IMPERATORE eletto. - Born in Vienna on 22 March 1459, to Frederick III of Habsburg and Eleanor of Portugal.
Following negotiations already conducted between the Emperor and the
Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold, in Aug. 1477
he married the Duke's daughter, Mary, saving the Burgundian
state from the annexationist aspirations of the King of
France Louis XI.
The war between M. and the King culminated in the battle of
Guinegatte (1479) won by M. and was settled by the peace
of Arras (23 Dec. 1482). M., who now, his consort having died suddenly,
held the regency for his firstborn
son Philip (b. 1478), consented to give to the dauphin
Charles in marriage his daughter Margaret (b. 1480), assigning
as dowry Artois, the Franche-Comté, the Mâconnais,
and renouncing instead Picardy and Burgundy,
already occupied by the King. The treaty, however, recognized the existence
of a conflict between the house of France and that of Habsburg,
over the fate of the inheritance of Charles the Bold.
From the government of his son's domains, M. was diverted in
1486 when his father Frederick III yielded to the insistence
of the German princes that his son be proclaimed
King of the Romans and assume the government of the Empire in the
hope of a reorganization of the German Empire.
Frederick III having died in 1493, M., now head of the Empire,
did not prove favorable to the plans of the head of the reform
movement, the archbishop elector of Mainz
Berthold of Henneberg. The clash occurred as early as the Diet
of Worms of 1495. The reformers wanted the constitu-
tion of a Council nominated by the princes and the cities
and a president nominated by the Emperor, with the
task of governing the Empire, flanked by a
Supreme Court of Justice. M. rejected this scheme, which
would have transformed the Empire into a confederation of
States over which he would have had only a fictitious authority:
he consented only to a Supreme Court of imperial jus-
tice and to the proclamation of a perpetual territorial peace;
the Diet had to grant the Sovereign the institution
of a universal tribute for the Empire (the hundredth), for
political necessities. These decisions were reconfirmed
at the Diet of Landau of 1496; at that of Augsburg of
1500 the project of a Reichsregiment, or Government Commission,
formed by the prince electors,
by the representatives of the great feudatories and by the delegates
of six circles into which the Empire was divided, was examined. This government was to reside at Nuremberg. The Augsburg settlement was born dead, and the dissension between M. and Berthold of Henneberg grew worse following the Sovereign's hostility to the reforms. The archbishop having died in 1503, M. set against the governing bodies created at Augsburg other governmental institutions that represented his centralizing aspirations and fused the interests of the Empire with those of the Habsburg States: the Hofrat, an aulic council in the sovereign's retinue, a court of justice and council of state; the Hofkammer, the fiscal administration residing at Innsbruck with separate treasuries for the Empire, for Austria and for Burgundy; the Hofkanzlei, the imperial chancery divided into the three branches imperial, Austrian, Burgundian. At the Diet of Cologne of 1505 M. affirmed his absolute authority; in the struggles of the two branches of the Wittelsbachs he succeeded in intervening as arbiter, humbling princes who had supported the reform of Berthold of Henneberg and binding the Empire ever more closely to the fortunes of the house of Habsburg.
European politics, however, demanded M.'s continuous attention. The conflict with France, already apparent in the Burgundian question, grew worse in the Italian question, where, however, he faced the problem of his conflict with Venice. In 1490 he had not hesitated to adhere to the plans of the French princes hostile to the monarchy and had married by proxy the heiress of the Duchy of Brittany, Anne, desired by the King of France. Charles VIII, however, intervened energetically, dissolved by authority the marriage of Anne and M., who did not stir even when he saw Anne become the consort of the King of France. He resigned himself to the treaty of Senlis, which restored to him his daughter Margaret, rejected by Charles VIII, and the territories already assigned as dowry. Nor did he stir when Charles VIII in 1494 entered Italy and occupied the Kingdom of Naples, perhaps calculating on the possibility of having France as an ally against Venice. In 1495, however, he took part in the League of S. Marco to expel Charles VIII from Naples, and in 1496 he descended into Italy and posed as protector of Pisa, without however achieving any result. Since he had married Bianca Maria Sforza, sister of Duke Gian Galeazzo, when Louis XII moved against Ludovico il Moro to seize Milan, M. intervened in aid of the Duke and for this purpose organized an expedition into Lorraine with the Swiss militias, but then, indignant against the Swiss Cantons, he sought to break them with an expedition of the Swabian League, which ended in a setback: M., by the treaty of Basel (1499), had to recognize the de facto autonomy of the Cantons. This conflict allowed Louis XII to occupy Milan; M. intervened and helped Ludovico il Moro to recover the Duchy, but could not prevent King Louis from definitively occupying Milan and imprisoning the Duke. M. resigned himself and now sought to exploit the French alliance against Venice, stipulating the marriage of his nephew Charles, son of Philip the Handsome, with Claude, daughter of Louis XII (treaty of Blois). These agreements were not applied; Claude in 1506 was given in marriage to the duke of Angoulême, the future Francis I. In 1508 M. renewed the understanding against Venice with Louis XII and with Pope Julius II (League of Cambrai). The allies intended to divide the domains of the Republic: to M. would fall the cities of imperial fief, Rovereto, Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, Friuli with the patriarchate of Aquileia. Since Venetian enmity prevented him from going to Rome for the imperial coronation, his ally Julius II granted him to assume the title of emperor Electus (Erwählter Kaiser). Already from the beginning of 1508 he had attacked the Venetian territories, but had been repulsed and forced to accept an armistice; only after the battle of Agnadello (14 May 1509) did he descend into the Veneto to occupy without fighting Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre; but the Venetians boldly retook Padua. Julius II was reconciled with Venice. The Emperor, on the other hand, supported Louis XII even in the attempt of the schismatic Council of Pisa against the Pope: M., having been widowed, for a moment thought of his own candidacy for the papal throne, uniting papacy and Empire. After the battle of Ravenna (11 Apr. 1512), to eliminate a French hegemony over the peninsula, M. made peace with Venice and drew closer to the Pope and the King of Spain.
The League of 1513 united Empire, Spain, England, and the papacy in the struggle against France, which was to be invaded within two months. The League brought about various French defeats, at Guinegatte and at Novara; the Swiss reached as far as Dijon and M. reappeared before Padua. The French victory at Marignano (13-14 Sept. 1514) brought about the failure of the anti-French League. M. in March 1516 again reached as far as Milan, without result. In Dec. of the same year he made peace with Venice (Treaty of Brussels), which abandoned Rovereto to him, and adhered at Cambrai to the general peace (11 March 1517).
M. died on 12 Jan. 1519 at Wels and was buried at Wiener-Neustadt in the church of St. George, although a grandiose sepulchral monument was being prepared for him in the Hofkirche of Innsbruck. He was a fanciful man, sensitive to art, curious about every technical innovation.
His political activity had essentially led to no positive result: the marriage policy begun by Frederick III was more successful: he had married the heiress of the Burgundian State; his son Philip married Joanna of Aragon, heiress of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon; his daughter Margaret, after the French marriage fell through, married Philibert II, Duke of Savoy. The political life of the 16th century was to be profoundly dominated by the consequences of these marriages.
Bibliography8 works
Francesco Cognasso