Louis IV of Bavaria

Origins and Youth

Louis was born in Munich, the son of Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Matilda, a daughter of King Rudolph I. As a member of the noble house of Wittelsbach, his great-great-grandfather, Otto, was given the duchy of Bavaria for his services to Frederick Barbarossa. As a result, Louis and his family enjoyed a close relationship with the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who not only acted as political allies to the Wittelsbachs, but also as family members through Elizabeth of Bavaria's marriage to Conrad IV of Germany.

Louis's father, Louis the Strict, went to great pains to ensure the Wittelsbach family would be closely intermarried with the other magnates of the empire. For example, at the coronation of Rudolf of Habsburg, Louis the Strict managed to negotiate a marriage to his daughter, Matilda. Due to his ties with the Habsburg dynasty, Louis IV was raised at the court of Albert of Habsburg. As a result, he was educated alongside his playmate Frederick the Fair, who would later become his rival in the struggle for the German throne. Ludwig's father died in 1294, and on the 14th of October 1308, he married the Piast princess Beatrice of Silesia.

In 1310, there was a dispute between the brothers over the inheritance of their father, Louis the Strict. He divided his realm so that Louis IV would rule with his brother Rudolf I in the Electoral Palatinate and the Duchy of Upper Bavaria. In Lower Bavaria, after the death of Stephen I on December 1310, tensions broke out with Louis and the Habsburgs over the succession. Even though Otto III, the former King of Hungary, had chosen Louis, local nobles instead appointed Frederick the Fair as the legal guardian of Stephen's children, Otto IV and Henry XIV. This led to conflict between Louis and Frederick, although he soon made a major change of course: In the Peace of Munich on the 21st of June 1313, he made peace with his brother and agreed a method of joint rulership for Upper Bavaria.

The peace was only intended to last one year, but Louis used this period to maneuver carefully with the aims of defeating Frederick. Louis promptly resumed hostilities, eventually defeating Frederick in the Battle of Gammelsdorf in November of that same year, despite Leopold I sending aid to Frederick. This victory caused a stir within the Holy Roman Empire and increased the reputation of the Bavarian Duke, and forced Frederick to surrender the tutelage of the young dukes.

Election as German King and conflict with Frederick the Fair

The death of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII in August 1313 led to a 14-month long election period between the seven prince-Electors. Henry's son John, King of Bohemia since 1310, was initially supported by the Bohemians alongside their allies Archbishop Peter of Aspelt of Mainz and Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg of Trier. Philip IV of France, who had already had relatives on the thrones of Hungary and Naples, wanted to ensure the election of his son Philip as Holy Roman Emperor after failing the previous election. With Philip being entirely unsupported by the Imperial princes yet again, John's position was initially strong.

However, believing John of Bohemia to be too young and the Luxembourg dynasty too powerful, the Habsburgs pushed forth with the only realistic resistance to the pro-Luxembourg faction. As the son of Emperor Henry's predecessor, Albert I, Frederick the Fair began gathering support for his cause. This intimidated the pro-Luxembourg faction, causing the Archbishops of Mainz and Trier to convince John to step down and settle on Louis as a compromise candidate for Emperor in order to prevent their Habsburg rivals from attaining the Imperial throne.

On 19 October 1314, Archbishop Henry II of Cologne chaired an assembly of four electors at Sachsenhausen, south of Frankfurt. Participants were Louis' brother, Rudolph I of the Palatinate, who objected to the election of his younger brother, Duke Rudolph I of Saxe-Wittenberg, and Henry of Carinthia, whom the Luxembourgs had deposed as King of Bohemia. These four electors chose Frederick as King.

The Luxembourg party did not accept this election and the next day a second election was held. Upon the instigation of Peter of Aspelt, Archbishop of Mainz, five different electors convened at Frankfurt and elected Louis as King. These electors were Archbishop Peter himself, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier and King John of Bohemia – both of the House of Luxembourg – Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg and Duke John II of Saxe-Lauenburg, who contested Rudolph of Wittenberg's claim to the electoral vote.

This double election was quickly followed by two coronations on the 25th of November: Louis was crowned at Aachen – the customary site of coronations – by Archbishop Peter of Mainz, while the Archbishop of Cologne, who by custom had the right to crown the new king, crowned Frederick at Bonn. Ludwig did not have the authentic Imperial Regalia, and so needed to have replicas created in an attempt to legitimise his coronation. Chroniclers on both sides attempted to portray their rival's coronation as illegitimate. For example, in the anti-Habsburg Chronica Ludovici, Frederick is depicted as being raised on a barrel on his coronation, before falling inside it. In the following conflict between the kings, Louis recognized in 1316 the independence of Switzerland from the Habsburg dynasty.

Dual Kingship

As he did not manage to overcome Leopold's obstinacy, Frederick returned to Munich as a prisoner, even though the Pope had released him from his oath. Louis, who was impressed by such nobility, renewed the old friendship with Frederick, and they agreed to rule the Empire jointly. Since the Pope and the electors strongly objected to this agreement, another treaty was signed at Ulm on 7 January 1326, according to which Frederick would administer Germany as King of the Romans, while Louis would be crowned as Holy Roman Emperor in Italy. Such a system of dividing kingship had never been seen before in the Holy Roman Empire, and it would never truly be repeated again in Imperial history. Louis also took further action in order to placate Leopold, and sought the advice of Frederick the Fair in secret meetings in order to achieve these ends. As a result, Leopold was appointed as an imperial vicar, with the aim of ensuring his loyalty to the two kings. This was short lived, however - after Leopold's death in 1326, Frederick withdrew from the regency of the Empire and returned to rule only Austria. He died on 13 January 1330.

Historians debate why Louis underwent such an unprecedented measure. German historian Heinz Thomas doubted that Louis's offer was genuine, and believed it was a tactical move to curry favour with the Habsburgs, especially Frederick's unwilling brother Leopold. Other historians, such as Michael Menzel, Martin Clauss, and Roland Pauler argue that Louis made the agreement in good faith, and genuinely wanted to rule alongside Frederick. Menzel writes that the treaty was in fact a tactical maneouvre against Pope John XXII, and that by using the legitimacy of the Electors rather than the decrees of the Pope as grounds for deriving legitimate kingship, Imperial power would be strengthened. By creating an alliance between the Wittelsbachs and the Habsburgs, the two powers were able to stabilise the north of the Alps in order to have a foundation with which to interfere in Italian politics. This was especially important, as Louis's predecessor marched troops into Italy to crown himself King of Italy and crush local rebels.

For years, the dual kingship was shaped by consensus in both political and symbolic affairs. The two rulers were regarded as brothers. In doing so, they depicted themselves as equal partners who propped each other up with mutual support. By operating under a dual-kingship, Louis eschewed the conventional medieval representation of kingship which stated that only one man could rule. At the investiture ceremony, the prince-electors swore fealty to both kings, a new seal was created to represent the dual-kingship, and the kings addressed themselves as "co-king". During the dual kingship period, the two kings expressed their co-rule through political cooperation as well as monarchical symbolism. They referred to each other as king, ate and drank together, and even shared a bed. The two ensured that any ceremonial expression was clearly demarcated in a way that embodied dual kingship. The introduction of this novel concept of dual-kingship was designed as a way of maintaining peace, as the Munich Treaty did not explicitly outline the way the concept would be introduced. Important aspects such as coinage and diplomacy with the prince-electors was notably left out of the agreement. The Pope, meanwhile, declared the treaty between the two kings to be invalid.

Coronation as Holy Roman Emperor and conflict with the Pope

The political situation of Italy in the late Middle Ages was complicated. The Kingdom of Italy consisted of northern Italy, except for the Republic of Venice. The kingdom belonged formally to the Holy Roman Empire, although the Emperor struggled to exert his authority there during the 13th and 14th centuries. The various city-states of Northern Italy were intermittently involved in conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines, wherein allegiances were split between the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. There was no strong division of ideological or cultural lines that caused the division between the two sides, causing Italian politics to be fluid. Instead, most rulers in the region tended to support their own interests, and were open to outside influence. The Italienzug of Louis's predecessor had been the first one in over half a century, and so many imperially-aligned Italian rulers sought to curry favour with Louis before the break in relations with the Pope. In the past, Henry VII's plans to stabilise Italy had been shattered by his untimely death, which had caused the Empire to lose significant influence in the region.

The situation was further complicated by the Avignon Papacy, where the Pope was under heavy influence from the Kingdom of France. The Pope functioned as ruler of the Papal State while the south of the peninsula was under the rule of the Kingdom of Naples. John XXII did not recognise the Imperial claims to the Kingdom of Italy, and declared the anti-Imperial Robert of Anjou to be vicar of Lombardy and Tuscany. As a result, the pro-Imperial factions came to face further resistance for their campaign into Italy.

After the reconciliation with the Habsburgs in 1326, Louis marched to Italy and was crowned with the Iron Crown as King of Italy in Milan on the Pentecost of 1327, with the intention of using his presence to undermine the Guelphs. Already in 1323, Louis had sent an army to Italy to protect Milan against the Kingdom of Naples, which was together with France the strongest ally of the papacy. But now the Lord of Milan Galeazzo I Visconti was deposed since he was suspected of conspiring with the pope. The Pope reacted against Louis with further measures, such as renouncing his honours as the Duke of Bavaria, and declaring him a heretic. In Papal correspondence, Louis is deridingly referred to as Ludovicus Bavarus (Louis the Bavarian). In doing so, he denied his every rank and title, but this did not prevent Louis from undergoing his Italienzug. Louis faced fewer adversities during his Italienzug than his predecessor Henry VII, as Louis did not enter Italy with the intentions of instituting wide-reaching installations of Imperial power.

Imperial privileges

Louis IV was a protector of the Teutonic Knights. In 1337 he allegedly bestowed upon the Teutonic Order a privilege to conquer Lithuania and Russia, although the Order had only petitioned for three small territories. Later he forbade the Order to stand trial before foreign courts in their territorial conflicts with foreign rulers.

Louis concentrated his energies also on the economic development of the cities of the empire, so his name can be found in many city chronicles for the privileges he granted. In 1330 the emperor for example permitted the Frankfurt Trade Fair, and in 1340 Lübeck, as the leading member of the Hanseatic League, received the coinage prerogative for golden gulden.

Dynastic policy

In 1323 Louis gave Brandenburg as a fiefdom to his eldest son Louis V after the Brandenburg branch of the House of Ascania had died out. With the Treaty of Pavia in 1329 the emperor reconciled the sons of his late brother Rudolph and returned the Palatinate to his nephews Rudolf and Rupert. After the death of Henry of Bohemia, the duchy of Carinthia was released as an imperial fief on 2 May 1335 in Linz to his Habsburg cousins Albert II, Duke of Austria, and Otto, Duke of Austria, while Tyrol was first placed into Luxemburg hands.

With the death of duke John I in 1340 Louis inherited Lower Bavaria and then reunited the duchy of Bavaria. John's mother, a member of the Luxemburg dynasty, had to return to Bohemia. In 1342 Louis also acquired Tyrol for the Wittelsbach by voiding the first marriage of Margarete Maultasch with John Henry of Bohemia and marrying her to his own son Louis V, thus alienating the House of Luxemburg even more.

In 1345 the emperor further antagonized the lay princes by conferring Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland upon his wife, Margaret II of Hainaut. The hereditary titles of Margaret's sisters, one of whom was the queen of England, were ignored. Because of the dangerous hostility of the Luxemburgs, Louis had increased his power base ruthlessly.

Conflict with Luxembourg

The acquisition of these territories and his restless foreign policy had earned Louis many enemies among the German princes. In the summer of 1346 the Luxembourg Charles IV was elected rival king, with the support of Pope Clement VI. Louis himself obtained much support from the Imperial Free Cities and the knights and successfully resisted Charles, who was widely regarded as a papal puppet ("rex clericorum" as William of Ockham called him). Also the Habsburg dukes stayed loyal to Louis. In the Battle of Crécy Charles' father John of Luxembourg was killed; Charles himself also took part in the battle but escaped.

But then Louis' sudden death avoided a longer civil war. Louis died in October 1347 from a stroke suffered during a bear-hunt in Puch near Fürstenfeldbruck. He is buried in the Frauenkirche in Munich. The sons of Louis supported Günther von Schwarzburg as new rival king to Charles but finally joined the Luxembourg party after Günther's early death in 1349 and divided the Wittelsbach possessions among themselves again. In continuance of the conflict of the House of Wittelsbach with the House of Luxembourg, the Wittelsbach family returned to power in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400 with King Rupert of Germany, a great-grandnephew of Louis.

Family and children

In 1308, Louis married his first wife, Beatrice of Silesia (1290–1322). They had six children:

Mathilda (aft. 21 June 1313 – 2 July 1346, Meißen), married at Nuremberg 1 July 1329 Frederick II, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1349)

Daughter (end September 1314 – died shortly after).

Louis V, Duke of Bavaria (July 1315 – 17/18 September 1361), duke of Upper Bavaria, margrave of Brandenburg, count of Tyrol

Anna (c. July 1317 – 29 January 1319, Kastl)

Agnes (c. 1318 – died shortly after).

Stephen II (autumn 1319 – 19 May 1375), duke of Lower Bavaria

In 1324, Louis married his second wife, Margaret II, Countess of Hainaut and Holland (1310–1356).

They had nine children:

Margaret (1325–1374), married:

in 1351 in Ofen Stephen, Duke of Slavonia (d. 1354), son of the King Charles I of Hungary;

1357/58 Gerlach von Hohenlohe.

Anna (c. 1326 – 3 June 1361, Fontenelles) married John I of Lower Bavaria (d. 1340).

Louis VI the Roman (7 May 1328 – 17 May 1365), duke of Upper Bavaria, elector of Brandenburg.

Elisabeth (1329 – 2 August 1402, Stuttgart), married: