Acceptance of the imperial crown of Louis IV

When Duke Leopold died in February 1326, Louis boldly opposed the pope in Italy itself. Supported by the Ghibellines, he accepted the iron crown of Lombardy in Milan (May 31, 1327) and the imperial crown in Rome (January 11, 1328), offered by the representatives of the Roman populace. This unusual move could be considered an emergency measure because the pope had refused to crown the designated emperor, declaring him a heretic on purely political grounds.

Louis let himself be persuaded to depose the pope formally by a decree of April 18, 1328, and to countenance the appointment of an antipope whose incompetence furnished John XXII with an easy triumph. Moreover, Louis’s forces were insufficient to subjugate Robert of Naples or to institute a stable order in Italy, for which he lacked the necessary prerequisite of a firm hold on Germany. Turning to the north again, he celebrated Christmas of 1329 in Trent, whence he had departed for Italy in February 1327.

King Frederick died on January 13, 1330. The problem of shared rule was thus solved. Yet Louis’s German enemies had not been idle. John of Bohemia had arranged the marriage of his younger son, John Henry, with Margaret, the heiress of Carinthia-Tirol, in 1330. This caused Louis to enter into a secret covenant with the Habsburgs regarding the partition of this strategically important inheritance (May 31, 1331). He thus encircled John of Bohemia, forcing him to withdraw from Italy, where he had ensconced himself in the guise of an imperial vicar. In order to confuse his enemies, Louis issued a new decree of abdication, hedged with countless provisos, on November 19, 1333; this time he proposed to renounce the throne in favour of his Lower Bavarian cousin Henry. The death of Duke Henry of Carinthia-Tirol in 1335 compelled Louis to invest the Habsburgs with Carinthia, by way of carrying out his part of the secret compact; he also granted them southern Tirol in order to save at least the northern part for himself. But the Habsburgs, in their eagerness to secure Carinthia, concluded an agreement behind his back with Luxembourg, which thus acquired the whole of the Tirol. As a result, the influential archbishop of Mainz came over to Louis’s side (June 29, 1337), and Edward III of England made a treaty with him (August 26), thus proving that Louis was a desirable ally on the international plane.

The Germans, tired of the incessant quarrels over the crown, were disconcerted by the pope’s intransigence. Through their city magistrates and other representatives, they pressed for legitimization of Louis’s rule and the rejection of papal interference. When Louis issued a statement of principle regarding the accession to the imperial throne before the Frankfurt Diet (Fidem catholicam of May 17, 1338), he had the support not only of the cities but also of the empire’s ecclesiastical lords. He relied upon this support in promulgating a basic electoral law (Licet juris) in Frankfurt (August 3) and again in Coblenz, where he met the king of England and bestowed on him an imperial vicarate on the Lower Rhine. The promulgation of that law, however, remained an empty gesture because the electoral princes, while assembled at Rhens on July 16, had rejected the pope’s claims without declaring themselves in favour of Louis and withheld their approval. The conflict over the crown and the charge of heresy thus continued to smolder. By isolating John of Bohemia and issuing a formal waiver of his own claims to the Tirol, Louis managed nonetheless to force John to renounce all claims to Italy, to declare himself a vassal, and to acknowledge Louis emperor in 1339.

Seeing that the entire clergy of the empire, except for the border bishoprics of Liège and Cambrai, had submitted to his rule and that the English held out the prospect of subsidies, Louis had reason to hope that he could confront the French in battle and thereby make the pope yield. When Edward III declared war on France on September 1, 1339, and had himself acknowledged as king of France in Ghent on January 27, 1340, Louis was in a position to arbitrate between England and France. But the Tirolean question spoiled everything. In November 1341 Margaret expelled her Luxembourg husband, whereupon Louis, declaring that the marriage had not been consummated and was therefore void, married her with ill-considered haste to his widowed son, Louis of Brandenburg, on February 10, 1342. This created an unfavourable impression throughout the empire. Worse, it led to the final rupture with Luxembourg and to Charles of Moravia, son of John of Luxembourg, declaring himself a candidate for the imperial crown now that the king of France, at war with England, was eliminated as a pretender. Louis vainly attempted to propitiate the Luxembourgs by the cession of Lower Lusatia and by the offer of one of his daughters in marriage. They negotiated with him but at the same time encouraged the new, intensely nationalistic French pope to renew the heresy proceedings against him and to demand a new election (August 1343). Once more Louis countered by offering to abdicate, this time in favour of his son, Louis of Brandenburg-Tirol (September 1343). The Luxembourgs maintained the negotiations until Charles of Moravia, who had granted excessive concessions to the pope, gained all electoral votes except the two of the house of Wittelsbach and thus was elected king (July 1346). Preparing himself for the war that had become inevitable, Louis died of a heart attack while bear hunting near Munich in the autumn of 1347.

The Tirolean question

Louis had wanted to raise his family to a royal status like that of the houses of Habsburg and Luxembourg. But he failed to achieve the major prerequisite—the welding of his family into a uniform body motivated by a single political will. He strove for this unity with all the diplomatic and juridical means at his disposal, and the Upper Bavarian law code of 1346 (first formulated about 1335) remains a monument to these efforts. For, while Charles IV did what he could to erase Louis’s memory within the empire, Charles’s famous edict, the Golden Bull of 1356, represents only the final codification of fundamental imperial laws that had actually evolved under Louis. This codification enabled the empire to stand up to the juridically minded church of Avignon.

Louis possessed courage and tenacity without being rigid. He won men over by a jovial and chivalrous demeanour, and his suppleness, coupled with diplomatic skill, charmed them even as a certain mercurial quality made him appear unfathomable. He was a political man, whose guiding principle remained the honor imperii. Even in his darkest hours he brooked no interference with the imperial rights. It would be unfair to judge him solely by the yardstick of success. It was Louis’s fate to repeatedly come up with inadequate resources against adversaries who were talented and powerful.