Frederick III

Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1440-1493)

• Born: September 21, 1415
• Birthplace: Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria
• Died: August 19, 1493
• Place of death: Linz, Austria

Frederick III’s long rule allowed him to outlive his many rivals, and after his reign the imperial crown remained with the Habsburgs, with one brief interruption, until the end of the empire in 1806. Frederick also united the territories of all branches of the Habsburg family.

Early Life

Frederick was the first son of Ernest and Cimburgis. Ernest was duke of Inner Austria. Innsbruck belonged to Ernest’s brother, also called Frederick IV, who had been banned temporarily from Tirol by the emperor for his support of a schismatic pope. To safeguard the Habsburg family’s interest in the Tirol, Ernest moved to Innsbruck.

Little is known of Frederick’s childhood. To distinguish him from his uncle, Frederick IV, he was called Frederick the Younger. Five of Frederick’s siblings died in childhood, but a brother and a sister survived. Like his mother, Frederick had a calm personality and was pious. As a youth he had a tendency to be withdrawn.

Frederick grew up in Wiener Neustadt, his favorite residence later in life, located thirty miles south of Vienna. He received a good education in Latin, legal matters, and writing, and he developed an interest in astrology and secret writing codes. In conversations, he used the local German dialect.

Frederick and his siblings were placed under the guardianship of their uncle, Frederick IV, after their parents died. Frederick reached maturity at age sixteen, but his uncle decided to continue his guardianship. With the help of Duke Albert V of Austria (later King Albert II), Frederick’s cousin, he was declared of age on May 25, 1435.

Life’s Work

On August 9, 1436, before turning his attention to issues of state, Frederick went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. One month later, he became a knight of the Holy Grave in Jerusalem.

Two deaths in 1439 made Frederick the senior male of the House of Austria. He also became the guardian of his cousin Sigismund, the son of Frederick IV of Tirol, and of Albert II’s son, King László V of Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary. The estates in Tirol, Bohemia, and Hungary demanded an early end to the guardianships, but Frederick wanted to exploit them for his own benefit. In 1446, Frederick allowed Sigismund to assume his position in Tirol, and six years later he surrendered his control over László.

On February 2, 1440, the German princes, meeting in Frankfurt, elected Frederick king, and he was crowned in Aachen on June 17, 1442. Frederick’s coronation as emperor in Rome occurred ten years later, the last Roman coronation of a German emperor.

The trip to Rome was facilitated by Frederick’s agreement with Pope Eugenius IV . In return for Germany’s recognition and support of Eugenius, Frederick was offered a coronation in Rome. The German king left for Rome in December, 1451, and was crowned by Eugenius’s successor on March 19, 1452. Three days earlier, he had married Eleonore, the daughter of King Edward of Portugal. Eleonore gave Frederick a son and heir, Maximilian I , in 1459, and a daughter, Kunigunde, before she died in 1467. Frederick never married again.

As German king, Frederick attended meetings of the German Reichstag in 1442 and in 1444, where reforms were discussed, restrictions against feuds were issued, and an attempt was made to control coinage. Frederick, however, lacked effective mechanisms to enforce these measures. Not until 1471 did he return to another Reichstag meeting, held in Regensburg, to reconsider reforms and to seek support against the Turks who threatened Austria and Hungary.

During much of his early reign, Frederick faced serious problems in his Habsburg lands. When Frederick met the estates in Vienna in the summer of 1441, he was greeted with shouts of “king of the Jews” and with calls to crucify him. In his diary, the king lamented that the Austrians were more vicious than the Hungarians or the Bohemians.

After returning from Rome in 1452, he faced an uprising of the estates, led by Ulrich von Eytzing and Ulrich von Cilli. His own brother, Albert VI, was a persistent challenge between 1458 and 1463. In the summer of 1461, Vienna sided with Albert’s attack on Frederick, and in the following year Frederick was besieged in his residence in Vienna. Only the death of his brother on December 2, 1463, ended this crisis. Still, revolts continued to surface. On April 23, 1471, Frederick executed Andreas Baumkircher, a knight who had led another revolt of the nobles.

Because of Frederick’s dynastic interests in Bohemia and Hungary, he had numerous conflicts with the estates and rulers of the two countries. Most serious was his conflict with Matthias I Corvinus , from the House of Hunyadi, who obtained the Hungarian crown in 1458, although Frederick received the title “king of Hungary.” Frederick signed the Treaty of Sopron with the Hungarian ruler in 1463, but the conflict resumed in 1480. Matthias I Corvinus occupied Vienna and Wiener Neustadt between 1485 and 1487 and forced the German king to move to Linz, Austria. Again, the death of a rival, Matthias I Corvinus, on April 6, 1490, removed one of Frederick’s major problems in his eastern lands. Five Turkish incursions into Carinthia between 1473 and 1483, however, continued the unrest in his eastern Austrian territories.

Frederick also faced major difficulties in the west. The Swiss had absorbed much of the ancestral Habsburg land, and the Bavarian Wittelsbach Dynasty attempted to absorb neighboring territories. The most important challenge and opportunity came from Charles the Bold , duke of Burgundy. In 1473, Frederick traveled to the Rhine area and attempted to negotiate a marriage between his son Maximilian and Charles’s daughter, Maria, but negotiations broke down. Frederick then declared an imperial war (Reichskrieg) against Charles after the Burgundian king invaded Cologne.

The Habsburgs also procured an alliance with the Swiss cantons in return for recognizing Swiss territory. Even though Charles was killed at Nancy on January 5, 1477, Maximilian married Maria six months later at Brügge (now in Belgium). In order to help keep the peace and contain the Wittelsbach Dynasty, Frederick created the Imperial League in Swabia in 1488.

Frederick consolidated his dynastic ambitions by having Maximilian elected German king in Frankfurt on February 16, 1486. Frederick also intervened in Tirol and forced the incompetent Sigismund to turn over his office to Maximilian in 1490. Frederick spent the last years of his life in Linz adding to his collections and enjoying his gardens. On August 19, 1493, he died from complications that arose after the amputation of his left leg because of arteriosclerosis.

Significance

Frederick ruled longer than any other German emperor. He was able to have his son, Maximilian I, crowned as his successor. Moreover, he ruled his Austrian lands for fifty-eight years. Because of this longevity, he was able to unite the lands and titles of the Habsburg lines. After the death of László in 1457, the Albertine line of the Habsburgs ended. Following the death of his brother Albert, Frederick gained control of all of Austria’s eastern lands. After the death of Sigismund of Tirol without an heir in 1496, Maximilian acquired Habsburg possessions in Tirol and Swabia. Also, Maximilian’s marriage to Maria brought Burgundy and the Netherlands under Habsburg control.

Frederick believed in the special mission of his Habsburg house. In 1453, he recognized a forgery created by Rudolf IV in 1358, which had granted special rights and titles to Austria. He was also keenly aware, however, of his imperial responsibilities. He negotiated the Vienna concordat with Pope Nicholas V in 1448, which gave him control over nominations to Church appointments and eventually enhanced imperial power.

His Burgundian policies added to Habsburg strength, but it also started the long-term Habsburg rivalry with the Valois kings of France. Even though Frederick was not able to overcome the dynastic divisions in Germany, he did prepare the groundwork for the emergence of the House of Habsburg as a world power in the sixteenth century.

Bibliography

Brady, Thomas A., Jr. Turning Swiss: Cities and Empires, 1450-1550. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Evaluates Frederick’s policy toward the free cities in southern Germany.

Heer, Friedrich. The Holy Roman Empire. Translated by Janet Sondheimer. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968. Highlights Frederick’s influence on his son, Maximilian I.

Heinig, Paul-Joachim. “How Large Was the Court of Emperor Frederick III?” In Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650, edited by R. G. Asch and A. M. Birke. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Examines Frederick’s administrative policy and strategy, based on a small court of four hundred to five hundred employees.

Press, Victor. “The Habsburg Lands: The Holy Roman Empire, 1400-1555.” In Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, edited by Thomas A. Brady et al. New York: E. J. Brill, 1994. Places Frederick’s reign within the context of dynastic and national rivalries in the empire.

Rees, Valery. “Hungary’s Philosopher King Matthias Corvinus, 1458-90.” History Today 44, no. 3 (March, 1994). Discusses the career of Frederick’s most dangerous rival, who occupied Vienna between 1485 and 1490.

Stieber, Joachim W. Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire: The Conflict Over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1978. Discusses Frederick’s negotiations with the pope leading to Eugenius’s recognition by the German princes.