Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe Read online

  (the M seems particularly lovely in its general unsustainability) and then, thanks to the tireless Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius, as the home of the first Slavic script – an alphabetic decision which has ever since decisively carved out a different zone, both in itself and as a signifier for allegiance to Orthodoxy. Indeed the missionary work of this period in shifting a large block of Europe towards Constantinople and out of Rome’s reach created a fault line with implications into the present.

  Each attempt to settle down and create a lasting dynastic state and even a little economic growth was thwarted by the sheer motility of these Eurasian bands. There may not have been a large European population yet (the nearest approach to a town being simply a large armed camp or a cluster of buildings around a fortress) but those that were there remained willing to travel great distances and take great risks. Two threats prevented Central European coalescence, one from the west and one from the east.

  Wandering peoples

  Passau, on the Bavarian–Austrian border, is a town of such absurd scenic grandeur and geophysical significance that it seems a shame to find its streets lined only with little shops selling devotional trinkets and bird-whistles – the inhabitants should be cut from some more heroic cloth. Passau’s fame stems from its location on a spit of land which at its tapered point joins together two monstrous rivers, the Danube and the Inn, the former all the way from a squashy meadow in Swabia, the latter from the Alps. There is also a third river, the extremely less impressive Ilz, which dribbles down from the north – making Passau ‘the city of three rivers’. The great significance of the Ilz is that it comes down from the watershed of the forests on the edge of the Bohemian Forest Mountains to the north, just as the Inn comes down from the Swiss Alps, with the Danube itself heading straight west–east along the northern side of the Alps. This combination of converging waters shows there is a gap in the mountains, and it was from here that German-speaking Europe extruded into the Slavic lands to the east.

  Bavaria, of which Passau is now the easternmost point, is one of those strange semi-kingdoms that has throughout its history come close to being a real and independent state but has always been subsumed or subverted. It has some of the same advantages of countries such as England or France in having a number of thorny borders. England’s sea coasts and France’s sea coasts and mountains have given their rulers a militarily happy situation and it has not been an accident that both these countries have been so hard to invade. This is entirely unlike most Central European states, which have been obliged militarily to turn round and round like a dizzy dog trying to defend its drinking bowl. Bavaria had coherence because of its impenetrable southern mountains and reasonably chunky eastern ones. It emerged from the Dark Ages as a well-run, Germanic, naturally wealthy place under the rule of the Agilolfing family. In the eighth century Bavaria stretched much further east than Passau and German-speaking colonists debouched into Tirol and Salzburg.

  As so often in Bavaria’s history, the country’s wealth and security attracted envious eyes. On the face of it a safe distance away, Charlemagne on the Lower Rhine, a Frankish chieftain, had re-established through a sheer act of the imagination a direct link between himself and the Roman Empire that had collapsed in the west over three centuries before. His ambition, his court’s pomp, wealth and learning, and his military success proclaimed the end of the Dark Ages and a new direction for Europe. Instead of being a shattered jigsaw of petty chieftainships and dubious Asiatic overlords, Europe would revive as a new Roman Empire re-founded with Charlemagne as emperor. The Bavarians and the Franks had fought each other a number of times, but in an astounding decade from 785 Charlemagne completed the conquest of the Saxons in the north, deposed the long-serving ruler of Bavaria, Tassilo, in the south and then destroyed the Avar Khaganate.

  The snuffing-out of the Agilolfing family in Bavaria and the absorption of the whole region into Charlemagne’s empire created a fresh eastward dynamic. Massacring, Germanizing and Christianizing their way east, the Franks created new marches and duchies, pushing back the Slavs so that by the mid-ninth century something not dissimilar to the modern language map existed, with much of Austria in Germanic hands. But before the linguistic patchwork settled into place there was one more, thoroughly startling intrusion.

  The Magyars were not the last of the new arrivals in an already crowded and chaotic neighbourhood, but they were certainly one of the most spectacular. Chased out of their home in the Khazar khaganate the Magyars shifted ever further west until they hurtled into Europe with their innovative cavalry skills and entirely unrelated language. They caused mayhem, defeating the Bavarian and East Frank armies sent against them and raiding deep into France and Italy before finally and decisively being stopped in their tracks by the Emperor Otto I at the Battle of the Lech in 955.

  The final Magyar raids have a somewhat nostalgic air to them – as though the older warriors could not resist calls to put the old band back together again. After being chased away by Otto I they abandoned raiding western Europe but continued to carve out an ever-larger territory for themselves, reinforced by fresh arrivals from Central Asia including many of their former enemies, the enjoyably named Pechenegs.

  As usual with these groups it is impossible now to unpick the true circumstances of their arrival. Everyone has an automatic picture of streams of wagons filled with seer elders, opulent wives, lisping daughters and young sons practising with wooden swords on their own tiny ponies. This is at odds with the patently rather male-only, rugby-match atmosphere of the Magyar raids themselves. We will never know, for example, what balance of the settled population managed to escape: were those unable to move fast enough killed or just enslaved? Did the Magyar men massacre the Slav and Avar men they found and take over their surviving families? Identity shifts very rapidly. In the late nineteenth century many Germans, Jews, Slovaks and others became Hungarians, changing language and religion across two generations with the same ease that other members of the same groups emigrated and became Americans. Clearly a much more local and wholly illiterate society could be blended in different combinations (particularly when imposed by terrible violence) with great speed. The chances of anybody today being a ‘pure’ example of any specific medieval ‘race’ must be close to zero, quite aside from the category being patently meaningless.

  The Magyar defeat at the Lech proved absolutely decisive for the shape of Europe. The retreating Magyar army tried to attack the Bohemian Slavs but were again defeated, headed back along the Danube and then stuck there. Germans and Magyars found a demarcation line east of Vienna and the two groups clicked together like a seatbelt, separating the northern Slavs (Bohemians, Moravians, Poles) from the southern Slavs (Slovenes, Croats, Serbs), and inventing what became Austria and Hungary. And then, in a stroke of genius, the Magyar prince Géza converted to Christianity in around 972. This was a purely political gesture, but nonetheless Magyars began genuinely to convert in large numbers and therefore put themselves out of bounds for the traditional Frankish anti-pagan campaigning season. Géza’s decision to plump for Rome rather than Constantinople was another of those small decisions with deep consequences, tying Hungary to the west and giving its entire culture a different shape and flavour from its eastern and southern neighbours.

  The final elements in the building of Central Europe were the Bavarians, who continued to pour into the region south of Bohemia either through Passau or through the Tirol. The settlement of this area had a very American atmosphere – a constantly shifting frontier, violent setbacks, enormous riches for those with ferocity and luck. Otto I appointed Margrave Luitpold to supervise the new territory exposed by the Hungarians’ defeat and a series of ‘marks’ or marcher, defensive states was created to organize the land and defend it. For almost two centuries this was done by the Babenberg family and others as vassals of Bavaria (and therefore at two removes from the Emperor). It was only in 1156 that the Babenbergs were made dukes (one remove from the Emperor).
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br />   The word ‘Austria’ is a Latinized form of ‘Eastern Land’. As usual we have no clear idea how the region’s population became mostly Bavarian. There were surprises for the colonists – surviving Roman Christians were found living around Salzburg, for example, and these presumably required some re-education. The flood of settlers within a couple of centuries seems to have absorbed the native population, leaving a mixed German–Hungarian border area to the east of Vienna and a mixed German–Slovenian border area in the south. The region was a classic German political patchwork and the separate territories of places such as Carinthia and Styria (‘the Mark of Steyr’ – the main fortress) only fell into Babenberger hands after many years. Salzburg and Passau remained separate ecclesiastical territories and there were all kinds of privileges for the great Benedictine and (later) Cistercian monasteries being founded along the Danube valley.

  It is alarming to imagine just how few people there must have been: much of Central Europe hardly supported anything more than villages. But now a fresh population was being generated by southern Germany, with a great cavalcade of heavily armed chancers, psychopaths, clerics, handymen and farmers all heading through the passes. Enormous areas remained barely inhabited – a forest of unimaginable size still separated Bohemia and Austria and random outcrops of mountain made communication very tiresome. The monasteries became engines for transforming the landscape, with armies of peasants converting waste land into farm land through generations of hideous toil. Genuine towns rather than merely fortified residences became visible – the key one being Vienna, sited on the Danube at the last point where the eastern Alps still offer some protection. In 1221 it was given control of the river trade between Germans and Hungarians and became very rich.

  The hawk’s fortress

  In 1246 after a long run of excellent luck the Babenberg dynasty at last tripped up, with Duke Frederick II’s death in battle fighting the Hungarians. Very unfortunately the Emperor died in 1250 and a deeply miserable and violent era swamped much of Central Europe. Battling with the breakdown of the Austrian lands, several nobles approached Ottakar II, the King of Bohemia, to take over. An aggressive southern German ruler, Rudolf of Habsburg, was eventually elected Emperor in 1273. As had happened a number of times, the Electors had chosen someone quite weak – in Rudolf’s case both through not having a large power base and through already being in his mid-fifties and therefore unlikely to do much damage. This proved to be a major miscalculation for everyone involved except Rudolf himself.

  Rudolf died at Speyer and is buried in the Imperial cathedral there. I was lucky enough to arrive in Speyer late in the evening in winter and slip into the cathedral shortly before it shut. It is a staggeringly powerful, harsh and threatening building with its sheer weight of stone a perfect symbol of Imperial power. For anyone growing up in England or France and used to Gothic it is very alarming to be surrounded by Romanesque gigantism, particularly when made expressionist by malevolent pools of darkness and weird echoes from shuffling feet. At one point the place filled with a truly hair-raising, other-worldly sound – which turned out to be the susurration of hundreds of little foil candle-holders being poured into bin bags. In any event, the highlight is Rudolf’s tomb figure. He looks exactly as anyone would hope the Emperor to look – austere, eagle-nosed, calm, holding his orb and sceptre, an Imperial eagle symbol on his chest and a lion at his feet. It helps that at some point he has been put upright against the wall rather than lying flat, making him look more conversational.

  In many ways Rudolf I was a classic German minor ruler. He had accumulated or inherited territories dotted around Alsace, Swabia and what is now northern Switzerland (including the ‘Habichtsburg’, the ‘hawk’s fortress’ that probably gave the family their name – the Swiss kicked them out of it in 1415). He proved to be a successful Emperor and took an army into Austria to expel King Ottakar. After several twists and turns Rudolf allied with the Hungarians to defeat the Bohemians and killed Ottakar at the Battle on the Marchfeld in 1278.

  Rudolf then decided to resolve the Babenberger inheritance problem by simply taking most of the lands for himself in 1282 – these lands stayed in the family for the next six centuries. This began the Habsburg rise to power, but there were many cock-ups and dead-ends to follow what might have proved to be the high point in the family fortunes – assassinations, deaths in battle, splits in the inheritance. The Habsburgs rapidly came to treat their old south German lands as less important than their new Austrian holdings. They picked up Tyrol in 1363 and Trieste in 1382, so the family got a first glimpse of the sea. Before they re-secured for good the title of Emperor in 1452 the Habsburgs were certainly an interesting bunch, but not exceptional, with the rival Luxemburg family having a far larger geographical spread and prestige. It was the Luxemburg Emperor Charles IV who, as King of Bohemia, had been largely responsible for making Prague such an extraordinary place – with a grandeur of vision that the Habsburgs could not yet match.

  The role of Emperor varied in importance depending on the personality of the job’s holder and his luck with events. Charles IV had only become incontrovertibly emperor once his bitter rival, Louis the Bavarian, died of a seizure while out bear-hunting, which decisively shifted the luck in Charles’s direction. The job was by the fifteenth century a thankless one and it had often been so too in the past. It was nonetheless key in holding together the shifting slurry of small territories which filled much of Europe, from Flanders to Vienna. These small territories were a mocking reproof to Charlemagne’s original vision of a new Roman Empire. Centuries of infighting, family squabbles, natural disaster, bribes and special needs had broken up his old empire into an incoherent mass. Any part of it would have powerful independent towns, extensive monastic holdings, individual castles with zones of land around them and very occasional serious blocks of land such as Bavaria or Saxony, but even these were a mass of cracks and sub-subdivisions. The Emperor held the system together, but with hundreds of individual territories reporting to him it was from a Human Resources point of view a poor management structure. Charles IV used his power on becoming Emperor to create the Golden Bull in 1356, which pinned into place all future arrangements. Most importantly it codified the seven figures who would in future elect the Emperor and, as significantly, laid down the rule that these men’s territories could not be split or alienated, giving the seven Electors solid power-bases of their own and preventing any possibility of a pretender or rival Elector messing up the election as had been the case with the shambles around his own election. The seven Electors would be the Archbishop of Cologne, the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Trier, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of the Rhine and the King of Bohemia. They met in Frankfurt to vote on who would be ‘King of the Romans’, the idea being that it was only the Pope could crown an Emperor – a distinction that would be dropped by the Habsburgs, who generally had their heir voted as King with the title of Emperor automatically being acceded to on the current holder’s death.

  It was definitely important to be Emperor, but it was a long way from being the incontrovertibly classy role familiar to readers of books about Ancient Rome. Every effort was made to link the job with the glory of Charlemagne, using Charlemagne’s throne at Aachen (which is still there, amazingly – a very plain but venerable object) and with as many flags and trumpets as could be mustered. But none of the other leading figures at these grand ceremonies had a strong sense of being drastically inferior to the Emperor or would necessarily tremble at his displeasure.

  ‘Look behind you!’

  The long rule of the Emperor Frederick III is the point at which the Habsburg family come into focus. This is for the accidental reason that standards of painted portraiture improve in the fifteenth century so that we have a clear idea what Frederick looked like. There is a very strange and beautiful portrait of his predecessor Sigismund – the last of the Luxemburg family – wearing an outsize fur hat with the hardened yet vacant express
ion of someone who has spent too much time experimenting with mushrooms, say, or on the road with a band. I am not suggesting this just to be silly: his face is absolutely baffling – there are no clues as to what the painter was trying to achieve by giving him such an odd expression. The fur hat and outdoorsy complexion make him look, well, Canadian. Frederick’s immediate predecessor, Albert II, was short-lived (he died fighting the Turks) and is known only from a portrait which could have been painted by someone at primary school, although his clothing is beautifully done. With Frederick, however, technical skill and patronage combine to produce a number of images where we have a clear sense of what he himself wanted to convey (perhaps the key point about any portrait): authority, serenity, an aura of Imperial power.

  Frederick’s reign, and indeed the whole of the fifteenth century, is intensely vulnerable to two problems for historians: the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress Effect’ and the ‘Christmas Pantomime Syndrome’. The first of these views the individual monarch as a figure who needs in his lifetime to reach a specific goal – invariably the creation of a coherent state as much as possible like the modern empire or country as it would emerge in the nineteenth century. Rulers are therefore judged on the degree to which they remain on this path and are not seduced, waylaid or discouraged by other temptations, like Christian in Bunyan’s allegory. In the case of England this is most painfully clear in the endless attempts to establish Henry VI as King of France – we all now know this is ridiculous and that the English should just go home; we groan at the narrative point when Joan of Arc turns up, we rally a little when she goes up in smoke. But we are over-aware that the ruler in London will never actually rule in Paris and cringe as in 1429, aged seven, Henry is crowned at Notre Dame, knowing that he is going to fritter decades in a futile bloodbath, a total distraction from England’s majestic, etc. destiny.