Sigismund, Archduke of Austria
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- This page is about Sigismund of Austria who lived during the 15th century. There was also a 17th-century Archduke known as Archduke Sigismund Francis of Austria.
Sigismund of Austria, Duke, then Archduke of Further Austria (Innsbruck, October 26, 1427 – March 4, 1496) was a Habsburg archduke of Austria and ruler of Tirol from 1446 to 1490.
Sigismund (or Siegmund, sometimes also spelled Sigmund) was born in Innsbruck; his parents were Frederick IV, Duke of Austria and Anna of Brunswick. He was a first cousin of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor.
In 1446, upon the death of his father, he acceded to rulership over Tirol and (other) Further Austria Vorderösterreich, which included the Sundgau in the Alsace, the Breisgau, and some possessions in Swabia. In 1449, he married Eleanor Stuart, the daughter of James I, king of Scotland.
In 1469, he sold his lands on the Rhine and in the Alsace to Charles, Duke of Burgundy. Sources are unclear whether he sold them due to his debts he had accumulated owing to his luxury lifestyle or just "rented" them because he wanted to have them protected better against the expansion of the Old Swiss Confederacy. In any case, he bought back these possessions in 1474, and together with the Swiss (with whom he had concluded a peace treaty in Konstanz) and the Alsatian cities, he sided against Charles in the Battle of Héricourt.
In 1477, Frederick III made him archduke. Three years later, Eleanor died, and 1484, Sigismund married the 16-year-old Katharina of Saxony, daughter of Albert, Duke of Saxony. He had no offspring from either marriage.
In the later years of the 1470s and early 1480s Sigismund issued a decree that instituted a radical coinage reformation that eventually led up to the creation of the world's first really large and heavy silver coin in nearly a millennium, the guldengroschen, which the Habsburgs in Bohemia developed later into the thaler. This coin was the ancestor of many the major European coin denominations to come later. Using new mining methods and technology, the largely quiescent silver mines in Tirol were brought back into production and soon numerous surrounding states were re-opening old mines and minting similar coins. This production of large coinage exploded as silver from the Spain's colonies in the Americas flooded the European economy.
A war with Venice, which he began in 1487, ended in a standoff, but in 1490 the opposition of the population of Tirol forced him to hand over the rulership to Archduke Maximilian I, who later became Holy Roman Emperor.
| Preceded by: Duke Frederick IV |
Duke of Further Austria | Succeeded by: Archduke Maximilian I |
