Of Germany as a state there is naturally very little history under a king who deliberately neglected his duties. For nearly thirty years Frederick III. remained obstinately |German opposition to Frederick III.| secluded in his own territories, and never visited any other part of Germany. Diets were held and matters of the gravest importance debated, but neither entreaties nor threats could induce the emperor to attend. In the first great problem of his reign, the quarrel between the papacy and the Council of Basel, Frederick showed the most cynical disregard of national interests and prejudices. The pope was anxious to annul the pragmatic sanction of 1439, which had given some measure of independence to the German Church. Frederick allowed himself to be bribed into a secret treaty with the papacy, and the diplomacy of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was employed to divide and gain over the princes and electors. Eugenius IV. lived just long enough to accept the preliminary treaty, and the final concordat was concluded with Nicolas V. (see p. [241]). Equally discreditable, though less treacherous and self-seeking, was Frederick’s conduct when the news came that Constantinople had fallen before the Turkish attack. The pope and the emperor, as the joint heads of Christendom, were the natural leaders of resistance to the encroachments of the infidel. And Frederick III. had strong personal and territorial interests at stake which he might consider more important than the obligations of his high dignity. Nicolas V. hastened to issue exhortations to a new crusade, and Æneas Sylvius set himself to rouse the martial spirit of Germany. But Frederick III. shut himself up in his room, and with tears lamented the instability of human greatness. The German diet met at Ratisbon in 1453, and at Frankfort in 1454, but the emperor would not appear, and in his absence no decision could be come to. Bitter indignation was felt and expressed at such pusillanimous inactivity. The archbishop of Trier, Jacob von Sirk, who had never pardoned Frederick for his betrayal of the German Church to the papacy, took the lead of the opposition. With him was allied the Elector Palatine Frederick the Victorious, who had supplanted the infant nephew for whom he had been guardian, but had never been able to obtain the imperial sanction for his usurpation. The deposition of the emperor was discussed, and Philip of Burgundy, who professed great ardour for the projected crusade, was suggested as his successor. Ultimately in 1455 a more practical scheme was put forward for the creation of a central administrative body, in which the emperor might appoint a deputy if he would not attend in person. This council, in which the electors would have preponderated, was to put down disorder, to raise a revenue by an imperial tax upon clergy and laity alike, and was to take measures for the defence of the empire against the Turks. The scheme came to nothing. Frederick III. opposed a passive resistance, and the archbishop of Trier was more interested to gain power and prominence for himself than to effect any real reform. In 1456 Mohammed II. laid siege to Belgrade, and the fall of the fortress would have opened the whole valley of the upper Danube to the Turks. The danger was warded off, not by the exertions of emperor or princes, but by the heroism and skill of a Hungarian soldier.
With the opposition to the emperor was combined hostility to the papacy. Many of the princes looked back with regret to the pragmatic sanction of 1439, and envied the French who still retained the pragmatic |German hostility to the papacy.| sanction of Bourges. The death of Nicolas V. in 1455 and the election of Calixtus III. gave an opportunity for formulating the old complaints against the Roman see. Some of the electors proposed to summon a new general council in a German city to take up the work of ecclesiastical reform which the council of Basel had failed to carry through. At the same time the reform of the imperial administration was again mooted, and Frederick III. was called upon to attend a meeting of the diet. But the princes had ceased to be a united party. Albert Achilles, the brother of the elector of Brandenburg, had quarrelled with the Elector Palatine, and now came forward as the supporter of the emperor. The archbishop of Trier was dead and his successor was gained to the side of Frederick III. The opposition leaders still threatened to depose the emperor, but they had no longer a majority behind them. Frederick III. by a masterly inactivity had thwarted the projects of administrative reform, and thus set the seal upon German disunion. His triumph brought with it a victory for the papacy. Ecclesiastical tenths were constantly levied on the pretext of a Turkish crusade, but the money passed into the pope’s coffers. Half the benefices in Germany were practically in the gift of the Curia. In 1459 Æneas Sylvius became pope as Pius II. in succession to Calixtus III. In 1460 he dealt a fatal blow to the conciliar opposition with which he had been so closely associated in earlier years. The bull Execrabilis declared any appeal from a papal decision to a general council to be impious and heretical. From this time the opposition to the papacy in Germany was only weak and fitful until a new era began in the next century.
For his inaction in Germany, Frederick III. had a fairly substantial excuse in the constant troubles in which he was involved at home. Not only had he to contend with the factious opposition of his brother Albert and the Styrian nobles, but in 1439 the death of his uncle Frederick left him to act as guardian for the young Sigismund of Tyrol, and later in the same year he was called upon to deal with the very serious problems to which the death of Albert II. gave rise. As Sigismund’s guardian, Frederick III. had to administer Tyrol and the Swabian territories, and the latter brought him into collision with the Swiss. For a long time jealousy had existed between the |Frederick III. and the Swiss.| rural cantons and the city members of the League, especially Zürich. This was brought to a head in 1436 by the death of the count of Toggenburg. His inheritance was claimed by the emperor, by the Confederation as a whole, and by Zürich. When the citizens seized a large part of the disputed territory, the rest of the confederates, headed by Schwyz, took up arms and compelled them to disgorge their booty. It was the prominent part taken by the men of Schwyz on this occasion which helped to give their name to the whole Confederation. Indignant at the humiliation, Zürich drew aloof from the League and appealed to Frederick III. as both emperor and representative of the House of Hapsburg. Frederick could not resist the temptation to enforce the imperial claims to Toggenburg, and also to recover the Aargau which the Swiss had taken from his uncle, Frederick of Tyrol, at the time of his quarrel with the Emperor Sigismund. The war broke out in 1442, and in spite of Frederick’s assistance Zürich was again closely besieged by the forces of the Confederation. Unable to spare more troops from his own territories, Frederick resorted to the extraordinary expedient of employing French mercenaries against his German subjects. Charles VII., freed for the time from his war with England, was only too glad to get rid of some of the écorcheurs, who had become a curse to France. Instead of the 5000 men whose services were demanded, he sent nearly 20,000 so-called ‘Armagnacs’ to invade Swabia under the nominal command of the dauphin. Devastation and misery marked the track of this vast force as it advanced to raise the siege of Zürich. A few hundred Swiss tried to block the way, and on the field of St. Jacob, the German Thermopylæ, they were completely annihilated. But their heroism had gained its end. The invaders, who had suffered terrible losses, hastened to conclude a truce with such resolute foes, and retired to Alsace. In 1445 they were induced to evacuate the country, but it was long before the horrors of the raid were forgotten in Germany. Frederick III., who had brought such sufferings upon his subjects, gained nothing by his unpatriotic action. The Swiss were more than ever determined to resist the hated Hapsburgs to the last. The war went on till 1450, when Zürich deserted the Austrian alliance and returned to the League. Frederick had to give up the guardianship of his cousin |Sigismund of Tyrol.| Sigismund, who became independent ruler in Tyrol and the Swabian territories. His subsequent history may be briefly traced. Involved in constant quarrels with the Swiss, for which he was inadequately provided with men and money, he pledged his Swabian lands in 1469 to Charles the Bold. They proved as fatal a possession to the Burgundian duke as they had been to the Hapsburgs. The wily Louis XI. gained one of his greatest diplomatic triumphs when he reconciled the Swiss with Sigismund of Tyrol, and stirred them up to make war against their powerful neighbour. After successive defeats at Granson and Morat, Charles the Bold fell in 1477 before the walls of Nancy. Sigismund of Tyrol recovered his Swabian inheritance, but he had no children, and before his death in 1496 he handed his territories over to Frederick III.’s son Maximilian, in whose hands all the Hapsburg territories were reunited.
The succession to Albert II. in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia gave rise to a series of complications in the east, and involved Frederick III. in many difficulties. Albert’s widow, Elizabeth, gave birth to a son, Ladislas Postumus, on February 22, 1440. In |Succession in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia.| Austria, where the rule of male succession was unquestioned, the infant duke was immediately acknowledged, and was placed under the guardianship of Frederick III. But in Bohemia and Hungary, where Hapsburg rule was both novel and unpopular, the problem was by no means so easily settled. In Hungary there was no absolute rule of inheritance, and female succession was not excluded either by custom or law. Sigismund’s claim to the crown had rested on his marriage with the daughter of Lewis the Great, and Albert had been accepted as the son-in-law of Sigismund. It was possible to contend that there was no real vacancy, and that Elizabeth was lawful queen. The primary need of Hungary was defence against the Turks, and in order to strengthen the kingdom the nobles compelled Elizabeth to offer her hand, and with it the Hungarian crown, to Ladislas III. of Poland. On the birth of her son, Elizabeth repudiated the engagement, and had the infant crowned king. But she was not strong enough to enforce her will, and on her death in 1442 the Polish king was generally acknowledged in Hungary. But he perished in the great battle of Varna against the Turks in 1444, and in the following year the Hungarians returned to the direct line and recognised Ladislas Postumus as king. But he was still a minor in the guardianship of Frederick III.; and as the Hungarians would not allow a foreigner to administer their kingdom, they gave the office of governor in 1446 to John Hunyadi, who had won a brilliant reputation in the Turkish war. Meanwhile, Bohemia had pursued its own course. The Utraquists, the most numerous and powerful party in the kingdom, refused to recognise claims based upon hereditary right or dynastic treaties, and insisted upon the right of election. In all probability they would have chosen the Jagellon king of Poland, if he had not already been accepted in Hungary. The connection with Hungary was no more popular than that with Austria. The crown was offered to Frederick of Brandenburg, but he would not have it, and in the end it was decided to elect Ladislas Postumus as king, and to intrust the administration during the minority to a council of Regency. But this settlement of the succession failed to produce any harmony among the contending parties. The Roman Catholics, headed by Ulrich von Rosenberg, desired a complete reconciliation with Germany and the Papacy. The Utraquists, who found a capable leader in George Podiebrad, were resolute to maintain the national independence and the religious settlement arranged in the Compactata with the Council of Basel. A prolonged civil war ended in the Utraquist victory and the appointment of George Podiebrad as governor of Bohemia in 1452.
The Hapsburg rule in Hungary and Bohemia was nominally prolonged by the recognition of Ladislas Postumus in his father’s dominions. But in actual fact there was |Ladislas Postumus.| little strength in the connection, as each state arranged its own affairs with intentional disregard of its fellows. To Frederick III., the guardianship of his young cousin brought little but incessant worries and annoyances. Neither Hungary nor Bohemia would allow him any authority whatever, and even in Austria Styrian administration was extremely unpopular. Both the Austrian nobles and John Hunyadi were urgent in demanding that Ladislas Postumus should be released from external tutelage and intrusted to the care of his own subjects. George Podiebrad, on the other hand, who had no wish to jeopardise his own authority by the presence of a young king, who might fall under the influence of his opponents, urged Frederick to maintain his rights as guardian. In 1451 a simultaneous rising broke out in Austria and in Styria. Frederick III. chose this moment for a journey to Rome, to receive the imperial crown at the hands of the Pope. He endeavoured to checkmate the rebels by taking Ladislas Postumus with him. The coronation, on March 19, 1452, was the last that was destined to take place in the ancient capital of the empire. On the emperor’s return to Germany, he was disgusted to find that his absence had only exasperated his opponents. The Austrian nobles entered Styria and attacked him in his own capital of Neustadt. Unable to resist any longer, Frederick agreed in September 1452 to hand over his ward to the Count of Cilly, who carried him in triumph to Vienna.
Ladislas Postumus seemed to have a brilliant career before him, when he emerged from tutelage to be Duke of Austria and King of Hungary and Bohemia. He was at the time in his thirteenth year, and he had only five troubled years to live. Hungary and Bohemia remained under the administration of Hunyadi and Podiebrad, but Ladislas was involved in quarrels with the two regents by the evil influence of the Count of Cilly. It was still uncertain whether the young king would succeed |Relief of Belgrad, 1456.| in asserting his personal authority, when the fall of Constantinople and the pressing danger from the Turks compelled a temporary pacification. In 1456, Mohammed II. with a huge army laid siege to Belgrade, and Turkish vessels sailed up the Danube to exclude any attempt to relieve the garrison by way of the river. Hungary and south-eastern Germany would be exposed to invasion if the great fortress were allowed to fall. For a moment, something like the old crusading fervour was excited by the preaching of an enthusiastic Franciscan, Fra Capistrano, and Hunyadi undertook the command of the motley host that was collected by the eloquence of the friar. A flotilla of rafts and boats was prepared, and the destruction of the Turkish ships, under the very eyes of the Sultan and his army, enabled the relieving force to enter Belgrad. But Mohammed II. refused to acknowledge his defeat. As a blockade was no longer possible, he determined to carry the fortress by storm. One by one the outworks were carried by sheer force of numbers in spite of the heroic resistance of the defenders. The crescent was about to be elevated to announce a signal victory, when Hunyadi and Capistrano headed a last sally. The Turks were driven in headlong flight from the walls, their camp was stormed and burned, and before evening the Sultan’s army was in full flight for Sofia, leaving 20,000 men on the field (July 22, 1456). The relief of Belgrade was a magnificent achievement, but it cost the life of the two leaders. Hunyadi died of camp fever on August 11, and a few weeks later Capistrano followed him to the grave.
The death of the Hungarian regent was welcomed by Count Cilly as removing a rival from his path. But the great soldier had left two sons, Ladislas and Mathias, who inherited their father’s popularity |Death of Ladislas Postumus.| and might aspire to hold his position in the state, and Cilly schemed to effect their ruin. Ignorant that his intrigues had been discovered, he accompanied the young king on a visit to the rescued fortress. No sooner were they within Belgrade than they found themselves prisoners, and Cilly was brought before Ladislas Hunyadi, reproached for his treachery, and put to death. Ladislas Postumus was shrewd enough to dissimulate his wrath and to pretend to pardon the murderers. But he was only waiting his time. Early in 1457 he returned to Pesth, and as soon as he had surrounded himself with his own partisans, he had Ladislas Hunyadi taken prisoner, tried and executed for the murder of Cilly. Mathias, the younger brother, he carried off to Vienna and thence to Prague. At the latter city he was preparing to celebrate his marriage with Madeline, daughter of Charles VII. of France, when he died suddenly on November 23, 1457. So tragic an event made a profound impression in Europe. Ladislas Postumus was too young to be regarded as responsible for the demerits of his government, and his handsome face and winning manners had always made him personally popular. In Vienna the news was received with paroxysms of grief, and a suspicion was naturally entertained that the young prince had met with foul play. That he should have died in Prague was almost conclusive proof of crime. German dislike of the Slavs and Roman Catholic detestation of heretics combined to formulate the charge against George Podiebrad. Before long men told in detail how the poison had been administered, its effects on the unfortunate victim, and the way in which the doctors had been suborned by the Bohemian regent. But there is not the slightest foundation for these stories, and Ladislas unquestionably died of the plague or Black Death which devastated Europe at intervals throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
For the second time within a few years the connexion between Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia was dissolved, and as Ladislas Postumus left no descendants, it seemed extremely unlikely that it would be renewed. In each of the three countries which he ruled he represented a different dynasty. In Austria he was the last of the Albertine line, and his death left the primacy to the Styrian branch of the Hapsburgs. In Hungary he had ruled, through the marriage of his grandfather Sigismund, as the ultimate descendant of the Angevin dynasty, which had held the crown for a century and a half. In Bohemia, through his mother Elizabeth, he represented the house of Luxemburg. Great interest attached to the succession. Austria, by family agreement, passed to the joint rule of the three surviving Hapsburg princes, Frederick III. and his brother Albert, and their cousin Sigismund of Tyrol. Such an arrangement gave rise to quarrels, which were only terminated by the death of Albert in 1463, when Frederick III. bought off Sigismund with a money payment and assumed the undivided government of the Austrian duchy. In Hungary it was decided to disregard all hereditary claims, and to fill the throne by free |Elections of Mathias Corvinus and George Podiebrad.| election. On January 24, 1458, the choice of the diet fell upon Mathias Corvinus, the surviving son of Hunyadi, whose final exploit in relieving Belgrade had made him a national hero. In Bohemia a similar contempt was shown for dynastic or treaty claims, and the growing national sentiment found expression in the election of George Podiebrad (March 2, 1458). These two elections were events of no ordinary significance. They marked a popular protest against dynastic arrangements which had paid no regard to national interests, and had so often brought about the rule of alien princes. The practical assertion of the rights of the people, of the principle of nationality, and of the idea that merit rather than birth confers a claim to rule, was a serious blow to the vested interests of European kings and princes.
The termination of Hapsburg rule in Hungary and Bohemia was a bitter disappointment to Frederick III., who had hoped to succeed his cousin in these kingdoms. But as usual, his exertions were unequal to his ambition; and after a futile struggle he was compelled to acknowledge his successful rivals. Common interests drew the new kings together, and the marriage of Mathias with the |War between Hungary and Bohemia.| daughter of Podiebrad seemed likely to be the basis of a close and lasting alliance. Such an alliance would have been of the greatest value to Europe, and would have constituted a formidable barrier to Turkish aggression. George Podiebrad had already shown consummate statesmanship in restoring order in the distracted state of Bohemia, and Mathias soon proved that he had inherited no inconsiderable share of the military skill and energy of his father. But unfortunately religious differences placed an impediment in the way of the concerted action of two princes who had no superior among the monarchs of their time. Mathias was an orthodox member of the Church, while his father-in-law had been born and bred a Utraquist, and had consistently directed his policy to the maintenance of the Compacts of 1433. But these concessions to the Hussites had been extorted with difficulty from the Council of Basel, and successive popes were eager to restore uniformity of belief and ritual by their revocation. Pius II., encouraged by a confident expectation of the revival of crusading ardour, ventured to annul the Compacts in 1462, and his successor, Paul II., in 1466 decreed the deposition of Podiebrad as a heretic. The result of these papal measures was to rekindle a religious war in Bohemia, and Breslau became the centre of a rebellious Catholic league. But Podiebrad was well able to hold his own against domestic opposition, and the Pope, with the connivance of the Emperor, set himself to obtain the active assistance of the Hungarian king. Mathias had no sympathy with heresy, his wife had died in 1464, and he was tempted by the prospect of acquiring the Bohemian crown for himself and of gaining the active support of the German states against the Turks. War broke out in 1468, but Mathias, in spite of occasional victories, gained little honour or substantial advantage. In fact the chief result of hostilities was to deprive him of the prospect of gaining Bohemia. George Podiebrad, driven by Hungarian invasion to seek the support of Poland, suggested Ladislas, the son of Casimir of Poland, as his successor. The proposal was not unwelcome to the diet. The sentiment of nationality was conciliated by the choice of a Slav prince, and the only lingering sentiment of loyalty to the ancient dynasty was gratified by the thought that Ladislas’s mother was the younger daughter of Albert II. and Elizabeth of Luxemburg, and that therefore some of the blood of Charles IV. ran in his veins. On the death of Podiebrad in 1471, Ladislas succeeded in attaining the crown in spite of all the efforts of Mathias to exclude him.
Mathias had good reason to suspect that the emperor, his professed ally, had supported the candidature of Ladislas, and during the later part of his reign he was engaged in almost continual hostilities with Austria. Frederick III. was no soldier, and for a time he was glad to purchase the restoration of conquered territories by a money payment to his formidable neighbour. His attention was absorbed during a whole decade by the important events in the |Frederick III and Burgundy.| west which preceded and followed the death of Charles the Bold. His great desire was to secure the hand of Charles’s daughter for his son Maximilian, but he must many times have despaired of achieving his end. In 1473 he evaded by flight Charles’s imperative request for a royal title. In the next year he had to raise an imperial army in order to relieve Neuss from the Burgundian besiegers, though he was careful to avoid actual hostilities, and rejected the artful proposals of Louis XI. for a partition of the territories of a common enemy. Yet he used his influence to bring about the war between Charles and the Swiss, which restored to the Hapsburgs their ancient lands in Swabia, and in which Charles met with his defeat and death. Then at last Frederick found his opportunity. Pressed by the selfish aggression of Louis XI., Mary of Burgundy concluded the marriage with Maximilian which had been so long debated, and brought to her husband the great Burgundian inheritance, though the treaty of Arras (1482) shore off some provinces which Louis XI. would not relinquish.