Birthday Greetings #70

Happy birthday to Albert II, King of the Romans.  You know how this goes, King of the Romans meant Holy Roman Emperor only he didn't get crowned by the pope.  There was some confusion about his actual date of birth it seems.  Wikipedia says he was born on the 10th of August whereas the online Encyclopaedia Britannica claims 16th August as the birthdate.  Despite my fondness for Wikipedia I've decided to allow my inner snob to decide that I should follow the Britannica in this instance rather than celebrate his birthday six days ago.

Albert, a Habsburg naturally, was born (whatever the date) in Vienna as the son of the Duke of Austria.  Due to his father coming down with a severe case of death he wound up as Duke himself (as Albert V) at the age of seven.  This was a little unfortunate as he was surrounded by rapacious relatives.  One of the reasons for the Habsburgs subsequent dynastic exhaustion some centuries into the future (apart from their predilection for marrying their cousins) was a series of ruthless power struggles within the family itself which whittled down the number of available Habsburgs.

Since a seven year old couldn't be trusted to effectively oppress the peasants his uncle, Duke William of Inner Austria (known apparently without irony as William the Courteous), stepped in as regent and he and his two brothers helped to essentially carve up and loot Albert's patrimony.  Still they didn't actually murder Albert and he managed to get a good education from somewhere (this was early fifteenth century Europe so "good education" was a somewhat relative term).  Albert eventually entered into his majority and managed to chase his irritating family out of the duchy. 

With something approximating peace restored to his territories Albert could take a deep breath and decide what to do with his life.  He decided to marry the daughter of Sigismund the King of Hungary.  This was a brilliant idea, the King of Hungary (actually a German from the House of Luxembourg) had strong imperial connections.  Indeed his cousin was King of the Romans until Rupert of Germany (who got a thoroughly undeserved birthday shout out recently) snaffled the crown.

Although brilliant politically the marriage did mean that Albert had to help Sigismund out with his wars and Sigismund seemed to have rather a lot of them.  During the course of these wars (against Hussites mainly) Austria got overrun and plundered a fair bit.  On the plus side Sigismund was grateful for the assistance and in the absence of any male offspring made Albert his heir.  This took on even more significance when Sigismund managed to get himself elected King of the Romans.

When Sigismund finally died in 1437 Albert, humble Duke of Austria (he was a Habsburg so I doubt he was that humble) wound up as King of Hungary.  Moving his court from Vienna to Hungary he immediately got into a war with the Bohemians.  You see Sigismund had somehow managed to wangle the Bohemian crown as well and Albert figured he might as well grab that one too.  While he was busy fighting the Bohemians (who didn't seem keen on him as their king) the Electors of the empire, apparently without reference to him, appointed him King of the Romans.  It had been a couple of centuries since the Habsburg family had held the imperial crown.  With the exception of a brief interlude in the 1700s they were never to let go of it again.

Albert ruled the empire from Hungary and in 1438 officially ended all feuds based on the right of private warfare within the empire.  Since Albert himself died the next year in the course of some very public warfare against the Turks its unlikely that too many people paid attention at the time but a precedent had been set and future emperors would use it to cut down on internal disputes.

Albert was known as Albert the Magnanimous for reasons which are unclear.  Possibly it was the way he magnanimously burnt the Jewish population of Vienna at the stake and demolished their synagogue.  If his uncle could get the epithet "the Courteous" simply because he didn't murder everyone he met stranger things have happened.