Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (69 page)

The bulk of the assets recovered through Revindication were alienated again in the century following Rudolf’s death in 1291. The form of alienation differed from that prior to 1273, because many were now pawned either for cash mortgages or under new service agreements binding the mortgagee to provide support over long periods. Pawning became more common from the late thirteenth century, because mortgages circumvented canonical prohibitions on usury by transferring assets rather than contracting loans against interest. Only 13 imperial cities were never pawned between 1273 and 1438.
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Unlike transfer by gift or enfeoffment, the king retained the option of recovering the property by redeeming the mortgage. However, the mortgages were often so high as to make redemption unlikely: Louis IV mortgaged Eger for 20,000 pounds of silver in 1322 back to Bohemia, which retained it permanently. Eger is still today the westernmost point of the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, mortgages cut the king off from the real value of the land since the mortgagee drew the revenue and other benefits in the meantime. Lucrative assets like Rhine tolls, mints, and ore and salt mining rights were repeatedly mortgaged until they were effectively permanently alienated.
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All this might suggest that Rudolf’s reign indeed represents a lost opportunity to centralize. However, the bailiwicks never represented the basis for a new royal bureaucracy, but instead relied on using established prerogatives to entrust minor lords with supervision of royal
assets. The dissipation of these assets through mortgages and other forms of alienation effectively removed the crown lands as a significant resource by the late fourteenth century. Rather than constituting ‘decline’, this instead reflected a fundamental shift in the basis of imperial rule to rest on the king’s direct possession of immediate fiefs as hereditary family lands.

This was already apparent under Rudolf. He owed his election to appearing less of a threat to princely liberties than Ottokar, because Rudolf only held modest possessions in Switzerland and on the Upper Rhine. These produced an annual revenue of just 7,000 pounds in silver; hence the Revindication policy begun soon after his coronation. However, his use of the royal office to contest Ottokar’s claims to the Babenberg inheritance proved far more significant in the longer term. Rudolf’s methods also illustrate the potential of the new feudal structures developed under the Staufers. Rudolf held an assembly at Nuremberg in November 1274 when he confirmed the princes in possession of their immediate imperial fiefs. However, this act explicitly asserted the monarch as suzerain, requiring all to seek formal re-enfeoffment within a year under the practice of
Herren- und Mannfall
(see
p. 300
). Rudolf used Ottokar’s failure to do this as an excuse to employ force to resolve the disputed Babenberg inheritance in his own favour after 1276. Rudolf’s strategy entailed high risks, because few of the princes were prepared to see Ottokar fully divested of his lands. However, this problem was solved by Ottokar’s death amidst defeat at Dürnkrut, north-east of Vienna, on 26 August 1278. The electors eventually agreed in 1282 that Rudolf could enfeoff his sons as dukes of Austria and Styria. These acquisitions added 18,000 pounds of silver in annual revenue for the Habsburgs, compared to only 8,000 pounds now flowing from all the imperial cities after Revindication.
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Rudolf’s victory signalled the new direction, but not yet the definitive turning point. The leading princes still expected the king to live from what were increasingly termed the imperial lands (
Reichsgut
) and, for this reason, had backed Revindication in principle if not always in practice. They remained suspicious of a king who wanted to acquire too many large fiefs directly as family property (
Hausgut
). A transitional pattern set in for the next century. Kings continued to use imperial lands, though increasingly as objects to pawn. Meanwhile, they used their royal office to secure vacant fiefs for their immediate
relations. Henry VII was able to enfeoff his son Johann with Bohemia in 1310, while Louis IV gave Holland, Zeeland and Hainault to his son Wilhelm in 1345. By keeping his gains split between his sons in 1282, Rudolf allayed the electors’ fears that either would be too powerful. Unfortunately, two of his sons predeceased him, leaving only Albert as sole heir when Rudolf died in July 1291. Albert’s curt manner further discouraged the electors, while he was simultaneously distracted by a revolt against Habsburg rule in Switzerland.
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Adolf and Albert

The electors eventually chose Count Adolf of Nassau as king in May 1292. Adolf’s family was one of the success stories from the previous two centuries, having risen from bailiffs serving the archbishop of Mainz. They amassed a large conglomerate of fiefs and jurisdictions on the Lower Rhine after 1080, securing comital rank when these were grouped into the new county of Nassau in 1160, permitting their emancipation from both Mainz and Trier overlordship. Like so many noble families in this period, their good fortune encouraged partitions after 1255, because their relative wealth allowed them to provide for more of their children through inheritance. Further partitions followed and the Nassau lands were not reunited until the very different circumstances of 1814.

Adolf was the weakest of the ‘little kings’. Again, circumstances played a role, because Archbishop Siegfried von Westerburg of Cologne wanted a pliant king to reverse his earlier defeat at Worringen in 1288.
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Adolf was obliged to grant Cologne and the other electors significant concessions, but otherwise continued Rudolf’s Revindication and bailiwick policy. Adolf used the windfall of English subsidies – intended to finance a joint war against France in 1294 – to buy off claims to Thuringia and Meissen, enabling him temporarily to incorporate these into the imperial lands in 1296.
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This proved his undoing, because Bohemia, Saxony and Brandenburg still coveted Thuringia and now combined to oppose Adolf, winning support from Mainz and Austria, but not Trier. The dispute gathered momentum as Adolf refused to compromise. Mainz secured agreement from Saxony, Brandenburg and the count Palatine to depose Adolf on 23 June 1298 in the first of what proved to be only two depositions undertaken exclusively by the
electors without papal involvement. The action was highly controversial, because the legality of Adolf’s election and coronation were uncontested and it was hard to find a convincing argument against him.

The situation demonstrated the relative strength of the monarchy as an institution, even if the current incumbent was weak. Moreover, the decision not to involve the papacy showed how the leading princes shared a sense of collective responsibility for the Empire, despite their ulterior motives. It is likely that they already chose Albert of Austria as successor at this point, though details are sparse.
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Adolf was killed in the rout of his forces by Albert at Göllheim near Worms on 2 July 1298. His death contributed to the lasting image of him as a failure, yet he had proved surprisingly successful, despite starting from an even weaker base than Rudolf. The outcome demonstrates the continued significance of agency in events: things would have been quite different if Albert had died instead.

Albert ascended the throne tainted by Adolf’s death.
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A new election was staged in a deliberate show of unity and probity. Albert soon proved the electors’ original fears from 1292 as correct, swiftly outwitting them to consolidate possession of Thuringia and moving to secure Bohemia, left vacant by the death of the last Premyslid in 1306. He was undone by his own family’s lack of dynastic discipline when he was murdered on 1 May 1308 by his nephew Johann, who wanted a larger share of the spoils.

Luxembourgs and Wittelsbachs

The Habsburgs again appeared too strong and the electors rejected Albert’s eldest son, Frederick ‘the Fair’, and instead chose the count of Luxembourg as King Henry VII in 1308. The Luxembourgs’ emergence broadly mirrored that of their Nassau neighbours, except that military defeat rather than family partition stalled an otherwise rapid rise to prominence. Luxembourg developed as a large county that eventually became detached from Lorraine by the twelfth century. Attempts by the family to acquire the duchy of Limburg in 1283 triggered the dispute that ended in Cologne’s defeat at Worringen in 1288. Luxembourg backed the losing side and lost Limburg. However, Count Henry’s brother Balduin was archbishop of Trier and persuaded his
electoral colleagues to back Henry.
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Like Adolf, his initial weakness obliged Henry to make concessions at his accession. He is considered an unrealistic dreamer for being the first monarch since Frederick II to go to Rome and be crowned emperor. However, this move made perfect sense in helping to raise Henry’s personal prestige over the other princes. He also continued the trend begun under Rudolf I by renouncing further attempts to incorporate Thuringia within the imperial lands. This bought the necessary support for Henry to escheat Bohemia as a vacant fief and transfer it to his son in 1310, laying the basis of future Luxembourg power, like Rudolf I’s acquisition of Austria for the Habsburgs in 1278.

Henry VII’s unexpectedly early death from malaria in August 1313 necessitated what unintentionally proved the first double election since 1257. The incremental growth of hereditary fief-holding across the previous forty years made the Luxembourgs and Habsburgs evenly matched frontrunners. Hoping to break the deadlock, Johann of Bohemia’s supporters agreed on the Wittelsbach Duke Louis of Upper Bavaria as a compromise candidate. However, Habsburg partisans pre-empted them by electing Frederick the Fair at Frankfurt on 19 October 1314. The Luxembourgs camped at Sachsenhausen on the opposite side of the Main belatedly proclaimed their candidate as Louis IV the next day. Frederick had been elected first, held the correct insignia, and was crowned by the archbishop of Cologne, traditionally considered the ‘right’ person to do so. However, Louis got to the ‘right’ location at Aachen first and was crowned by the archbishop of Mainz with substitute insignia. These moves aptly symbolized the underlying political stalemate that opened the Empire to renewed papal interference. Relatively low-level skirmishing shifted the balance gradually in Louis’ favour after 1315, culminating in a convincing victory at Mühldorf on the Inn on 28 September 1322 when Frederick was captured. As in 1278 at Dürnkrut and 1298 at Göllheim, the Empire’s fate was decided in battle.
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Louis defused the dispute by recognizing Frederick as nominal co-king in 1325, the last time this arrangement was used. Louis also distributed some of the remaining south German imperial lands to Frederick’s relations and allowed them to inherit Carinthia when this fell vacant in 1335. However, Johann of Bohemia now openly opposed Louis over conflicting claims to Brandenburg, which had fallen vacant
on the extinction of the Askanier line there in 1320. A further dispute erupted over rival claims to the Tirol in 1346. These problems illustrated both the growing importance of hereditary possessions in the competition for the monarchy and the dangers for kings who insisted on trying to claim vacant fiefs themselves, rather than standing above disputes as impartial judges. France and the papacy backed the Luxembourgs, while renewed excommunication weakened Louis’ legitimacy. In April 1346 five of the seven electors chose Johann’s son Charles (IV) as anti-king. Louis remained politically powerful, but died of a heart attack whilst hunting in October 1347.

Shift of Emphasis under Charles IV

Charles IV was an unscrupulous opportunist, dividing contemporary opinion as sharply as Frederick II had in his day.
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He skilfully held the political balance in the mid-fourteenth century, managing to curb both Habsburg and Wittelsbach influence without driving either into open opposition. Wittelsbach supporters belatedly elected Count Günther von Schwarzenburg as anti-king in January 1349, but he was defeated at Eltville on the Rhine in the third case of the succession being decided in battle, and renounced his title on 29 May in return for an amnesty for his followers. Charles’s confirmation of Wittelsbach possession of Brandenburg reconciled the family to his rule, while their continued partitions hindered any real chance of challenging him later. Both Bavaria and Austria were excluded from the electoral college when this was given definitive shape in the Golden Bull of 1356. The secular votes all went to Charles’s close allies, including the Wittenberg Askanier rather than the Lauenburg branch that had backed Schwarzenburg. However, Charles reconciled Austria by agreeing a hereditary pact in 1364 that eventually provided the basis for the Habsburgs to succeed the Luxembourgs in 1438. However, like Bavaria, in the meantime convenient deaths and further family partitions prevented the Habsburgs from challenging Luxembourg rule.
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Charles’s long reign (1346–78) allowed time to consolidate Luxembourg rule and to shift imperial governance decisively to its new basis in hereditary possessions rather than the imperial lands and church. This was not obvious at the start of his reign when he resumed the Revindication policy with particular intensity to recover assets pawned
by Louis IV, only to abandon it for good after 1371. Immediate circumstances provided one reason for this decision. Charles pawned four towns and associated lands, together forming what became known as the Upper Palatinate, to the Wittelsbachs in 1373 in return for their renunciation of claims to Brandenburg, allowing him finally to escheat this as a vacant fief that he granted to his second son, Sigismund. In this way, Charles swopped imperial land to expand his family’s hereditary possessions. He then extended this to other imperial assets, raising 2 million florins, or 48 per cent of all the cash he received from Germany during his reign.
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Although the money was useful, it was simply an added bonus from what was now a long-term strategy to wreck the traditional basis for imperial rule. By stripping the royal title of the means to sustain itself, Charles ensured that his family were the only viable candidates as kings, since only they now had the necessary resources. To this end, he also deliberately alienated the infrastructure built up since 1273 to administer imperial lands. The bailiff rights were pawned or sold to the counts exercising them. In one sense, this continued the Staufers’ policy of expanding the princely elite as a way of ensuring no single family had too much regional power. For example, the Nuremberg bailiwick was sold to that imperial city, but the criminal jurisdiction was detached and sold to the Hohenzollern burgraves, who were also raised to princely status by a special charter in 1363.
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