Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans. Episode 169, Sigismund the Not Yet Emperor, which is also episode 6 of season 9. The Reformation before the Reformation, the late 14th and early 15th century was a period of upheaval. The certainties of the Middle Ages, that the Pope ruled the world and that knights were invincible, were crumbling away. The long period of economic growth, of eastward expansion and conversion of the pagans made way for war, plague and famine.
The Church was split in half and the Ottomans were coming. This was an age that called forth larger than life characters. Joan of Arc, fierce and holy Henry Bolingbroke seizing a throne. Jadwiga and Yogaila uniting kingdoms. The audacious Gian Galeazzo Visconti and the fiery Cola di Rienzo. The ever scheming John the Fearless and Jakob van Artevelde, the tragic Ines de Castro and the unflinching Jansciske.
Into this glittering and turbulent lineup steps a man whose reputation has not exactly been polished by time, despised in his kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, and even Constans, the city that owes him so much, decided to remember him as a fat, naked, crowned guy with skinny arms and legs, worn out face, forked beard and disproportionate genitalia, balancing on the hand of a 9 meter tall sex worker. No, I'm not making this up.
Sigismund, because that was his name, was a true enigma of the late Middle Ages. He had inherited his father's charm and ruthless cunning, his knack for negotiating compromise in impossible situations, and his unshakable belief in his role as the head of Christendom. But what he hadn't inherited was his father's performative piety, his zeal for relics, his asceticism or his wealth.
Instead, Sigismund was left with a volatile mix of ambition, enormous self confidence, a lust for life, and crucially, a chronic shortage of funds. Yet despite his flaws, he took on Christendom's two greatest crises, the Schism and the Ottoman threat, and in doing so managed to create a third. Now, this is his backstory, but before we start, let me tell you that AdWords and podcasts now make up 7.2% of the average episode, and in the most popular shows, that has reached nearly 10%.
That means if this episode had podcast ads, you would have to skip through four minutes of a mix of me droning on about VPNs or dodgy mental health services. I guess you know how to prevent that. Do what your dv, Adam F, Rich S, John R, Karen G and Edward R. Have already done. Go to historyofthegermans.com support and make a one time donation. For that you gain my eternal gratitude, but most importantly, the thanks of all your fellow listeners who you protect. And with that, back to the show.
Sigismund of Luxembourg was born on February 15, 1368, the second surviving son of the Emperor Karl IV, so we have already heard enough about his father, so he needs no introduction. But his mother was no less remarkable. By most accounts she was a striking beauty, a full 30 years younger than her husband and by all testimonies, deeply devoted to him. Though her frame seemed slight, of weak appearance, as one chronicler delicately put it.
Her strength was legendary, the kind spoken of in awestruck whispers. She could twist horseshoes as if they were mere ribbons, shatter swords as easily as snapping a twig, and rend chain mail with her bare hands. Her son Sigismund was no stranger to physical prowess himself, though even his strength paled when measured against hers. How much he saw of her is unclear, though, but probably not a lot.
Like most princely children during this period, he was likely raised by wet nurses and servants in one of the imperial castles, like the magnificent one at Karlstein, whilst his parents pursued the itinerant lifestyle of medieval monarchs. By the mid 14th century, princely education had taken on a new dimension. Young aristocrats and future rulers still learned the essentials swordmanship, jousting, hunting. But this wasn't the whole picture anymore.
Sigismund, along with his brothers, was taught to read and write, a skill not taken for granted amongst nobility a hundred years earlier, being groomed for a leadership role in the multicultural realm of the House of Luxembourg, languages were a priority. He was fluent in Latin, German, Czech, Hungarian, French, Italian, and possibly Polish as well.
His education even included a respectable grounding in theology and both canon and Roman law, giving him a broad base of knowledge that would serve him well later, though, he did neither become a writer or embark on grand building projects. Like his father, Sigismund's contemporaries couldn't help but notice and remark upon his relentless curiosity, his sharp intellect and remarkable drive.
Even from a young age, he was known for probing questions and an eagerness to master every topic placed before him. Sigismund appeared in the historical records for the first time in 1373, when he was in fiefd with the Margraveyard of Brandenburg alongside his two brothers. In 1376 he showed up at his brother Wenceslas coronation as King of the Romans.
He was Margraf of Brandenburg, an arch chamberlain of the empire, and so, even though he was only eight years old, was entrusted with carrying one of the imperial regalia, the sword of St Maurice, at the head of the procession. Sigismund was still only 10 and his brother Wenceslas 17, when their father must have noticed that the two of them were not getting on.
Where Sigismund was full of energy, ambition and ideas, Wenceslas was pondering and slow, a terrible constellation in the system of primogeniture, where the obviously less qualified one was to inherit everything and the smart one is left with nothing. Carl IV tried to preempt the potential conflict by giving Sigismund both a task and the resources to achieve it.
The task was for him to acquire the crowns of Hungary and Poland through marriage to Maria, the oldest surviving daughter of Louis the Great, the current king of both of these lands. And the resources to push through his claim was the sole ownership of the mark graveyard of Brandenburg, the territory Karl IV had only recently acquired from the house of Wittelsbach for the astronomic sum of 500,000 mark.
And he also made the brothers exchange letters in which they pledged to forever and honestly and truly support each other, exercise their votes in the college of electors jointly, and that under no circumstances would they ever, ever attack each other's castles and cities. Not exactly watertight, but the best Karl could do in the few months he had left being Margraf of Brandenburg sounds great. After all, future holders of the title would indeed build an empire out of its poor soil.
But in 1378 it had just about 200,000 inhabitants, and most of them battered and beaten after decades of feuds and civil wars that had followed the death of Magrav Waldemar, the last of the descendants of Albrecht Bear, who had founded the principality back in 1157. Episode 106 if you're interested. As for his claim on the Hungarian and Polish crowns, well, that was a nailed down pat either. Karl had agreed with King Louis I of Hungary that Sigismund would marry his daughter Maria.
That was in 1372 and 1375, when Maria's elder sister Catherine had still been alive and Catherine was to marry Louis of Orleans, the younger son of King Charles V of France. King Louis of Hungary had even got his vassals to swear fealty to Catherine, not Maria, in case of his demise.
So in one of his last acts, Karl IV resolved that issue in a secret pact with the king of France that granted the French crown de facto control of Provence and the Rhone Valley in exchange for letting Sigismund and Maria succeed Louis of Hungary. We discussed that bit of skullduggery in more detail in episode 163. I hope you understand why there are so many episodes about all these goings on in the late 14th century.
It is just unspeakably complex, with dozens upon dozens of players in the empire, in Poland, in Hungary, in France, in Naples, in Rome, in Avignon, in Constantinople, all with their own backstories. It is like Balzac's novels, where the protagonists show up here and then there and then they get their own novel, where others from previous plots show up. Or for modern listeners who don't like Balzac that much, it's like the Marvel universe. But do not worry, the Avengers endgame is inside.
But first we have to get through Sigismund's backstory. So by some miracle, this complex web of arrangements between Prague, Paris and Buda survived the death of its creator, Karl IV. In August 1379, Louis of Hungary and Wenceslas, King of the Romans, hosted the official engagement of 11 year old Sigismund and 8 year old Maria, heiress of the crowns of Hungary and Poland.
The actual marriage was supposed to happen in 1382, when Sigismund would be 14 and hence an adult, and Maria 11, apparently old enough for conjugal duties. Louis publicly recognized Sigismund as his chosen successor and took the young man in to live at his court. Now, that arrangement suited all concerned.
For Wenceslas, it was the perfect opportunity to send away his little brother, whose charm, good looks and boundless energy were beginning to grate against his own surly, lethargic disposition. And for Louis, the greatly admired chivalric king of Hungary, this was a golden chance to shape his young son in law into a fitting heir, grooming him with the skills and values that will one day serve as the backbone of his vast realms.
So let's take a look at where Louis came from, and more importantly, what Sigismund hoped he would bring to him. Louis was from the House of Anjou, the cadet branch of the French royal family that had wrestled Sicily out of the hands of the Hohenstaufen and had killed young Conradine. So not everybody is perfect. Louis father had become the first Anjou king of Hungary pretty much the same way. Sigismund was aiming to gain these crowns in the horizontal.
Louis succeeded him in 1342 and reigned for 40 astonishingly successful years. During these 40 years, he pursued, broadly speaking, three main policy aims. The first was to expand Hungary southwards into the Balkans along the Dalmatian coast. And that worked really well. He picked up parts of Stefan Dujan's Serbian empire after the great ruler had died in 1355, he established suzerainty over Transylvania and Wallachia.
Became King of Croatia, took on the overlordship of Ragusa, that's modern day Dubrovnik. So his zone of influence comprised modern day Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria. His second ambition was to regain his family's homeland, the Kingdom of Naples that was ruled by the childless Queen Joanna I. He accused of having killed his brother, but that effort was not quite as successful.
He did invade a couple of times, burned and plundered, but could not oust Queen Joanna against the opposition of the papacy. All he left behind was a shedload of bad blood between the Neapolitan side of the family, his own. The third leg of his policy was Poland. Its king, Casimir the Great, had consolidated the once fragmented kingdom, but found himself without a male heir.
Louis supported his uncle Casimir in multiple campaigns and formed an attachment that convinced the Polish king to name him his successor. And in 1370, Louis was crowned King of Poland in Krakow. In other words, Louis realm was huge and thanks to its mineral wealth, that the clever Nuremberg merchants were exploiting extremely rich for how they managed that. Check out episode 153. This sounds almost perfect.
Young Sigismund grows up in one of the most splendid courts in Europe under the wings of a father in law, one of the great kings of the 14th century. Who's willing to hand him all of that on a silver platter? What else can a bright and ambitious 11 year old want? But there's no such thing as a free royal banquet. Whilst Louis really liked him, not everybody shared the king's enthusiasm for the bouncy little prince. And those who did not were all called Elizabeth.
The first of these Elizabeths was King Louis mother, a sister of the much beloved King Casimir of Poland. As much as her son was shrewd and capable, she had a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way until they lashed out. Her intervention in the Kingdom of Naples cost her youngest son Andrew his life. And her attempts at establishing a regency in Poland after her brother's death nearly cost her hers.
Not even her son Louis liked her very much and she retaliated by really hating his chosen successor, young Sigismund. The problem largely resolved itself when Elizabeth of Poland died just a year after Sigismund had arrived in Hungary. But her disaffection of the young man passed on to the next Elizabeth, Elizabeth of Bosnia, the wife of King Louis and therefore Sigismund's mother in law. Why she disliked him, then despised him and finally fanatically hated him has never been properly explained.
He might have slighted her in some way or done something foolish. In the exuberance of Youth, or she simply hoped for something better for her daughter. After all, the couple was only engaged, not yet married. And better could mean a man who would be more caring, more respectful to her darling daughter, or just someone less forceful and younger who would allow her to establish her own regency once King Louis was dead.
What turned this from a bad 1960s mother in law joke to full blown Greek tragedy was that Elizabeth passed her hate for young Sigismund onto her daughter Maria, the woman he was going to marry. In 1382, King Louis declared Sigismund officially as his heir in Poland as well, and he called on his vassals to swear an oath to serve him faithfully.
Sigismund was given the command over a small contingent of soldiers and the task to calm down some minor disturbance and to prepare his ascension to the Polish throne. Aged 14, Sigismund's political career had begun and he was not given much time to settle in. He arrived in Poland in July 1382. The country was in chaos. Though properly crowned in everything, his father in law had not really gained much of a foothold in Polish politics.
The regions he had deployed were universally hated and were confined to the few castles they held. The magnates fought them and then there also fought amongst themselves. What the Polish nobles did not like was the idea of an absentee landlord king who regarded Polish affairs as secretaries. And Polish affairs meant getting the lands back from the Teutonic knights that they had acquired over the years. Episodes 130 to 138 if you're interested. So they all agreed.
Louis wasn't the king who would do that, but they hoped things would improve once the old man had shuffled off his mortal coil. What they did not yet agree on was what should happen then. One group was broadly amenable to Maria and Sigismund taking over, provided they would live in Poland. Others believed Poland should break with the House of Anjou and choose its own dedicated ruler. This question came a lot more acute, a lot earlier than anybody expected.
Because King Louis the Great of Hungary died in September of that same year. Sigismund immediately demanded that the magnates of Poland recognize him as their lord, which some did. Before really thinking about it, the nobles of Jakopolska had considered the situation more thoroughly and said yes, they would very happily swear allegiance, but only if Sigismund promised to permanently reside in Poland.
Now that was a no go for Sigismund, since it would mean abandoning the hope of ever becoming king of Hungary. And Hungary looked a lot easier since his future wife Maria had just been recognized and crowned as king, not Queen of Hungary. Without the slightest delay or hiccup, Sigismund's refusal prompted the nobles to form an alliance. They demanded that if they were to recognize any of Louis daughters, it would be the one who was prepared to reside permanently in Poland.
If neither of those two were prepared to do that, well then, well then they would choose someone amongst themselves to be their king. Now if Sigismund ever had a chance to push back against the Polish noble's opposition, it was taken away when his enemy mother in law Elizabeth pulled the rug from under him. She wrote to the Polish nobles, thanked them for their loyalty to the House of Anjou and promised them to select one of her daughters to come to Poland very soon.
But in the meantime she urged them not to do anything rash. In particular, not to recognize Sigismund as king. So much for familial loyalty. Sigismund sat down with the grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights who told him that, well, the idea of becoming king of Poland was clearly for the birds. So you better go back to Hungary. Oh yes, let's go back to Hungary. That's where his bride would be waiting for him. And now that he had turned 14 and was an adult, the marriage could finally proceed.
And once married, he would be crowned king and everything would be exactly as old king Louis had wanted. Not so. There were three main parties amongst the Hungarian nobles and only one of them could see Sigismund wearing the holy crown of St Stephen. The Garay family wanted Hungary to align more with France. Basically they wanted to revive the old plan of bringing in the French Duke of Orleans as the new king.
The equally powerful Lugfi family preferred a closer alignment between Hungary and the empire and as a way to fend off the Ottoman threat that was slowly but surely coming up the Balkans. And finally there were the Hvati who preferred the King of Naples, Charles III called the Small, as their new ruler. Charles was a pretty ruthless man who had grown up in Hungary and had at some point been Louis designated successor. Whilst Sigismund had been detained up in Poland.
The queen mother Elizabeth had made herself regent on behalf of her 11 year old daughter. And she had sided with the pro French party of the Garets. Envoys were on their way to Paris to negotiate a new marriage for little Maria, replacing Sigismund with the duke Louis of Orleans. Now if Maria married Louis of Orleans, there would have been curtains for our friend Sigismund. Without a marriage to Maria.
He was just a foreign prince with no claim on the Hungarian or Polish crowns and not even a particularly wealthy one at that. Elizabeth would have loved to call off the engagement right away and send Sigismund back home to Brandenburg, but she did not yet dare to do that since the two other factions, the pro imperial Lakhis and the pro Neapolitan Horvatis were stirring up revolt. So she did the second best thing and sent Sigismund back to Poland. Even though there was nothing in for him.
Sigismund went in the hope that he could still convince his mother in law of his suitability as ruler and win the heart of little Maria. That wasn't a great plan, but at least it was a plan. What is less clear is what plan Elizabeth was pursuing in Poland. Elizabeth knew she had not enough resources to force the Poles into recognizing Maria and as king unconditionally. So it was either sending her younger daughter Jatwyga up to Krakow or to give up on the Polish crown entirely.
But she didn't either. She tried to stall the Poles. That gave the anti Hungarian party in Poland the justification to strike. And they proposed one of their own as king. A full blown civil war broke out in Poland and the pro Hungarian party asked Elizabeth for help. And that's why she sent Sigismund with an army of 12,000 to put things back in order in the north. Sigismund did as told and burned and pillaged the opposition's lands, but failed to take Krakow.
So negotiations resumed and Elizabeth finally promised to send Jadviga after all. A time was set for Jatviga to be handed over. But then Elizabeth stalled again and again she sends Sigismund to deal with the Poles, but this time without an army. Sigismund met the members of the Polish Sejm who were now seriously angry. And even those loyal to the Hungarian royal house had enough. If Elisabeth does not want to let Viga become king, well that's fine. We will just go with the Polish candidate.
Thank you so very much. It was Sigismund who talked them round. This is the first time his charm and diplomatic skill came to the fore. After long and arduous negotiations and knowing Sigismund, probably including some serious hard partying, he and his mother in law is given one last chance. An absolutely completely final extension. So on October 15, 1384, the beautiful Jadwiga is crowned King, not Queen of Poland.
Shortly afterwards she married Jungaila, the Grand Prince of Lithuania, thereby creating the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Having saved the kingdom of Poland for the House of Anjou, having proven his allegiance to Elizabeth and her daughters by forsaking the Polish crown he once believed should be his, Sigismund returned to Buda to rapturous applause. His mother in law offering him the kiss of peace. And young Maria getting excited about her upcoming nuptials. Oh no, no, none of that.
You completely underestimate how much the queen mother, Elizabeth, hated Sigismund. In 1385 she struck what she thought was the final blow that would rid her of that pesky Luxembourger. She called the engagement between Sigismund and Maria off. And immediately thereafter, Maria married Louis of Orleans by proxy. Now the chips are really down. Sigismund is outplayed. His grand plan is in tatters.
But then Sigismund, still only 16, can be very, very determined if he wants something very, very badly. And he wanted the crown of Hungary very, very, very badly. So badly he did go for help to the man he never ever wanted to be depended upon, who he not necessarily despised, but regarded as mediocre and undeserving of the wealth and power he had received. His stepbrother, King Wenceslas. Wenceslas, as it happened, was riding high at this point in his reign.
He had just concluded the general peace of Ego, the great project his father had never managed to complete, and was preparing his journey to Rome to obtain the imperial crown. Wenceslas had the military resources to help. And there were their cousins, the Margravs of Moravia, Jopster and Prokop. They had inherited a very well run principality that was throwing up cash like nobody's business. They have the means to bankroll Sigismund's claim on the Hungarian crown.
So it looks like the Luxembourg family is pulling together to put one of them to obtain the holy crown of St. Stephen. Well, that is what the Habsburgs, for instance, would have done. The Luxembourgs. Different kettle of fish. Yes, dear brother and cousin, we are happy to help, but it'll cost you and dearly. Sigismund had to pawn big chunks of Ismar graveyard of Brandenburg, and hand over some of his various rights, castles and income streams to his brother and cousins.
Having been stripped down by his relatives, he did at least get his army. And with that he returned to Hungary to force the queen regent to give her daughter over in marriage to him. Not the most romantic move. But then love did not really get into this. Whether the plan would have worked on its own would we will never know, because events outside his control pushed little Maria into his bed. Anyway, you remember there were three political parties in Hungary.
The Garay who were pro French and had allied with the evil mother in law, Elizabeth. The Lacvi who supported Sigismund and the Hvati who wanted Charles the Small of Naples on the throne. This Charles of Naples was about to enter the fray and he was a tough nut. Once he had been dismissed as Louis of Hungary's heir presumptive, he had gone to Naples, where he captured and then killed his cousin, Queen Joanna I. This effort had been sponsored by Pope Urban vi.
But then Urban found out that Charles had double crossed him when he was casually torturing a brace of cardinals. So Charles attacked the pope, besieged him in Nocera, from where the pope escaped by a hair's breadth. The late 14th century is no time for sissies and Charles may have been small, but he was definitely no sissi. In 1385, this very much not a Sissi. Neapolitan landed on the Dalmatian coast to stake his claim on the Hungarian crown.
His supporters, the Horvati, raised their banners and marched on Buda. Elizabeth was panicking. Her regime had become quite unpopular for all the usual reasons, taxes, favorites, etc. And her allies, the garay alone, weren't strong enough to fend off the other two parties. So she had no choice but to seek support from the man who happened to be just about to muster military force. Even it was the man she hated more than anyone else, our friend Sigismund.
And Sigismund's price was marriage to the heiress Maria. In November 1385, the not very happy couple stood before a hastily prepared altar and were finally married. Sigismund returned to Bohemia to take command of his troops, whilst Elizabeth and Maria prepared the defence of Buda against Charles of Naples. As part of that, they called an assembly of the Hungarian nobles, promised them remediation of all their grievances and asked for their support. But they refused.
Instead, they told her to make an arrangement with Charles of Naples or else. So it happened that a month later, Charles the Small was crowned king of Hungary at Ferevar, where Hungarian kings have been crowned since time immemorial. But he did not stay king for very long. Two months later, on February 7th, 1386, his cupbearer attacked him and injured him severely. He was thrown into a prison where the queen regent, who presumably had paid the cupbearer in the first place, had him killed.
Not very nice, but very effective. It still kicked off a civil war between the Neapolitan party and the party of the queen regent. And the queen regent also went back on her deal with Sigismund, refusing to support his coronation as king. So Sigismund had to go back to his relatives and ask for even more money and even more troops, which they provided, pulling even more chunks out of his inheritance.
Sigismund took his troops back into Hungary and occupied the western part of the country to force Elizabeth to hand over his bride and get him crowned. At that point, the queen regent called upon Sigismund's brother Wenceslas, who was after all the king of the Romans, to mediate in the conflict. And Wenceslas did pass judgment in the way one would expect of him. Hungary was to pay some astronomical sum to pay for the cost of the war. Maria was to accept Sigismund as her husband for real now.
And he was given some property to live off. But what Wenceslas did not demand, what he even precluded, was his brother's coronation as king of Hungary. These two really did not get on that well. Sigismund was now broke. He was only nominally Margrav of Brandenburg, but all the income from the territory was going to his cousins. He even passed them the right to inherit Bohemia should Wenceslas die without an heir. And for what? No coronation, A wife who hated him so much.
Even he did not want to enforce conjugal rights and no real position of power in Hungary. But in this super volatile environment, things can sometimes brighten up in rather unexpected and admittedly somewhat unpleasant ways. And this way was paved by the foolishness of the queen regent. Her paladin, Miklos Garay felt that after Charles of Naples death and some successes against the Horvati, it was possible for the queens to come down to Dalmatia and to inspect their lands. He was wrong.
The land was not yet pacified. When the ladies traveled along with the small bodyguard, Janos Hovati came out of the bushes, killed the Garay and the rest of the guards, and then carried the queen away into captivity. Hungary was now without a ruler and in the midst of a civil war. To fill the vacuum, the Hungarian magnates declared themselves the guardians of the realm and took control of the kingdom.
And these guardians of the realm recognized Sigismund as captain of the Hungarian cause, not as king. The lady's position was very precarious. The widow of King Charles, you know, the one that Elizabeth had murdered, bade for their blood. Not being able to kill Elizabeth with her own bare hands, the queen of Naples ordered the Horvati to do the deed on her behalf.
So in mid January 1387, Elizabeth, the daughter of the king of Bosnia, widow of king Louis the Great of Hungary, Poland and lots more, was strangled before the eyes of her daughter and her body thrown in the castle's ditch. Maria was 15 years of age when that happened. Sigismund had months to mount a rescue, but he had not sent his army to the castle where they were kept.
Elizabeth's death convinced the guardians of the realm that to properly incentivize Sigismund, they had to crown him king of Hungary after all. Still, Sigismund had to make far reaching concessions to the nobles, including the promise only to appoint Hungarians to key positions and to pardon everyone who had risen up against him or opposed him. The already quite modest royal power was further undermined by these promises, making Hungary more of an aristocratic republic than a kingdom.
Sigismund had to reward his supporters after his coronation with expensive gifts. 85 of the 150 royal castles and manors passed on to the magnates. This financial and political weakness meant that Sigismund remained hampered in his rule of Hungary for decades. The way he tried to wriggle out of the clutches of the barons was to build up his own parallel bureaucracy that very gradually and very slowly took over tax collection and the management of the defence of the country against the Ottomans.
That being so, at least, after five years of fighting and frustrations, Sigismund is finally king of Hungary. The first item on the to do list of the freshly elected and crowned king was to free his wife Maria from the clutches of the Horvati. This took until the end of 1387 and a month long siege. The married couple were finally united, but the relations remained cold professional until her death in a riding accident in 1395.
Sigismund may be charming and all that, but wooing a young girl that had just seen her mother getting killed due to her suitor's reluctance to come to her aid would go beyond the capabilities of even the most accomplished of seducers. The subsequent five years from 1387 to 1393 were taken up with defeating the Hvati and the reconquest of Dalmatia, which again was extremely costly. The Hungarian estates and magnates did not provide the funds he needed, despite regular assurances.
So Sigismund finally bit the bullet and pawned all that he had left to his cousin Jobst for the astonishing sum of 565,263 guilders. By doing that, Sigismund had severed all his links to the Holy Roman Empire. He was now 100% committed to his kingdom of Hungary and the funds were enough to muster an army capable to defeat the Horvati and regain Dalmatia.
Janos Hovati was captured, brutally tortured, pulled through the streets of the city of Pe tied to the tail of a horse, and then whatever was left of him was drawn and quartered. This success did however, not mean that Sigismund could now kick back and enjoy being king. As we heard last week, the Ottomans were coming. In 1389. They had defeated and then incorporated the despotate of Serbia. They were standing at the Hungarian border.
Sigismund's predecessor, the great King Louis of Hungary, had not worried too much about the Ottomans. He had fought and won a couple of battles against them. And so he remained unconcerned. What he had not realized was that the Ottomans had learned from their early defeats against armies made up of armored knights and had developed their own unique combination of light cavalry and janissary infantry that proved so successful.
And after the battle on the kosovo field in 1389, where the whole Serbian army perished, the major players on the Balkans woke up to the power of the Ottomans. And Sigismund was a player on the Balkans. And he did understand that the Ottomans would be unstoppable unless he could muster an army far larger than anything Hungary alone could ever raise. Hence his involvement in the crusade that ended in the battle of Nikopol we discussed in the last episode.
After the crushing defeat at Nicopol, Sigismund was rescued by two of his closest supporters, the Counts Johann von Zollern and Hermann of Chile, who commandeered a ship on the Danube to take him away from there. Sigismund could have easily returned home to Hungary, but instead he decided to take a little detour to see the famous sights of Constantinople. This was bordering on madness, given the Ottoman army was standing undefeated on the Hungarian border.
Thousands of Christian knights had been captured and either enslaved or killed, and his opponents in Hungary had gone on manoeuvres. That was the other side of Sigismund's character. Once he could doggedly pursue an objective for years and years and bet everything on the outcome, as he had done with the crown of Hungary, sometimes he would suddenly drop everything, just give up and go looking for adventures and opportunities elsewhere.
Hence the smart trip to Constantinople, where he was received with great honors by the deeply disappointed emperor Manuel ii. Whilst his host was falling into despair, Sigismund dreamt up grand plans to defeat the Ottomans. He embarked on a journey across the Levant, taking in Rhodes and the Greek islands. Before returning to Buda via Ragusa and split back home. He had the magnate Istvan Lakvi and his nephew killed for barely provable treason.
This act, together with his previous brutality against the Hvati, made him despised by the Hungarians, a sentiment that continued to this day. And that sentiment was, at least for a time, mutual. The concessions Sigismund had granted at his coronation and the vast wealth he had to transfer to the guardians of the realm left him with very little room to exercise actual power in Hungary. Tired of being pushed around by the magnates, he began looking for new opportunities abroad.
His next project was to gang up with his cousins to unseat his stepbrother, Wenceslas. We did discuss Wenceslas demise in episode 165, so there is no point going through all of this complex story once again. But in a nutshell, Wenceslaslas was dealt a tough hand upon his father's death and turned out being pretty bad at playing it.
Between the simmering resentment of the Bohemian nobles, discord with the Church, his absence from the empire and his utter failure to address the schism in the papacy, Wenceslas was left isolated, vulnerable and ultimately a perfect target for Sigismund's ambitions. Sigismund had his hand in every one of the various conspiracies and uprisings that made his brother's reign even more untenable than it needed to be. His comrades in crime were his cousin Jobst of Moravia and various Habsburg dukes.
These guys would backstab and betray each other in a wild merry go round. I simply cannot be bothered to recount in detail. To call this self destructive is an understatement of epic proportions. The House of Luxembourg, which once held a quarter of the empire and provided order and peace, had formed an orderly circular firing squad. By 1400 they had managed to strip Wenceslas of the rule of the Holy Roman Empire. And they nearly cost Sigismund his Hungarian crown as well.
The magnates of Hungary were disappointed with Sigismund's constant trips to Bohemia and the mostly foreign administrators he left behind in Buda. So when he came down for a short visit, they seized him and locked him up in a castle. But then they had no idea what to do next. Some wanted to get Ladislaus of Naples, the son of the murdered King Charles, to return. Others favoured a union with Poland, whilst a third party preferred a Habsburg duke.
And to top it off, cousin Jobst came down with an army not to free Sigismund, but to claim the Hungarian throne for himself. That was, even by 14th century Hungarian standards, a God awful mess. In the end they decided it was better to stick with their monarch, even if he was disappointing. Rather, rather than embark on a civil war, Sigismund promised to do better. To fire his foreign advisors and spend more time in Hungary. And in exchange, the Hungarians let him be.
Sigismund said thanks, that was great fun, and buckered off back to Bohemia, where he spent another two years trying to oust his brother, double cross his cousins and merrily signing and breaking alliances with nobles and neighbouring monarchs. In 1403, the Hungarian monarchs really had enough of their absent monarch and rose up. King Ladislas of Naples landed in Dalmatia. Sigismund came back with an army and now it was the final showdown.
His followers gathered support and Ladislas, in fear of ending like his father, rushed back to Naples. Sigismund acted the magnanimous victor for once and received the members of the opposition back into the fold. But this time, he did not apologize or promise to do better. Instead, he removed the magnates, one by one, from their positions of power, claiming, quite accurately that they lacked loyalty to their lord.
Meanwhile, more and more Hungarians realized that the incessant infighting was seriously undermining their ability to defend the kingdom against the Ottomans. So for almost seven years, Sigismund gave up on the wild goose chases and focused on his job in Hungary. He expanded the state apparatus, reorganized taxes in the church, introduced military reform that created the famous hussars, suppressed the robber barons and unjust feuds, and just generally rebuilt the country.
His most notorious reform was the creation of the Order of the Dragon he bestowed on local magnates and allies, including Messiah the Elder, the voivode of Wallachia Musea was so proud of the honor, he asked people to call him Draco, Latin for dragon. And so his son Vlad became Little Dragon or Dracula in Latin, a name you might have heard before.
This period of benign rule in hungary lasted until 1410, when King Ruprecht of the Empty Pocket, the rather ineffectual ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, unexpectedly died. And with that, the throne of the empire became vacant. And Sigismund, always on the lookout for another crown, another adventure, another grand plan, put his large ermine hat in the ring. But that is a story for another time.
Next week, we will meet the last important participant in the council of Jan Hus, professor at the University of Prague, follower of John Wycliffe and radical preacher.
And I promise, once we have talked about him, we will finally come back into Germany, get to the shores of Lake Constance and watch Pope John XXIII, 3 Patriarchs, 23 Cardinals, 27 Archbishops, 106 Bishops, 103 Abbots, 344 Doctors of Theology, 676 Noblemen of High Birth, 336 Barbers, 516 Buglers, Pipers and Entertainers, and 718 Whores and Public girls determine the fate of Christendom. And just before I go, a quick reminder about the website where you can support the show.
It is historyofthegermans.com support. Hope to see you all back here next week.