Thus with the later years of the 13th century Europe had arrived at the definite close of one epoch and the beginning of another. The period of the Crusades was over, the Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. theory of the Holy Roman Empire had broken down. The period from the beginning of the 14th to the close of the 15th century might well be styled the latter days of medieval Europe.
During the 14th and 15th centuries the idea of regarding Europe as one state in which emperor and pope presided over a number of subordinate kings gave way before the spirit of nationalism and particularism. England, France and Spain were rapidly becoming strong centralized monarchies which stood in striking contrast to the weakened Empire. Partly no doubt owing to the failure of the Empire and papacy to work together, a great impetus had been given to the formation of national monarchies. While Frederick II. had failed, Louis IX. and Philip IV. of France, Ferdinand III. of Castile (1217-1252), James the Conqueror, king of Aragon (1213-1276) and Edward I. of England (1239-1307) succeeded in laying the foundations of strong monarchies which after two centuries of struggles with the dying efforts of feudalism were established on a firm basis. In spite of the intellectual activity and political developments which characterized the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries it remains true that the later middle ages were marked by the decay of those remarkable social and political forces which had been such striking characteristics of the earlier period (see [Middle Ages]).
Thus the 14th and 15th centuries have characteristics which differentiate them from all preceding and succeeding centuries, The triumph of the papacy over the Empire had been short-lived. Owing to the disturbed state of Italy, Clement V. was in 1305 compelled to take refuge at Avignon, and till 1377—a Summary of the characteristics of the 14th and 15th centuries. period known as the Babylonish captivity—the popes remained in France. While the Empire and papacy steadily decline, while the Byzantine empire falls before the Turks, strong monarchies are gradually formed in England, France, Spain, and Portugal, and in Italy the Renaissance movement covers the later years of the 15th century with glory (see [Renaissance]). During these centuries there is common to Europe no one principle which is to be found in all kingdoms. But while the old system, founded on belief in the unity of Europe under the Empire and papacy, declines amid chaos and turbulence, there is much intellectual and political activity which portends the appearance of an entirely new state of things. The 14th and 15th centuries may truly be styled a period of transition.
From the death of Conrad IV., the son of Frederick II., in 1254 to 1273, when Rudolph of Habsburg became king, chaos reigned in Germany, and the period is known as the Great Interregnum. The forces of decentralization The decline of the Empire, 1254-1519. strengthened themselves, and the emperors found that the formation of a strong and united German kingdom was an impossibility. Rudolph of Habsburg (1273-1291), realizing what were the limits of his power in Germany and the futility of attempting to establish his hold upon Italy, began that policy of family aggrandizement which was continued so notably by successive members of his house. His reign witnessed the firm establishment of the house of Anjou in Naples, and, after the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the supremacy of the house of Aragon in Sicily. Refusing to follow the example of Frederick II. and to take part in distant expeditions, Rudolph conquered Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, Vienna became the capital of the Habsburg dominions in Germany, and his son Albert of Austria, who was king from 1298 to 1308, was careful to continue the policy of his father. Though no Habsburg was again elected to the imperial throne till 1438, when the long succession of emperors began which continued unbroken till 1742, the establishment of the Habsburgs in Austria by Rudolph proved an event of European importance. From that time the leading members of the Habsburg family never lost an opportunity of aggrandizement. In 1335 they received Carinthia, in 1363 the Tirol. While, however, the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and later the house of Brandenburg were strengthening themselves, the Empire was steadily declining in power and influence. The 14th century saw Switzerland shake itself free from the Austrian house and establish its independence, which was, however, not formally acknowledged till the treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
During the 14th century the weakness of the Empire became more and more accentuated under the weak rule of Louis IV. On his death in 1346 his successor Charles of Luxemburg, known as the emperor Charles IV., made a celebrated attempt to form a strong centralized German monarchy. With that object he issued in 1356 the Golden Bull, by which it was hoped that all matters connected with the imperial election would be settled. The number of imperial electors was settled, and henceforth they were to consist of the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, and of the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg and the count palatine of the Rhine. Charles hoped to concentrate gradually in his house all the chief German provinces, and having by the Golden Bull endeavoured to check the growth of the towns, he expected to establish firmly the imperial influence in Germany. But the towns were too strong to be coerced, and during his reign the Swabian cities formed a union; and though the marriage of his son Sigismund to the heiress of the king of Hungary and Poland, and the possession of Brandenburg, which fell to him in 1373, seemed steps towards the realization of his hopes, his death in 1378 left his work unfinished. Moreover, his son and successor Wenceslaus (1378-1400) proved, like Richard II. of England and Charles VI. of France, unequal to the task of checking the growing independence of the nobles and the cities. The Hanseatic League (q.v.) was at the height of its power, and in 1381 the Rhenish towns formed a confederation. Wenceslaus, like Richard II., had fallen upon evil times. The advance westwards by the Turks occupied the attention of his brother Sigismund, now king of Hungary; he was himself unpopular in Bohemia, and at the same time was exposed to the intrigues of his cousin Jobst of Moravia, who had secured Brandenburg. In 1400 Wenceslaus was formally deposed by the electors, and spent the rest of his life in Bohemia, where he died in 1419. His successor Rupert of the palatinate reigned from 1400 to 1410, and during his reign the council of Pisa endeavoured to bring to an end the great schism which had followed upon the return of Pope Urban VI. from Avignon to Rome in 1377. Two popes had been elected, one living at Rome, the other at Avignon, and Christian Europe was scandalized at the sight of two rival pontiffs. On Rupert’s death the electors chose Sigismund the brother of Wenceslaus, and he ruled as emperor from 1411 to 1437.
Thus at the beginning of the 15th century the papacy was seen to have fallen from the high position which it occupied at the time of the death of Frederick II. The Avignon Decline of the papacy. captivity followed by the great schism weakened its temporal as well as its spiritual power and prestige, while national developments and dynastic ambitions, such as led to the Hundred Years’ War, diverted men’s minds from religious to purely temporal concerns. The work of Wycliffe and Hus illustrated not only the decline of papal prestige but also the general opinion that reform in the papacy was necessary. Sigismund’s reign as emperor was rendered Sigismund, emperor, 1411-1437. noteworthy by the part which he took in the council of Constance (q.v.), and by his successful efforts to suppress the Hussite movement in Bohemia (see [Hussites]). That country on the death of Wenceslaus in 1419 fell to Sigismund, but it was not till 1431, after a long and sanguinary war, that the opposition to the union of Bohemia with the Empire was suppressed. Led by Žižka and other able chiefs, the Bohemians who were Slavs utilized the Hussite movement in a vigorous attempt to secure their independence. In 1436 Sigismund was formally acknowledged king of Bohemia. In 1431, the year of the final overthrow of the Bohemians and the Hussites, he opened the council of Basel (q.v.), being resolved to establish a religious peace in Europe and to prevent the Hussite doctrines from spreading into Germany. In 1438 Sigismund died, leaving Germany involved in a quarrel with the papacy, but having successfully withstood the efforts of the Bohemians to acquire independence. Sigismund’s death marks an epoch in the history of the Empire, for his successor Albert of Austria proved to be the first of a long line of Habsburg emperors. Albert himself reigned only from 1438 to 1440, but on his death the imperial dignity was conferred upon another member of the Habsburg house, Frederick, duke of Styria and Carinthia, known as the emperor Frederick III. With his accession the imperial throne became practically hereditary in the Habsburg family. Frederick’s long reign, which lasted from 1440 to 1493, was of little benefit to Germany; for he showed no administrative skill and proved a weak and incapable ruler. Undoubtedly his lot fell upon evil days, for not only were the Turks at the height of their power, but both Bohemia and The taking of Constantinople by the Turks. Hungary gave him much anxiety. The imminent fall of Constantinople, the last barrier of Christendom against Islam in the East, was a threat not only to the Empire, but to all Christian Europe. But western Europe was too much occupied with internecine feuds to unite effectively against the common enemy. In vain the emperor John VI. had gone in person to solicit aid at the various courts of the West; in vain he had humbled himself to pay the price asked, by subscribing to the abnegation of the distinctive tenets of the Orthodox Church, which secured the ephemeral reunion of Christendom at the council of Florence (1438). The crusading spirit was dead; the European powers stirred no finger to save the imperial city; and in 1453 Sultan Mahommed II. rode through the breach over the body of the last of the Eastern Caesars, and planted the crescent on the dome of the metropolitan church, of Eastern Christendom (see [Turkey], and [Roman Empire, Later]).
The fall of Constantinople marked the definite establishment on European soil of a power alien and hostile to all that was characteristic of European civilization. It was a power, moreover, which could live only by expanding; and for over two hundred years to come the dread of Ottoman aggression was a dominant factor in the politics of eastern Europe. The tide of Turkish advance could have been arrested by a union of Europe; but the appeals of Pope Nicholas V. fell unheeded upon a sceptical age, intent only on its dynastic and particularist ambitions. To the emperor the ousting of the Ottomans from the Balkan peninsula seemed of less importance than the consolidation of the Habsburg power in Germany, and its extension over the neighbouring kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. France was exhausted by the long agony of the Hundred Years’ War, which came to an end the very year of the fall of Constantinople, and the French kings—especially Louis XI. (1461-1483)—were busy for the rest of the century crushing out the remnants of feudalism and consolidating the power of the monarchy. As for Italy, with its petty tyrants and its condottieri, there was no hope of uniting it for any purpose whatever, least of all a religious purpose, and Spain was busy with her own crusades against the Moors. The exploits of John Hunyadi, king of Hungary, against the Turks, therefore, remained isolated and unsupported. In 1456 he checked their advance northwards by a brilliant victory which led to the relief of Belgrade; but he died the same year, and his death was followed by a struggle for the succession between Hungarians and Bohemians. The racial and religious quarrels of the Balkan peoples had made it possible for the Turks to obtain a foothold in Europe; the jealousies and internecine struggles of the Christian states made possible the vast expansion of the Ottoman power, which in the 17th century was to advance the frontiers of Islam to those of Germany and to reduce the emperors, in their relations with the Porte, to the status of tributary princes.
The victory of Ladislaus, son of Casimir, king of Poland, who succeeded in uniting in his own person the crowns of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, threatened to result in the permanent independence of those countries of the house of Habsburg. But in 1490 Ladislaus was compelled by Maximilian, son of Frederick III., to sign the treaty of Pressburg, providing for the eventual succession of the Habsburgs to Hungary and Bohemia.
In other ways the reign of Frederick III. laid the foundations of the greatness of his family. In 1477 Maximilian married Mary, duchess of Burgundy and heiress of Charles the Bold, and through her the Habsburgs obtained Franche Consolidation of the Habsburg power. Comté and the Netherlands. The line, Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube, well described the method by which the house of Habsburg increased its possessions and established its fortunes. A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo), was the device invented for his house at that time by Frederick III. and it proved no idle boast. Maximilian I, the son of Frederick III., reigned from 1493 to 1519, and during his reign Europe passed from medieval to modern times. Some reforms in the Empire were carried out, but the events of his reign made it apparent that it was impossible to set up a centralized monarchy in Germany (see [Maximilian I.]; [Germany] and [Austria]: History).
Far different developments were taking place during the 14th and 15th centuries in France, Spain, the Scandinavian north and in England. During the greater part of the 14th century France was engaged in foreign wars and France in the 13th and 14th centuries. in internal complications, and it seemed doubtful if a strong centralized monarchy would be firmly established. The failure of Philip VI. (1328-1350) and John (1350-1364) in their contest with England weakened the central power in France, and, though Charles V. (1364-1389), owing to his own sagacity and the weakness of the English government, managed to regain for France many of her lost provinces, the French power both at home and abroad again declined under the rule of the incapable Charles VII. (1380-1422). In fact the year 1422 may be said to mark the lowest stage in the history of the French monarchy. From that year an improvement gradually set in. A national sentiment, as exemplified in the career of Joan of Arc (q.v.), was developed; an alliance, essential for the successful expulsion of the English from France, was made in 1435 between the king of France and the duke of Burgundy; and in 1439 the famous ordinance empowering the king to maintain a standing army and to raise money for its maintenance was passed at Orleans by the states-general. These measures proved successful; in 1453 the Hundred Years’ War came to an end, and Louis XI. managed between 1461 and 1483 to establish an absolutism in France on sure foundations. Under his successor Charles VIII. (1483-1498), Brittany was annexed, and France, secure from all danger of a feudal reaction, entered with the invasion of Italy in 1494 by Charles VIII. upon modern times. A similar process is observable in England and Spain. In England the Wars of the Roses were followed by the establishment of a strong monarchy under Henry VII., while in Spain Ferdinand and Isabella established in place of anarchy the royal authority, and during their reign suppressed all attempts at provincial independence. In 1491 the consolidation of Spain was completed by the conquest of Granada. In 1397, by the union of Calmar, the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark were united under Eric XIII. This union was, however, short-lived, and in the early years of the 16th century came definitely to an end (see [Norway]; [Sweden]; [Denmark]).