Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

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Maximilian I of Habsburg (March 22, 1459 – January 12, 1519) was Holy Roman Emperor. He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through both war and marriage.^[1] He is often referred to as "The Last Knight".

Contents 1 Life and reign in the Habsburg hereditary lands 2 Reign in Burgundy and The Netherlands 3 Reign in the Holy Roman Empire 4 Tu felix Austria nube 5 Death and legacy 6 Marriages 7 Children 8 References

[edit] 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 had been a widower since the death of his first wife in 1482.

[edit] 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^[1]. 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^[1]. 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.

[edit] 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^[1]. This brought French intervention in Italy, inaugurating the prolonged Italian Wars^[1]. 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^[1], where he had 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.

[edit] 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, i.e., "Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee."

[edit] 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 is buried in the Castle Chapel at Wiener Neustadt, a cenotaph tomb for Maximilian is located in the Innsbruck Hofkirche[1].

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.

Charles built on his grandfather's successes and enlarged the Empire. He united the Habsburg Netherlands which Maximilian had ruled for his wife and son Philip.

[edit] Marriages

• Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482) — married in Ghent on August 18, 1477
• Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510) — married 1493

[edit] 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

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} World Book Encyclopedia, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, 1976.

House of Habsburg Born: 22 March 1459 Died: 12 January 1519
Preceded by Frederick III	King of Germany 1486–1519	Succeeded by Charles V
	King of the Romans 1486–1508
	Holy Roman Emperor-Elect 1508–1519
	Archduke of Inner Austria, Duke of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola 1493–1519
Preceded by Sigismund	Archduke of Further Austria, Archduke of Upper Austria, Count of the Tyrol 1490–1519
Preceded by Margaret of York	Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Limburg, Lothier and Luxembourg, Count of Artois, Burgundy, Flanders, Hainaut, Holland, Namur, Zeeland and Zutphen by marriage with Mary of Burgundy 1477–1482	Succeeded by Joanna of Castile
	Duke of Guelders 1477–1482	Succeeded by Elisabeth of Brunswick