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

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

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

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

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

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

And with that, back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What exactly then happened, nobody knows. But one night, Wenzeslaus hopped the fence and legged it back to Prague. Did Albrecht IV let him go, or was it his cousin Wilhelm who had unlocked the cell? Albrecht IV at least felt obliged to placate Sigismund by doing something he rarely did, he went to war. In 1404, the two princes were leading an expedition against a rebellious group of barons in Moravia, when they both fell violently ill. Sigismund recovered, Albrecht IV did not. As always there were rumours of poison everywhere…and again, who knows. But as far as Sigismund was concerned, he had more confidence in Albrecht’s loyalty than in Wilhelms. And he transferred this sympathy to Albrecht’s son, Albrecht V, who was just 7 years old at this point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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