In 1325 Germany was astounded by the news that Lewis had been formally reconciled with his imprisoned rival. It is true that the treaty was not carried out, and Frederick, unable to fulfil his promises in face of the opposition of his brothers, returned to captivity. But in the following year the death of Leopold, the most resolute and active of the Hapsburg princes, removed all danger to Lewis from this quarter, and enabled him to follow the advice of his Franciscan counsellors and to take aggressive measures against the Pope. In 1327 the Emperor appeared |Lewis in Italy.| at Trent, where he was welcomed by the Ghibelline leaders eager to have his assistance against Robert of Naples. At Milan he received the iron crown of Lombardy, and thence, accompanied by Castruccio Castracani, Lord of Lucca, he set out for Rome. The Guelf cause seemed to be ruined in northern and central Italy, and the partisans of the Pope and Naples fled from the city. In January, 1328, Lewis was crowned Emperor by two bishops, whose chief qualification was that they shared with their patron the penalties of excommunication. Three months were spent in planning further proceedings, and in April John XXII. was formally declared uncanonically elected and guilty of heresy. In May, Peter di Corvara, a Franciscan friar, nominated by the Emperor and accepted by the acclamations of the citizens, assumed the papal title as Nicolas V.
This initiation of a schism in the interests of the Franciscan party marks the limit of the Emperor’s success in Italy. He had committed himself to an enterprise which he had neither the moral nor the material force to carry through. His immediate enemy, Robert of Naples, had not yet been even attacked. When the imperial troops advanced southwards in June, they were speedily compelled to retreat, and Lewis thought it advisable to evacuate Rome and retire to the Ghibelline strongholds in the north. The Emperor was accompanied by his Antipope, and the Roman populace, with characteristic inconstancy, expelled the imperial partisans and opened their gates to the Orsini and the Neapolitan troops. To make matters worse, death carried off two of Lewis’s chief advisers, Castruccio Castracani and Marsiglio of Padua. From this time his career in Italy was one long catalogue of blunders, and he eagerly seized the excuse for returning to Germany on the news of the death of his former rival, Frederick the Handsome (January, 1330). The unfortunate Nicolas V., deserted by his patron, was compelled to resign his dignity and to make the most humiliating submission to John XXII. He ended his life a prisoner in the palace of Avignon.
After such a complete and disastrous failure it might have been thought that the cause of Lewis was ruined, and that he too would have to submit to the triumphant Pope. But the open alliance of the Papacy with France, and the consequent alienation of Germany, enabled him to recover much of the lost ground, and by 1338 his position appeared |Position of Lewis in 1338.| to be firmer than ever. At the head of a national movement, which had expressed its sentiments unmistakably in the decrees of Rense and Frankfort, and closely allied with Edward III. of England, who was now committed to his great war with France, Lewis seemed able to dictate his own terms both to Benedict XII. and Philip VI.
But Lewis was as incapable as ever of pursuing a resolute and consistent course of policy, and at the very moment when success seemed assured he began to vacillate and draw back. In 1340 he suddenly abandoned the English alliance and made terms with Philip VI., in the hope that the French king would use his influence to secure for him the papal absolution. Philip, delighted to be freed from a very pressing danger, did endeavour to intercede with the Pope, but even the gentle Benedict fired up at this attempt to command what the king had previously forbidden; and the Pope died in April 1342, without having granted the Emperor the pardon for which he craved. The Germans were naturally disgusted by Lewis’s pusillanimity, but this feeling was as nothing compared to the storm of indignation excited by the Emperor’s conduct in the question of Tyrol. The final cause of Lewis’s failure is to be found in his reckless pursuit of that policy of family aggrandisement which had been almost forced upon the holders of the imperial dignity since the Great Interregnum. In his insatiable greed for territory, he did not hesitate to alienate the chief German princes at a time when their support was absolutely indispensable.
In 1335 Henry, Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, had died leaving an only daughter, Margaret Maultasch, who |Succession question in Tyrol.| was married to John Henry of Moravia, a son of King John of Bohemia. The claim of Margaret to succeed to her father’s territories was contested by the dukes of Austria, whose father, Albert I., had married the sister of Henry of Carinthia. The struggle for the succession between the Houses of Hapsburg and Luxemburg ended in a partition, the Hapsburg dukes taking Carinthia, while Tyrol was ceded to their niece Margaret. But the marriage relations of Margaret and John Henry proved extremely inharmonious, and in 1341 the former discarded her husband and threw herself upon the protection of the Emperor. The temptation to acquire a new province for his House was more than Lewis could resist. He had already in 1323, on the death of Waldemar of Brandenburg, conferred the vacant provinces and electorate on his eldest son Lewis. On the death of his cousins, the sons of Henry of Lower Bavaria, he had seized their land and had thus united the whole of Bavaria under his own rule. To these acquisitions he would now add the county of Tyrol. In reckless defiance of ecclesiastical prejudice, he usurped rights which had hitherto been exercised by the Church. By solemn decree he granted Margaret a divorce from her husband, and a dispensation to marry his own son, Lewis of Brandenburg.
The consequences of this reckless action might have been foreseen. The clergy were alienated by the assumption of clerical powers by a layman, while the lay princes, headed by John of Bohemia, were jealously indignant at such an addition to the already immense possessions of the Bavarian House. The new Pope, Clement VI., found himself at last in a position to raise an anti-imperial party in Germany, and to bring about the election of a rival king. But for the fact that Philip VI. was now engaged in the war with England, Clement, who was a thorough Frenchman, would probably have used all his influence to secure the election of the French king. As it was, it was natural to find a candidate in the House of Luxemburg, which had most cause for exasperation with Lewis, and was also closely allied with France. John of Bohemia himself was disqualified by blindness, having lost his eyesight in a campaign against the heathen Wends of Prussia, but his eldest son, Charles, was put forward in his |Election of Charles IV., 1346.| place. The only electors who supported Lewis were his own son, Lewis of Brandenburg, and the Archbishop of Mainz, Henry of Virneburg. The Pope, to secure another vote, deposed the archbishop, and awarded his see to Gerlach of Nassau. On June 11, 1346, the three Archbishops, with John of Bohemia and Rudolf of Saxony, formally elected Charles as king of the Romans. With characteristic quixotism the blind king, instead of asserting his son’s title with arms, hurried the new king off to France to aid his ally, Philip VI. On the field of Crecy John of Bohemia fell in heroic despair, but Charles IV., whose share in the battle is wrapped in some obscurity, escaped to Germany to maintain his title.
Meanwhile Lewis had made the last great addition to the territories of his family. His second wife, Margaret, was a sister of William IV. of Holland and Hainault, and |Death of Lewis, 1347.| on the death of that prince in 1345 his possessions fell to William V., a son of Lewis by this second marriage. The House of Wittelsbach seemed for the moment so powerful that it need fear no rival, and the injudicious absence of the Luxemburg princes had enabled Lewis to strengthen himself still further by an alliance with Albert of Austria. Charles found his position almost hopeless. An attack upon Tyrol was repulsed, and he was forced to retire to Bohemia. Lewis, confident of an easy triumph, left the prosecution of the campaign to the Margrave of Brandenburg and returned to Bavaria, where he died suddenly on October 11, 1347, while engaged in a boar-hunt near Munich.
CHAPTER VI
CHARLES IV. AND THE GOLDEN BULL
Charles IV. secures the German Crown—His rule in Bohemia—His coronation in Italy—Difficulties in Germany—The Golden Bull—The Papacy and the Golden Bull—The results of the Golden Bull—The intentions of Charles IV.—The Territorial Policy of Charles IV.—The Succession question in Upper Bavaria—The election and coronation of Wenzel—The Swabian League—The Great Schism—Death of Charles IV.—Partition of the Luxemburg territories.
When Charles IV. returned from the campaign in France, which had cost his father’s life, he seemed to have very little |Position of Charles IV. in 1347.| chance of gaining the imperial throne, to which he had been elected by the opponents of Lewis the Bavarian. It is true that Bohemia was rich in mineral wealth, but in territorial power the House of Luxemburg was no match for the House of Wittelsbach, whose various members ruled over the Palatinate, the whole of Bavaria, the marks of Brandenburg, Tyrol, and the border districts of Hainault, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, and Utrecht. The second son of Lewis, Stephen, was head of the powerful Swabian League, and the imperial towns were all on the side of the Bavarian Emperor. The electors who had given Charles their votes were not prepared to make any sacrifices in his cause, and Albert of Austria, the most powerful of the non-electoral princes, was committed to the cause of Lewis. The chief ally to whom Charles might have looked for support was the French king; but Philip VI. was fully occupied in the war with Edward III., and was thus unable to take any part in the affairs of Germany.