Friedrich III.

Friedrich III of the House of Habsburg was born in Innsbruck on 21 September 1415 and died in Linz on 19 August 1493. As Friedrich V, he was Duke of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola from 1424, Duke of Austria from 1439, King of the Romans from 1440, and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1452 until his death. He was the second-to-last German king and Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned by the pope, and the last whose coronation took place in Rome. His reign was the longest of any German king or Holy Roman Emperor. Friedrich was the eldest son of Duke Ernst and Cimburgis of Masovia. His father died when Friedrich was nine years old, and he subsequently lived with his mother in Graz and Wiener Neustadt. After her death in 1429, he and his brother Albrecht VI were placed under the care of their uncle, Friedrich IV of Tyrol. In 1435, Friedrich assumed independent rule in Inner Austria. The brothers soon came into conflict over authority and revenues, but Friedrich, as the elder, secured a position of precedence. In 1436, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, during which numerous nobles joined his retinue. After Friedrich IV’s death in 1439, Friedrich took on important guardianships. He became guardian of his young cousin Sigmund of Tyrol and, above all, of Ladislaus Postumus, the posthumous son of the late King Albrecht II. This responsibility brought him into conflict with his brother and with political forces in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. Many opponents accused him of wanting to retain his ward’s inheritance for himself. On 2 February 1440, the prince-electors unanimously elected Friedrich king of the Romans. As head of the Empire, he faced major challenges: the imperial constitution, judicial system and finances were to be reformed; Ottoman expansion had to be resisted; and the Church’s schism had to be resolved. Friedrich first had to consolidate his rule in the Habsburg lands, however. He was not crowned king at Aachen until 1442. In Hungary and Bohemia, a struggle developed over the succession of the late Albrecht II. Friedrich insisted on retaining guardianship of Ladislaus, refused to surrender him, and consequently came into conflict with the Hungarian and Bohemian estates as well as with his brother. In 1450, it was agreed that Ladislaus would remain with Friedrich until reaching the age of eighteen. After Ladislaus’s unexpected death in 1457, hopes for a Habsburg succession initially collapsed. Matthias Hunyadi, known as Corvinus, prevailed in Hungary, while George of Poděbrady became king of Bohemia. In the Treaty of Ödenburg in 1463, Friedrich recognized Matthias, but obtained the right of succession should Matthias die without children and was allowed to continue using the title of King of Hungary. For much of his reign, Friedrich was focused on his Inner Austrian hereditary lands. Apart from two journeys to Italy, he scarcely left them between 1444 and 1471. This later led to his reputation as an absent and inactive ruler. In practice, he often governed through charters, mandates and appointed representatives. The center of his rule shifted from Bohemia to Austria, particularly to Wiener Neustadt, whose expansion he supported. He also had the Neukloster built there. From 1437 onward, he used the motto A.E.I.O.U. on his possessions, while allowing various interpretations of its precise meaning. In 1444, Friedrich brought French mercenaries, the Armagnacs, to the Upper Rhine to fight the Swiss Confederates. The campaign caused severe devastation and damaged his reputation. His restraint in confronting the Ottomans was also criticized. Despite repeated imperial diets, no common action was agreed for a long time because the emperor, electors and princes were unable to reach consensus. Friedrich’s policy was also shaped by conflict between papal authority and the conciliar model of church governance. In 1448, he concluded the Vienna Concordat with Pope Nicholas V, regulating relations between the imperial church and the papacy until the end of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1452, Friedrich traveled to Italy. In Rome, Pope Nicholas V crowned him emperor on 19 March. At the same time, he married Eleonore of Portugal, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Portuguese king. They had six children, but only Maximilian and Kunigunde survived to adulthood. Their marriage ended with Eleonore’s death in 1467; Friedrich did not marry again. Friedrich and his brother Albrecht VI fought over the inheritance of the Albertinian Habsburgs. The dispute escalated into war in 1461 and led, in 1462, to Friedrich and his family being besieged in the Vienna Hofburg. Albrecht’s death in 1463 finally ended the conflict. Friedrich was then able to take over almost all Habsburg possessions; only Tyrol and the Vorlande initially remained with Sigmund. In 1467, Friedrich issued a public peace decree banning feuds, although its effectiveness remained limited. From the 1470s onward, Friedrich again became more active in imperial affairs. In 1471, after 27 years, he attended an imperial diet outside his hereditary lands for the first time, the Regensburg Christian Assembly. A tax to finance the struggle against the Ottomans was approved there. His renewed activity coincided with a profound transformation of the Empire: administration, communication and written documentation expanded, and relations between the emperor and the imperial estates grew closer. The connection with Burgundy became especially important. In 1475, Friedrich forced Duke Charles the Bold to abandon the siege of Neuss. After Charles’s death in 1477, Friedrich’s son Maximilian married Charles’s daughter, Mary of Burgundy. The Habsburgs thereby acquired a rich and politically significant inheritance, laying the foundation for the later rise of the dynasty. After Mary’s death in 1482, Maximilian had to defend the inheritance against French claims and revolts in the Netherlands. The Treaty of Senlis in 1493 ultimately secured most of the Burgundian possessions for the Habsburgs. Friedrich also remained threatened in the east. Matthias Corvinus captured Vienna in 1485 and Wiener Neustadt in 1487. Only after his death in 1490 could the Habsburgs recover the occupied territories. In the same year, Sigmund of Tyrol renounced his rule in favor of Maximilian. Maximilian had already been elected King of the Romans during Friedrich’s lifetime in 1486 and crowned at Aachen. This secured the dynastic succession and laid the foundation for the Habsburgs’ further expansion of power. In his final years, Friedrich lived mainly in Vienna and Linz. In 1493, a serious illness required the amputation of his left leg. He died in Linz on 19 August of that year. His entrails were buried there, while his body was interred in Vienna Cathedral in December. His tomb, commissioned during his lifetime, is regarded as an important work of medieval ruler imagery. For a long time, Friedrich was portrayed as a passive and detached ruler. Older scholarship established the image of the “Arch-Sleeping Cap” of the Holy Roman Empire. The discovery and publication of numerous previously unknown documents, however, led to a reassessment. Recent research presents Friedrich as a cautious, adaptable and politically persistent ruler whose dynastic interests often took precedence over the concerns of the Empire. Despite severe crises, he maintained his position, reunited important Habsburg territories and prepared the dynastic rise that continued under his son Maximilian I.