Early life Born in
Nuremberg or
Prague, Sigismund was the son of
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and his fourth and final wife,
Elizabeth of Pomerania, who was the granddaughter of King
Casimir III of Poland and the great-granddaughter of
Gediminas, a
Grand Duke of Lithuania. He was named after
Saint Sigismund of Burgundy, the favourite saint of Sigismund's father. From Sigismund's childhood, he was nicknamed the "ginger fox" (
liška ryšavá) in the
Bohemian Crown lands on account of his hair colour. (
Chronica Hungarorum, 1488) King
Louis the Great of Hungary and Poland always had a good and close relationship with Emperor Charles IV, and Sigismund was
betrothed to Louis' eldest daughter,
Mary, in 1374, when he was six years old and Mary but an infant. The marital project aimed to augment the lands held by the
House of Luxembourg. Upon his father's death in 1378, young Sigismund became
Margrave of Brandenburg and was sent to the Hungarian court, where he soon learned the Hungarian language and way of life, and became entirely devoted to his adopted country. The disagreement between Polish landlords of
Lesser Poland on one side and landlords of
Greater Poland on the other, regarding the choice of the future monarch of Poland, finally ended in choosing the Lithuanian side. The support of the lords of Greater Poland was however not enough to give Prince Sigismund the Polish crown. Instead, the landlords of Lesser Poland gave it to Mary's younger sister
Jadwiga, who married
Jogaila of
Lithuania.
King of Hungary , 1488) On the death of her father in 1382, his betrothed, Mary, became queen of Hungary and Sigismund married her in 1385 in Zólyom (today
Zvolen). The next year, he was accepted as Mary's future co-ruler by the
Treaty of Győr. However, Mary was captured, together with her mother,
Elizabeth of Bosnia, who had acted as regent, in 1387 by the rebellious
House of Horvat, Bishop
Paul Horvat of
Mačva, his brother
John Horvat and younger brother Ladislav. Sigismund's mother-in-law was strangled, while Mary was liberated. , 1488) Having secured the support of the nobility, Sigismund was crowned
King of Hungary at
Székesfehérvár on 31 March 1387. Having raised money by pledging
Brandenburg to his cousin
Jobst, Margrave of Moravia (1388), he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne. It was not for entirely selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties. (For some years, the baron's council governed the country in the name of the
Holy Crown). The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work. The bulk of the nation headed by the
House of Garai was with him; but in the southern provinces between the
Sava and the
Drava, the Horvathys with the support of King
Tvrtko I of Bosnia, Mary's maternal uncle, proclaimed as their king
Ladislaus of Naples, son of the murdered
Charles II of Hungary. Not until 1395 did
Nicholas II Garai succeed in suppressing them. Sigismund returned by sea and through the realm of
Zeta, where he ordained the local
Montenegrin lord
Đurađ II with the islands of
Hvar and
Korčula for resistance against the Turks; the islands were returned to Sigismund after Đurađ's death in April 1403. (left).The disaster at Nicopolis angered several Hungarian lords, leading to instability in the kingdom. Deprived of his authority in Hungary, Sigismund then turned his attention to securing the succession in
Germany and
Bohemia, and was recognized by his childless half-brother
Wenceslaus IV as Vicar-General of the whole empire. However, he was unable to support Wenceslaus when he was deposed in 1400, and
Rupert of Germany, Elector Palatine, was elected
German king in his stead.
Possessions in Serbia Threatened by Ottoman expansion, King Sigismund managed to strengthen the security of southern Hungarian borders by entering into a defensive alliance with Despot
Stefan Lazarević of
Serbia. In 1403, Hungarian possessions in northwestern regions of Serbia (the city of
Belgrade and the
Banate of Macsó), were given to Despot Stefan, who pledged his allegiance to King Sigismund, remaining the king's loyal
vassal until death in 1427. Stefan's successor
George Branković of Serbia also pledged his allegiance to Sigismund, returning Belgrade to the king. By maintaining close relations with Serbian rulers, Sigismund succeeded in securing the southern borders of his realm.
Order of the Dragon Sigismund founded his personal order of knights, the
Order of the Dragon, after the victory at Dobor. The main goal of the order was fighting the
Ottoman Empire. Members of the order were mostly his political allies and supporters. The main members of the order were Sigismund's close allies
Stefan Lazarević,
Nicholas II Garay,
Hermann II of Celje,
Stibor of Stiboricz, and
Pippo Spano. The most important European monarchs became members of the order. He encouraged international trade by abolishing internal duties, regulating tariffs on foreign goods and standardizing weights and measures throughout the country.
King of the Romans After the death of King
Rupert of Germany in 1410, Sigismund—ignoring the claims of his half-brother Wenceslaus—
was elected as successor by three of the
electors on 20 September 1410, but he was opposed by his cousin
Jobst of Moravia, who was
elected by four electors in a different election on 1 October. Jobst's death on 18 January 1411 removed this conflict and Sigismund was
again elected king on 21 July 1411. His
coronation was deferred until 8 November 1414, when it took place at
Aachen.
Conference in Buda , 1664) In 1412, a Knights Tournament was held in
Buda, Hungary, this was also a conference between Hungarian King Sigismund, Polish King
Wladyslaw II (Jogaila) and Bosnian King
Tvrtko II. 2000 knights were present from all over Europe, even England. There were very many princes, lords, knights and servants at the court of Buda in Hungary. Three kings and three other monarchs, a Serbian
despot, 13 herzogs and/or dukes, 21 counts, 2000 knights, 1 cardinal, 1 legate, 3 archbishops, 11 other bishops, 86 players and trumpeters, 17 messengers, and 40,000 horses. There were people from 17 countries and languages. A presumably contemporary list of the participants of the meeting has also survived. Besides the host, Sigismund, and his main guest, Władysław II, this text mentions Władysław's cousin
Vytautas,
Grand Duke of Lithuania, and the king of Bosnia, usually identified as Tvrtko II. Some argue convincingly that it was not Tvrtko II but
Stjepan Ostoja who visited Buda at that time. Besides the king,
Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić,
Sandalj Hranić Kosača and
Pavle Radinović also came from Bosnia, and from
Serbia, the Despot
Stefan Lazarević, bringing two thousand horses. From Austria, dukes
Ernest (the Iron) and
Albert II, later successor of Sigismund, also took part in the Buda meeting. Also
Heinrich von Plauen. the
Grand Master of the
Teutonic Order,
Stibor of Stiboricz,
Nikola II Gorjanski,
Hermann II, Count of Celje and his son
Frederick II, count of
Krbava—Karlo Kurjaković, Ivan Morović-ban of
Machva. Długosz reports the arrival in Buda of the envoys of the
Jalal al-Din, khan of the
Golden Horde and son of
Tokhtamysh, who wanted to meet Władysław II of Poland. Jalal al-Din was an ally of the Polish and Lithuanian rulers in their fight against the
Teutonic Order, and according to some reconstructions of the events, Sigismund also wanted to rely on the Tatars against the
Ottoman threat. A narrative source from
Lübeck also mentions the proceedings in Buda in 1412. Detmar's Lübeckische Chronik continued from 1400 to 1413. The continuation also gives a detailed description of the participants at the Buda meeting. The royal meeting was accompanied by festivities and various entertainments. At the tournament, a knight from
Silesia named Nemsche and a page from Austria won the joust. A Polish priest and chronicler
Jan Długosz says in his
Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae that in the tournament there were also knights from Bulgaria, probably from the court of prince
Fruzhin, Sigismund's
vasal who also was at the conference.
Council of Constance From 1412 to 1423, Sigismund campaigned against the
Republic of Venice in Italy. The king took advantage of the difficulties of
Antipope John XXIII to obtain a promise that a
council should be called in Constance in 1414 to settle the
Western Schism. He took a leading part in the deliberations of this assembly, and during the sittings travelled to
France,
England, and
Burgundy in a vain attempt to secure the abdication of the three rival popes. The council ended in 1418, having resolved the Schism and—of great consequence to Sigismund's future career—having the
Czech religious reformer,
Jan Hus,
burned at the stake for
heresy in July 1415. The complicity of Sigismund in the death of Hus is a matter of controversy. He had granted Hus a
safe conduct and protested against his imprisonment,
Thomas Carlyle nicknamed Sigismund "Super Grammaticam". His main acts during these years were an alliance with England against France, and a failed attempt, owing to the hostility of the princes, to secure peace in Germany by a league of the towns. The close relationship that developed between Henry V and Sigismund resulted in him being inducted into the
Order of the Garter.
Hussite Wars , 1488) after the emperor's death In 1419, the death of
Wenceslaus IV left Sigismund titular
King of Bohemia, but he had to wait for seventeen years before the
Czech Estates would acknowledge him. Although the two dignities of king of the Romans and king of Bohemia added considerably to his importance, and indeed made him the nominal temporal head of
Christendom, they conferred no increase of power and financially embarrassed him. It was only as
King of Hungary that he had succeeded in establishing his authority and in doing anything for the order and good government of the land. Entrusting the government of Bohemia to
Sofia of Bavaria, the widow of Wenceslaus, he hastened into Hungary. The alliance against the Hussites continued to develop though, joined by Upper German princes and cities, even from "the regions furthest from Bohemia". In January 1424, the associative activity of the German electors led to the Union ('einunge') of Bingen, "within which the Rhenish princes were joined by the elector of Saxony and Sigismund's loyal partner Margrave Frederick of Brandenburg, and mutual assistance, adjudication, and cooperation in the face of the Hussite threat were stipulated."
Germany Sigismund's rule in Germany and in the empire in general was hampered by his complete lack of
Hausmacht (domestic power) within the
Kingdom of Germany. His rule relied on key allies and the culture of associative political mechanisms in Germany. Duncan Hardy remarks that "both the local and the trans-regional dimensions of the political activity displayed by the sources from throughout Sigismund's reign demonstrate that power at every level in the empire was exercised and mediated through the customary institutions and mechanisms of associative political culture. If Sigismund enjoyed considerable successes at certain junctures, it was not in spite of or independently from these institutions and mechanisms, but precisely because he devoted considerable energy to harnessing associative interactions and building strategic relationships with leading actors within elite networks. Even during his prolonged absences from the empire's core lands, Sigismund was able to make use of these partnerships, and could reasonably expect that the associative activity of princes, nobles, and towns would yield results—as indeed they did, in the form of large-scale collective activity against Duke
Frederick IV of Austria—Tyrol in the 1410 and the Hussites in the 1420. Not all of Sigismund's projects came to fruition, and he could not always control the longer-term outcomes of his policies, but the notion that there were phases of an 'empire without a king' during his reign clearly does not stand up to the abundant evidence of his interactions with regional clients and associations. At the same time, the somewhat adulatory view that has developed in recent years of Sigismund as a masterly politician can be tempered by the evidence that it was often felicitous alliances as much as personal skill which made his successes possible." The alliance between Sigismund and his two key allies in Germany, namely
Frederick I, Elector of Brandenburg and
Albert of Austria (who became his son-in-law and heir through the marriage with Sigismund's only daughter
Elizabeth of Luxembourg), started the rise of the Hohenzollerns and reboosted the
Habsburgs (who returned to the German throne and also inherited the connection with Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia from Sigismund).
Final years In 1428, Sigismund led another campaign against the Turks, but again with few results. In 1431, he went to
Milan where on 25 November he received the
Iron Crown as
King of Italy; after which he remained for some time at
Siena, negotiating for his
coronation as emperor and for the recognition of the Council of Basel by
Pope Eugenius IV. He was crowned emperor in
Rome on 31 May 1433, and after obtaining his demands from the pope returned to Bohemia, where he was recognized as king in 1436, though his power was little more than nominal. This was sparked by an
Albanian revolt against the Ottomans, which had begun in 1432. In 1435, Sigismund sent
Fruzhin, a Bulgarian nobleman, to negotiate an alliance with the Albanians. He also sent Daud, a pretender to the Ottoman throne, in early 1436. Sigismund died on 9 December 1437 at
Znojmo (),
Moravia (now
Czech Republic), and as ordered in life, he was buried at
Nagyvárad,
Hungary (today
Oradea,
Romania), next to the tomb of the King Saint
Ladislaus I of Hungary, who was the ideal of the perfect monarch, warrior and Christian for that time and was deeply venerated by Sigismund. By his second wife,
Barbara of Celje, he left an only daughter,
Elisabeth of Luxembourg, who was married to
Albert V, duke of Austria (later German king as Albert II) whom Sigismund named as his successor. As he left no sons, the male line of
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor became extinct on his death. == Family and issue ==