Meanwhile the electors and princes had been seriously |Adolf’s fall.| alarmed by Adolf’s alliance with the lesser nobles and towns, and by his temporary successes in Thuringia. To put down the prince whom they had chosen, they turned to Albert of Austria whom they had rejected. Albert, who had already formed a close alliance with Wenzel II. of Bohemia, and had been in communication with the French king, was eager to strike a blow for his father’s crown. The Archbishop of Mainz summoned a meeting of princes to Frankfort on May 1, 1298, and Albert set out to attend it with an army at his back. Adolf, however, collected troops from his supporters among the lesser nobles, and prepared to dispute his passage. By superior strategy Albert marched round his opponent to the south, and succeeded in reaching Mainz, whither the meeting was transferred. Here the electors formally declared Adolf’s deposition (June 23), but the irregular proposal of Albert of Saxony to elect Albert of Austria on the spot met with no support. The army of the princes now advanced against the king, and after a desperate struggle near Göllheim, Adolf was slain—struck from his horse, it was said, by the hand of his rival (July 2). He had made a brief but creditable attempt to rule as a German king, but was too weak to face the hostile coalition of the princes. His schemes in Thuringia and Meissen perished with him, and the House of Wettin recovered its territories.
After Albert’s victory as champion of the electors, the |Albert I.| latter could no longer avoid choosing him to fill the vacant throne; but they soon had ample reason to recognise the wisdom of their previous refusal. Albert inherited his father’s policy, with more restless energy and greater military capacity. What he might have done for the Hapsburg dynasty and the German monarchy if his career had not been prematurely cut short by assassination it is impossible to say, but the ten years of his reign are full of great enterprises, most of which promised successful results. The reputation for cruelty which he bears in history is mainly due to the sternness of his manner and appearance, increased by the loss of an eye, and to the fables which have grown up round him in the more than dubious traditions of the Swiss.
To coerce Pope Boniface VIII., who refused to acknowledge |Albert’s policy.| his election, Albert concluded a treaty with Philip IV. of France, who had a quarrel of his own with the Papacy, and thus abandoned the attempt of Adolf to defend the Burgundian frontiers. In December, 1299, he had a personal interview with Philip, and arranged a marriage between the French princess Blanche and his eldest son Rudolf. In German politics he set himself to favour the towns against the princes, and infuriated the latter by an edict abolishing all tolls on the Rhine imposed since the death of Frederick II. in 1250. The death of the Count of Holland and Zealand (October, 1299) gave him an opportunity to claim these provinces as vacant imperial fiefs in opposition to John of Hainault, who claimed the inheritance through his mother. This scheme, however, proved a failure, and the House of Avesnes succeeded in adding Holland and Zealand to Hainault. Encouraged by Albert’s check in the north-west, the Rhenish archbishops and the Elector Palatine, furious at the threatened loss of their tolls, formed a league against the king whom they had voted for two years before. But Albert was not so powerless as Adolf had been. Backed by the enthusiastic support of the cities and aided by French auxiliaries, he took the aggressive against his opponents, and compelled them not only to abolish the tolls, but to recognise the right of the towns to receive burghers of the pale (Pfahlbürger)—that is, to confer the privileges and immunities of citizenship on residents in the suburbs outside the walls. Few German kings since Henry III. had been so successful in coercing their powerful vassals as was Albert in these campaigns of 1301 and 1302.
For the next few years Albert’s attention was mainly |Succession in Hungary.| absorbed in eastern affairs. The death of Andrew III., the last male of the Arpad dynasty in Hungary, left that kingdom without any obvious heir. There were two candidates, who were descended from the royal family through females—Otto of Lower Bavaria, and Charles Robert or Carobert, the grandson of Charles II., the Angevin king of Naples. But the Magyar nobles passed over both, and offered the crown to Wenzel II. of Bohemia, who accepted it for his son Wenzel III. Such an accession of power to the Premyslides was entirely opposed to Albert’s interests, both as King of Germany and as Duke of Austria. As he had no love for the Wittelsbachs in Lower Bavaria, he did not hesitate to espouse the cause of Carobert, the son of his sister Clementia, and the candidate supported by Boniface VIII., with whom Albert had reconciled himself in 1302. For a time the Bohemian power proved too strong, but the death of Wenzel II. (June, 1305) and the growing discontent in Hungary with the conduct of the young king, enabled Carobert to secure the crown, though his title was disputed for a time by Otto of Wittelsbach.
In the next year (August, 1306) the murder of the young |Succession in Bohemia.| Wenzel III. left the Bohemian crown itself vacant. The sister of the late king had married Henry of Carinthia and Tyrol, the brother of Albert’s wife.[[2]] In spite of this relationship Albert claimed the kingdom as a vacant fief, and conferred it upon his eldest son Rudolf. The consent of the Bohemian nobles was extorted or purchased, and an agreement that Rudolf’s brothers should succeed if he himself died childless, seemed to secure to the Hapsburgs the permanent possession of a kingdom which, added to their Austrian territories, would make them all-powerful on the eastern frontier of Germany. This was the greatest of Albert’s achievements, and, if the acquisition had been permanent, would have made his reign as important in Hapsburg history as his father’s had been. But his last years were clouded with disappointment. An attempt to renew his predecessor’s claims upon Meissen and Thuringia was repulsed by Frederick of Wettin, who defeated the royal army, under Frederick of Hohenzollern, near Altenburg (May 31, 1307). This defeat was followed by the sudden death, on July 4, of the youthful Rudolf of Bohemia. The Bohemians had tired of Hapsburg rule, and in spite of the agreement made at Rudolf’s election, they now offered the crown to Henry of Carinthia. Albert had already made one incursion into Bohemia, and was preparing another, |Albert’s death.| when he was treacherously murdered by his nephew, John (May 1, 1308).
John was the son of Albert’s brother Rudolf and Agnes, daughter of Ottokar, and seems to have resented his uncle’s refusal either to support his candidature for the Bohemian crown, or to give him any share of the Hapsburg territories. The assassination, therefore, was the result of mere personal pique, but it was as important as if it had arisen from a deep-laid political scheme. If Albert had lived longer he would very probably have established his son Frederick in Bohemia, and rendered his election to the German kingship inevitable. In that case the Hapsburgs might have founded a territorial monarchy in Germany, and the House of Luxemburg would never have risen from obscurity. The complaint that Albert neglected to enforce imperial pretensions in Italy is well founded, but should rather be set to the credit of his political capacity. The Italian connection was fatal to the best interests of Germany. A far more serious criticism is his failure to resist the aggressions of France. He aided the House of Anjou to acquire the crown of Hungary in addition to that of Naples, and although for the moment Charles Robert’s candidature was opposed by Philip IV., it was certain that in the long-run the Angevin and Capet interests would combine the two families. He made no opposition to the transference of the papal residence from Rome to Avignon, though the disadvantage to Germany was obvious when Clement V. filled the Rhenish archbishoprics with partisans of France.
It resulted from these changes that French influence was |Election of Henry VII.| very prominent in the election of 1308, and was strong enough to secure the exclusion of Albert’s heir, Frederick the Handsome. Philip IV.’s brother, Charles of Valois, came forward as a candidate and was openly supported by the Pope. But the secular princes were strong enough to resist such a sacrifice of German interests to ecclesiastical pressure, although their own interests prevented them from supporting the Hapsburg. At this juncture, the Archbishop Baldwin of Trier (appointed in 1307) suggested as a compromise the choice of his brother, Henry of Luxemburg. He was the descendant of the counts of Limburg and Arlon, who had acquired Luxemburg by marriage in 1214. His territorial power was too small to inspire jealousy in Germany, while he was connected with France by education and by military service in the war against Edward I. As no other candidate had any chance of election, Henry VII. was chosen without opposition on October 28, 1308. The Hapsburgs found it necessary to acknowledge the new king on condition of receiving confirmation of their fiefs.
The personal career of Henry VII. belongs rather to the |Italian expedition.| history of Italy than that of Germany, and will be considered in the following chapter. From the first he seems to have looked on Germany as a foreigner, and abandoned the policy of his predecessor for the wild dream of reviving the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen in Italy at the head of the Ghibelline party. In 1310 he set out on his southern expedition, which resulted in little beyond his coronation in Rome (June 29, 1312). He never returned to Germany. But before his departure he took some steps which were fraught with future consequence. To conciliate the princes he withdrew the concessions by which Albert had purchased the support of the towns. In 1310 |Concessions to the princes.| he prohibited the creation of pfahlbürger, and restored their tolls to the Rhenish princes. In the same year he seized the opportunity to obtain a great acquisition for his family. The Bohemians were in rebellion against Henry of Carinthia, and offered the crown to Henry VII.’s son, John, on condition that he should marry Elizabeth, |John of Bohemia.| daughter of Wenzel II. The offer was accepted; but so little did Henry care even for his family interests in comparison with his chimerical schemes, that he did not delay his advance into Italy, and left the securing of his son’s throne to the Archbishop of Mainz, Peter von Aspelt. Fortunately, the enterprise did not require his presence. Henry of Carinthia was expelled, and John of Luxemburg was firmly seated on the Bohemian throne.
During the Italian expedition, which ended in Henry VII.’s |France seizes Lyons.| death near Siena (August 24, 1313), the interests of the German monarchy were neglected, the princes were left in complete independence, and Philip IV. was enabled to carry on his aggressions with impunity. In 1310 he took advantage of a dispute between the archbishop and the citizens of Lyons to send French troops into the city, and in 1312 the former was compelled to make a treaty by which he acknowledged the suzerainty of France.
Forty years had now elapsed since the close of the Great |Importance of period 1273-1313 in German history.| Interregnum. The kingly office had been revived, and had been held by four princes, each of whom had shown considerable vigour and capacity. But the absence of hereditary succession had rendered impossible the pursuit of any efficient scheme for the enforcement of central authority and the repression of princely independence. The greatest successes in this direction had been gained by Albert I., but they had been rendered nugatory by his untimely death and by his successor’s absorption in dreams of reviving the universal empire. Germany in 1313, as in 1273, was a mere bundle of states under a nominal head, while its neighbours England and France had been receiving a strong national organisation under the capable rule of Edward I. and Philip IV. That Germany escaped for a century from the worst consequences of her disunion was mainly due to the jarring interests of the neighbouring states which led to the Hundred Years’ War.