Birthday Greetings #24

Happy birthday to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1576-1612) also King of Hungary & Croatia (1572-1608), King of Bohemia (1572-1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576-1608). Keen readers will note that while the imperial title lasted until his death in 1612 he seems to have lost all of the subsidiary ranks (which were the ones with the real power) sometime earlier. There is a good reason for this, his brother Mattias. For more (possibly accurate) details, read on.

Rudolf was born in Vienna in 1552 but in keeping with the Habsburg custom of getting their kids the hell out of the way was sent at the age of eleven to the court of his uncle King Phillip of Spain. The rigid ceremonial of that court (Vienna was a relaxed fun place by comparison) seems to have formed a lasting impression and to the end of his days Rudolf was reserved, secretive and slow to trust. Possibly in reaction to his rigidly Catholic upbringing in Madrid Rudolf became a patron of the arts, dabbled in the occult, was a promoter of alchemists, astronomers, astrologers, protestants and various other weirdos. He turned his capital Prague into a centre of culture and learning as knowledgeable men of all kinds sought out a congenial atmosphere for their activities.

In fact Rudolf was close to being the ideal ruler except for one minor detail. He totally sucked at ruling. Disinterested in detail or indeed broad policy he let matters drift and quite naturally they drifted onto the rocks. Although disinterested in Catholicism he didn't embrace Protestantism either and tried to steer a strictly neutral path between both sides. Naturally this wound up with him being hated by everybody. His only major policy decision was war with the Ottoman Turks. This dragged on for years without much success (or even direction) until everybody was thoroughly sick of it. The war was held mainly in Hungary and by 1604 the Hungarians had had enough. They revolted against Rudolf and a Habsburg family conclave forced Rudolf to cede power in Hungary to his younger brother Mattias.

Mattias made peace with the rebels by offering generous concessions which infuriated Rudolf but with Hungary behind him Mattias effectively rebelled against his brother and stripped him of his titles of Hungary, Croatia and Austria leaving him only the kingship of Bohemia and the largely meaningless imperial title. Protestant nobles in Bohemia, sensing their chance, then revolted against Rudolf and extorted an array of concessions from him as the price of their obedience. Rudolf conceded these but the Bohemians decided they wanted more and dialled in Mattias who imprisoned Rudolf and cheerfully pinched his Bohemian title as well. About nine months later Rudolf died which was probably somewhat of a relief to him by this stage and Mattias succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor.

Although his reign was a bit of a disaster (particularly if you lived in Hungary) Rudolf did make Prague a centre of learning and enlightenment. His patronage extended to artists, scientists (including Kepler and Brahe), alchemists and his somewhat disinterested tolerance made Prague a safe haven for Protestants and Jews at a time when both were coming under increasing pressure. As an alchemy nut of course he spent a lot of his time funding searches for the Philosophers Stone which was supposed to be a way of transmuting base metals into gold. In fact you required a lot of gold to start with in order to get no useful result. The search for the Philosophers Stone is therefore actually quite a neat analogy for Rudolf's entire reign.