Maximilian I E-Book

Robert Seton-Watson

• Herausgeber: Jovian Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 167

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

There is a peculiar difficulty in bridging over long periods of history, and in clearing our minds of the habits and prejudices of today, before we criticize characters and events which belong to distant periods and other lands. This difficulty, in spite of the strange charm which encourages us to surmount it, makes itself all the more felt in a Transition Period, such as the close of the fifteenth, and the dawn of the sixteenth century...

Leseprobe

MAXIMILIAN I

..................

Robert Seton-Watson

JOVIAN PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Robert Seton-Watson

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

APPENDIX

I

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THERE IS A PECULIAR DIFFICULTY in bridging over long periods of history, and in clearing our minds of the habits and prejudices of today, before we criticize characters and events which belong to distant periods and other lands. This difficulty, in spite of the strange charm which encourages us to surmount it, makes itself all the more felt in a Transition Period, such as the close of the fifteenth, and the dawn of the sixteenth century. The breath of new ideas is in the air.

“The old order changed, yielding place to new”, but the old dreams are not yet banished from the imagination, and the old ideals have not yet wholly lost their power. Change is everywhere apparent, consummation is still a dream of the far-distant future. To those who look for a figure typical of the age, Maximilian stands forth pre-eminent. Heir to all the splendid traditions of the Caesars and the later glories of the Saxon and Franconian Emperors, he filled the highest position of Germany, not in an attitude of indifference or aloofness, but devoting all his energies and sympathies to every movement or aspiration of his time. His actual achievements in the hard concrete of facts are, from a national point of view, but small; but these are more than balanced by his activity in other and more abstract directions. It is in his relations to the budding thought of modern life that we can feel the real charm and fascination of Maximilian’s character. For his was a nature which could never rest satisfied with the past, and aspired to ends which only the far distant future was destined to attain.

Maximilian cannot fairly be judged solely from an historical standpoint; from this a judgment in the main unfavorable would be difficult to avoid. For his task was to bridge over a necessary period of transition—to check the perils of innovation, to employ political expedients which could not, from their very nature, stand the shock of later developments, and to make shift with materials and resources which were soon to be altered or replaced. Hence his achievements, though of very real value to his own age, have left but few traces visible to modern eyes. The Southern temperament which he inherited from his mother often drove him into foolhardy adventures, from which he only extricated himself with a loss of dignity. But the questionable results of his headlong enthusiasms are atoned for by the noble ideals which prompted them; and the very traits which were disastrous to his political career have earned for him his truest claims to greatness.

To tell the life-story of an idealist seems to be repugnant to the most modern of historical methods. Hard dry facts must be summoned to describe his career; an array of political exploits and the wearisome details of fruitless legal reforms must be poured forth in profitless and unending monotony. The soul and its impulses, human or divine, seem no monger to be admitted to the chamber of the historian, whose dull and regulated pulse scorns to beat faster at the tragedy of human lives. But if there is one case in which a true account must not be limited to mere facts, it is that of Maximilian. The specious system of accumulating details, coldly balancing them, and leaving the reader to judge, would be utterly unfair in his case. As well attempt to do justice to Luther, while omitting the agonies and self-reproach of his cloister life, the deep formative influence of those silent months upon the Wartburg, as estimate Maximilian, the dreamer and idealist, by the necessities of his purse or the extravagance of his vast designs! His personality and his office do not by any means coincide. There are many features of his character which have no connection with the government of his lands, which the historians of his own day overlooked, and which would still be overlooked from a strictly political and historical point of view. But while our admiration is aroused by his active share in the great living movements of the age, it must be confessed that his versatility and breadth of interest have an unfortunate counterpart in the fickleness and lack of concentration which led him to flit from scheme to scheme, without ever allowing any single one to attain to maturity. Such inconstancy in a sovereign is usually negatived, or at least held in bounds, by the apparatus of government. But in this case all centred in Maximilian himself, and not even the influential Matthew Lang was entirely trusted in high affairs of state. As a rule, Maximilian could not endure to have men of masterly or original character about him, mainly owing to the passionate conviction with which he clung to his own opinions, and partly perhaps to a half-conscious fear of unfavorable comparisons. We are thus driven to the conclusion that his policy is mainly his own work, and that, though inspired by lofty patriotism and definite family and territorial ambitions, he never succeeded in combining the two motives, and finally left the problem unsolved and insoluble. But this conviction should only serve to remind us that his greatest achievements lie outside the province of politics. Indeed, regarded as a whole, his life is not so much a great historical drama, as an epic poem of chivalry, rich in bright colors and romantic episodes, and crowded with the swift turns and surprises of fortune.

II

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TO DESCRIBE THE EVENTS OF Maximilian’s political career with any sort of detail would be to narrate the history of Europe during one of its most fascinating and complicated phases. To an essay such as the present such a scheme must be entirely alien; and for its purposes Maximilian’s life may be broadly divided into two periods. In the first, which ends with 1490, his ambitions are directed towards the West; and Burgundy, the Netherlands, and the French frontier claim his whole attention. But in the midst of his designs against France, new developments at home summon him away. The acquisition of Tyrol and the recovery of Austria shift the centre of gravity from West to East, and his accession to the Empire finally compels him to take up new threads of policy, which point him to the East and the South rather than to the West. In this later period, which is more purely political, and in which the character of Maximilian is perhaps less marked, the main trend of his policy is towards the re-establishment of Imperial influence in Italy, and combinations either against the French or the Turks. In each case he is doomed to disappointment; and the misfortunes that arise from his continual lack of money and resources form a story at once irritating and pathetic.

While engaged in certain operations against the County of Cilly, 1452, the Emperor Frederick III narrowly escaped capture by the enemy. He ascribed his safety to a dream, in which St. Maximilian warned him of his danger; and thus when his wife presented him with a son, the infant received the name of his father’s saintly patron.

Maximilian was born at Neustadt near Vienna on May 22, 1459. His mother, Eleanor of Portugal, whose marriage to Frederick III has been immortalized by theabrush of Pinturicchio, was a princess of lively wit and considerable talent: and many points of his character are to be traced to the Southern temperament of Eleanor, rather than to the phlegmatic and ineffectual nature of Frederick.

His early years were times of stress and trouble; and, while still an infant, he shared the dangers of his parents, who were closely besieged in the citadel of Vienna by Albert of Austria and the insurgent citizens. To such straits was the slender garrison reduced, that the young prince is said to have wandered through the castle vaults, tearfully begging the servants for a piece of bread. In spite of a vigorous defense, Frederick must have yielded to superior force, but for the timely assistance of his allies, the Bohemians, through whose influence peace was restored between the rival brothers. The death of Albert in 1463 left Frederick supreme in Austria and its dependencies. But his past experiences had inspired him with a very natural prejudice against the citizens of Vienna; and they, on their part, were never slow to reveal the dislike and contempt in which they held their Imperial master. This mutual ill-feeling largely accounts for the ease with which Matthias effected the conquest of Austria. Frederick, at first from choice, later from necessity, chose Linz or Graz as his Austrian residences, and never overcame his distrust of the Viennese.

Thus it was that Maximilian’s childhood was spent at Wiener Neustadt, thirteen miles S.E. from Vienna. His education was entrusted to Peter Engelbrecht, afterwards Bishop of Wiener Neustadt; and we learn that up to the age of six he found great difficulty in articulating. This may have thrown him back somewhat; and, indeed, he himself complained in later days of his bad education. “If Peter, my teacher, still lived” he declared, “I would make him live near me, in order to teach him how to bring up children”. But Maximilian’s strictures are probably undeserved, and may be due to the fact that his tutor restrained him from the study of history, which he loved, and held him down to Latin and dialectics, even enforcing them upon his unwilling pupil by rudely practical methods. Certainly, if we may judge by the accounts furnished in Weisskunig, which seems the most reliable of the books compiled under Maximilian’s supervision, there were but few pursuits, physical or mental, in which the young Prince had not his share. Not merely was he instructed in the art of war, and in the technical details of various trades, such as carpentry and founding, but also in the prevailing theories of statesmanship and government. These are quaintly divided by the young White King under five heads—the all-mightiness of God, the influence of the planets on Man’s destiny, the reason of Man, excessive mildness in administration, and excessive severity in power; and his discourse on the subject wins the complete approval of his father and the wonder of his biographer. Everything which Maximilian does approaches perfection; if he fishes, he catches more than other men; he cures horses of which all the horse-doctors have despaired; he has few equals as blacksmith or locksmith. But though all this is clearly exaggeration, it yet affords a clue to the accomplishments to which Maximilian was brought up, and to the many sidedness of his early training. There is no doubt as to his proficiency as a linguist; he could speak Latin, French, Italian and Flemish fluently, and had some knowledge of Spanish, Walloon, and English besides. His thirst for knowledge was almost unquenchable, and increased with his years—history, mathematics, languages, all receiving attention from the Royal student. But his literary tastes, even in later life, never superseded his love of manly exercises; and it was no doubt in his early years that he first acquired that passion for the chase which never deserted him. His marvellous adventures in pursuit of the chamois or the bear are still remembered in the Tyrolese Alps.

He possessed the most dauntless courage, and is said to have been one of the finest swordsmen in Europe. He had few equals at the tourney; and one of the most romantic incidents of his life was the single combat at Worms, when, entering the lists in the simplest of armour, he overcame a famous French knight, and then, raising his vizor, revealed his identity amid the deafening plaudits of the crowd. Nor were his exploits confined to chivalrous amusements : time and again he proved his courage on the field of battle; notably at Guinegate, where “he raged like a lion in the fight”, and later, with characteristic generosity, devoted himself to dressing the wounds of the vanquished. Gallant, chivalrous and versatile, full of high ideals and noble enthusiasms, he was formed by nature to be the darling of his age and nation.

Such general characteristics must suffice for a description of Maximilian’s early life, of which we possess but few details or facts, until the Burgundian marriage brought him into the full blaze of the political arena. This famous event, whose results are still to be traced in the political conditions of Europe, was the first step of the House of Hapsburg towards the “Weltmacht” of Charles V.

To Frederick III belongs the credit of this achievement. During his long reign of fifty-three years the Imperial crown lost much of its remaining prestige and influence; and it is undoubtedly true that Frederick used his Imperial office for purposes of Hapsburg aggrandizement. But he can hardly be blamed for adopting a policy to which there was no alternative. Chosen mainly for his impotence, he had literally no hold upon the Empire itself, beyond the largely nominal prerogatives of his office; and he had good precedent for his scheme of attaining to real Imperial power by building up a compact territorial state. Something must be allowed to a prince who, with such slight resources as Frederick III, could aspire to the proud motto, “Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich Unterthan”, and who, after years of disaster and disappointment, succeeded in laying the foundations of a greatness which he did not live to see. The policy of the Hohenstauffen was no longer practicable. The power of the Emperor had all but vanished, and the sole way of meeting the territorial tendencies of the great princes was to develop a territorial power for himself. The task required a man of courage and endurance, who should paralyze the opposing forces by passive resistance; and such a man was Frederick. That the Burgundian marriage was no mere lucky accident, but the fruit of a long and deliberate policy, is abundantly shown by the negotiations which preceded the event. A life-long struggle against inadequate means effectually soured the character of the old monarch, but it had not been wholly in vain; and the marked contrast between father and son may perhaps account for the unfavourable light in which Frederick has been viewed by posterity.

The first suggestion of a marriage between Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy occurs in a letter of Pius II to Philip the Good in 1463. The Pope doubtless hoped that an alliance of Austria and Burgundy would further his great scheme of a crusade against the Turks; but even hints of a kingly title failed to rouse the old Duke’s interest in the proposal, and it seems to have been allowed to drop. In 1468 an envoy appeared at the Burgundian Court, with full powers to treat as to the marriage, and the election of Charles the Bold as King of the Romans. But the latter’s soaring ambitions were a hindrance to the marriage; and when the long negotiations for the revival of the old Burgundian kingdom came to nothing in 1474, Frederick’s object seemed as far from fulfillment as ever. Throughout Charles’s reign there was a continual danger of the prize falling to some more favored suitor. It was only when the Burgundian arms first met with disaster at the hands of the Swiss, that Charles’s day dreams began to be dispelled, and he gave serious thought to the future of his only child. A month after the defeat of Grandson, an Imperial embassy waited upon the Duke; and on May 6, 1476, the betrothal of Maximilian and Mary was formally announced. In its immediate results, the alliance was disastrous to Charles; for his desertion by the Prince of Taranto, one of Mary’s disappointed suitors, the day before the battle of Morat, was one of the causes of his second defeat by the Swiss. Charles now became anxious to hasten on the marriage, and sent an envoy to obtain his daughter’s consent. On November 4, he wrote to Frederick begging him and Maximilian to come with all speed to Köln for the ceremony; and soon after, Maximilian received a letter from his bride, thanking him for the letter and ring which he had sent her, and declaring her agreement with her father. But now, as ever, Frederick was tied down by want of money, and the final catastrophe, when Charles the Bold perished on the field of Nancy (January 6, 1477), found the bridegroom quite unprepared for his new and arduous task. At a time when so much depended on prompt action, the Emperor contented himself with sending despatches to the officials and stadtholders of the Low Countries, urging them to obey none but Mary and Maximilian as her betrothed husband, and promising to come in person at the earliest possible date. Meanwhile, Mary’s position was pitiable in the extreme. The ungallant citizens of Ghent took prompt advantage of her weakness by extorting from her “The Great Privilege” : the chief cities refused to pay taxes; and French agents everywhere incited the burghers to rebellion.

Louis XI did not imitate his cousin of Austria, and lost no time in profiting by Mary’s helpless condition. In the course of a Few weeks, Picardy, Franche Comté, and the Duchy of Burgundy were annexed to the French Crown. King Louis demanded, almost at the sword’s point, the hand of Mary for the infant Dauphin; and his ungenerous betrayal of her secret overtures exposed her to an unpardonable affront at the hands of her disloyal subjects. Despite her tears and entreaties, and before her very eyes, her two most trusted counsellors were executed by the citizens of Ghent; and the young Duchess found herself friendless and alone, at the mercy of the treacherous Louis and her own rebellious people. In her distress she turned naturally to her knight and protector, Maximilian, whose admirers pictured to her a new Lohengrin destined at the last moment to restore the desperate fortunes of Elsa of Brabant. The romance of this journey to succour his Princess in distress is somewhat marred by the long delay which preceded it. It can only be explained by the money difficulties of his father, and the intrigues of Matthias of Hungary, which brought him to the verge of war with Frederick. Notwithstanding Mary’s pressing entreaties for his coming, it was only on May 21 that Maximilian left Vienna, and he did not actually reach Ghent till August 18. But though this delay was of great advantage to Louis XI, it may be doubted whether Maximilian could have effected much, even had he arrived on the scene at an earlier date. The Ghentois were probably hostile to him, or sank their opposition mainly because of the distance of his own dominions. It was the growing fear of French predominance which won adherents to his cause, and he found many supporters among the Flemish nobles, and the party of the Hoeks. The old Netherland chronicler gives us a favourable sketch of Maximilian, when he says: “Though still a youth, he displayed the true qualities of a man and a prince. He was magnanimous, brave and liberal, born for the good of the race. His fame was increased by a countenance of right royal dignity, the splendour of his father’s majesty, the antiquity of his lineage, and the amplitude of his inheritance”. The day after his arrival in Ghent, the marriage was celebrated by the Legate with great pomp and rejoicings.

“I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old;

Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the fleece of gold;

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;