Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary and Bohemia. Conclusion

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Diet of Augsburg, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, Ottoman Empire, Philip II of Spain, Pope Pius V, Protestants, Stephan IV Bathory of Poland, Suleiman I, Treaty of Adrianople

In November 1562 Maximilian was chosen King of the Romans, or German King, by the electoral college at Frankfurt, where he was crowned a few days later, officially designating him heir to the empire. After assuring the Catholic electors of his fidelity to their faith, and promising the Protestant electors that he would publicly accept the confession of Augsburg when he became emperor, he also took the usual oath to protect the Church, and his election was afterwards confirmed by the papacy.

Maximilian was the first King of the Romans not to be crowned in Aachen. In September 1563 he was crowned King of Hungary by the Archbishop of Esztergom, Nicolaus Olahus, and on his father’s death, in July 1564, he became Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia. He was also Archduke of Austria.

The new emperor had already shown that he believed in the necessity for a thorough reform of the Church. He was unable, however, to obtain the consent of Pope Pius IV to the marriage of the clergy, and in 1568 the concession of communion in both kinds to the laity was withdrawn. On his part Maximilian granted religious liberty to the Lutheran nobles and knights in Austria, and refused to allow the publication of the decrees of the council of Trent.

Amidst general expectations on the part of the Protestants he met his first summoned Diet of Augsburg in March 1566. He refused to accede to the demands of the Lutheran princes; on the other hand, although the increase of sectarianism was discussed, no decisive steps were taken to suppress it, and the only result of the meeting was a grant of assistance for the war with the Turks, which had just been renewed.

The Ottomans would besiege and conquer Szigetvár in 1566, but their sultan, Suleiman I the Magnificent, would die of old age during the siege. With neither side winning a decisive engagement, Maximilian’s ambassadors Antun Vrančić and Christoph Teuffenbach would meet with the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha in Adrianople to negotiate a truce in 1568.

The terms of the Treaty of Adrianople required the Emperor to recognise Ottoman suzerainty over Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia. In his realm, Suleiman I was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death in 1566. Under his administration, the Ottoman caliphate ruled over at least 25 million people.

Meanwhile, the relations between Maximilian II and Felipe II of Spain had improved, and the emperor’s increasingly cautious and moderate attitude in religious matters was doubtless because the death of Felipe II’s son, Don Carlos, had opened the way for the succession of Maximilian, or of one of his sons, to the Spanish throne. Evidence of this friendly feeling was given in 1570, when the emperor’s daughter, Archduchess Anna, became the fourth wife of Felipe II. Archduchess Anna was Felipe’s niece, her mother, Infanta Maria of Spain, was Felipe’s sister. Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor and Infanta Maria of Spain, were first cousins.

In 1570 the emperor met the diet of Speyer and asked for aid to place his eastern borders in a state of defence, and also for power to repress the disorder caused by troops in the service of foreign powers passing through Germany. He proposed that his consent should be necessary before any soldiers for foreign service were recruited in the empire; but the estates were unwilling to strengthen the imperial authority, the Protestant princes regarded the suggestion as an attempt to prevent them from assisting their co-religionists in France and the Netherlands, and nothing was done in this direction, although some assistance was voted for the defense of Austria.

The religious demands of the Protestants were still unsatisfied, while the policy of toleration had failed to give peace to Austria. Maximilian’s power was very limited; it was inability rather than unwillingness that prevented him from yielding to the entreaties of Pope Pius V to join in an attack on the Turks both before and after the victory of Lepanto in 1571; and he remained inert while the authority of the empire in north-eastern Europe was threatened.

In 1575, Maximilian was elected by the part of Polish and Lithuanian magnates to be the King of Poland in opposition to Stephan IV Bathory, but he did not manage to become widely accepted there and was forced to leave Poland.

Emperor Maximilian II died on October 12, 1576 in Regensburg while preparing to invade Poland. On his deathbed he refused to receive the last sacraments of the Church. He is buried in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.

By his wife Maria he had a family of ten sons and six daughters. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, who had been chosen King of the Romans in October 1575, and was elected as Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Another of his sons, Matthias, also became Holy Roman Emperor Emperor; three others, Ernst, Albert and Maximilian, took some part in the government of the Habsburg territories or of the Netherlands, and a daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles IX of France.

Vlad III the Impaler/Count Dracula

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Bela Lugosi, Bram Stoker, Count Dracula, Dracul, Dracula, Halloween, Ottoman Empire, Vlad III, Vlad the Impaler, Voivode of Wallachia

Vlad III Dracula, known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. He was born
circa 1428/31 and died circa 1476/77.

Vlad was the second legitimate son of Vlad II Dracul, who was an illegitimate son of Mircea I of Wallachia. Vlad II had won the moniker “Dracul” for his membership in the Order of the Dragon, a militant fraternity founded by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. The Order of the Dragon was dedicated to halting the Ottoman Empire’s advance into Europe.

Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia

Vlad and his younger brother, Radu, were held as hostages in the Ottoman Empire in 1442 to secure their father’s loyalty. Vlad’s father and eldest brother, Mircea, were murdered after John Hunyadi, regent-governor of Hungary, invaded Wallachia in 1447. Hunyadi installed Vlad’s second cousin, Vladislav II, as the new voivode. Hunyadi launched a military campaign against the Ottomans in the autumn of 1448, and Vladislav accompanied him. Vlad broke into Wallachia with Ottoman support in October, but Vladislav returned and Vlad sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire before the end of the year. Vlad went to Moldavia in 1449 or 1450, and later to Hungary.

The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, ordered Vlad to pay homage to him personally, but Vlad had the Sultan’s two envoys captured and impaled. In February 1462, he attacked Ottoman territory, massacring tens of thousands of Turks and Bulgarians. Mehmed launched a campaign against Wallachia to replace Vlad with Vlad’s younger brother, Radu. Vlad attempted to capture the sultan at Târgoviște during the night of 16–17 June 1462. The sultan and the main Ottoman army left Wallachia, but more and more Wallachians deserted to Radu. Vlad went to Transylvania to seek assistance from Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, in late 1462, but Corvinus had him imprisoned.

Vlad was held in captivity in Visegrád from 1463 to 1475. During this period, anecdotes about his cruelty started to spread in Germany and Italy. He was released at the request of Stephen III of Moldavia in the summer of 1475. He fought in Corvinus’s army against the Ottomans in Bosnia in early 1476. Hungarian and Moldavian troops helped him to force Basarab Laiotă (who had dethroned Vlad’s brother, Radu) to flee from Wallachia in November. Basarab returned with Ottoman support before the end of the year. Vlad was killed in battle before 10 January 1477. Books describing Vlad’s cruel acts were among the first bestsellers in the German-speaking territories. In Russia, popular stories suggested that Vlad was able to strengthen central government only through applying brutal punishments, and a similar view was adopted by most Romanian historians in the 19th century.

Count Dracula portrayed by Bela Lugosi

Vlad’s reputation for cruelty and his patronymic inspired the name of the vampire Count Dracula, for whom, however, he did not serve as the general inspiration, in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.

According to “Dracula: Sense and Nonsense” by Elizabeth Miller, in 1890 Stoker read a book about Wallachia. Although it did not mention Vlad III, Stoker was struck by the word “Dracula.” He wrote in his notes, “in Wallachian language means DEVIL.” It is therefore likely that Stoker chose to name his character Dracula for the word’s devilish associations. 

The theory that Vlad III and Dracula were the same person was developed and popularized by historians Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally in their 1972 book “In Search of Dracula.” Though far from accepted by all historians, the thesis took hold of the public imagination, according to The New York Times. 

In Stoker’s novel, Jonathan Harker is having a conversation with Dracula in Chapter 3, where he refers to his own background, and these speeches show elements which Stoker directly copied from An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: With Various Political Observations Relating to Them by William Wilkinson. Stoker mentions the Voivode of the Dracula race who fought against the Turks after the defeat in the Battle of Kosovo, and was later betrayed by his brother, historical facts which unequivocally point to Vlad III, described as “Voïvode Dracula”.

This indeed encourages the reader to identify the Count with the Voivode Dracula first mentioned by him in Chapter 3, the one betrayed by his brother: Vlad III Dracula, betrayed by his brother Radu the Handsome, who had chosen the side of the Turks. But as noted by the Dutch author Hans Corneel de Roos, in Chapter 25, Van Helsing and Mina drop this rudimentary connection to Vlad III and instead describe the Count’s personal past as that of “that other of his race” who lived “in a later age”. By smoothly exchanging Vlad III for a nameless double, Stoker avoided that his main character could be unambiguously linked to a historical person traceable in any history book.

June 28, 1914. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary.

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1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Czar Nicholas II, Emperor Franz Josef of Austria- Hungary, June 28, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Ottoman Empire, Sarajevo, Sophie Chotek, Wilhelm II of Germany, World War I

98 years ago today came the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary an act which precipitated the first World War. I cannot do justice in this blog to all the complexities that lead to the start of World War I. I don’t view the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the cause of World War I but merely the spark that set off a ticking time bomb.

The roots of the war go back a long way in European history. Throughout the 19th century a weakened Ottoman Empire began losing its European territories. As territories were lost they were gobbled up by the larger European powers which often disregarded the ethnic and nationalistic make up of the population. This happened when Austria-Hungary annexed the Bosnian region which had a large population of Serbian nationals.

What also was a large factor was the alliance system that reached its peak during the 19th century. In order to balance power states sought alliances with one another so one state would not be dominant over others. While in theory this may sound like a good system, or maybe not, it created great tensions between the states and when the spark was set off, the house of cards came tumbling down. With the end of the war the monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, which had existed for over a millennium, were gone.

At the time of the assassination Archduke Franz Ferdinand was heir to the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. He was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria (himself a younger brother to the then reigning emperor, Franz Joseph) and his second wife, Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. After the murder suicide at Mayerling of the heir to the throne, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera in 1889, Archduke Karl Ludwig became heir to his brother’s throne until his death in 1896. From 1896 until his death in 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of his great-uncle.

On July 1, 1900, Franz Ferdinand married Countess Sophie Chotek. Although she was from an aristocratic family and claimed descent from various reigning houses, her family was not a reigning family and therefore she did not meet the requirement for an equal marriage. After many years of tension between Emperor Franz Joseph and Franz Ferdinand the emperor finally capitulated and allowed his heir to enter into a morganatic marriage where his wife had no right to her husbands titles and their children would have no claim to the throne.

Although more liberal than the emperor, Franz Ferdinand envisioned a future empire where all ethnic groups would have greater autonomy under his rule. This benevolence actually did not sit well with many Serbian nationals who did not want autonomy within the empire, they wanted freedom from the empire. Fearing that if Franz Ferdinand’s plans came to pass their desire for independence would fail.

Franz Ferdinand and his wife were in Sarajevo that day representing the emperor at opening of the state museum when Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serb nationalist organization ‘the Black Hand,” assassinated the Archduke and his wife. 

There were several attempts on the Archduke’s life that day. Princip failed at an earlier attempt that day to assassinate the Archduke when the motorcade drove by too fast. Another attempt occurred when a bomb was throne at the Archduke’s car wounding 20 people. Undeterred, the Imperial couple continued on.  After visiting the Town Hall the Archduke’s motorcade took a wrong turn on its way to the next event. When the driver tried to turn the car around, the car stalled and Princip, who had just walked out of a delicatessen for lunch, found himself only a few feet away from the Archduke and his stalled limousine.

Princip fired two shots at a very close range hitting the Archduke in the jugular vein and Sophie in the abdomen. They were both rushed to the Governor’s Residence for medical treatment but both died within a few minutes. The shock was felt deeply throughout Europe and within the month all the major powers of Europe would be at war.

The Archduke’s blood soaked tunic

The 1911 Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was riding at the time of his assassination.