Roman consuls and emperors, Scipio, Marius, Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Marcus, Aurelius, Constantine did not inherit absolute power but had earned it, whilst those who just inherited power, the Caligulas, Neros, Commodus and Heligobalus squandered it.

By going back to the ancients, these strongmen could justify their rule, claiming their merit superseded the herditary rights of the Visconti or the Anjou. So when the Malatesta of Rimini comissioned Lean Battista Alberti to turn the old gothic cathedral into a mausoleum for his family in the style of a roman temple, it wasn’t a fashion statement, but a political one.

Art and Architecture was one component of this large public relations effort to legitimise the power of these nouveau riches, the other was science, knowledge, literature, and also libraries. The great Italian princes competed hard over who had the most dazzling court of intellectuals and the largest and best library in the land. Cosimo de Medici and his grandson Lorenzo were avid collectors, bringing together a thousand or so manuscripts covering both religious and secular topics, now in Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library. Frederico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino and quintessential Renaissance prince had a similar number of books, most of them in Latin, but also 168 were in Greek, 82 in Hebrew and even 2 in Arabic.

And that is where Matthias, a new man like all of these, superseded them all. In the magnificent renaissance palace his Italian architects erected for him in Buda, his library comprised roughly 3,000 volumes, three times as many as the Medici and almost as many as the largest library in Christendom, the Vatican library. To amass such a number of books was at a minimum a huge logistical challenge. Travelling from Florence, where the best booksellers of the age operated, to Buda could easily take months. The roads were not always safe and these books were not only incredibly valuable, but also easy to conceal and sell, a bit like 19th century imperial jewellery.  Some of these books Matthias took from other Hungarian libraries whose owners had either passed away or fallen into disgrace. Others he had produced in the workshop he established in his palace at Buda, but the majority he ordered from Italy.

Hardly anything that Matthias built or collected survived the vagaries of time. His palaces in Buda and Visegrad have been entirely destroyed, so that just one of the many fountains that once adored his gardens survived. Of his famed library only 200 books can still be attributed.

But as a political tool it did work. He had placed the library right behind the throne room. Foreign dignitaries and local magnates could see the rows and rows of books behind the king, making clear that his power wasn’t just built on brawn but also brain.

And whilst the Italian princes competed over books, painters and writers amngst each other, Matthias’ message had another, wider audience. In the 15th century most of Europe saw the Hungarians as fierce, but rustic and uneducated warriors. Meanwhile despite what the Greek refugees in Italy said about the Turks, thoe who travelled there knew that Constantinople had benefitted enormously from being again the capital of a huge empire. Wonderous new mosques and palaces were comissioned, old trade routes that had been disrupted reopened and Venetian and Genoese merchants resumed their activities. Italian artists like Gentile Bellini came to paint the sultan and Mehmet II’s library could easily rival thos eof teh Italian princes.

Hence Matthias needed to show Hungary not just as a military, but also as a cultural bulwark of Western Europe. His library, his buildings and the humanists at his court were there as the intellectual force that held back the alleged barbarism of the Turks.

We know him today as Matthias Corvinus, after his heraldic symbol, the raven, corvus in Latin. In the 15th century the raven was not yet a symbol of darkness and witchcraft. It appeared in Genesis when Noah sent a raven to find out whether the waters have receded, ravens fed the prophet Elias during a drought, and in Luke 12,24 it says: „Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them”. Ravens were birds sent by God for a specific purpose, and hence most suitable for a king tasked with the defence of Christendom.

Some Italian humanists then concocted the idea that the Hunyadis were descendant of Marcus Valerius Corvus, a roman senator elected consul six times and dictator twice. Matthias never formally endorsed the theory, but also did not deny it, again adding to the reasons he was the rightful ruler of Hungary.

Not just Hungary. As we already mentioned, Matthias Corvinus did not use his great army and broad support at home and abroad to regain lost territory from the Ottomans. In fact, he largely left the Ottomans alone after 1464.

Instead, he turned his gaze north, to Bohemia and Austria. It was these lands he used his army to conquer. First, he went for Bohemia, the kingdom of his erstwhile father in law, Georg of Podiebrad. By now pope Paul II had revoked the Compacta and Georg of Podiebrad had been excommunicated and declared a heretic. This gave Matthias the justification he needed. As the shield of Christendom, he was not only tasked with defence against the Muslims, but also with eradicating heresies. Or so he claimed. In 1471 he had succeeded in a manner of speaking. Georg of Podiebrad had given up the hope of creating a dynasty and had made Kasimir IV of Poland the heir to the kingdom of Bohemia, and he had given up the outer territories of Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia and Lusatia to Matthias.

After this success, Matthias turned on Austria and on Friedrich III. This war, that lasted until his death in 1490 could not be justified as a crusade against a heretic or a war against the Turks.

If there was to be a justification for his ambition, it went as follows. The Ottoman armies are far stronger than those of Hungary alone, even his Black Army. If Europe was to be defended successfully, all of the forces of central Europe, Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, the Holy Roman Empire and Poland have to act in unison. And guess how one can ensure that these diverse places act in unison…

Now, you ask, what has that to do with the Habsburgs?

States and empires stick together for a reason, often these reasons are cultural or linguistic. But sometimes they are not, sometimes they are driven by a shared belief in institutions – like in Switzerland – sometime they are a function of geography, like Britain, and sometimes they are a function of geopolitical circumstances.

If one wonders why three so culturally different nations like the Hungarians, the Czechs and the Austrians, plus a large number of others stuck together from the 15^th to the early 20^th century, it wasn’t just the iron will of the Habsburg dynasty. As we have seen at the top of the episode, the Habsburgs could have easily disappeared from history in 1462. If they had disappeared, I am fairly convinced that a multinational state in central europe would have emerged anyway, be it under the Hunyadis or the Jagiellons or someone else. Because only a combination of these forces and support from Poland and the Empire was strong enough to halt the Ottoman progress.

This objective was what gave legitimacy to the state and the campaigns of Matthias Corvinus and will give justification for the existence of the Habsburg empire. And the Habsburgs adopted some of the other elements of Matthias Hunyadi’s concept; the Landsknechte were the Maximilan’s version of the Black Army, general taxation, which in turn required the bureaucracy of a modern, absolutist state were introduced in the hereditary lands and in the empire. The sponsorship of art, architecture and literature as a counterpoint to the alleged barbarity of the Ottomans embellished Vienna. And last but definitely not least, the ferocious persecution of anyone who wasn’t Catholic became a key Habsburg feature.

That is not to say the Habsburgs slavishly copied Matthias Hunyadi. Friedrich III was no fan of the renaissance and his architectural taste remained rooted in the Gothic style; his right to rule was not based merit, but on his unshakeable belief that his family was divinely ordained . His son Maximilian was the first Habsburg to be a true Renaissance prince, but he left neither much architecture nor did he create a library. But he understood the importance of public relations in a way no emperor had before, using painting, engraving and the printing press to achieve what the Biblioteca Corvina did for Matthias.

But that is for next week when we will take a look at how Friedrich III responded to the emergence of the Black Army and the great Corvinian Library on his doorstep and how he finally, finally got out of his apathy, and went off to talk first marriage and and then war with Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, getting a ball rolling that will drop into the net that we call the Habsburg empire.

The Siege of the Hofburg in 1462

It is November 1462 and the emperor Friedrich III and his young family are huddling together in the cellars of the Hofburg. The citizens of Vienna are shooting cannonballs into the 13^th century castle, the walls are crumbling and any moment now the angry crowds may break in. Outside, supporting the insurrection stood his own brother, calling on him to give up.

Two crowns he has already lost and a third is about to be knocked off his head as the imperial princes had ganged up on him. Friedrich III was a man who firmly believed in ancient laws and traditions and was profoundly ill suited for a world where, as Picciolomini wrote in the last sentence of his history of the emperor Friedrich III quote: “We are of the opinion that empires are won by weapons, not by legal means!”  

Friedrich III and with him the Habsburgs hit rock bottom, but how and why exactly he ended up there, and what that tells us about the profound changes during this period of history is what we are going to explore in this episode.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 211 – Hitting Rock Bottom, also episode 10 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

It is November 1462 and the emperor Friedrich III and his young family are huddling together in the cellars of the Hofburg. The citizens of Vienna are shooting cannonballs into the 13^th century castle, the walls are crumbling and any moment now the angry crowds may break in. Outside, supporting the insurrection stood his own brother, calling on him to give up.

Two crowns he has already lost and a third is about to be knocked off his head as the imperial princes had ganged up on him. Friedrich III was a man who firmly believed in ancient laws and traditions and was profoundly ill suited for a world where, as Picciolomini wrote in the last sentence of his history of the emperor Friedrich III quote: “We are of the opinion that empires are won by weapons, not by legal means!”  

Friedrich III and with him the Habsburgs hit rock bottom, but how and why exactly he ended up there, and what that tells us about the profound changes during this period of history is what we are going to explore in this episode.

But before we start I would like to touch on something completely different. I recently came across a Facebook post from someone claiming to have discovered a foolproof path to YouTube success. His method? Find the five most popular videos, transcribe them, and ask ChatGPT to create a new script from the results.

Apart from the obvious copyright issues, it made me wonder why anyone would want to do that. This is clearly not a creative endeavor of any kind. Whoever does that does not want to convey any thoughts or ideas, nor achieve a deeper understanding of anything; it’s purely about money. But who would pay for such drivel? Audiences care about quality and authenticity and are pretty good at smelling a rat. So it must be the advertising dollars they are after.

And yes, this scheme might yield a small profit, given the minimal effort required to churn out this AI-generated sludge. But for the rest of us, it is a nightmare. We end up wading through a morass of nonsense to find the nuggets we are looking for.

I am no luddite. I can see a lot of benefit from using AI tools to make this podcast better or better known. It is not the technology that is the problem, it is the advertising driven business model of social media. Without it, nobody would be pumping out utter dross. Which once more convinces me that running this podcast advertising free was the right choice, something I can only do thanks to the extreme generosity of our patrons who have already signed up at historyofthegermans.com/support. If you join them, your name will be immortalized here, just like Anne T., Ged M., TOXDOC, David W.H., Norman J., and Arvid M. are today.

And with that, back to the show.

TheAftermath of the death of Ladislaus Postumus

Last week we ended on the sudden death of the boy king Ladislaus Postumus. Ladislaus had been at least nominally king of Hungary, King of Bohemia and duke of Austria. However, power in these territories had largely shifted to local leaders, in Hungary to the great general John Hunyadi, in Bohemia to the Hussite baron Georg of Podiebrad and in Austria to the populist firebrand Ulrich von Eyczing.

The election of Matthias Corvinus

Let’s first have a look at what happened in Hungary. The local leader there, John Hunyadi had died following his heroic defence of Belgrade against the sultan Mehmet. His eldest son, Lazlo had been executed by king Ladislaus for the murder of Ulrich of Celje, a relative of the king and rival of the Hunyadis. The younger son, Matthias had been brought to Prague as a prisoner when king Ladislaus had to flee Hungary from the rage of the Hunyadi party.

When King Ladislaus died, the imprisoned Matthias Hunyadi was freed. On his return to Buda, the Hungarian nobles gathered and, in an unprecedented act of political boldness, proclaimed him king.

It is difficult to overemphasise how significant this was. Hungary had been a Christian kingdom since the year 1000, its rulers chosen on lineage and merit. After the extinction of the original  Árpád dynasty in 1301, a series of foreign monarchs had ruled, each claiming descent or marital ties to justify their crowns. Matthias Hunyadi had no blood relation to the Arpads or any previous Hungarian ruler nor did he belong to one of the 60 magnate families. And pure merit could not justify it either, since at 15 years of age, he simply had not yet had the time to prove himself.

Still the magnates set aside the heirs of their erstwhile king, and instead elevated the son of the man who had defended Christendom against the Ottoman threat at the siege of Belgrade. Matthias became king of Hungary in January 1458 and ruled for 32 years. He became known by his latinised name, Matthias Corvinus, Matthias the Raven, and we will hear a lot more about him, just not today.

The rise of Georg of Podiebrad to king of Bohemia

And something similar was happening in Bohemia. There were various options for the succession of Ladislaus, first and foremost the Habsburgs, specifically the emperor Friedrich III, then the husbands of Ladislaus’ sisters, Kasimir of Poland and Wilhem of Saxony, or the true ruler of Bohemia, Georg of Podiebrad. And, like in Hungary, the estates set aside the claims of the princely houses, and chose a simple baron with not an ounce of royal blood.

One of the reasons the estates of Hungary and Bohemia were prepared to risk such a move was the inertia of Friedrich III. They looked at Friedrich’s track record and they knew for a fact that he would not come down to Buda or Prague with an army of mercenaries demanding his inheritance. Nor would Kasimir of Poland who was still fighting the Teutonic Order in Prussia nor Wilhelm of Saxony, well the latter because, because he did not have the cards.

The social, military and economic changes in the 15th century

But it was also a result of broader social, military and economic changes. When we did our series on the 15^th century we came across men of modest backgrounds taking charge. Some made their career in the church, like Nicholas Cusanus and Andreas Silvio Piccolomini, something that had always been possible. But now we have bankers like the Welser, Fugger, Imhof and Hochstetter that are richer than any prince and determine the outcome of wars and imperial elections. We have inventors and entrepreneurs that change the world, like Gutenberg and his fellow printers, the armourers Kolman, Lorenz and Helmschmied, the cartographers, mathematicians, clockmakers; and there are the university professors training lawyers in how to take over the administration of the state. The military became a professional force, led by mercenary commanders who had risen through the ranks and some end up ruling cities as counts and marquesses and, in the case of Francesco Sforza, rise to the title of a duke of Milan.

Western Europe, for the first time in centuries experienced social mobility, social mobility that went as far as raising simple noblemen to the royal thrones in Hungary and Bohemia.

So one could argue that it wasn’t all Friedrich III’s fault that Hungary and Bohemia were lost to the Habsburgs for the time being. But then we have seen Sigismund gaining the St. Stephen’s crown from a much less promising position and we will see other Habsburgs turning tenuous titles into tangible territories.

The division fo Austria

That gets us to the last of Ladislaus’ possessions, the duchy of Austria. There the estates had appointed Ulrich von Eyczing as Landverweser, i.e., temporary regent whilst they debated who should be the new duke. Here are the runners and riders: Friedrich III, emperor and most senior of the Habsburg archdukes. Then there is his brother, Albrecht VI, at this point archduke in control of further Austria, i.e., the ancestral lands on the upper Rhine. And, in the outside lane, is Sigismund, the archduke and count of Tyrol.

On the face of it, neither Sigismund nor Albrecht should have a particular claim or interest in the duchy of Austria. Sigismund was the youngest and preoccupied with his innumerable and rapacious mistresses and his even more ruinous wars against Milan. And Albrecht’s main powerbase was a long way from Vienna.

On that basis Sigismund was given some vague promises and quickly dispatched back to Innsbruck, but Albrecht insisted on his pound of flesh. Much depended on the position Ulrich von Eyczing, the actual leader of the duchy. Eyczing in one of these 180 degree shifts we see a lot in this period, opted for the emperor he had previously dismissed as sluggish and miserly. Which was not very clever, since Albrecht simply snatched him and put him in jail. At which point even the sloth-like Friedrich felt he needed to come to Vienna and see what he could do to become duke. He freed von Eyczying and had a serious ding dong with his brother, which ended in an agreement to divide the duchy in two along the river Enns. Albrecht was to receive Austria above the Enns, which is modern day Upper Austria, where he established his headquarters in Linz. Friedrich got Austria proper, including Vienna.

We will get back to the situation in Vienna by the end of this episode, but before we do that, we need to talk about the other crown in play, that of the Holy Roman empire.

Friedrich III’s scorecard in 1458

Sorry, why is that crown in pay? Friedrich III has been elected in 1440 and crowned emperor in 1452. Who needs a new one. The simple answer was – everyone.

When the electors chose Friedrich III  in 1440 they expected him, the tall, broad shouldered promised mythical last emperor in control of all the Habsburg lands and crowns, to solve three major problems: Defence of Europe against the Ottomans, reform of the church and reform of the Empire.

By 1458 the scorecard for Friedrich III looked as follows:

Defence aganst the Ottoman threat

Defence of Europe against the Turks, to say it in the words of the Eurovision song contest: Saint Empire Romaine – Nul Points. Friedrich III had not mobilised any forces in the crusades against the Ottomans in 1444, 1448 and 1456. Constantinople had fallen under his watch and he had not lifted a finger helping John Hunyadi and Giovanni Capistrano defending Belgrade. The utter failure of the imperial diets in 1454, 1455 and 1456 that were supposed to organise the defence against the Turks was laid at his door, with some justification. He had called the gatherings but could not be bothered to go there himself, which meant very few other princes showed up and the whole thing went nowhere.

Church reform

Item 2 on the list, church reform scored no better. Yes, by going over to the side of the pope and ditching the council of Basel he did help ending the conciliar and papal schism. But at what price? The church in the empire remained subject to far reaching interference by Rome, church revenues went down to the papacy in much higher proportions then elsewhere and actual reform of the church, aka, proper training of priests, the end of benefice farming and generally better behaviour, none of that was happening. Some historians who defend Friedrich III argue that there was never a chance that the emperor could enforce church reform. Well, maybe, but at least he could have tried. Sigismund did try, and he achieved the end of the schism.

Reform of the Empire

That leaves item 3 – reform of the empire. Reform of the empire had been on the agenda ever since Ludwig the Bavarian and then Karl IV shed papal influence over the management of the empire. It was now down to the emperor and the German princes to define the laws, processes and institutions of the state.

Karl IV had taken a first stab at it in two ways. On the positive side he passed the Golden Bull of 1356 that set out the roles of the Prince Electors and confirmed the absence of papal interference. On the not so positive side, his extreme bribery in the run-up to first his own election and then the election of his son Wenceslaus, had wiped out the financial basis of the royal office.

That meant from the middle of the 14^th century onwards, being emperor was a pleasure entirely funded out of the officeholders private purse. Which explains why Karl IV’s successors, who all had serious money problems, were so remarkably ineffective.

In the hundred years since the Golden Bull, the empire had failed to set up an effective system of law and order, there was no formal political decision making process, no common rules on coinage, road building and commerce, nor was there a taxation system that could sustain any such institutions.

The empire was falling behind fast. In England, France, Spain, Poland institutions like parliaments, unified court system and tax collection infrastructure were being rolled out, despite, or because of the ongoing military pressure. The same was true for the territories within the empire, where princes were consolidating their power, hired lawyers to run their bureaucracy, negotiated taxation rates with the estates and enforced court judgements.

If the empire wanted to defend itself against the Ottomans and the encroachment by France, Burgundy, Poland, Sweden and Hungary, it urgently needed at least some of these kinds of institutions.

 That was the bit most people agreed on. The other thing that everybody agreed on was that making that happen, was extremely difficult.

Why? Let’s think this through. Say you were to introduce an imperial government tasked with defending the borders and preventing the endless feuding between the princes. Good plan. Now you need the money to fund this government, i.e., money to pay the bureaucrats, judges and if necessary armies to fight the Turks or keep the princes from killing each other. Well, that money should come out of taxes, which were to be paid by the territorial princes and the cities. To go with a concept that is now almost forgotten: “no taxation without representation”, meant the territorial princes and cities would demand a seat on that imperial government. At which point the emperor goes, hang on a minute. I am God’s anointed and I am not going to have my government be hemmed in by these other princes.

O.k., what is the emperor’s proposal? Well, Friedrich said: we can do as we do it back home in Styria and Carinthia, i.e., I call up the estates when I need money and will make concessions as and when that happens. But otherwise I can do what I want, in particular my judges are where you have to take your cases or appeals and if I ask for help fighting the Turks you come and fight for free like in the good old days of Frederick Barbarossa. At which point the territorial princes say, no, no, no. If we do it like that, then you have actual influence on the ground in my lands and my family had just spent a hundred years getting control of my own people, so thanks, but no thanks. And your idea I would fight for you for free, you are not serious, right

It is one of those almost irresolvable problems that require someone willing to dedicate time and effort resolving it, with the power to bang heads together and the willingness to compromise when needed.

The situation was effectively untenable. The empire was deteriorating at quite a rate of knots, and all the inhabitants heard from Wiener Neustadt was “Njet”.

Martin Mair’s attempts to reform the empire

One man was particularly keen to do something about this gridlock, Martin Mair. We already mentioned him in episode 197, but just a quick rundown again. Of unknown social background, he had studied in Heidelberg and began his career in 1448 in Schwäbisch Hall before going to Nürnberg. He quickly established himself as one of the most gifted political minds of his time, so that he was lent out by his employer, the city of Nürnberg to various lords, including in 1449 to the emperor himself. There he struck up a friendship with the emperor’s chief councillor, Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini who tried to keep him in the service of the imperial chancery.

But Martin Mair had seen enough. He did not believe there was any chance that Friedrich III would bring law and order, let alone a set of institutions and processes that would strengthen the empire against its enemies. So he began working on an alternative.

The reform proposal of 1454

In 1454 he proposed a wide reaching reform of the empire, namely a permanent imperial government made up of the emperor and the Prince Electors or their representatives. A court that acted as the final court of appeal and was made up of lords, counts and princes, overseen by the imperial government, and all that funded by a tax system the details of which remained a secret.

That proposal was brought to the imperial diet of the same year and then again in 1455. These diets had been set up to discuss the defence against an Ottoman invasion, not to discuss imperial reform. But since Friedrich said Njet to imperial reform, the princes said Njet to funding an army against the Turks, and nothing happened on either front.

Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate as candidate

In 1456 things became a bit more dicey for our Friedrich III.

Having failed with his reforms, Martin Mair, decided to play the man as well as the ball. He collected electoral votes to put someone else on the throne. Someone he thought had the energy, military might and political clout to pull it off. And that someone was none other than Friedrich der Siegreiche, Friedrich the Victorous, Count Palatine on the Rhine, our friend from episode 189.

The way Mair and his supporters thought this could be made acceptable to Friedrich, was to present the Count Palatine as a junior king, below the emperor, doing the drudgework, whilst the emperor could remain in Wiener Neustadt growing radishes or whatever it was he was doing down there.

That did not cut the mustard though. The emperor already had beef with Friedrich the Victorious over the way the latter had shunted his nephew out of the line of succession. So Friedrich III objected to the person, but even more to the whole concept. He was emperor, there was no need for a separate king of the Romans and that was that. At which point Friedrich the Victorious said, well in that case we do it against your will.

The only reason Friedrich III did not get deposed in 1457  was that Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg got cold feet and withdrew his support to Martin Mair and his friends. The conspirators did not have a quorum amongst the Prince Electors and so they had to give up. And half a year later the main supporter of the plan, the archbishop of Trier was dead and was replaced with a relative of the Habsburgs.

Proposing Georg of Podiebrad as King of the Romans

Martin Mair still did not give up. In 1461 he presented another candidate, Georg of Podiebrad, recently crowned king of Bohemia.

Let’s take a step back. In 1273 the imperial princes balked at the idea of making a Bohemian king of the Romans, even one of impeccable lineage going back to Saint Wenceslaus and an unblemished track record as a military leader and a reputation as a faithful son of the Holy Catholic church. Barely 200 years later they are seriously considering a simple baron who had usurped the crown from one of the most eminent princely houses, namely the Habsburgs, and much more concerning, was a man who had risen to power as the leader of the Utraquists, a Hussite sect that had fought the catholic church for decades.

Why did they chose him? There were a number of reasons. First up, he was a successful military leader and a charismatic individual. Then – despite all that had happened – he had a very good relationship with the emperor Friedrich III. And then Podiebrad played his cards right. He never provided any detail of the institutional changes he would implement once he was king. Instead he talked about peace and unity. And then he emphasised the fight against the Ottomans, one subject everyone could agree on and that covered up the smell of heresy that surrounded him.

In February 1461 the princes gathered in Eger to discuss imperial reform. Georg of Podiebrad had high hopes that this would be his great breakthrough. Support for the emperor had been crumbling for a long time now. Friedrich III’s main allies were his brother-in-law the elector Frederick of Saxony and Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg. Whilst Saxony remained broadly supportive, Albrecht Achilles’ enthusiasm for the Habsburg cause had faded a lot.

Meanwhile the party hostile to the emperor had grown substantially. There was Ludwig the Rich of Bayern-Landshut, his cousin Friedrich the Victorious, the elected archbishop of Mainz Diether von Isenburg, even count Ulrich of Württemberg, the landgrave of Hessen and the bishops of Bamberg and Würzburg joined the chorus of the discontent.

They called Friedrich III idle and pointed out that he had not shown his face in the empire for a solid 15 years, had failed to organise defence against the Turks and had sold the imperial church down the swanny. Martin Mair proposed another simple three point program: King Georg of Podiebrad should lead an imperial army against the Turks, second, that Georg of Podiebrad should guarantee an all-encompassing peace in the empire and three, that the church taxes should only be collected with the consent of the Prince Electors. Huzzah! What a great plan. Everybody was nodding. Let’s do all that.

And then Podiebrad added one more thing, he suggested they should meet again in a formal imperial diet and elect a new head of the empire to facilitate this most excellent program. And that is when they all went quiet. There was a lot of shuffling of feet until margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg, the brother of Albrecht Achilles pointed out that they were in Eger, on Bohemian soil, and that no emperor could be elected on Bohemian soil. They agreed to meet again in Nürnberg in four weeks time.

The emperor fights back

This was now serious. Though the election did not happen in Eger, it could happen at the next gathering, just a month hence. Friedrich III contacted his only true supporters, the dukes of Saxony and urged them to protect his interests. And there may have been some other diplomacy efforts under way, since the gathering at Nürnberg showed some major cracks in the united front Martin Mair had tried to engineer. Duke Ludwig the Rich of Bavaria had a long running disagreement with Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg that came back to the fore. Friedrich the victorious and the archbishop of Mainz withdrew their support for Georg of Podiebrad for reasons I have not yet fully understood.

All they could agree on was to write a harsh letter to the emperor asking him to show up at an imperial diet on May 30^th in Frankfurt and do his job for once. Friedrich dithered as usual. The situation has become so contentious that the pope now got involved. And that pope was Pius II, previously known to us as Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini, chief advisor of emperor Friedrich III. He had been elevated to the throne of Saint Peter on the back of the concordat he had negotiated on behalf of the empire (no conflict of interest here at all), his relentless efforts to organise a crusade against the Turks and his conservative position on any form of deviation from papal doctrine, theological and otherwise. He had come a long way from the man who had embraced the council of Basel and written erotic novels. Now he was a hardline defender of papal supremacy and propriety, and a very smart one at that.

In concert with Friedrich’s aides, he prevented the diet in Frankfurt from taking place at all. And we see the disagreements between the imperial princes breaking up their unified front. In August 1461 he set the cat amongst the pigeons when he deposed Diether von Isenburg as archbishop of Mainz and replaced him with Adolf of Nassau which kicked off the Mainzer Stiftsfehde, binding Ulrich of Wuerttemberg, the margrave of Baden and his brothers as well as Friedrich the Victorious of the Palatinate. And the attempted reconciliation between Albrecht Achilles and Ludwig the Rich fails. Friedrich and Albrecht Achilles renew their alliance. The two sides are now set for war, on one side we have the Palatinate, Bayern-Landshut and  Diether of Isenburg, the deposed archbishop of Mainz, On the other side we have Brandenburg, Wurttemberg and Baden as well as Trier and Metz. Since we have discussed the two wars that make up this conflict in episodes 191 and 197, I will not repeat it all here. But what we had not discussed was the third front that extended this conflict to the entire south of the empire and was about to spell doom for the Habsburg emperor.

The War of the Brothers

And that was the conflict between emperor Friedrich III and his brother archduke Albrecht VI.

Two very different men

These two had been quarrelling off and on since they were teenagers. When the emperor was slow, occasionally timid and stubborn, the archduke was the true son of Ernst the Iron, seizing opportunities, easily swapping sides and quick to draw a sword. Friedrich had hoped he could appease his brother by giving him further Austria, a territory large enough to keep him occupied but not so large as to threaten him. When the brothers divided the duchy of Austria and Albrecht got the part above the Enns river, the balance had shifted. They were now almost equals. Watching Friedrich letting Bohemia and Hungary go and getting under intense pressure from inside the empire, he saw the opportunity to take the other half of the duchy of Austria from his brother.

Friedrich never cared much about Austria and he particularly disliked Vienna. Even when he was ruling Austria in his own right, he rarely showed himself in the city. Nor did he make an effort to keep law and order in the duchy. When things got very bad in 1460, he did mount another expedition against the robber barons, but brought only a meagre band of 13 evildoers to justice. That contrasted with Albrecht’s haul of 600 thieves in 1458.

In June 1462, when the empire was set alight by the Mainzer Stiftsfehde and the War of the Princes, Albrecht VI set out to take Vienna. He had joined the anti-imperial coalition and made a deal with Ludwig the Rich of Bavaria. Meanwhile inside the city of Vienna, the supporters of Albrecht had taken control. They elected Wolfgang Holzer as their new mayor.

Friedrich III comes to Vienna

Friedrich, somewhat unaware of these events came to Vienna in person to assert his claim to the duchy. He should have realised that the situation was dangerous when the city refused to open its gates to him and his small band of mercenaries. They let him in after 2 days of negotiations. Friedrich took up residence in the Hofburg and called the citizens together. He told them to replace Wolfgang Holzer, their recently elected mayor, with someone of the emperor’ choosing. They did, but then things rapidly went out of control.

As per usual, Friedrich did not have the money to pay his soldiers, so he demanded money from the city. The city refused. The soldiers began stealing stuff and found themselves being beaten up by the populace. Friedrich had to drop his candidate for mayor and Wolfgang Holzer returned to City Hall.

Holzer recommended that Friedrich left the city, as clashes could easily escalate. Friedrich refused and the clashes escalated. Friedrich and his soldiers barricaded themselves into the Hofburg.

The siege of the Hofburg

On October 5^th, 1462 the citizens of Vienna rose up against their lord, the emperor Friedrich III. And on October 17^th, they began the siege of the Hofburg. They wheeled their cannon onto the square before the castle and systematically brought down walls and towers.

At this point the Hofburg was still a 13^th century fortress, in no conceivable way able to withstand 15^th century artillery. Day by day more of the defences came down. Two weeks later Friedrich’s brother, archduke Albrecht arrives in Vienna with further reinforcements. He is quickly recognised as duke and overlord of Vienna. Albrecht offers Friedrich safe conduct for his return to Wiener Neustadt, but Friedrich refused.

For four weeks the cannon kept pounding the ancient castle where Friedrich III and his family are holding out. The situation is dire and the imperial family is starving. By now Friedrich and Eleanor had been married for 9 years. She had given birth to three children so far, the eldest, Christoph had died after a few month, but a second boy had lived. He was 2 ½ years old and his name was Maximilian, a name that had never been used in the Habsburg family or in the family of Eleanor of Portugal before. And there was another baby, Helene, who would not live much longer.

I have been married for 26 years now, so I can say with some authority, that if I had brought my wife and our two small children into a castle that is being pounded by cannon, that is surrounded by hostile locals and we were running out of food, I would come in for some criticism. And if I had got us into this situation through my stubbornness and lack of political acumen, that criticism could have become intense. There is no recording of the marital conversation between Eleanor and Friedrich, but if chroniclers write down that she had called him incompetent, you can imagine what was said in the privacy of the imperial bedchamber.

Maximilian who should have been much too young to remember these events still recounts in his autobiography that quote “he was so little and unsteady in his feet, that he had to hold someone’s hand as he descended down into the cellars. There he still heard the din of arms and the roaring of the cannon, but his mother protected him day and night with the help of the guards.” End quote.

This was even worse than the siege of Wiener Neustadt in 1452. This time their life was truly in danger, even the whole dynasty was. Neither Archduke Albrecht, nor their cousin Sigismund of Tyrol had any legitimate children, one misguided cannonball and the Habsburgs would be no more than a footnote of history.

And rightly so. Friedrich III had managed to lose two crowns for the family, Hungary and Bohemia, and a third one, the imperial one, was hanging by a thread. He had failed as emperor on all three counts. The Habsburg family unity was broken to the point that his brother had joined his enemies and was now shelling him. The few lands he actually ruled were down in the dumps and under threat from the Hungarians and the Turks.

If little Maximilian had succumbed to the horrors of the siege, history would have forgotten the Habsburgs quicker than you can say “who’s that emperor anyway”. This period, November and December 1462 is, as far as I can see, the low point of the House of Habsburg. There will be more and even more severe setbacks – Friedrich III will lose even his beloved Styria and spend his time as an itinerant emperor dependent upon the charity of his hosts. But difficult as these times were, they never again reached this level of despair.

Outlook To next week

So from next week, we will get to the second part of this season, the rise of the House of Habsburg. But if you still think that their success was only a matter of being in the right marital bed at the right time, you will find things are a bit more complicated. I hope you will join us again.

And if you want to make sure this show makes it out of this valley of tears and into the sunny uplands of Habsburg world domination, go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where you can find various options to keep us on the road and advertising free.