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Louis I of Hungary
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Louis I the Great ( Croatian: Ludovik I) (5 March 1326, Visegrád 10 September 1382, Nagyszombat/Trnava) was King of Hungary from 1342 and of Poland from 1370.
Louis was the head of the senior branch of the Angevin dynasty. He was one of Hungary's most active and accomplished monarchs of the Late Middle Ages, extending territorial control to the Adriatic and securing Dalmatia, with part of Bosnia and Bulgaria, within the Holy Crown of Hungary.
He spent much of his reign in wars with the Republic of Venice and in competition for the throne of Naples, the former with some success and the latter with little lasting results.
342, Louis (Ludvig I,Czech: Ludvík I.
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Encyclopedia
Louis I the Great ( Croatian: Ludovik I) (5 March 1326, Visegrád 10 September 1382, Nagyszombat/Trnava) was King of Hungary from 1342 and of Poland from 1370.
Louis was the head of the senior branch of the Angevin dynasty. He was one of Hungary's most active and accomplished monarchs of the Late Middle Ages, extending territorial control to the Adriatic and securing Dalmatia, with part of Bosnia and Bulgaria, within the Holy Crown of Hungary.
He spent much of his reign in wars with the Republic of Venice and in competition for the throne of Naples, the former with some success and the latter with little lasting results.
Family
In 1342, Louis (Ludvig I,Czech: Ludvík I. Veliký, married his first wife, Margaret (1335 1349), underaged daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, who died while still a minor. He then married his second wife, Elisabeth, daughter of Stephen II of Bosnia, who became Louis's vassal, and Elisabeth of Kuyavia, in 1353 . Her maternal grandfather was Polish Casimir of Kuyavia, son of Ziemomysl of Kuyavia and Salome of Eastern Pomerania.
His daughters
Louis had four daughters, all born of his second wife:
- Mary (1365 1366)
- Catherine (1368 1378)
- Mary, his successor in Hungary, who married Sigismund, at that time Margrave of Brandenburg (1371 1395)
- Hedwige his successor in Poland, who married Jogaila, then Grand Duke of Lithuania
Biography
Louis, named for his uncle, Saint Louis of Toulouse, was the eldest son of Charles I of Hungary and Elisabeth of Poland, daughter of Ladislaus the Short and sister of Casimir III of Poland, the Piasts who reestablished kinship in Poland. Though only sixteen Louis understood Latin, German and Italian as well as his mother tongue. He was designated heir of his father at birth.
In 1342 he succeeded his father as king of Hungary and was crowned at Székesfehérvár on the 21st of July with great enthusiasm. Louis led his armies many times in person. Besides his best known campaigns, he fought in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Wallachia, and against the Golden Horde. The first Ottoman-Hungarian clash occurred during his reign.
He was an Alexander type leader. He led assaults personally and climbed city walls together with his soldiers. He shared the privations and hardships of camp life with his soldiers. Although few legends were woven around his name, one incident casts light on his courage. When one of his soldiers who had been ordered to explore a ford was carried away by the current, the King plunged into the torrent without hesitation and saved the man from drowning. As an excellent commander and a gallant fighter, Lajos resembled his exemplar, King Saint Ladislaus.
Under his reign lived the most famous epic hero of Hungarian literature and warfare, the king's Champion: Nicolas Toldi. John de Cardailhac, patriarch of Alexandria and envoy of the Vatican,(who saw the most European countries and monarchs) wrote: "I call God as my witness that I have never seen a monarch more majestic and more powerful... or one who desires peace and calm as much as he."
Domestic and legislative activity
The gold coin of Hungary (the Florin), of the same weight and purity of its namesake of Florence, was clear proof of the country's prosperity. Hungarian and Florencian coins were the most valuable coins of the age.
the gold flowed in an undiminished stream into Louis' coffers, enabling him to keep a court even more splendid than his father's. And the whole country, spared for two generations from serious invasion or civil war, blossomed with a material prosperity which it had never before known. By the end of Louis' reign its total population had risen to some three millions (4 million with Croatia and Slavonia), and it contained 49 royal boroughs, over 500 market towns and more than 26,000 villages. International commerce, favoured by the continued stability and high repute of the currency, began to make headway.
Constitutionally, Louis maintained much of the structure of his father's regime, but introduced several cultural reforms. In In 1351 Louis also confirmed the constitution (Golden Bull of 1222), adding an explicit declaration that all nobles enjoyed 'one and the same liberty', a provision which, it appears, besides reaffirming the rights of the noble class as a whole, including the familiares, also enlarged its ranks by bringing full noble privileges to a further class of border-line cases. His other laws introduced the entail system regulating the inheritance of the land-owning class.
In 1351, Lajos codified the military obligations of the nobility in the so-called Law of Entail (osiség). In the past the nobility mustered soldiers according to the size of their holdings. With the passage of time, however, many of these estates had been sold or split up, causing diminishing returns and a reduction of military obligations. This was harmful to the country's military strength. Other provisions of the law stabilised land tenure by universalising the system of aviticitas under which all land was entailed in the male line of the owner's family, collaterals succeeding in default of direct heirs; if the line died out completely, the estate reverted to the Crown. The daughters of a deceased noble were entitled to a quarter of the assessed value of his property, but this had to be paid them in cash.
This (Law of Entail) is a highly important law, which ensured the integrity of ancestral property, remained in force until 1848 and was to a great extent instrumental in keeping Hungary in Hungarian hands.
At the same time, Louis standardised the obligations of the peasant to his lord at one-ninth of his produce -neither more nor less. As he also had to pay the tithe to the church and the porta to the state, the peasant's obligations were thus not inconsiderable, but do not appear to have been crushing in this age of prosperity; his right of free migration was specifically re-affirmed.
He founded the first university in Hungary in the city of Pécs in 1369.He created the second university at Óbuda in 1389.
Italian wars
Wars with Venice and Naples
In 1345, Louis decided to help liberate city of Zara.
His soldiers didn't take the field (because some Hungarian leaders were corrupted by Venice before the battle), therefore he couldn't help for Zara.
In the spring of 1346 the Hungarian King arrived with his ernomous vast Royal Army of 100,000 men, of whom more than 30,000 were Horsemen and Men-at-Arms and 10,000 were soldiers under Stephen II. The Venetians had attempted to bribe several Hungarian Generals, including the Bosnian Ban, who gave away the positions of Hungarian troops for a handsome sum of money. This earned him the nickname the Devil's Student. On July 1, 1346 a fierce clash followed, which the Hungarian side eventually won only due to numerical superiority although more than 7000 Hungarian troops killed in battle. However this Hungarian victory was a big clout and admonition to Venice.
Louis embarked on an expedition against Naples in revenge of the murder of his brother Andrew, Duke of Calabria, husband of Joan I of Naples. The circumstances of his death in a palace conspiracy suggested the involvement of the queen. Louis entered Italy on 3 November 1347 and, after obtaining the support of many local princes, he entered Benevento early in 1348 , much to the applause of the Neapolitan baronage. Louis defeated his enemies in Battle of Capua. On 15 January, Joan fled Naples by ship for Provence, soon to be followed by her second husband, Louis of Taranto. Having established himself in Naples with little difficulty, Louis was nevertheless forced to withdraw quickly by the arrival of the Black Death. In his rush to leave ravaged Italy, he appointed two Hungarian officials to hold the regency. They soon lost the support of the barons and opened the way for the return of Joan and her husband.
Two years later, early in 1350, Louis landed at Manfredonia and, in next to no time at all, was menacing Naples. However, he soon called off the campaign at the insistence of his exhausted troops and renounced all claims on the Neapolitan crown. Before leaving Italy, he had the papal curia of Avignon begin an inquest into the murder of Andrew, but the papal court found Joan innocent, largely for political reasons, as Joan agreed to ceded her temporal rights over the city of Avignon to the papacy. The conflict with Naples finally settled in 1381 , one year before Louis death. The pope stripped the royal title from Joan and authorized king Louis to execute his decision. He was too ill to go personally, but his nephew, Charles of Durazzo aided with Hungarian gold and army seized the throne and killed Joan.
From 1357 to 1358, Louis waged a new war against Venice for the rule of Dalmatia. After successfully organising an anti-Venetian league, Louis put the cities of Dalmatia to fire and the sword, expelling all Venetians. By the Treaty of Zara (1358), all of Louis's demands over the Adriatic region were recognised. He immediately built up an Adriatic fleet. Venice had to pay annual tribute to Louis. Venetians also had to raise the Angevin flag on St. Mark's Square on holy days.
Louis' Italian army contained German mercenary infantry and English longbowmen, Hungarian heavy knights and light calvary from Hungary,, Louis party Italians and Italian nobles.
Northern wars
In the North Lajos assisted his ally and uncle: King Casimir, in his wars against the pagan Lithuanians and Tartars, and against Bohemia. In Poland, Louis defeated Lithuanians, Tatars and repelled the Bohemians . The young Louis had become very popular in Poland due to these campaigns. After Casimir's death in 1370, the Poles elected Lajos King of Poland in compliance with the agreement made in Visegrád during his father's reign. Being the ruler of Poland, however, was not an unqualified pleasure. The Poles hated to pay taxes and loved to quarrel among themselves and with the Court, especially with the domineering dowager Queen Elizabeth.
Louis had named Elizabeth Regent of Poland to conveniently eliminate her from his Court. Still, Queen Elizabeth had some justification for taking part in the affairs and quarrels of Poland: she had been a Polish princess before marrying Róbert Károly. Elizabeth's regency turned out to be a failure, her background notwithstanding. In 1375, the Poles killed 160 of her Hungarian soldiers and the dowager Queen escaped to Hungary lest she, too, be killed by her compatriots. Louis reconed with the rebels, and strengthened his power again.
Balkanian and Turkish wars
Louis with his ernomous 80.000 strong army repelled the serbian Duan's armies in vojvodine of Macva and principality of Travunia in 1349. when Czar Dusan broke into Bos-
nian territory he was defeated by Stephan II with the assistance of King Louis' troops, and when Duan made a second attempt he was decisively beaten by his luckier rival, King Louis the Great himself, in 1354. The two monarchs signed the peace agreement in 1355.
His latter campaigns in the Balkans were aimed not so much at conquest and subjugation as at drawing the Serbs, Bosnians, Wallachians and Bulgarians into the fold of the Roman Catholic faith and at forming a united front against the looming Turkish menace. In 1366 John V Byzantine Emperor visited Hungary to beg for help against Turks. It was relatively easy to subdue Balkanian Orthodox countries by arms, but to convert them was a different matter. Despite Lajos' efforts, the peoples of the Balkans remained faithful to the Eastern Orthodox Church and their attitude toward Hungary remained ambiguous. Louis annexed Moldavia in 1352 and established a vassal principality there, before conquering Vidin in 1365. The rulers of Serbia, Walachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria became his vassals.
They regarded powerful Hungary as a potential menace to their national identity. For this reason, Hungary could never regard the Serbs and Wallachians as reliable allies in her subsequent wars against the Turks. However Lajos defeated the Turks when Hungarian and Turkish troops clashed for the first time in history at Nicapoli in 1366. The Hungarian Chapel in the Cathedral at Aachen was built to commemorate this victory.
In the spring of 1365, Louis I headed a campaign against the Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin and its ruler Ivan Sratsimir. He seized the city of Vidin on 2 May 1365; the region was under Hungarian rule until 1369.
But it is easily arguable that his Balkan enterprises brought Hungary, on balance, more loss of money than profit.
Inheritance of Poland and death
In 1370, the Piasts of Poland died out. The last dynast, Casimir the Great, left only female issue and a grandson. Since arrangements had been made for Louis's succession as early as 1355 , he became King of Poland upon his grandfather's death in right of his mother, who held much of the practical power until her death in 1380 .
When Louis died in 1382, the Hungarian throne was inherited by his daughter Mary. In Poland, however, the lords of Lesser Poland did not want to continue the personal union with Hungary, nor to accept Mary's fiancé Sigismund as a regent. They therefore chose Mary's younger sister, Jadwiga of Poland as their new monarch. After two years of negotiations with Louis widow, Queen Elisabeth, who was regent of Hungary, and a civil war in Greater Poland (1383), Jadwiga finally came to Kraków and was crowned "King" (not Queen) of Poland on 16 November 1384. The masculine gender in her title was intended to underline the fact that she was a monarch in her own right and not a queen consort.
Peace for Hungary in a Turbulent Europe
Although he waged a host of campaigns outside Hungary, Lajos did keep peace within Hungary itself. In an era when Spain was harassed by the Arabs, France targeted by the British, Germany tormented by the rivalries of its princes, Italy the scene of bloody conflicts among its city-states, Poland and Russia the objects of Lithuanian and Tartar attacks, and Byzantium and the Balkan states subject to Turkish raids and expansion, Hungary flourished as an island of peace.
In death as in life, Lajos expressed his wish to lie eternally by his idol's side. Accordingly, he was laid to rest in Nagyvárad beside the tomb of king Saint Ladislaus
Ancestors
Titles
King of Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia, Jerusalem, Sicily from 1342, Poland from 1370
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