Division in the dynasty
With a few minor exceptions, the next two generations of Habsburgs hit low water marks in all sorts of ways: their competence, their achievements, their contributions to the dynasty’s furtherance. By the first decades of the 1400s, the male members of the family had degenerated into a fractious rabble. Rudolf’s younger brothers Albrecht III and Leopold III at least showed some positive attributes, though it is their fault that the patrimony began to split. Albrecht was 15 when Rudolf died, Leopold 14. The former was a reserved, passive character, while the latter went too far in the other direction, being combative, ambitious, and obsessed with chivalric values, to his ultimate doom. In their early years the brothers attempted a kind of corulership, and the family made some important territorial gains. The thriving city of Freiburg im Breisgau came into the house in 1368, and would remain there for centuries. In 1382 Trieste and parts of inner Istria also submitted to the Habsburgs, seeing them as a counterbalance to Venice’s expanding power along the Adriatic. By 1379, however, their joint rule was not working out, largely because of Leopold’s aggressive ambitions. Contravening Rudolf’s explicit instructions in the Privilegium maius, the brothers negotiated a division of the family’s territories.
The partition treaty signed at Neuburg in Styria in September 1379 resulted in the formation of the separate “Albertine” and “Leopoldine” branches of the family. Albrecht kept Upper and Lower Austria as well as the Salzkammergut, while Leopold got Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Tyrol, the Vorlande, and the Adriatic areas. The Albertine branch managed to maintain primogeniture such that the domains stayed in the hands of the oldest son, but the Leopoldine branch subsequently split further into Tyrolean and Styrian lines. It would not be until 1496, when only the Leopoldine Styrian line survived, that all the Habsburg domains were reunited under one ruler. In the Neuburg treaty, Albrecht and Leopold tried to maintain the fiction that their now-divided lands all made up parts of one united realm, and that they would all be kept within the Habsburg inheritance. But in practice their politics soon diverged and the branches rarely collaborated over the next century. The Albertine branch tended to be allied with the Luxemburg dynasty, which for several decades held the imperial crown as well as those of Bohemia and Hungary. The Leopoldine branch tended to look west and south, routinely scrapping with the Swiss and the Venetians. The two brothers themselves took opposite positions in the bitter papal schism of 1378, with Albrecht towing the Luxemburg line in favor of Pope Urban VI, and Leopold supporting the Anti-Pope Clement VII. Though such patrimonial divisions were not uncommon among medieval German families, it is unquestionable that in this case it weakened dynastic solidarity and the chances of advancing the whole house’s interests.
One of those interests decisively damaged in this time was the family’s position in Switzerland. Leopold went to war in 1386 against the Swiss Confederacy, gallantly but fatefully leading his own squad of knights at the battle of Sempach. There he was killed and the Habsburg troops decimated. Trying to undo that loss, Albrecht in 1388 sent some 6,000 men to battle at Näfels in the Glarus Valley, where again they were overcome by farmers wielding axes and spears. These two disastrous defeats nearly completed the process of pushing the Habsburgs out of Switzerland, though it was not until 1415 that the Swiss achieved the symbolic victory of taking Habsburg Castle. With Leopold’s death, Albrecht became the warden of Leopold’s four sons. These sons, with perhaps too much of their father’s bellicosity in them, eventually fell into what amounted to a civil war involving also Albrecht’s son Albrecht IV. This period, the first decade of the 1400s, was a terrible time in the Habsburg lands: robber knights marauded because there was no acknowledged judicial authority; famines, epidemics, floods, and an earthquake swept the countryside; and the nobility were able to assert their interests against the disorderly Habsburg rulers.
Though the civil war was inexcusable, the branches’ divergent interests are more easily understood. The Albertine line in Upper and Lower Austria fought against the Hussite rebellion that spread in Bohemia and Moravia after 1419 following the execution of the religious reformer Jan Hus at the Council of Konstanz. The Styrian branch of the Leopoldine line had to deal with the rising power of the Ottoman Turks, whose raids up the Balkans were encroaching on central Europe. The Tyrolean line was preoccupied by fighting the last battles with the Swiss. Two of Leopold’s sons divided the Leopoldine inheritance: Ernst “the Iron” ruled Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and was reasonably competent, while his brother Friedrich IV, in Tyrol, was notoriously inept.
Ernst “the Iron” (1377–1424) elevated the cities of Graz and Wiener Neustadt into the seats of his government, and also built up a state structure that would make Inner Austria one of the most cohesive Habsburg lands until it was dissolved as an entity in 1619. He promoted economic activities such as iron production, asserted the right to levy taxes and to make church appointments, and repeatedly attempted to establish jurisdictional supremacy for himself in a variety of domains. The most vexing problem in this regard was land controlled by the counts of Cilli within Ernst’s broader territories. Possibly as part of his campaign to project Habsburg authority over these enclaves of Cilli lordship, Ernst revived use of the lofty title “archduke.” Ernst was also the first Habsburg to face the Turks in battle, a calling which would become defining for generations of his successors. His work in strengthening the Inner Austrian domains was essential in that territory’s enduring obligation to oversee the war against the Ottomans.
Ernst’s younger brother, Friedrich IV (1382–1439), managed to bungle almost everything he touched. Only toward the end of his life did he salvage anything from his reign. Emblematic is his involvement in the Council of Konstanz in 1415. Friedrich decided to stand firmly behind the anti-pope John XXIII, who was one of three popes the council was trying to depose. As a result of his obstructionism, Emperor Sigismund declared Friedrich an outlaw, and all his possessions in Tyrol and the Vorlande forfeit. Friedrich was attacked from all sides, thanks to Sigismund’s promise that any conquests made would pass to the victors as fiefs of the Empire. It is at this time that the last Habsburg possessions in the Swiss lands were lost. Scrambling to hold on to anything when even his own subjects in Tyrol had deserted him, Friedrich had to pay his brother Ernst a sizeable sum in 1417 to get Ernst to surrender the authority that the Tyrolean estates had conferred upon him. Friedrich then in 1418 had to pay even more money to clear his name from Sigismund’s imperial ban and get back some of the other territory he had given up. During these years on the run (literally and figuratively) Friedrich earned his nickname in Habsburg history as “Freddy with the empty pockets.” Once Ernst died in 1424, though, and after his final reconciliation with Sigismund in 1425, Friedrich became the elder of the house and warden of Ernst’s two sons. By the time of his own death in 1439, Friedrich had repaired some of the damage he had done to his government, and left his own son Sigismund in a far better place than the bleak years around 1417.
Albrecht V (1397–1439)
As the Leopoldine lines flailed, the Albertine branch remained relatively tranquil. Albrecht V proved an able ruler, achieving a tight alliance with Emperor Sigismund and then regaining the imperial crown for his own family for the first time in more than a century. Albrecht had a sharp mind, particularly in relation to military matters, was enterprising, brave, and doughty. He employed intelligent advisors and led financial and legal reforms in his territories. His smartest diplomatic move was strongly supporting Emperor Sigismund as the latter faced the growing threat of the Hussite rebellion in the 1420s. In gratitude for Albrecht’s military support also against the Turks, Sigismund married his daughter to Albrecht in 1422 and named him his heir. When Sigismund died in 1437, then, Albrecht was quickly named the new king of Hungary in January 1438. In March that year he was elected German king as Albrecht II. From 1438 all the way to 1806—with only a brief Wittelsbach interlude 1742–5—every ruler of the Holy Roman Empire was a Habs
burg. Interestingly, Albrecht took several weeks to think over whether he wanted the honor, given the very difficult task of trying to rule the Empire. One of the biggest problems was the deficiency of the crown’s resources. In the century since the Habsburgs had last occupied the throne, the Luxemburg emperors had continued the practice of alienating imperial property from which the crown could have drawn an income. Other sources of weakness were the lack of an administration that could adequately enforce the king’s will, the pressing threats from the Hussites and the Turks, and Albrecht’s own position controlling territories that were all peripheral to the main areas of the empire.
Still, he could not resist the offer. He then set about trying to secure the crown of Bohemia, to which he was entitled as Sigismund’s heir and thanks to the Habsburg-Luxemburg inheritance treaty Rudolf IV had arranged back in 1364. The Catholic members of the Bohemian estates duly chose Albrecht as their king in the summer of 1438, but the Hussites rejected him. Albrecht defeated his opponents in a battle, but not decisively enough to eliminate the Hussite challenge fully. Since he was foremost a soldier, Albrecht then turned to face the Turks. He led an expedition against them in Hungary, where in 1439 he died as a result of dysentery. He had been a king for only a year and a half, but over the decades of his reign in the Austrian duchies he had registered some respectable achievements. He made progress in repairing the damage done during the days of the intra-family conflicts, restoring order and increasing the authority of his supreme court over the nobles and the clergy. The responsibilities of his government expanded because of his defense needs, and he hired more officials and advisors. The government’s budget doubled especially thanks to the wars with the Hussites. Such financial exigencies demanded effective administration, which fortunately Albrecht had. His advisor Berthold von Mangen helped increase government income through taxes on townspeople and Jews, through tolls and even indemnities paid in court cases. Finally, in the long-term dynastic perspective, Albrecht’s reign was most important for renewing the Habsburg claim on the imperial crown—and for uniting it with the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary, which would come to pass again only in the following century under Ferdinand I.
Dynastic strategies
In the two centuries from Rudolf I to Albrecht V, the Habsburgs deftly practiced a number of key dynastic strategies, but failed quite spectacularly in others. Representative of this mixed record are the family’s efforts at dynastic production and reproduction. Rudolf I’s rise to the German kingship brought a corresponding jump in prestige that for a few generations opened up the family’s marriage prospects to some of the other leading dynasties of central and western Europe. For example, Rudolf married his children into the royal lines of Bohemia and Hungary, and Albrecht his children into the royal lines of Hungary, France, and Aragon. Once the Habsburgs were shut out of the kingship after 1308, they were then demoted somewhat as marital prospects. Rudolf IV still managed to marry Charles IV’s daughter, but it was the astute politicking of Albrecht V’s marriage back into the Luxemburg line that enabled the Habsburgs to recapture the imperial crown. Even without that crown, though, they remained one of the leading families in the German lands thanks to the acquisition of Austria in 1278. This was the most notable territorial expansion of this time, followed closely by Tyrol’s coming into the house after 1363. Against these successes must be set the gradual loss of the family’s position in their original Swiss homeland, which had two long-term effects. On the one hand, the family’s solidifying power base in Austria, on the periphery of the Empire, enabled it greater autonomy in imperial politics. On the other, this peripheral location also naturally limited the dynasty’s power in the Empire once it regained the crown. The last crucial issue of production and reproduction at this time was the failure to maintain dynastic solidarity and an undivided patrimony. Territorial partition diminished the family’s status and resources as a whole, and also spurred the infighting over multiple decades in the fifteenth century.
In the processes of legitimacy and loyalty creation, the dynasty claimed a distinct status even though here, too, it exhibited trends common to the era. Rudolf I’s rule proved vital in fashioning many of the foundations for the dynasty’s legitimacy. Most lasting of these was Rudolf’s reputation for piety, which was cultivated during his life then heavily propagandized later. This reputation grew out of oft-repeated stories such as one in which Rudolf, out riding his horse on a hunt, came across a priest bearing a consecrated Host who needed to cross a river. Rudolf lent his horse to the priest, then forever after refused to mount the steed, since it had ostensibly borne the body of the Lord himself. Another legend configuring a special relationship between God and the Habsburgs holds that when Rudolf was crowned king in the cathedral at Aachen, a cloud appeared in the sky in the form of a cross. Such stories served to reinforce the idea that Rudolf was exercising God’s power on earth, that he would rule in accordance with and be legitimized by Christian precepts.
The Habsburgs’ claim to the imperial crown which Rudolf I established also became a central plank in their legitimation strategies. That claim had to be legitimized itself, though, to justify the dynasty’s worthiness for the imperial title, especially given the allegations that Rudolf was but a “poor count.” Hence the family began in these centuries fabulistic genealogical researches to weave an ancestry back through the Carolingian and Merovingian kings, Roman noble families such as the Colonna, and Trojan luminaries. The idea was that as descendants of Charlemagne and Hector, the Habsburgs had a natural claim to primacy. This grew out of the common medieval notion of nobility that an illustrious bloodline legitimized leadership. The Privilegium maius was another audacious gambit to assert the Habsburgs’ legitimacy. The falsified approbations of Caesar and Nero and the invented title of “archduke” adhered in that document to Austria itself—but Rudolf IV identified himself and his dynasty with the territory and so claimed its special privileges for himself and his family. The bargains with provincial elites were a further way of gaining loyalty and legitimacy. In most of these examples, the dynasty’s legitimacy and loyalty depended upon the relationship with the upper echelons of society. There was at this time very little need to justify rule to the masses.
A number of these medieval Habsburgs clearly exemplified typical medieval notions on the role and image of the sovereign. Rudolf I, for instance, unmistakably wielded the ruler’s sword: he was the chief of the war band, present on the battlefield with his soldiers in the fight against Otakar. He also wielded coercive justice, restoring peace by rooting out the robber knights left over from the Interregnum. The role as military leader was fundamental to most other Habsburg heads of the family too, from the knightly sallies of the first Friedrich and Leopold on to Albrecht V, who met his end campaigning against the Turks. However, Rudolf’s common touch and his easy interactions with all kinds of people evinced a less grandiose image of kingship than his Hohenstaufen predecessors had propagated. Though myth-making plays a role here too, Rudolf as a ruler worked to display the Christian virtue of modesty, at least according to an incident in the conflict with Otakar. In 1276 the Bohemian king was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Rudolf. At this ceremony, Otakar appeared in ostentatious kingly regalia while Rudolf dressed in gray, ordinary apparel. The subtext to this ceremony was that the quarrelsome king had to submit to the authority of the man he had previously slandered as no more than a poor count. Albrecht V also demonstrated a surprisingly clear conception of both his authority and his duties as a ruler. His relatively conscientious government was exemplary for a medieval prince in its objectives of ensuring the peace and fostering the commonweal. He also upheld the prince’s duty to protect the Christian faith by leading a war against the “heresy” of the Hussites, and by supporting the church reforms that spread from the Austrian abbey of Melk throughout the southern German lands during this time.
Another trend generally visible in medieval rulership also appears in Austria, namely the gradual move toward ter
ritorial lordship. This is the emerging idea that a ruler exerts authority over an increasingly defined geographical space rather than merely over different groups of people who acknowledge him as sovereign. The trend can be seen in the Habsburgs’ efforts throughout this period to strengthen the institutions and boundaries of their various Austrian lands, whether the two Austrian duchies, or Styria, Carniola, etc. In this process they were also cementing the notion of the dynasty as specifically “Austrian” rulers. The Privilegium maius again played an important role here, and showed Rudolf IV’s particular conception of the ruler. With this document, he made a claim for the primacy of princely power, of the prince’s majesty and sovereignty over his own lands and subjects, even in relation to the emperor and the pope. The Privilegium further defined the special status of Austria, and took a significant step toward associating the dynasty with that territory. The theme of prestige and honor also points to the personal aspects of rulership, which lingered despite the evolution of territoriality. Personal bonds remained central to medieval social systems. One of the essential values undergirding such bonds was honor. The ruler was supposed to treat his vassals and subjects honorably, but also defend the honor of his own line. That preoccupation with honor helps explain Johann Parricida’s murder of Albrecht I, since he considered himself slighted by Albrecht’s actions. It also motivated Friedrich I’s crusade to keep the imperial crown within his house.
The Habsburgs- The History of a Dynasty Page 5
