Rudolph I of Germany - King of Germany

King of Germany

Rudolph was crowned in Aachen Cathedral on 24 October 1273. To win the approbation of the Pope, Rudolph renounced all imperial rights in Rome, the papal territory, and Sicily, and promised to lead a new crusade. Pope Gregory X, in spite of Ottokar II of Bohemia's protests, not only recognised Rudolph himself, but persuaded King Alfonso X of Castile (another grandson of Philip of Swabia), who had been chosen German (anti-)king in 1257 as the successor to Count William II of Holland, to do the same. Thus, Rudolph surpassed the two heirs of the Hohenstaufen dynasty that he had earlier served so loyally.

In November 1274 it was decided by the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg that all crown estates seized since the death of the Emperor Frederick II must be restored, and that King Ottokar II must answer to the Diet for not recognising the new king. Ottokar refused to appear or to restore the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia with the March of Carniola, which he had claimed through his first wife, a Babenberg heiress, and which he had seized while disputing them with another Babenberg heir, Margrave Hermann VI of Baden. Rudolph refuted Ottokar's succession to the Babenberg patrimony, declaring that the provinces reverted to the Imperial crown due to the lack of male-line heirs (a position that however conflicted with the provisions of the Austrian Privilegium Minus). King Ottokar was placed under the imperial ban; and in June 1276 war was declared against him.

Having persuaded Ottokar's former ally Duke Henry XIII of Lower Bavaria to switch sides, Rudolph compelled the Bohemian king to cede the four provinces to the control of the royal administration in November 1276. Rudolph then re-invested Ottokar with the Kingdom of Bohemia, betrothed one of his daughters to Ottokar's son Wenceslaus II, and made a triumphal entry into Vienna. Ottokar, however, raised questions about the execution of the treaty, made an alliance with some Piast chiefs of Poland, and procured the support of several German princes, again including Henry XIII of Lower Bavaria. To meet this coalition, Rudolph formed an alliance with King Ladislaus IV of Hungary and gave additional privileges to the Vienna citizens. On 26 August 1278, the rival armies met at the Battle on the Marchfeld, where Ottokar was defeated and killed. The March of Moravia was subdued and its government entrusted to Rudolph's representatives, leaving Ottokar's widow Kunigunda of Slavonia, in control of only the province surrounding Prague, while the young Wenceslaus II was again betrothed to Rudolph's youngest daughter Judith.

Rudolph's attention next turned to the possessions in Austria and the adjacent provinces, which were taken into the royal domain. He spent several years establishing his authority there but found some difficulty in establishing his family as successors to the rule of those provinces. At length the hostility of the princes was overcome. In December 1282, in Augsburg, Rudolph invested his sons, Albert and Rudolph II, with the duchies of Austria and Styria and so laid the foundation of the House of Habsburg. Additionally, he made the twelve-year-old Rudolph Duke of Swabia, a merely titular dignity, as the duchy had been without an actual ruler since Conradin's execution. The 27-year-old Duke Albert (married since 1274 to a daughter of Count Meinhard II of Gorizia-Tyrol (1238–95)) was capable enough to hold some sway in the new patrimony.

In 1286 King Rudolph fully invested the Duchy of Carinthia, one of the provinces conquered from Ottokar, to Albert's father-in-law Count Meinhard. The Princes of the Empire did not allow Rudolph to give everything that was recovered to the royal domain to his own sons, and his allies needed their rewards too. Turning to the west, in 1281 he compelled Count Philip I of Savoy to cede some territory to him, then forced the citizens of Bern to pay the tribute that they had been refusing, and in 1289 marched against Count Philip's successor, Otto IV, compelling him to do homage.

In 1281 his first wife died. On 5 February 1284, he married Isabella, daughter of Duke Hugh IV of Burgundy, the Empire's western neighbor in the Kingdom of France.

Rudolph was not very successful in restoring internal peace. Orders were indeed issued for the establishment of landpeaces in Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia, and afterwards for the whole Empire. But the king lacked the power, resources, or determination, to enforce them, although in December 1289 he led an expedition into Thuringia where he destroyed a number of robber-castles.

In 1291, he attempted to secure the election of his son Albert as German king. However, the electors refused claiming inability to support two kings, but in reality, perhaps, leery of the increasing power of the House of Habsburg. Upon Rudolph's death they elected Count Adolf of Nassau.