Ladislaus IV.

Bust of Ladislaus IV.

Ladislaus IV of Hungary, illustration in the Thúróczy Chronicle

Ladislaus IV.Lithograph by Josef Kriehuber after a drawing by Moritz von Schwind , ca.1828

Ladislaus IV. The Kumane ( Hungarian IV. László , also Kun László , Croatian Ladislav IV. Kumanac ; * 1262 , † July 10, 1290 in Cheresig ) from the noble family of the Árpáden was king of Hungary and Croatia from September 1272 to 1290 .

He was the son of King Stephen V of Hungary (* 1239 † 1272) and the Cuman princess Elisabeth . Ladislaus was married to Isabella von Anjou , daughter of King Charles I of Naples.

childhood

Ladislaus' early childhood was politically shaped by the fighting between his father and his grandfather Béla IV . Béla and Stephan V made a peace in Pressburg in 1264 , but the armed conflict flared up again almost immediately. Two-year-old Ladislaus was captured with his mother and held in Túróc Castle. With the peace on the Rabbit Island (today Margaret Island in Budapest ) on March 23, 1266 Ladislaus was released again. From the clashes within the royal family, the Hungarian aristocracy emerged stronger, while the power of the Árpáds had received a clear setback, from which they did not recover until the end of their rule in 1301.

Ladislaus was betrothed to Charles I , the daughter of the King of Naples and Sicily , in 1269 ; her name was Isabella, but in Hungary she was known as Elisabeth. The marriage was concluded in 1270. And it is not certain whether this marriage was ever consummated. The couple lived separately and had no children during their 20-year marriage. Ladislaus' heart was attached to the Cuman princess Edua, who not only became his lover, but also remained his partner throughout his life.

In 1272, on a trip to Dalmatia, Ladislaus was kidnapped by the Slavonian Ban Joachim Gutkeled and held captive in the castle of Kapronca . Stephan V wanted to free his son with an army, but the thirty-three year old king died on August 6, 1272.

Domination

Chaos of rule and civil war

In the days before September 3, 1272, Philip, the Archbishop of Esztergom , crowned Ladislaus, whom the contemporaries Ladislaus III. named because the child Ladislaus (1204–1205) had not been recognized as king. There is speculation about whether the new Queen Elizabeth played an active role in the murder of Stephen V, as the coronation ceremony for ten-year-old Ladislaus was well prepared after the king's death.

After Stephen's death, there were disputes in which the royal family, the nobility and neighboring empires were involved. So Stephan's faithful Egyed Monoszló, who wanted to avenge the suspected murder, fled to Bohemia . Conversely, Heinrich Kőszegi (from the family of the Lords of Güns ) returned to Hungary from Bohemia. Heinrich had fled to the neighboring country as an opponent of Stephen. Ottokar II , who wanted to expand his power to the south-east, had put Heinrich at the head of an army that conquered the Győr castle in April 1273 . Under this external threat, the Hungarian aristocratic parties united and recaptured the castle after bloody battles.

At the end of July, Heinrich returned with a larger Bohemian army. However, there was no battle with the roughly half the size of the Hungarian armed forces. The Hungarians later achieved minor victories in Moravia , but when they returned home, Ottokar's troops captured important fortresses such as Óvár , Moson , Győr and Sopron on the border.

With Bohemian support, Heinrich Kőszegi assumed a prominent position in Hungary. He charged Ladislaus and his relatives Béla, Duke of Macsó and Bosnia , with treason and killed Béla, the last remaining Árpáden alive and able to act. The troubled times strengthened the position of the Hungarian high nobility: on the throne sat a ten-year-old who did not have a strong group behind him.

At the same time, a dispute broke out within the nobility, which split into two large groups. One formed behind Heinrich Kőszegi and Joachim Gutkeled , while the other gathered around the noble family of Máté Csák and Péter Csák , who became influential under Charles I and had their possessions mainly in northern Hungary.

In the years that followed, these two groups took turns in power. Ladislaus IV had no influence on political decisions. In 1274 the Kőszegier took him prisoner, whereupon the Csákers freed the king and the Kőszegier set Duke Andreas, the younger brother of Ladislaus, as the opposing king.

Heinrich Kőszegi died in the battle of Polgárdi in central Hungary from September 26-29, 1274, but his sons continued his policy. A civil war raged in Hungary. In March 1276, Péter Csák devastated Veszprém because a member of the Kőszegi family was sitting on the bishopric there. The Káptalan school , which was the most important educational institution in Hungary at the time , was also destroyed in this battle .

The turning point in foreign policy: the union between Ladislaus and Rudolf von Habsburg

Rudolf I was the first Habsburg to take the German throne. On October 1, 1273, the German electors against Ottokar II Přemysl elected him German king. Since the Bohemian king did not accept this decision, the electors authorized Rudolf to campaign against Ottokar.

Rudolf campaigned for the Hungarian military support against Ottokar. Despite the chance to recapture the territories lost to Bohemia in 1273, the aristocratic parties could not agree on an alliance with the German king. In addition, Ottokar offered the Hungarians a peace on October 6, 1275, over which there was a new dispute among the aristocratic parties because the group around the Csák family wanted to accept the offer.

When Rudolf began his campaign in the autumn of 1276, the Kőszegi party was in power and supported the Habsburgs. The Hungarian armies moved in the direction of Vienna , under the leadership of the fourteen-year-old king. The Hungarians intended to unite with Rudolf's army and attack Ottokár, but when the troops were at Sopron, Ottokar gave up and swore allegiance to Rudolf.

In the peace that was concluded on November 21st, Ottokar promised to liberate the occupied Hungarian territories, but this did not take place except for the Sopron area. The peace, however, strengthened Ladislaus IV, who was able to present himself as the liberator of Sopron.

Increase in rank of the Cuman nobility

One of the most important events in Ladislaus' reign was the rise in rank of the Cuman nobles in 1278, who were now equal to the Hungarian nobles. The Cumans had only been settled in Hungary by Béla IV as a mercenary people around 1240 .

Ladislaus was murdered by Cumans in 1290. He was buried in the Cathedral of Cenad (Tschanad), Romania.

literature

• György Györffy: Ladislaus IV. In: Biographical Lexicon for the History of Southeast Europe. Vol. 3. Munich 1979, p. 3 f.

Web links

• Pallas Großlexikon (short biography in Hungarian)

predecessor	Office	successor
Stephan V./VI.	King of Hungary 1272–1290	Andreas III./II.
Stephan V./VI.	King of Croatia, Dalmatia and Rama 1272–1290	Andreas III./II.