This union of the Neapolitan and Hungarian crowns was incredibly short-lived. Charles’s stroke of genius in arriving without an army and taking the throne through a peaceful elective process was now revealed as a piece of completely misguided optimism. Elisabeth rallied her supporters behind the scenes, and on 7 February 1386, thirty-nine days after his coronation, Charles was kidnapped and carried to Visegrad, where he died a prisoner on 24 February, a fitting end for the man who deposed Johanna.21
The Female Kings of Hungary and Poland
Elisabeth formally claimed the Hungarian throne again on behalf of Maria, and recalled Sigismund. The region of Neapolitan support in the south of the country and Dalmatia rebelled and invited Charles’s young son Ladislas to take the Hungarian throne as well. Elisabeth bizarrely showed herself to be as naive as Charles had been, and she took Maria to face the rebels in an attempt to calm the situation. Instead, the rebels killed Elisabeth’s escort on 25 July 1386 and sent their heads to Charles’s widow in Naples, and Elisabeth and Maria were imprisoned in the Archbishop of Zagreb’s castle of Gomnec. Sigismund now took control of Hungary as regent, and made a bold attempt to rescue Elisabeth and Maria in January 1387. This failed, and in retaliation Elisabeth was strangled in front of her daughter.
Sigismund returned from his failed rescue attempt and decided to take over the kingdom himself as Maria’s husband. This required approval from the barons, which was obtained, but when Sigismund was crowned at Székesfehérvár on 31 March 1387, it was as an elective king rather than a hereditary monarch, an important constitutional development. Pressure from the Neapolitan Angevins was reduced when Charles of Durazzo’s widow Margaret was expelled from Naples in 1387 in favour of Louis II of Anjou, and she took her heir Ladislas to Gaeta for safety. Although Ladislas would eventually take the throne of Naples, the way was now clear for the dukes of Anjou.
Maria was liberated from her prison by a Venetian fleet in June 1387 and crowned as ruler in her own right. This coronation led to an interesting dispute that would clarify the linguistic and philosophical conception of a reigning queen. When Maria was crowned, the archbishop of Esztergom and the bishop of Veszprem argued over who should perform the ceremony, because it was the archbishop’s role to crown the king and the bishop’s role to crown the queen, i.e. the queen-consort who was married to the king. The fact that the archbishop prevailed demonstrates again that Maria was ‘king’, the ruler of the kingdom.
Although Maria’s position was officially recognized in this way, in practice Sigismund ruled as king and she essentially acted as queen-consort. Maria died after a riding accident while pregnant in 1395, and although Hedwig and her husband launched an invasion from Poland to claim the throne for themselves, they were repulsed, and although Hungary would be successfully ruled by Sigismund, it had passed definitively from Angevin control.22
Angevin rule in Poland was brief, lasting only twenty-nine years with Louis the Great and Hedwig reigning as kings of Poland, but it was quite significant. As we have seen, the origins of Angevin rule in Poland came through Carobert’s support for Władysław Loktiek, who was Duke of Łęczyca and finally became King of Poland in 1320. Carobert married Władysław’s daughter Elisabeth, and Władysław’s son Casimir the Great agreed in 1339 that if he died without male heirs the throne would go to one of Carobert’s sons. Although Casimir was married multiple times and had several children, these were all daughters and most of them predeceased him, and when he did finally have sons they were from a later marriage of questionable legitimacy, meaning Louis the Great remained his heir apparent.
However, Casimir was concerned about the fact that Louis himself had no male heirs, and began to incline towards his grandson, Casimir Duke of Pomerania, son of his daughter Elisabeth who had died in 1361. Had Casimir the Great lived longer, it seems likely that Louis wouldn’t have ruled Poland after all, but Casimir was injured in a hunting accident – that constant royal peril – and died soon after on 5 November 1370. Louis immediately hurried to Poland when he heard Casimir was dying, but arrived after Casimir’s death, and the Polish nobles seemed likely to support Casimir of Pomerania. Fortunately Louis was accompanied by his mother Elisabeth, from whom his claim to the throne originated, and together they dispossessed Casimir of Pomerania and Louis was crowned king of Poland on 17 November. Louis left Poland and Elisabeth ruled in his name supported by a council led by the bishop of Cracow. To secure the future succession of Louis’s daughters, Elisabeth and Louis made various concessions to the nobles, which permanently weakened royal power in Poland.23
In 1380, after ten years of regency, Elisabeth died, but there was a smooth transition to a new regency council of three nobles, still led by the bishop of Cracow. All seemed to be going well for Angevin rule in Poland, but the country was about to be drawn into the turmoil that overtook Hungary. In July 1382, as part of his general withdrawal from public life as his health failed, Louis the Great sent Maria’s husband Sigismund to Poland and forced the nobles to do homage to him. Sigismund was still in Poland when he learned that Louis had died on 4 September 1382, and he attempted to take the Polish throne outright. Louis had intended for Maria to inherit Poland, but the Polish nobles were unwilling to accept Maria’s husband instead of her, and when Sigismund learned that there was also opposition to her succession in Hungary, he left Poland to help her secure what was viewed as the primary throne.
In the turmoil that resulted, many nobles still supported the Angevins, but called for Hedwig to be sent to Poland to rule instead of Maria. Initially the regent Elisabeth, Louis the Great’s widow, refused to send her young daughter to Cracow, but by March 1384 she was informed that if Hedwig did not arrive by Pentecost then Poland would choose another king. Elisabeth sent Sigismund to mediate, but he was rebuffed, and in September the nobles formally met to choose a new king. This galvanized Elisabeth, who finally relented and sent Hedwig to Cracow. She arrived on 13 October 1384 and at the age of ten was crowned on 15 October.24 Like her sister, Hedwig was ‘king’ rather than queen, but unlike in Hungary there was no need for a process of ‘masculinization’; instead, Poland was much more pragmatic and simply called the ruler of the country king, whether a man or a woman.
As king, Hedwig, or as she was now known, Jadwiga, faced a variety of problems. The most pressing, inevitably, was marriage. She had been betrothed to William of Austria, a Habsburg prince, and there is some confusion in the sources as to whether the marriage had actually occurred or not. The Angevins maintained that Jadwiga had only been betrothed to William of Austria, and as she was only ten at the time of the betrothal, it seems reasonable to suppose that whatever form of ceremony had taken place, Jadwiga was not in any meaningful sense married to William. Certainly this was the view in Poland, leaving Jadwiga available to marry a more useful prince.25 The Habsburgs steadfastly maintained that the marriage had taken place, and prosecuted Jadwiga in ecclesiastical courts culminating in the papal court in Rome in 1387. Although the pope supported Jadwiga, Habsburg sources labelled her a bigamist, and such accusations were being made against her even in the mid-15th century when she was long dead.
A nagging problem for Poland had always been the presence on its eastern border of Lithuania, the only remaining pagan state in Europe. This made it a target for European invaders, specifically the Teutonic Knights, who had been Crusading there for centuries. The constant attacks by the Knights had nearly destroyed Lithuania as an independent state, and the Lithuanians needed an ally. Their situation was now sufficiently dire that they were willing to consider conversion to Christianity to end the Crusades against them. The Lithuanians had close ties to their Orthodox Russian neighbours and a conversion to Orthodox Christianity might have been natural, but if the goal of the conversion were to forestall attacks by the Teutonic Knights, then this would have been a poor choice: we have seen repeatedly that Latin Christians, and especially Crusaders, viewed Orthodox Christians as schismatics. The Lithuanians instead chose Poland and Latin Chr
istianity.
Naturally any agreement would be concluded by a marriage alliance, and a treaty between Poland and Lithuania cemented by the union of Jadwiga and a Lithuanian ruler was proposed. This marriage of a Christian ruler to a pagan prince is a relic from another time and seems utterly peculiar in the late 14th century, yet it would be a great success. The marriage was arranged between Jadwiga and Jagiello, the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The transaction proceeded briskly, and the Lithuanian envoys arrived in Cracow in January 1385. Jagiello would have to meet fairly severe demands: he would be baptized before the wedding along with his attendants, and then the entire population of Lithuania would have to convert. More importantly, Lithuania would become part of Poland, and there were various other territorial and financial requirements.
Although Jadwiga was still only eleven, and the envoys sought approval from her mother, Elisabeth reputedly left the final decision to Jadwiga herself. Her choice to agree to the marriage is viewed as a noble act facilitating the conversion of the Lithuanian people, and was key to her later sainthood. Although Jadwiga had agreed to the marriage, the arrival of William of Austria in Poland insisting that Jadwiga was already married to him threatened to derail proceedings. We are not entirely sure how this was resolved, though given the lack of information it seems most likely that William was simply ignored and sent away.
However, the story of the child Jadwiga piously agreeing to marry the middle-aged Jagiello to spread Christianity may be a little too neat. Viewed objectively, it is much more likely that Elisabeth agreed to the marriage and Jadwiga had no choice. In the mythology that surrounds her, there is a sense that Jadwiga was ‘sacrificed’ to convert the Lithuanians, and such a ‘human sacrifice’ obviously has myriad references in Christian tradition. The question is whether Jadwiga, as a saint, sacrificed herself, or Elisabeth made the decision to sacrifice her. Another tradition sheds some light on this, because there is a different story: Jadwiga actually loved William of Austria and deplored the thought of marrying Jagiello. William came back to Poland to carry her away, and when he was resisted, the child Jadwiga is said to have taken an axe and tried to smash through the gates of Wawel castle to free herself, though to no avail.
Polish envoys then went to Lithuania to secure Jagiello’s agreement with all the terms, which was done in August 1385. Jagiello arrived in Cracow on 12 February 1386, and he was baptized on 15 February with the name Władysław. The couple were married on 18 February, and they were both crowned – and both as ‘king’ – on 4 March in Wawel cathedral, inaugurating the most splendid era in Polish history, which although known as the ‘Jagiellon’, is rooted in Angevin Poland.26
Jadwiga then became known for her religiosity in several notable ways. The Teutonic Knights, in one of the actions that would cement their unsavoury reputation, claimed that Jagiello’s baptism was fake and continued to attack Lithuania. Jadwiga was the guarantor of her husband’s sincerity, and she negotiated with the Knights to make peace. Further, Casimir the Great had founded the university of Cracow in 1364 as part of a wave of university foundations in central Europe, but he intended it to focus on creating diplomatic and administrative staff, so there was an emphasis on law. In 1397, Jadwiga secured the Roman Pope Boniface IX’s agreement to renew the university and create a faculty of theology, with a special mission to create clergy to work on the evangelisation of newly Christian Lithuania. At the same time, Jadwiga endowed a Lithuanian college at the university of Prague for similar reasons.
Although it was a very traditional role for a queen-consort – and Jadwiga was forced into the role of consort despite her right to rule as king of Poland – to be a religious patron, Jadwiga was particularly committed to the spiritual life of Poland. She adopted the device of two entwined ‘M’s to symbolize the value she placed on both the active life of Martha and the contemplative life of Mary. The intellectual Henrik Bitterfeld dedicated a work on the active versus contemplative life to her, and she had a large library of mainly religious and theological works. An illustration of her intellectual life can be found in Warsaw, where her psalter with parallel columns in Latin, Polish and German survives. Other personal items that survive are her ‘rational’ in the treasury of Cracow cathedral, and most importantly, a splendid rock crystal vessel in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden decorated with her arms. This was designed as a gift to Wawel cathedral, but Jadwiga died before it could be presented and it found its way into the collection of Augustus the Strong, duke of Saxony and later king of Poland.27
Jadwiga’s life had been full of intellectual and religious activity, but as both king and queen of Poland she was required to continue the dynasty. On 22 June 1399, she gave birth to a premature daughter who was christened Elizabeth Bonifacia, since Pope Boniface IX had been enlisted as her godfather, but Jadwiga died after a few days and the child died after three weeks. Jadwiga was aware that she was dying from the difficult pregnancy, and requested that all her valuables be sold to fund the university of Cracow that she had re-established. Her wish was granted, and in 1400 Jagiello issued a formal act reopening the university, where the Angevin arms are still displayed over the gateway.
After Jadwiga’s death, she was popularly believed to be a saint and a cult sprang up around her almost immediately in the 15th century. Although this was not made official until Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1997, her tomb occupies a prominent place in Wawel cathedral and has always been a significant shrine. It has a beautiful early 20th-century effigy in white marble that fittingly sets her apart from the other monarchs buried in the cathedral. Jadwiga joins the other Hungarian and Angevin saints of the beata stirps, but is also fully embraced as a Polish national saint. This is apt, since in addition to achieving the conversion of the Lithuanian nation to Latin Christianity through her marriage, which was of great significance to the Catholic Church, her later actions to defend the validity of the Lithuanian conversion as well as establishing and reestablishing educational foundations had lasting significance in Poland and beyond.28
The death of Jadwiga and her daughter marked the end of Angevin Poland, although Władysław Jagiello founded one of the most important dynasties in the country’s history and was succeeded by his son from a subsequent marriage. A similar situation arose in Hungary, where the turmoil that marked the end of Angevin rule had dire consequences.
Since 1389 the Ottoman Turks had been operating close enough to the Hungarian border to cause constant skirmishing, and Sigismund was deeply worried about defending the kingdom. He attempted to organize a Crusade against the Ottomans in 1395, and sent messengers throughout Europe and even to the Mamluks in Egypt to seek allies. The pope approved the Crusade in 1396, and a large French force led by the Duke of Burgundy joined a Hungarian force to invade Bulgaria in August of that year and besiege the fortress of Nicopolis. The Ottoman sultan led a relief force, and the Crusaders were overwhelmingly defeated on 25 September 1396. Sources said that this was due, inevitably, to the indiscipline of the French knights. Froissart gives the story in great detail, and after explaining how the French knights ignored the warnings of the Hungarians, describes the defeat:
The lords of France were so richly dressed out, in their emblazoned surcoats, they looked like little kings; but, as I was told, when they met the Turks, they were not more than seven hundred, which sufficiently shewed the folly of the measure; for, had they waited for the hungarian army, that consisted of sixty thousand men, they might, perhaps, have gained a victory, but, through their pride and presumption, was the whole loss owing; and it was so great, that never since the defeat at Roncesvalles, where the twelve peers of France were slain, did the French suffer so considerably.29
Sigismund himself survived the defeat and fled by ship to Constantinople, only returning to his kingdom in 1397, but the disastrous Crusade made his position somewhat precarious, and he was overthrown by a coalition of nobles in April 1401. Ladislas of Naples was considered as a replacement, and although Sigismund regained control of the ki
ngdom, Ladislas was already committed to the project and sent troops to Dalmatia in 1402. The southern barons returned to their traditional loyalty to the Neapolitan Angevins and revolted, and Ladislas went to Zara, where he was crowned King of Hungary by a papal legate in August 1403. Sigismund quelled the revolt and Ladislas was forced to return to Naples in November, although Ladislas appointed a supporter as Duke of Split and ruled parts of the Dalmatian coast, and Sigismund never fully regained control. Ladislas maintained tenuous control of the Adriatic coast until 1409, at which point his fleet was defeated, and he then ceded all his claims and rights in Dalmatia to Venice.30
The continuing struggle between the Hungarian and Neapolitan Angevins had only resulted in the loss of Dalmatia to both, erasing the gains of Louis the Great, and Hungary was now an embattled frontier province constantly harried by the Ottomans. To help mobilize supporters, Sigismund adopted the same course as many of his contemporaries and founded a chivalric order, which had possibly the most bizarre consequences of any of the 15th-century orders. Sigismund founded the Order of the Dragon, and although he awarded membership to figures such as Alfonso and Ferrante of Naples who will soon play a large part in our story, most members were local military leaders. One was a Wallachian warlord named Vlad, who became known as Vlad ‘the Dragon’ or, in Romanian, Vlad Dracul. His son was Vlad Tepes, ‘the Impaler’. The legendarily diabolical cruelty of Vlad Tepes was conflated with the more sinister name of his father (dracul also means ‘the devil’ in Romanian) to, finally, give us the name ‘Dracula’.31 Sigismund himself went on to considerably greater things and will reappear decades later in the story of King René, but first we must go back to Anjou and the final line of Angevins.
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 45
