Maximilian I of
Habsburg (
March 22,
1459 –
January 12,
1519) was
Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death. He expanded the influence of the
House of Habsburg through both war and marriage. He is often referred to as "The Last Knight".
Life and reign in the Habsburg hereditary lands
Maximilian was born in
Wiener Neustadt as the son of the Emperor
Frederick III and
Eleanore of Portugal. He married (
1477) the heiress of Burgundy,
Mary, the only daughter of
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Through this marriage, Maximilian obtained the
Burgundian Netherlands and the
Free County of Burgundy, although he lost the Duchy of Burgundy to France upon the death of his wife.
In
1490, he bought
Tyrol and
Further Austria from his cousin
Sigismund, the last member of the
Elder Tyrolean Line of the House of
Habsburg. Upon the death of his father in
1493, he inherited the rest of the Habsburg possessions and thus reunified all Habsburg territories. That same year Maximilian married
Bianca Maria Sforza (d.
1510), the daughter of Duke
Galeazzo Maria Sforza of
Milan as he'd been a widower since the death of his first wife in
1482.
Reign in Burgundy and The Netherlands
Maximilian governed his first wife's vast inheritance in the
Low Countries, and he prosecuted a war over them with
Louis XI, King of France on her behalf
. Upon the Duke of Burgundy's death in 1477, the
Duchy of Burgundy had been claimed by the French crown under
Salic Law. Louis further attempted to expand his control into the
Burgundian Netherlands. Mary, who was only 20 and yet unmarried, refused a proposed marriage to the Dauphin as a way to settle the dispute, and when she married Maximilian less than a year after her father's death, she used his power to try to take back the parts of her father's lands Louis had acquired. Maximilian was successful in the war and in stabilizing the Netherlands, but some of the Netherland provinces were hostile to him, and when Mary died unexpectedly in March 1482, they signed a
treaty with Louis in 1482 which forced Maximilian to give
Franche Comté and
Artois to Louis
. Louis died in 1483 and his successor,
Charles VIII of France, was a minor whose regent,
Anne of France, ended France's bellicosity for a time. Maximilian continued to govern Mary's remaining inheritance in the name of their young son,
Philip the Handsome. After the regency ended, Maximilian and Charles VIII exchanged these two territories for Burgundy and Picardy in the
Treaty of Senlis (1493). Thus ultimately
much of the Netherlands became and remained a Habsburg possession.
Reign in the Holy Roman Empire
Elected
King of the Romans in
1486 at the initiative of his father, he also stood at the head of the
Holy Roman Empire upon his father's death in
1493. The following year, after he married
a daughter of the
Duke of Milan (
16 March 1494), Maximilian sought to expand his power in parts of
Italy. This brought French intervention in
Italy, inaugurating the prolonged
Italian Wars. He joined the
Holy League to counter the French. Maximilian lost, but after his death the Empire ultimately won. Maximilian was also forced to grant independence to
Switzerland, where he'd tried to re-establish the lost Habsburg dominance.
Maximilian is possibly best known for leading the
1495 Reichstag at
Worms which concluded on the
Reichsreform (Imperial Reform), reshaping much of the constitution of the
Holy Roman Empire. In the
1499 Treaty of Basel, Maximilian was forced to acknowledge the
de-facto independence of the
Swiss confederacy from the Empire as a result of the
Battle of Dornach.
In
1508, Maximilian, with the assent of
Pope Julius II, took the title of
Elected Roman Emperor (
Erwählter Römischer Kaiser), and thus ended the century-old custom that the
Holy Roman Emperor had to be crowned by the pope.
Tu felix Austria nube
As part of the Treaty of Arras, Maximilian betrothed his three-year-old daughter
Margaret to the Dauphin (later
Charles VIII), son of his adversary Louis XI. Louis had attempted seven years earlier to arrange a betrothal between the Dauphin and Margaret's mother, Mary. Under the terms of Margaret's betrothal, she was sent to Louis to be brought up under his guardianship. Despite the death of Louis in 1483, shortly after Margaret arrived in France, she remained at the French court. The Dauphin, now
Charles VIII, was still a minor, and his regent until 1491 was his sister,
Anne of France. Anne's first betrothal, to the
Duke of Lorraine, had ended when the Duke broke it off in order to pursue Mary of Burgundy (and died shortly afterwards). Despite Margaret's betrothal and continued presence at the French court, Anne arranged a marriage between Charles and
Anne of Brittany. She, in turn, had been betrothed in 1483, and actually
married by proxy in 1491, to Maximilian himself, but Charles and his sister wanted her inheritance for France. The final result of all of these machinations was that Charles repudiated his betrothal to Margaret when he came of age in 1491, invaded Brittany, forced Anne of Brittany to repudiate her unconsummated marriage to Maximilian, and married her. (They had four children who all died in infancy, and after Charles died, his widow married his cousin and successor,
Louis XII.) Margaret still remained in France until 1493, when she was finally returned to her father. She married twice more.
In 1493, Maximilian contracted another marriage for himself, this time to the daughter of the Duke of Milan, whence ensued the lengthy
Italian Wars with France. Thus Maximilian through his own marriages (and attempted marriage) sought to extend his sphere of influence against that of France. The marriages he arranged for both of his children more successfully fulfilled the same goal, and after the turn of the
Sixteenth Century, his matchmaking focused on his grandchildren, for whom he looked opposite France towards the east.
In order to reduce the growing pressures on the Empire brought about by treaties between the rulers of France,
Poland,
Hungary,
Bohemia, and
Russia, as well as to secure Bohemia and Hungary for the Habsburgs, Maximilian I met with the
Jagiellonian kings
Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia and
Sigismund I of Poland at Vienna in
1515. There they arranged for Maximilian's grand-daughter
Mary to marry
Louis, the son of Ladislaus, and for
Anne (the sister of Louis) to marry Maximilian's grandson
Ferdinand (both grandchildren being the children of
Philip the Handsome, Maximilian's son, and
Juana la Loca of Castile). The marriages arranged there brought Habsburg kingship over Hungary and Bohemia in
1526. Both Anne and Louis were adopted by Maximilian following the death of Ladislaus. These political marriages were summed up in the following
Latin hexameters:
Bella gerant aliī, tū fēlix Austria nūbe/ Nam quae Mars aliīs, dat tibi regna Venus, for example, "Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee."
Death and legacy
Maximilian died in
Wels,
Upper Austria, and was succeeded as Emperor by his grandson
Charles V, his son
Philip the Handsome having died in
1506. Although he's buried in the Castle Chapel at
Wiener Neustadt, a
cenotaph tomb for Maximilian is located in the
Innsbruck Hofkirche
(External Link
).
Maximilian was a keen supporter of the arts and sciences, and he surrounded himself with scholars such as
Joachim Vadian and
Andreas Stoberl (Stiborius), promoting them to important court posts. His reign saw the first flourishing of the
Renaissance in Germany.
Maximilian had appointed his daughter
Margarete of Austria as both Regent of the Netherlands and the guardian and educator of his grandsons Charles and
Ferdinand (their father, Philip, having predeceased Maximilian), and she fulfilled this task well. Through wars and marriages he extended the Habsburg influence in every direction: to the Netherlands, Spain, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and Italy. This influence would last for centuries and shape much of European history.
Ancestors
His Wives
Children
Philip the Handsome (1478–1506) — married to Joanna of Castile
Margaret of Austria, (1480–1533) — married to Crown Prince of Castile and Aragon John, Prince of Asturias, and secondly Philibert II of Savoy
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