Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire

“ On the eastern frontier, however, the Empire was enlarged by the voluntary annexation of Silesia to Bohemia, in exchange for protection against the claims of Poland.
In 1290 Rudolf's eldest son, of the same name, died, and at a Diet held in Frankfort the following year he endeavored to procure the election of his son Albert, as his successor. A majority of the bishops and princes decided to postpone the question, and Rudolf left the city, deeply mortified. ”

“ At last, therefore, in December, 1607, a meeting took place at Z̆erotin’s castle in Rosice, to which he invited, not only his Moravian friends, but also the Hungarian Illyezhazy, and the leader of the Protestants in Upper Austria, George Erasmus von Tschernembl. They resolved to insist on the enforcement of the terms of peace in Hungary; and they demanded that the princes of the Empire should compel Rudolf to confirm the concessions of Matthias. Rudolf became alarmed, and prepared to suppress the movement by force of arms. ”

“ He collected an army of 20,000 men, and made known that he would depose the emperor from the government of his hereditary domains. Rudolf's Jesuitical flatterers had named him the 'Bohemian Solomon.' He now, in terror, without drawing sword, ceded Hungary and Austria to Matthias, and gave him also the government of Moravia. Matthias guaranteed religious liberty to the Austrians. Rudolf did the same to the Bohemians and Silesians by the 'Letters of Majesty.' Rudolf, to escape deposition by Matthias, abdicated the throne of Bohemia. ”

“ An Imperial authority like that of Otto the Great or Barbarossa had not been restored; yet Rudolf's death left the Empire in a more orderly condition, and the many small rulers were more willing to continue the forms of Government. But the Archbishop Gerard of Mayence, who had bargained secretly with Count Adolf of Nassau, easily persuaded the Electors that it was impolitic to preserve the power in one family, and he thus secured their votes for Adolf, who was crowned shortly afterwards. ”

“ He had always been a rock of offence to the Catholic party. ... But Rudolf [son of Maximilian II.] , when he became emperor [1576] , surrounded by secret Jesuits who had been his teachers and advisers, became the humblest slave of the order and let it do what it would. Rudolf had been sent by his father for the interests of his own house to the Spanish court; a terrible punishment now followed this self-seeking. Rudolf confirmed liberty of conscience only to the nobles, not to the citizens or peasants. ”

“ King Rudolf was a man who lay late in the morning; and he was not well pleased to be roused when the clock had but just struck four. Yet he sat up in his bed readily enough, for he imagined that the embassy from the Grand Duke of Mittenheim must be nearer than he had thought, and, sooner than fail in any courtesy towards the prince whose alliance he ardently desired, he was ready to submit to much inconvenience. ”

“ Brought up in Spain, and believed to be a strict Catholic in convictions, shy and repellent in manner, he seemed exactly the man to revive the reactionary policy of his grandfather. But in Rudolf, as in the majority of men, temperament and taste had a greater influence over his actions than either religious or political convictions. The same feelings which made him so repellent in general intercourse, led him also to shrink from the burdens of public life; and his fondness for art and science led him in the earlier part of his reign to leave politics to men of more active character. ”

“ But turning away from France, it was in vain for them to look for kings or men either among friends or foes. In Germany religious dissensions were gradually ripening into open war, and it would be difficult to imagine a more hopelessly incompetent ruler than the man who was nominally chief of the Holy Roman Realm. Yet the distracted Rudolph was quite as much an emperor as the chaos over which he was supposed to preside was an empire. Perhaps the very worst polity ever devised by human perverseness was the system under which the great German race was then writhing and groaning. ”

“ Soon afterwards he pulled down the Evangelical churches, and dispersed the citizens by arms. He intended soon to begin the same proceedings in Hungary and Bohemia; but in Hungary the nation rose in defence of its liberty and faith. The receipt of the intelligence that the Hungarian malcontents were progressing victoriously produced--what there had been symptoms of before--insanity. The members of the house of Austria assembled, and declared 'The Emperor Rudolf can be no longer head of the house, because unfortunately it is too plain that his Roman Imperial Majesty ... ”

“ Surely a more pathetic appeal was rarely addressed by a great ruler to the head of the Christian Church. But Gregory X., though willing like his predecessors to be on good terms with the King of Bohemia, was probably not so ill-informed of the affairs of Europe as not to know that many of the evils which Ottakar depicted as likely to follow on Rudolf’s election, had already disturbed the Empire for many years past ”

“ Already at the Council of Lyons the envoys of Rudolf had appeared and in his name had taken the oaths previously exacted from Otto IV and Frederick II. Rudolf had subsequently met Pope Gregory at Lausanne in 1275, and had confirmed the act of his representatives. Thus Gregory obtained from a crowned German King an acknowledgment of all the claims advanced by the Papacy since the days of Charles the Great. Rudolf was too busy ever to visit Rome ”

“ Upon the death of Otto a partition of the inheritance took place. This partition became to the family an hereditary evil, a fatal source of quarrel and of secret or open enmity. ... In [the] dark and dreadful period of interregnum [see GERMANY: A. D. 1250-1272] , when all men waited for the final dissolution of the empire, nothing appears concerning the Wittelsbach family. ... Finally in 1273 Rudolf, the first of the Hapsburgs, ascended the long-unoccupied throne. ... He won over the Bavarian princes by bestowing his daughters upon them in marriage. ”

“ Rudolf of Hapsburg desired the title of King of the Romans for his son. "But the electors already found that the new house of Austria was becoming too powerful, and they refused. On his death, in fact, in 1291, a prince from another family, poor and obscure, Adolf of Nassau, was elected after an interregnum of ten months. His reign of six years is marked by two events; he sold himself to Edward I. in 1291, against Philip the Fair, for 100,000 pounds sterling, and used the money in an attempt to obtain in Thuringia a principality for his family as Rudolf had done in Austria. ”

“ In 1603 the school of the Bohemian Brethren at Bunzlau was destroyed, so that the Jesuits had, henceforth, no antagonist of moment but the Utraquist University of Prague. Nevertheless, on July 5, 1609, the Parliament extorted a solemn charter re-establishing complete religious freedom. Rudolf’s brother, Mathias, rebelled against him in Hungary and Austria, compelled him to abdicate, and was crowned King of Bohemia, amidst universal joy, on May 23, 1611. ”

“ With Frederick's death the mediæval empire may be said to have come to an end. It is true that after a period of "fist law," as the Germans call it, a new king, Rudolf of Hapsburg, was elected in Germany in 1273. The German kings continued to call themselves emperors. Few of them, however, took the trouble to go to Rome to be crowned by the pope. No serious effort was ever made to reconquer the Italian territory for which Otto the Great, Frederick Barbarossa, and his son and grandson had made such serious sacrifices. Germany was hopelessly divided and its king was no real king. ”

“ In the said year 1291, King Rudolf of Germany died, but he never attained to the honours of the Empire, because he was always intent upon increasing his state and lordship in Germany, leaving the Purg. vi. 103-105. enterprises of Italy that he might increase land and possessions for his sons; who, by his energy and valour, from a small count rose to be Emperor, and gained for himself the duchy of Austria, and a great part of the duchy of Suabia. ”

“ Rudolf in the meantime had rallied round him his most determined supporters. Chief among these was Frederick of Hohenzollern; and the Emperor also received ready help from Count Meinhard of the Tyrol, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and the Bishop of Basel. Besides these supporters, he had under his command a strong force of South Germans; while fiercest and keenest of all the soldiers in his ranks were those who fought under the banners of the discontented Styrian nobles. ”

“ They supported the Count of Luxemburg, who became Henry VII. By choosing emperors [kings?] who were poor, the electors placed them under the temptation of enriching themselves at the expense of the empire. Adolf failed, it is true, in Thuringia, but Rudolf gained Austria by victory; Henry succeeded in Bohemia by means of marriage, and Bohemia was worth more than Austria at that time because, besides Moravia, it was made to cover Silesia and a part of Lusatia (Oberlausitz) . Henry's son, John of Luxemburg, married the heiress to that royal crown. ”

“ At the same time, it should be noted that this revival, though generally connected with the name of Rudolf, had been already growing since the accession of Ferdinand. The greater security for life and property, which was gradually introduced by the House of Austria, had given more opportunity for quiet study than had been possible in the turbulent Bohemia of the fifteenth century; while the greater intercourse with foreign countries, which the renewed connection with the Empire had produced, naturally attracted a large number of foreign celebrities to the Court of Prague. ”

“ Hannewaldt.—The Bohemian nobility is taking a stand with Rudolf, and the Archprince Leopold is gathering his forces, which may come to the aid of the king at any moment. In Hungary, Moravia, and Austria, the cause of Rudolf is the stronger—
Kinský.—If His Majesty can employ some sorcerer’s charm to gain that end. ”

“ He loved Hungary as much as Hungary loved him. Had he lived there would be no straining at the bit now; we should be content to wait. Had he lived, there would be in Europe to-day no uneasy anticipation of our poor old King’s death. And not only could Rudolf make himself beloved by everybody, but there have been few better brains born to thrones—or in spheres where brains are more abundant. He would have sown his wild oats, poor chap!—and have made a great ruler. Then our guest would have had a rival worthy of his mettle. ”

“ In the struggle with the Papacy he held to the Staufen. It mattered little to him that his estates were under an interdict, and himself excommunicated. He held faithfully to the illustrious dynasty, and accompanied its last representative, Conradin, across the Alps, to Verona, in 1267. On the death of Conradin on the scaffold at Naples, and the consequent extinction of the Staufen line, Rudolf veered gradually round to the side of the Pope.
Rudolf was highly popular with the peasantry, winning their hearts by his affability, simple habits, and kindly good-nature. ”

“ But Louis IX was dead also, and Charles would be likely to influence his nephew the new King of France more than he had ever influenced his high-souled brother. It was necessary to find a new King of the Romans who might be a counterpoise in Europe, and perhaps even in Italy, to Charles. Thus encouraged and almost coerced by the Pope, the German princes elected Rudolf Count of Hapsburg (September 1273) , a man of "popular qualities" who was not too powerful. ”

“ In great pomp we laid him to his rest in the vault of the kings of Ruritania in the Cathedral of Strelsau. There he lies among the princes of the House of Elphberg. I think that if there be indeed any consciousness among the dead, or any knowledge of what passes in the world they have left, they should be proud to call him brother. There rises in memory of him a stately monument, and people point it out to one another as the memorial of King Rudolf. I go often to the spot, and recall in thought all that passed when he came the first time to Zenda, and again on his second coming. ”

“ Rudolf II. was the first to see whence he could fetch those adaptable beings, devoid of will, out of whom the Hapsburg spirit could create its own men. He sought them among peoples for whom there was no room in the traditional orders and castes; people who were nothing in and by themselves; who could become something only under the Emperor’s hand; people without a real life of their own and whom Imperial favour must first turn into men. They were people of the kind that have sometimes founded colonies and who, in Austria, formed a colony—the colony of the Imperial House. ”

“ After a six months’ vacancy Nicholas III., A.D. 1277-1280, mounted the papal throne. By diplomacy he secured the ratification of the still undecided concordat with the German kingdom, and Rudolf, who had enough to do in Germany, immediately withdrew from Italian affairs, even abandoning his claims to imperial coronation. The powerful pope, whose pontificate was marked by rapacity and nepotism, and who is therefore put by Dante in hell, did not live long enough to carry out his plans for the overthrow of the French yoke in Italy. ”