While Germany was convulsed with the town war, the House of Luxemburg had made an important territorial acquisition in the east. Lewis the Great, king of Hungary and Poland, the head of the original House of Anjou in Naples, had died in 1380. He left a widow, Elizabeth, and two daughters, Maria and Hedwig. In spite |Succession in Hungary and Poland.| of the natural prejudices against female rule, he had induced his subjects to recognise his daughters’ claim to the succession. If they were passed over, the nearest male heir was Charles of Durazzo,[[10]] who was engaged in a struggle for the crown of Naples with Louis of Anjou, brother of Charles V. of France. Maria, the elder of the two daughters, was betrothed to Sigismund, the second son of Charles IV. She was accepted by the Hungarians, and Sigismund was eager that his future wife should also gain the crown of Poland. But the Poles, influenced by the growing Slav sentiment, were unwilling to continue the connection with Hungary or to accept a German ruler. They insisted upon electing the younger sister Hedwig, and upon choosing a husband for her. Hedwig was sent to Poland in 1385, and in the next year was married to Jagello, prince of Lithuania, who was baptized as a Christian under the name of Ladislas. The union of Poland and Lithuania under the Jagellon house founded a powerful Slav state to the north-east of Germany, and led to the downfall of the Teutonic Knights, who could no longer claim to conduct a crusade when their foes had accepted Christianity (see p. [459]).
Meanwhile Sigismund, disappointed in Poland, came near to losing Hungary as well. Elizabeth, the late king’s widow, |Sigismund’s accession in Hungary, 1387.| unwilling to surrender authority to an ambitious son-in-law, tried to break off Maria’s engagement, and to bring about a marriage with a French prince. But her schemes were suddenly checkmated by a revolt of the Hungarian nobles, who offered the crown to Charles of Durazzo, now established on the throne of Naples. Charles accepted the offer, and landed in Dalmatia in 1385. This unexpected danger forced Elizabeth to appeal for assistance to Sigismund, whose long-delayed marriage was hastily solemnised in October 1385. The bridegroom hurried off to raise troops for the defence of his wife’s crown, and among his expedients for gaining money he pawned a great part of Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst of Moravia. Meanwhile events in Hungary moved with kaleidoscopic rapidity. Charles of Naples, after having apparently secured his kingdom, was assassinated by the emissaries of Elizabeth in February 1386. Elizabeth recovered authority in her daughter’s name, and at once quarrelled with her son-in-law, whose assistance seemed to be no longer needed. But the nobles of Croatia determined to avenge the death of Charles. They seized Elizabeth and Maria, and carried them off to the fortress of Novigrad. When the fortress was besieged, the former was put to death, and Maria was threatened with the same fate. In the general anarchy, the Hungarian nobles determined to offer the crown to Sigismund, who was crowned in 1387, and soon afterwards succeeded in effecting his wife’s release. His accession added a new province to the Luxemburg possessions, and at the same time founded the dynastic connection between Hungary and Bohemia which still exists.
The acquisition of Hungary did nothing to strengthen the position of the House of Luxemburg in Germany, while it increased the jealousy with which its overgrown territories were regarded. The western princes, representing the original German duchies of Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia, resented the transference of power to a dynasty whose possessions lay mostly in the east, and some of them outside Germany altogether. The House of Wittelsbach, from whose hands Charles IV. had snatched the imperial dignity, were the foremost in raising this outcry of the west against the east. And the malcontents were not |Opposition to Wenzel in Germany.| without more serious grounds of complaint. Wenzel had done nothing to terminate the ecclesiastical schism. His feeble and vacillating conduct during the town war had disgusted the princes; and after the peace of Eger he had practically withdrawn from German politics, and had left the kingdom in a state of anarchy. Even in the east he incurred difficulties and humiliations which brought discredit upon his person and his office.
Charles IV. had had two sources of strength which his successor entirely lacked. He could rely upon the enthusiastic loyalty of the Bohemians, and he was the undisputed head of the Luxemburg family. Neither of his brothers had ever ventured to oppose his will. But under Wenzel Bohemia enjoyed neither the prestige nor |Troubles in Bohemia.| the good government which had endeared Charles to his subjects, while there was a growing feeling that it was degrading to a Slav people to be ruled by a German prince and by German methods. The sentiment of race which had led Poland to unite with Lithuania under Jagello was beginning to be powerful in Bohemia, in spite of its long and intimate association with Germany. Wenzel himself was not personally unpopular. The very coarseness of his character and manners, which degenerated in time into brutish gluttony and drunkenness, seems to have evoked a rude sympathy, at any rate among the lower classes. But his reckless passion led him into gross political blunders, his unconcealed contempt alienated the clergy, while his patronage of unworthy favourites exasperated the nobles. A series of disorderly revolts began in 1387, and followed each other in rapid succession. And Wenzel’s kinsmen, instead of assisting the head of their house, rather added to his embarrassments. The evil genius of the family was his cousin, Jobst of Moravia, a man who anticipated the Italians of the next century in his selfish cunning and his complete disregard of moral rules. Jobst had already gained Brandenburg by trading on the pecuniary difficulties of Sigismund, and he hoped by discrediting Wenzel to obtain for himself the Bohemian and the imperial crowns. In 1394 he was at the head of a baronial revolt, in which Wenzel was seized and imprisoned by the rebels. The most loyal member of the family, John of Görlitz, who succeeded in releasing his brother, was treated by Wenzel with gross ingratitude, and died in 1396, not without grave suspicions of poison. Sigismund, though absorbed in the pursuit of his own ends, was less cynically selfish than Jobst, and showed some regard for the dignity and interests of his house. But he was prevented from giving Wenzel any real assistance or guidance by the necessity of defending his own kingdom of Hungary against the Turks. In 1396 he led a large crusading army to be cut to pieces by the forces of Bajazet I. on the field of Nicopolis. But for the advance of the Tartars under Timour, eastern Europe would have been at the mercy of the victorious sultan.
The scandals in Bohemia and the quarrels among the Luxemburg princes seem to have convinced the western princes that Wenzel was as little to be feared as respected. He had given them a new grievance in 1395 by granting the title of Duke of Milan and thus raising to princely rank the aggressive Ghibelline leader in northern Italy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. And three years later he gave them a pretext for throwing off their allegiance by his action with regard to the |France and the schism.| schism in the Church. From the first the University of Paris, then by far the most influential university in Europe, had set itself against a schism which the French government had done much to bring about. At first the king had silenced the university, but gradually he had come to share its views. France found it extremely expensive to support a schismatic Pope who had little but French contributions to look to for the maintenance of himself and his court. Popular sympathy was cooled when a Spaniard, Peter de Luna, was chosen to succeed the French Pope Clement VII. Under the guidance of the university leaders, Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, Charles VI. and his ministers determined to end the schism by ‘the way of neutrality,’ i.e. by withdrawing allegiance from the two rival Popes, and thus forcing them to abdicate, when a new election could restore unity to Christendom. To give effect to this scheme, it was necessary to secure simultaneous action on the part of the supporters of the Roman Pope Boniface IX., and of these the most exalted was the King of the Romans. Wenzel seems to have inherited some of the traditional attachment to France of the Luxemburg |Meeting of Wenzel and Charles VI.| dynasty, and he had quarrelled with Boniface about the appointment of an Archbishop of Mainz. The two kings, the one a confirmed drunkard and the other subject to fits of insanity, met at Rheims in 1398 to discuss the most pressing problem of the age. Their personal intercourse cannot have been very edifying. On one occasion Wenzel was invited to a banquet with the French king, and when the Dukes of Burgundy and Berri came to escort the guest, they found that he had already dined, and was lying under the table in a drunken sleep. But the interview resulted in a more or less formal agreement that France should extort the resignation of Benedict, while Wenzel was to do the same by Boniface.
The Elector Palatine had already warned Wenzel that if he withdrew his allegiance from the Pope who had confirmed his title, his subjects would no longer be bound |Schism in the Empire, 1400.| to him. The interview at Rheims had the effect of hurrying the execution of a plan which had been for some time in contemplation. Boniface IX., though careful to avoid committing himself to the conspiring princes, was not unwilling to checkmate Wenzel by encouraging his opponents in Germany. Of the seven electors, two, representing Bohemia and Brandenburg, belonged to the Luxemburg house, while the Duke of Saxony held aloof. The other four, whose territories bordered on the Rhine, met in 1400 at Lahnstein, decreed the deposition of Wenzel, and elected one of their own number, the Count Palatine, Rupert III. But the Rhenish electors, like the recalcitrant cardinals in 1378, had no power to enforce their decree of deposition, and the only result of their action was to create a schism in the Empire side by side with the schism in the Church.
Rupert was a far wiser ruler and a far better man than his rival, and if to his other virtues he had added the slightest military capacity, he might have gained a complete triumph. Wenzel continued to quarrel with |The rival Kings of the Romans.| his brother and his cousins, and during a revolt in Hungary Sigismund was for five months a prisoner in the hands of his barons. If Ladislas of Naples had not been occupied in his contest with Louis II. of Anjou, he might have enforced the claims of the House of Durazzo to the Hungarian crown, as his father had done in 1385. But the difficulties of the Luxemburg princes were not enough to enable Rupert to profit by them. He invaded Bohemia, and actually reached Prague, where Jobst and the malcontent nobles offered him their support. But at the first slight reverse he withdrew, and his opportunity was lost when Sigismund escaped from captivity and came to govern Bohemia for his incompetent brother. Then Rupert tried to obtain an indirect triumph by crushing Wenzel’s protégé, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. He hoped thus to restore German influence in Italy, which the two last Luxemburg rulers had allowed to decay, and also to receive the imperial crown from the gratitude of Boniface IX. Florence and all the opponents of the Milanese despot promised to aid him with men and money. But his Italian expedition was even more unsuccessful than his invasion of Bohemia. His army was utterly routed by the mercenary forces of Gian Galeazzo under the walls of Brescia (October 21, 1401), and he returned to Germany the laughing-stock of Europe. His failure encouraged Wenzel to plan a journey to Italy to obtain his long-delayed coronation, and Sigismund undertook to escort him. Boniface IX., who was now committed to the cause of Rupert, sought to foil the scheme by urging Ladislas of Naples to an invasion of Hungary, which proved unsuccessful. But the project was perforce abandoned on the news of the death of Gian Galeazzo (September 3, 1402). From this time the rival Kings of the Romans abstained from direct attacks on each other, and contented themselves with their respective obedience, the one in the west and the other in the east. Germany was so accustomed to dispense with any active exercise of the royal authority that the schism created little excitement and less inconvenience.
The schism in the Church was far more important to Europe, though the chief actors were hardly more imposing than the rival emperors. The position of the Papacy was necessarily shaken by the contentions of two old men, each claiming to exercise divine authority, and each cursing the other with human petulance. The religious were shocked by such a spectacle: the irreligious laughed and mocked. A contemporary remarks that for a long time Christians had had an earthly god who forgave their sins, but now they have two such gods, and if one will not forgive their sins, they go to the other. The prolonged scandal forced men to change their conception of papal power, and to contend that such power does not exist for its own ends, but for the sake of the whole Church. If therefore that power is grossly abused, it is the right and even the duty of the Church to interfere on behalf of its suffering |The idea of a General Council.| members. Hence arose the conciliar idea, which dominates all other ecclesiastical conceptions in the first half of the fifteenth century. The Church, as represented by a General Council, is superior to the head, as the whole body is superior to any member. This idea found its main support in the Universities, especially in Paris, Oxford, and Prague. The schism in the Empire and the prominence of the University of Paris enabled France to take the foremost place in urging the summons of a Council to put an end to ecclesiastical anarchy. France had already adopted a policy of neutrality in 1398, and had gone so far as to besiege Avignon and to make Benedict XIII. a prisoner. But a reaction had set in when no other power followed the example of France, and the Orleanist party, in opposition to the Duke of Burgundy, had espoused the cause of Benedict. In 1402, to the great chagrin of the University of Paris, France returned to its allegiance, and Benedict, released from his captivity, journeyed to the coast of Provence and opened negotiations with his rival in Rome. The last two Roman Popes, Innocent VII. and Gregory XII., had only been elected on the express condition that they would resign as soon as their opponent did the same. Gregory XII. went so far as to make an agreement |Negotiations between the two Popes.| with Benedict, by which the two Popes pledged themselves to create no new cardinals, and to meet together at Savona in 1407. The agreement was probably insincere on Gregory’s part, and at any rate there were powerful influences at work to prevent its execution. Gregory XII. might be old and unambitious, but his relatives were eager to profit by his elevation, and he was too feeble to disregard their wishes. And Ladislas of Naples, who had become almost supreme at Rome under Innocent VII., had his own interest in prolonging the schism. A Roman Pope with a rival at Avignon was bound to support him against the Angevin claimant to Naples: but a new Pope, chosen at Savona under French influence, would be sure to espouse the cause of Louis of Anjou. None of the princes of Europe wished France to recover the ascendency in Church matters which it had enjoyed from 1305 to 1378, yet this would probably be the result if France were allowed to take the lead in terminating the schism. So the negotiations between the two Popes remained ludicrously futile. Gregory came as far north as Lucca, and Benedict as far south as Spezzia, yet they could not agree to meet. ‘The one,’ said Leonardo Bruni, ‘like a land animal, refused to approach the sea; the other, like a water-beast, refused to leave the shore.’
But Europe was not prepared to allow its interests to be any longer sacrificed by the selfish procrastination of two aged priests. In France Benedict’s chief supporter, the Duke of Orleans, had been removed by assassination in 1407, and Charles VI. was induced by the University to withdraw his allegiance once more. Benedict replied by a bull of excommunication against the French bishops, but the bull was burned, on the proposal of the University. This boldness convinced Benedict that he could no longer trust in France, and he fled to Perpignan, in his native state of Roussillon. But meanwhile an important event had taken place in Italy. |The Cardinals desert the Popes.| The cardinals who had supported the respective Popes shared the general disgust at the obstinate refusal of their masters to fulfil their oft-repeated pledges. Though the Popes had never met, they had come near enough to allow their cardinals to confer together. The result was that most of them abandoned the Popes, put themselves under Florentine protection, and summoned a General Council to meet at Pisa.
The European states were invited to approve the action of the cardinals by sending delegates to Pisa. The support of |The attitude of Europe.| France was assured, and England readily agreed to acknowledge the Council. The Spanish kingdoms, on the other hand, remained passively loyal to Benedict XIII., and Germany was divided. Wenzel, who had never done anything to carry out the policy of neutrality which he had promised France to adopt in 1398, agreed to support the Council on condition that his title as King of the Romans was formally recognised. But Rupert, although many of his chief supporters were inclined to favour the cause of the cardinals, remained obstinate in his allegiance to the Roman Pope. Within Italy, Ladislas of Naples showed his determination to enforce his own interests by occupying Rome with his troops. The two Popes, threatened with general desertion, made a tardy effort to conciliate public opinion by each summoning a council of his own. But very few prelates could be induced to attend, and the Council of Pisa only gained in importance by comparison with these conciliabula.