Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519), belonged to the imperial House of Habsburg, and the imperial electors made him King of the Romans in 1486 during his father's lifetime, thus establishing him as his successor. He jointly ruled with his father until the latter's death in 1493, then steadily gained power until he was appointed Holy Roman Emperor in 1508. A unique emperor, Maximilian was quite clever about how he managed diplomacy and war with other European rulers of the time. He is particularly known for his strategic expansion of the House of Habsburg through important dynastic marriages and inspired the famous maxim, "Let others wage war; you, O happy Austria, marry."
Through marriage and warfare, Maximilian gained control of the coastal regions of Europe known as the Low Countries in the 16th century. He also made successful Spanish alliances that would set up his heirs for inheritance of the Spanish regions. Thus, through luck, marriage, and warfare, Maximilian is famous for having transformed the Habsburgs from a middle-rank dynasty into a formidable power in Europe, with a large chunk of territory.
Early Life & Marriages
Born in 1459 to Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and his wife Eleanor of Portugal, Maximilian faced some perilous periods in his infancy. Albert of Austria besieged his parents in Vienna, and Maximilian experienced neglect and starvation during this time. From a young age, he was more fond of chivalric sports, wine, feasts, and women than intellectual pursuits. Already in 1476, at the age of 17, Maximilian headed a military campaign against Hungary, establishing himself as a military commander.
From the 1470s, Maximilian's father, Frederick, was in contact with the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, because they needed each other politically. After much discussion, warfare, and negotiations, the two agreed to an alliance between their respective royal houses. In 1477, Maximilian married Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of Charles, thus cementing the alliance. Despite Maximilian's sexual indiscretions, the marriage was a happy one and produced three children: his primary successor, Philip the Handsome (aka Philip I of Castile), in 1478; a daughter, Margaret of Austria, in 1480; and Francis of Austria, who died at birth in 1481.
Mary died in a riding accident in 1482, and Maximilian would marry twice more, although his other marriages produced no offspring. His second marriage, in 1490, was to Anne, the daughter of the Duke of Britanny, but it remained unconsummated and lasted only until 1492, when it was dissolved so that she could marry Charles VIII of France (reign 1483-1498) instead. Maximilian married a third time in 1494 to the eldest daughter of the Duke of Milan, Bianca Maria Sforza. The marriage was an unhappy one, and Bianca died in 1510. In addition to these marriages, Maximilian also had several affairs that led to the fathering of many illegitimate children. The exact numbers of affairs and illegitimate children are a matter of debate.
Maximilian's first father-in-law, Charles, possessed Burgundy, Charolais, Luxembourg, the Low Countries (present-day Belgium and the Netherlands), and a territory in France. Charles died in battle in 1475 without a male heir, and through his marriage to Mary, Maximilian inherited Charles's lands. Furthermore, Maximilian's father, Frederick III, also took possession of Upper Austria, Tyrol, and Lower Austria from his various relatives. All these possessions passed to Maximilian upon his father's death in 1493.
Reign through Personality
By the time of his death in 1493, Frederick had established a strong imperial line in the House of Habsburg. Unlike his father, Maximilian did not stay at any one place for more than a few weeks. However, like his father, he travelled only through regions that were traditionally close to the ruler, such as Swabia, Franconia, the Rhineland, and the Low Countries. One can argue that, since his sovereign journeys never included large chunks of the Holy Roman Empire with such places as Saxony, Brunswick, Brandenburg, and the southern Baltic principalities, the Habsburg territory did not develop into a unified nation-state like France and Spain.
Maximilian relied on his personality and presence for effective rulership throughout his reign, first since 1486 as King of the Romans, then after 1508 as Holy Roman Emperor. His face, depicted on several thousand portraits, was the best-known in Europe. He commissioned well-known artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Albrecht Altdorfer to create his image and portray achievements in dramatic and grandiose light. He also commissioned poems in his honour. The Renaissance scholar poet Conrad Celtis penned panegyrics that praised Maximilian as a great hunter and warrior, comparing him to classical heroes. Nearly 40 other poets also wrote many verses celebrating his rule. Maximilian saw to it that these poems were printed and protected with an early version of copyright. Celtis's edition of Tacitus's Germania, which contained several passages about Maximilian's glories, was widely reproduced and further embellished and spread the emperor's reputation.
Maximilian also oversaw the composition of three autobiographies Theuerdank, Freydal, and Weisskunig, that glorified him as the most chivalric, noble, and accomplished knight. Theuerdank (Noble Thought) recites a tale of a hero undertaking a perilous journey abroad to marry his wife and then, after winning his wife's hand, setting off on a crusade. Freydal (Fair and Courteous) recounts Maximilian's jousting with 200 combatants in front of admiring audiences and celebrated with masked balls. The Weisskunig (White King) describes Maximilian's upbringing and his many military campaigns. The story paints the White King as an assiduous student, a king desirous of peace but constantly forced into war by the Blue King (of France), Green King (of Hungary), the Black King (Aragon), the Red and White King (of England), and so on.
Accompanied by elaborate woodcuts, illustrations, and motifs, these autobiographies connected Maximilian's accomplishments to ancient Greek and Roman heroes and depicted Maximilian's imagined dominion over unlimited geography, including the New World and southern India, although these places were far from his grasp. The woodcuts known as The Triumphal Arch, The Triumphal Procession, and Triumphal Carriage are particularly grandiose in depicting imaginary scenes of Maximilian's triumphs. In reality, Maximilian's wedding travel constituted copious feasting and grand receptions. And contrary to his depictions of being an assiduous student, Maximilian was a very poor student. Further, the "fearsome" armies he battles are often just mercenaries.
Domestic Policy
Throughout his reign, two main factors occupied his domestic policy. First, Maximilian's fantastical visions met hard reality when he could not muster enough income to forward his ambitions. Maximilian undertook 17 military campaigns during his reign. To fund them, he tapped into the resources of the Holy Roman Empire. He forever embraced initiatives that either proved impossible or fizzled out. Compared to the king of France, who could count on a revenue of several million ducats annually, Maximilian could gather from his possessions only around 600,000 ducats. The Low Countries resisted his demands for taxes, and the Holy Roman Empire on the whole contributed to just 20,000 ducats annually.
To repair these financial problems, he divided the administration into three separate branches, that is, government, treasury, and chancellery, and this administrative division would persist as an institutional structural framework until the 18th century. His attempts at money extraction also led him to consent to the establishment of a central court of justice known as the Imperial Chamber Court, the positions of which were mostly populated by the princes and nobles of the Empire. Maximilian also established his own separate court in Vienna, and the two courts often behaved as rival judicial structures. Furthermore, Maximilian and the princes and nobles effectively blocked one another at various steps, and so the Holy Roman Empire never established a powerful government at the centre and remained a policing institution to curb violent excesses. Thus, Maximilian mostly failed to make the Empire pay for his wars.
The other matter of domestic policy Maximilian had to solve concerned his authority in the Low Countries. After his first wife's death in 1482, several cities and the province of Flanders rebelled against Maximilian, arguing that he had no authority to rule there upon his wife's death. In 1488, the people of Ghent had seized Maximilian and held him captive for several months until his father suppressed the revolt and secured his release with an army. Some years later, another popular uprising in the Netherlands that rose against Maximilian's taxation was suppressed by German mercenaries. To maintain control over the Low Countries, Maximilian handed over power to his son Philip I in 1494. Being Mary's descendant, Philip was a more acceptable ruler for the people in the region. When Philip died in 1506, Maximilian again assumed regency on behalf of his infant grandson, the future Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. But again, he had to transfer the regency to his daughter Margaret so that it would not stir up opposition.
Religion
A devout Catholic, Maximilian regularly announced going on a crusade. His father had established a chivalric order known as the Knights of Saint George in 1469, and shortly after coming to power in 1493, Maximilian established an affiliated body called the Brotherhood of Saint George. He commissioned an exclusive prayer book for the knights in this order and used this brotherhood to rally a campaign against the Ottoman forces to recapture Jerusalem. He never went on that crusade.
Maximilian also sought to reform papal institutions and supported (along with the French King) the Council of Pisa convened between 1511 and 1512 by a small group of bishops and cardinals who sought to depose the Pope and bring about reforms in church governance. In fact, at one point in 1511, Maximilian even thought of becoming pope himself, embracing a life of celibacy, and uniting the papal and imperial offices under himself. Nothing came of these plans, and Maximilian eventually withdrew his support for the Council of Pisa.
His treatment of the Jewish and Romani people was very inconsistent. Early in his reign, he expelled all Jewish people from Styria in 1495 but offered them refuge in Lower Austria. He banned Jewish writings and texts in 1509 and almost immediately revoked the decree. In 1510, he became interested in Jewish texts after the humanist scholar Johann Reuchlin defended the Talmud. In the same year, he centralized taxation of the Jewish population so that he could extract steady revenues from them rather than practising local expulsions.
Historians also note his treatment of the Romani people. In 1500, he ordered all Romani people to leave Germany based on accusations of vagrancy and carrying diseases. This event would set the precedent for later expulsions of Romani people in various regions of Europe.
Marriage Policy
What Maximilian was most successful at was his marriage policy. He was responsible for the establishment of three key marriage alliances. The first alliance was his own when he was a prince, which took place between himself and Mary of Burgundy; it would bring the Low Countries into the Habsburg lineage. The second marriage was concluded after he became king. In 1496 and 1497, he wed his son Philip to Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, and his daughter Margaret to their son, John. The latter couple did not have any children, while the former couple produced six, the eldest of whom, Charles, would inherit Maximilian's titles as well as the Spanish kingdom. The third alliance was forged in 1515 when Maximilian betrothed his grandchildren Mary and Ferdinand to Louis II of Hungary and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, the son and daughter of the King of Hungary and Bohemia, Vladislaus II. The couples formally married in 1521-1522.
Through these marriages, Maximilian secured for the Habsburg lineage the kingdoms of Spain, Hungary, and Bohemia. These diplomatic alliances were a gamble because the Habsburg possessions could have easily gone to Spain and Hungary, respectively. But Maximilian's gamble paid off as luck favoured him in this regard. Actually, Maximilian had concluded numerous other marriage alliances during his lifetime, but they were less successful. The reason that all these countries found the Habsburgs to be a desirable partner was the central location of the Holy Roman Empire and the expanding geopolitical reach of the empire.
Foreign Policy
In 1494, the French king, Charles VIII, invaded and captured the kingdom of Naples in Italy. The Italian peninsula was comprised of a series of city-states, including the Papal States, the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, and the Kingdom of Naples, which had all entered an agreement known as the Italic League that enabled them to maintain a balance of power in the region. By 1492, due to the death of key members and supporters of the League, the agreement declined, leaving the Italian states vulnerable to attack, and Charles took advantage of the situation to forward his political interests in the region.
By 1495, a coalition comprised of Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), Venice, Milan, Maximilian, and Ferdinand II of Aragon called the Holy League formed quickly to expel Charles VIII from Italy. The League was successful, but Charles' adventure had revealed that the Italian city-states were now vulnerable to further such attacks. In 1498, at the behest of the Duke of Milan, Maximilian invaded Italy to crush Florence, which favoured an alliance with France, and drive away any French influence in the region. A series of such wars known as the Italian Wars continued until 1559, and during this period, Italy was plagued with internal as well as external rivalries, and alliances changed frequently.
In 1500, the new French king Louis XII (1498-1515) conquered Milan, and Maximilian lost a major supporter in Italy. In fact, Venetian and French forces prevented Maximilian from crossing the Alps and going to Rome for his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. As a result, Maximilian proclaimed himself Emperor-elect, which Pope Julius II (1443-1513) accepted in 1508, thus setting a legal precedent for future Habsburg rulers to rule without needing a papal ceremony in Rome.
By 1508, Venice began aggressively expanding its control over the Italian mainland, much to the concern of Julius II. In December 1508, Maximilian entered a military alliance with Pope Julius II, Louis XII, and Ferdinand II of Aragon, forming the League of Cambrai to curb the influence of Venice. Along with the French king, Maximilian then invaded Venice, seeking the partition of Venice to gain the territories of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, and Friuli. By 1509, France defeated Venice, but Julius's mistrust of France caused the League to collapse by 1510. In this context, Maximilian switched to supporting Venice, aligned with Julius, and turned against France, completely shifting the dynamics of the war by 1511. All these wars and diplomatic manoeuvring led nowhere for Maximilian in gaining any territory. Northern Italy was effectively divided between France and Spain. Maximilian eventually signed a peace treaty known as the Treaty of Brussels with Francis I of France (reign 1515-1547) in 1516, thus ending his military adventures in Italy.
Last Days
In 1519, Maximilian died of an uncertain cause. Physicians in attendance have listed many ailments that afflicted him, ranging from jaundice to pleurisy to cancer. He was buried at Saint George's Chapel in Wiener Neustadt. His casket was opened during a renovation under Empress Maria Theresa (reign 1740-1780), and the body was reinterred in the baroque style. The sarcophagus was found in the ruins of the chapel in 1946 after the Second World War (1939-45).
Maximilian's grandson Charles succeeded him as the ruler of the Habsburg lands and was elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (reign 1519-1556). Maximilian was an extravagant ruler with a fantastical imagination whose marital diplomacy was the most successful aspect of his reign. It is therefore important to remember him not only as a ruler who failed to ground his ambitions in reality but also as one who set the stage for the Habsburg dynasty to emerge as one of the most royal lineages in Europe in the succeeding generations.
