Maximilian I of
Habsburg (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519) the son of
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor and
Eleanor of Portugal was
King of the Romans from 1493 and
Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death. He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from circa 1483. He expanded the influence of the
House of Habsburg through both war and marriage,
[World Book Encyclopedia, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1976.] but also lost the Austrian territories in today's
Switzerland in the
battle of Dornach 22 July 1499, where the Swiss won a final decisive victory. King Maximilian I had no choice but to agree to a
peace treaty signed on 22 September 1499 in
Basel granting the Swiss Confederacy de facto far-reaching independence from the
Habsburgs. He is often referred to as "The Last Knight".
Reign in Burgundy and The Netherlands
Maximilian governed his first wife's vast inheritance in the
Low Countries, and he prosecuted a war over them with
Louis XI, King of France on her behalf.
Upon the Duke of Burgundy's death in 1477, the
Duchy of Burgundy had been claimed by the French crown under
Salic Law. Louis further attempted to expand his control into the
Burgundian Netherlands. Mary, who was only 20 and yet unmarried, refused a proposed marriage to the Dauphin as a way to settle the dispute, and when she married Maximilian less than a year after her father's death, she used his power to try to take back the parts of her father's lands Louis had acquired. Maximilian was successful in the war and in stabilizing the Netherlands, but some of the Netherland provinces were hostile to him; when Mary died unexpectedly in March 1482, they signed a
treaty with Louis in 1482 which forced Maximilian to give
Franche Comté and
Artois to Louis.
Maximilian continued to govern Mary's remaining inheritance in the name of their young son,
Philip the Handsome. After the regency ended, Maximilian and Charles VIII exchanged these two territories for Burgundy and Picardy in the
Treaty of Senlis (1493). Thus ultimately
much of the Netherlands became and remained a Habsburg possession.
Reign in the Holy Roman Empire
Elected King of the Romans (
Rex Romanorum) 16 February 1486 in
Frankfurt am Main at his father's initiative and crowned on 9 April 1486 in
Aachen, Maximilian also stood at the head of the
Holy Roman Empire upon his father's death in 1493. After he married
Bianca Maria Sforza, a daughter of the
Duke of Milan on 16 March 1494, Maximilian sought to expand his power in parts of
Italy.
This brought French intervention in
Italy, inaugurating the prolonged
Italian Wars.
He joined the
Holy League to counter the French and lost, but after his death the Empire ultimately won. Maximilian was also forced to grant independence to
Switzerland,
where he had tried to re-establish the lost Habsburg dominance.
He is possibly best known for leading the 1495
Reichstag at
Worms which concluded on the
Reichsreform ("Imperial Reform"), reshaping much of the constitution of the
Holy Roman Empire. In the 1499
Treaty of Basel, Maximilian was forced to acknowledge the de facto independence of the
Swiss confederacy from the Empire as a result of the
Battle of Dornach.
In 1508, Maximilian, with
Pope Julius II's assent, took the title of
Erwählter Römischer Kaiser ("Elected Roman Emperor"), thus ending the centuries-old custom that the
Holy Roman Emperor had to be crowned by the pope.
Tu felix Austria nube
Emperor Maximilian I and his family; with his son Philip the Fair, his wife Mary of Burgundy, his grandsons Ferdinand I and Charles V, and Louis II of Hungary (husband of his granddaughter Mary of Austria).
As part of the Treaty of Arras, Maximilian betrothed his three-year-old daughter
Margaret to the Dauphin (later
Charles VIII), son of his adversary Louis XI. Louis had attempted seven years earlier to arrange a betrothal between the Dauphin and Margaret's mother, Mary. Under the terms of Margaret's betrothal, she was sent to Louis to be brought up under his guardianship. Despite the death of Louis in 1483, shortly after Margaret arrived in France, she remained at the French court. The Dauphin, now
Charles VIII, was still a minor, and his regent until 1491 was his sister,
Anne of France. Anne's first betrothal, to the
Duke of Lorraine, had ended when the Duke broke it off in order to pursue Mary of Burgundy (and died shortly afterwards). Despite Margaret's betrothal and continued presence at the French court, Anne arranged a marriage between Charles and
Anne of Brittany. She, in turn, had been betrothed in 1483, and actually
married by proxy in 1491, to Maximilian himself, but Charles and his sister wanted her inheritance for France. The final result of all of these machinations was that Charles repudiated his betrothal to Margaret when he came of age in 1491, invaded Brittany, forced Anne of Brittany to repudiate her unconsummated marriage to Maximilian, and married her. (They had four children who all died in infancy, and after Charles died, his widow married his cousin and successor,
Louis XII.) Margaret still remained in France until 1493, when she was finally returned to her father. She married twice more.
In
1493, Maximilian contracted another marriage for himself, this time to the daughter of the Duke of Milan, whence ensued the lengthy
Italian Wars with France. Thus Maximilian through his own marriages (and attempted marriage) sought to extend his sphere of influence against that of France. The marriages he arranged for both of his children more successfully fulfilled the same goal, and after the turn of the sixteenth century, his matchmaking focused on his grandchildren, for whom he looked opposite France towards the east.
In order to reduce the growing pressures on the Empire brought about by treaties between the rulers of France,
Poland,
Hungary,
Bohemia, and
Russia, as well as to secure Bohemia and Hungary for the Habsburgs, Maximilian I met with the
Jagiellonian kings
Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia and
Sigismund I of Poland at the
First Congress of Vienna in 1515. There they arranged for Maximilian's granddaughter
Mary to marry
Louis, the son of Ladislaus, and for
Anne (the sister of Louis) to marry Maximilian's grandson
Ferdinand(both grandchildren being the children of
Philip the Handsome, Maximilian's son, and
Juana la Loca of Castile). The marriages arranged there brought Habsburg kingship over Hungary and Bohemia in 1526. Both Anne and Louis were adopted by Maximilian following the death of Ladislaus. These political marriages were summed up in the following
Latin elegiac couplet:
Bella gerant aliī, tū fēlix Austria nūbe/ Nam quae Mars aliīs, dat tibi regna Venus, "Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee."
Death and legacy
Maximilian's cenotaph, Innsbruck
Maximilian died in
Wels,
Upper Austria, and was succeeded as Emperor by his grandson
Charles V, his son
Philip the Handsome having died in 1506. Although he is buried in the Castle Chapel at
Wiener Neustadt, a
cenotaph tomb for Maximilian is located in the
Hofkirche, Innsbruck.
Maximilian was a keen supporter of the arts and sciences, and he surrounded himself with scholars such as
Joachim Vadian and
Andreas Stoberl (Stiborius), promoting them to important court posts. His reign saw the first flourishing of the
Renaissance in Germany. He commissioned a series of three monumental
woodblock prints -
The Triumphal Arch (1512-18, 192 woodcut panels, 295 cm wide and 357 cm high - approximately 9'8" by 11'8½"), and a
Triumphal Procession (1516-18, 137 woodcut panels, 54 m long) which is led by a
Large Triumphal Carriage (1522, 8 woodcut panels, 1½' high and 8' long), created by artists including
Albrecht Dürer,
Albrecht Altdorfer and
Hans Burgkmair.
Maximilian had a great passion for
armour, not only as equipment for battle or tournaments but as an art form. The style of armour that became popular during the second half of his reign featured elaborate fluting and metalworking, and became known as
Maximilian armour after the Emperor. Maximilian armour emphasized the details in the shaping of the metal itself, rather than the etched or gilded designs popular in the Milanese style. Maximilian also gave a bizarre jousting helmet as a gift to
King Henry VIII - the helmet's visor featured a human face, with eyes, nose and a grinning mouth, and was modeled after the appearance of Maximilian himself. It also sported a pair of curled ram's horns, brass spectacles, and even etched beard stubble.
Maximilian had appointed his daughter
Margaret as both Regent of the Netherlands and the guardian and educator of his grandsons Charles and
Ferdinand (their father, Philip, having predeceased Maximilian), and she fulfilled this task well. Through wars and marriages he extended the Habsburg influence in every direction: to the Netherlands, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Italy. This influence would last for centuries and shape much of European history.
Ancestors
Titles
Maximilian I, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany, of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, etc. Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Princely Count of Habsburg, Hainaut, Flanders, Tyrol, Gorizia, Artois, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, the Enns, Burgau, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Salins, Mechelen, etc. etc.Marriages and offspring
Maximilian was married three times, of which only the first marriage produced offspring:
- Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482). They were married in Ghent on 18 August 1477, and the marriage was ended by Mary's death in a riding accident in 1482. The marriage produced three children:
- Margaret of Austria, (1480–1533), who was first engaged at the age of 2 to the French Dauphin (who became Charles VIII of France a year later) to confirm peace between France and Burgundy. She was sent back to her father in 1492 after Charles repudiated their betrothal to marry Anne of Brittany. She was then married to the Crown Prince of Castile and Aragon John, Prince of Asturias, and after his death to Philibert II of Savoy, after which she undertook the guardianship of her deceased brother Philip's children, and governed Burgundy for the heir, Charles.
- Francis of Austria, who died shortly after his birth in 1481.
- Anne of Brittany (1477–1514) — they were married by proxy in Rennes on 18 December 1490, but the contract was dissolved by the Pope in early 1492, by which time Anne had already been forced by the French King, Charles VIII (the fiancé of Maximilian's daughter Margaret of Austria) to repudiate the contract and marry himself instead.
- Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510) — they were married in 1493, the marriage bringing Maximilian a rich dowry and allowing him to assert his rights as Imperial overlord of Milan. The marriage was unhappy, and they had no children.
- By Margareta Von Edelsheim, Maximilian is alleged to have been the father of:
- Margareta (1480-1537) wife of Count Ludwig Von Helfenstein-Wiesentheid, was killed by peasants on 16 April 1525 in the Massacre of Weinsberg during the Peasants' War.
See also
