Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen
Map of the Holy Roman Empire around 1250
| date | August 26, 1278 |
|---|---|
| place | Between Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen , Lower Austria |
| output | Victory of the Habsburgs |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Habsburgs : German Empire Duchy of Austria Burgraviate Nuremberg Kingdom of Hungary Mercenaries: Duchy of Swabia Duchy of Styria Duchy of Upper Bavaria |
Přemyslids : Kingdom of Bohemia Margraviate Moravia Duchy of Glogau Duchy of Lower Bavaria Mercenaries: Margraviate Brandenburg Margraviate Meißen Silesia Lesser Poland |
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 25,000 men | 30,000 men |
| losses | |
|
12,000 fallen |
unknown |
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The Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen on August 26, 1278 - also known as the Battle of the Marchfeld - was fought for the legacy of the Babenbergs . It is considered one of the largest knight battles in Europe . The 60-year-old Rudolf I of Habsburg , who was elected Roman-German king on October 1, 1273 , successfully opposed the 46-year-old Ottokar II and thus laid the foundation for the Habsburg dynasty in the area of today's Austria . The battle is named after the two places Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen in Marchfeld in Lower Austria , between which it took place. In the two communities of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen, a medieval festival has been held alternately since 2003 to commemorate the battle .
requirement
The fall of the Hohenstaufen and the interregnum had made possible an expansion policy for Ottokar II , King of Bohemia . At the expense of the empire , he tried to appropriate the Babenberg inheritance and add it to the Premyslid Kingdom of Bohemia, which was also part of the Holy Roman Empire . After Rudolf I of Habsburg was elected Roman-German king, he endeavored to reclaim the duchies of Austria and Styria , the duchy of Carinthia and other areas conquered by Ottokar in order to establish the Habsburgs' own power . The legal basis for this was provided by the principle announced soon after the beginning of the reign that all imperial property that Emperor Frederick II had held before his deposition by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 was to be returned. Correspondingly, a feudal procedure was initiated. As Ottokar, as expected, did not obey the request for the return of the imperial property, he was treated with care, which amounted to a declaration of war.
prehistory
Soon after the death of Duke Friedrich II of the Babenberg family, the struggle for the areas that had become ownerless began. Ottokar von Böhmen strove to create a larger coherent domain. After the decisive victory against the Hungarian King Béla IV, this goal was within reach.
Through this success and the suppression of the high nobility , Ottokar succeeded in uniting the duchies of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and the margravates Carniola , Friuli and the Windische Mark under his rule. However, his clumsy policy, which was based primarily on the townspeople and the lower nobility , made the resentment of the high nobility , who were limited in their privileges, grow. Probably for this very reason the electors elected the little-known Rudolf von Habsburg as king on September 29, 1273 in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Sachsenspiegel . Ottokar himself had energetically applied for this office and refused to recognize Rudolf as this would have involved the return of the conquered duchies. After he had rejected the invitation to appear before the Diet and the King himself three times , he was banned from the Empire.
While the Bohemian king was still considering his options for action, Rudolf's army and his Hungarian ally Ladislaus IV were already encamped outside Vienna in the summer of 1276 . This alliance forced Ottokar to formally recognize Rudolf as the German king and to return the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carinthia as well as the occupied margravates. In addition, Ottokar had for Bohemia and Moravia by Rudolf belehnen leave.
This peace, which was unacceptable to Ottokar, was not to last long. In 1278 the King of Bohemia marched again against Vienna and met the united army of Rudolf and the 16-year-old Ladislaus on August 26th.
Eve of battle
Main article: Campaigns of Rudolf I against Ottokar II Přemysl
This time Ottokar succeeded in winning allies in the empire more easily than in 1276. He received firm commitments of alliances from the Duke of Lower Bavaria , the Margrave of Brandenburg and the Polish princes. He achieved a further strengthening of his position through his friendship with the Archbishop of Cologne , which ensured neutrality of the spiritual electors. On the other hand, Ottokar believed that he could easily do without the help of Hungary, since the strength of his Polish auxiliary troops seemed sufficient to him.
Ottokar's plan of operations stipulated that Siegfried, Duke of Lower Bavaria, should remain in the country and hinder the approach of Rudolf's allies for as long as possible. Ottokar himself intended to invade Austria on July 15th. However, since the entire main army was not yet assembled, the originally planned direct approach to Vienna could not be carried out. Thus Ottokar first began to siege the fortifications of Drosendorf , which were captured after 16 days, and then of Laa an der Thaya . This gave Rudolf enough time to undertake a risky approach: he decided to give up Vienna and instructed his allies to meet with him on the Marchfeld (near Stillfried ). Despite the disabilities in Bavaria , these contingents arrived in large numbers and in good time at the Marchfeld camp. Of particular importance were the Hungarian Cumans who rode with King Ladislaus. They were able to cross the Danube unhindered and thus reunite with Rudolf's troops. Surprised by this approach, Ottokar broke off the siege on August 18th and marched towards his opponent. Rudolf was also ready to fight, broke down his tents on August 23 and set up his new camp near Dürnkrut, where he wanted to face his rival in open battle.
The battle
A total of about 30,000 men were available to both sides, but only the mounted part of both armies was chosen to go into battle; the infantry had to guard the respective camp. King Rudolf had his army set up in three meetings of two groups each. There were about 1500 riders at each meeting, with the heavy knights standing hidden further back. Ottokar also had his knights set up in three meetings of two groups each. Here, however, 2000 knights per unit and the heavily armored riders were mainly to be found in the first and second meeting.
For three days the Habsburg army waited 40 kilometers northeast of Vienna for the advancing enemy. The Cumans meanwhile explored both the area and the troop strength of the enemy. In possession of this information, Rudolf prepared two tactical ruses : First, 60 knights were to be hidden between the loess hills on Ottokar's right flank, in order to use them against the Bohemian king at the decisive moment ; second, its strongest, third meeting should be placed outside the Přemyslid's line of sight . In the thirteenth century, the ruse in combat was still considered dishonorable and unchristian, which is why no one wanted to be prepared to carry out the ambush at first. Only after repeated urging, Ulrich II von Kapellen agreed to take over the leadership of the sixty knights hidden in the vineyards. But he apologized in advance to his comrades in the camp.
The armies of Rudolf and Ottokar rode off on the morning of August 26, 1278. With his superior number of heavily armored knights (approx. 6500), it seemed easy for Ottokar to defeat the enemy's light cavalry and its numerically inferior heavy cavalry (approx. 4500 knights). The Habsburg army, recruited from Styria, Carinthia, Krain, Nuremberg , Swabia , the Black Forest , Breisgau , Alsace , Sundgau , Aargau , Thurgau , 200 soldiers from the city of Zurich , the three forest sites Uri , Schwyz and He believed that Unterwalden and an influx from Lucerne , Zug , Glarus and Chur were in a hopeless situation.
The first successes, however, were recorded by the approximately 4,000 Cuman horse archers riding with Ladislaus , who stood in front of Rudolf's main army and were instructed to shoot the enemy; at the same time they were supposed to protect the flanks of their own army. In pursuit of a strategy of demoralization , the Cumans rushed to the left wing of Ottokar, whose knights could not pursue the lighter Hungarian cavalry fast enough. Therefore, the Cumans could continue their attacks, in which hundreds of knights lost their lives without a fight, unhindered.
As a result, however, the two main armies collided and the fundamental superiority of the knights over the light riders became apparent. For Ottokar, victory came within reach when his opponent's horse was killed and the already 60-year-old Rudolf fell. Heinrich Walter von Ramschwag saved his master's life in this unfortunate situation and secured the continuation of the battle. At this point the battle had been going on for three hours. Ottokar's troops showed the first signs of exhaustion. Thereupon Rudolf ordered his hidden troops to intervene in the battle. The rested third meeting, which arrived in the center, inflicted devastating losses on the worn out troops of Ottokar. The knights working in the right flank of the Bohemian King under Ulrich von Kapellen split the enemy army.
Ottokar, who was in the army, recognized the situation and ordered his reserve to intervene in the battle. A small part of these troops, under the command of Milota von Diedicz , tried by changing direction to fall in the rear from chapels. This movement, however, is likely to have been misunderstood by some Bohemian knights and interpreted as a flight , which benefited one of Rudolf's last ruse, which was supposed to panic the Bohemian army. For the most part surrounded and in the belief that the reserve was in flight, the troops of the Bohemian king disbanded, which made an orderly withdrawal impossible. The Habsburgs supported the confusion with the call, which had already been agreed before the battle: "You flee!"
Many knights who tried to flee through the March drowned or were killed by the quick Cumans while fleeing. By the end of the hostilities, 12,000 Bohemians were dead or captured and the Bohemian camp was looted. The mutilated corpse of the " Lion from Prague " was also found among the fallen . The decisive battle at Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen was therefore stylized as one of the greatest knight battles of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, certain popular statements should be viewed critically. The fact that Ottokar II's first wife campaigned for a peaceful solution on the eve of the battle is an invention of Franz Grillparzer : Margarethe , cast out by Ottokar, died in 1267, eleven years before the conflict.
Effects
Austria
To consolidate his position, Rudolf had the body of his slain rival on display in Vienna for thirty weeks. During this time the Habsburgs began to organize their empire and lay the foundations for a future empire. He also knew how to use this victory in diplomatic terms. He moved into Bohemia only slowly and had not failed to write a circular to the Bohemians and Moravians. In this he declared that he wanted to spare the conquered and to give refuge to the children of the fallen king. He broke up with the pillaging Cumans and thus practically eliminated all resistance in the heartland of his former rival. Rudolf finally came to an agreement with the queen widow Kunigunde and thus finally ended the conflict. A last military advance by Margrave Otto von Brandenburg , who advanced as far as Kolin , was nipped in the bud when the guardianship of the seven-year-old son of Ottokar II, Wenzel, was handed over to him and the administration of Bohemia for five years.
Through his victory, Rudolf also got back the areas occupied by Ottokar (Duchies of Carinthia , Styria and Austria as well as the Margraviate of Carniola ). Through a friendly policy with the citizens of Vienna and the nobles in the respective duchies, Rudolf had obtained sufficient support to bind the later heartland of the Habsburg Empire to his descendants. At the Diet of Augsburg on December 17, 1282 his two sons were Albrecht I and Rudolf II. Formally with the areas invested . Rudolf himself, who actually had his possessions in Switzerland, thus became the forefather of the Habsburg dynasty in Austria. However , he never received the dignity of emperor , because two coronation dates that had already been set did not materialize.
The Habsburgs have been recorded in Vienna since 1278. Your dynasty should be able to maintain its supremacy in Austria for the next 640 years.
This historical event is the theme of Franz Grillparzer's drama King Ottokar's Luck and End . In Vienna- Ottakring (16th district) the Stillfriedplatz has been a reminder of the battle since 1883 .
Hungary
Ladislaus IV was by Pope Nicholas III. urged to convert his pagan allies, the Cumans , to Christianity by force if necessary . He initially obeyed and successfully broke the Cuman resistance, but soon became friends with them. In 1290, probably on behalf of the Pope, he was murdered by Hungarian nobles during a festival in a kuman tent.
Bohemia
The new King Wenceslaus II , son of Ottokar II, led the Přemyslid family to a brief second bloom. After the end of the guardianship under Margrave Otto von Brandenburg , who had held him like a prisoner, he inherited the Principality of Krakow from his deceased cousin Heinrich IV. Probus , and through the extinction of the Arpaden in Hungary he was later able to give his son Wenceslaus III. help to the Hungarian royal dignity. One year after his father's death, he, who was also King of Poland and formerly also of Hungary, was murdered in Olomouc . Since he had no offspring, the Přemyslids' fall was sealed.
Monuments
Jedenspeigen Castle Museum
At Schloss Jedenspeigen , an exhibition redesigned in 2019 shows the prehistory and the consequences of the battle in new rooms. The course of the battle is digitally reconstructed in a multimedia production.
Memorial stone at Jedenspeigen
In 1978, on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the battle, a memorial stone was erected on the municipal border between Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen . The monument marks the center of the battlefield. The 6 meter high granite block was created by the sculptor Carl Hermann . It shows a knight with a horse, modeled on King Ottokar's seal.
Ottokarkreuz am Weidenbach
The stone cross on the Weidenbach near Dürnkrut is said to have been erected on the spot where King Ottokar died. According to another tradition, Rudolf von Habsburg fell from his horse at this point and was only barely able to save himself from death. The cross is lost today, there is only one watercolor (around 1900) by Adolf Blamauer that shows it.
Ottokarkreuz in Ebenthal
The stone cross was set in the 18th century by the pastor of Ebenthal and was used as building material in the 20th century. A few years ago, the stone cross at the side entrance to Ebenthal Castle was repositioned .
literature
- Kurt Peball : The Battle of Dürnkrut on August 26, 1278. Austrian Federal Publishing House for Education, Science and Art, Vienna 1968.
- Andreas Kusternig (ed.): 700 years battle near Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen: [1278–1978]. Exhibition in Jedenspeigen Castle, May 13th – October 29th, 1978 (= catalog of the Lower Austrian State Museum. NF, 79). Office of the Provincial Government of Lower Austria, Vienna 1978.
- Andreas Kusternig: Narrative sources from the Middle Ages. The problem of medieval historiography using the example of the Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen in 1278. Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1982, ISBN 3-205-08370-9 .
- Andreas Kusternig: The battle near Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen on August 26, 1278. In: Marie Bláhová, Ivan Hlaváček (ed.): Bohemian-Austrian relations in the 13th century. Austria (including Styria, Carinthia and Carniola) in the great empire project of Ottokar II. Přemysl, King of Bohemia. Lectures at the international symposium from September 26 to 27, 1996 in Znojmo. Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague 1998, ISBN 80-85899-42-6 , pp. 185-215.
- Andreas Kusternig: Problems about the fighting between Rudolf and Ottokar and the battle at Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen on August 26, 1278. In: Ottokar research (= yearbook for regional studies of Lower Austria. New episode 44/45 ). Vienna 1978/79, pp. 226-311 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
- Heinz Dopsch : The countries and the empire. The Eastern Alps in the High Middle Ages 1122–1278 , with the collaboration of Karl Brunner and Maximilian Weltin (Austrian History 1122–1278, edited by Herwig Wolfram ), Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-8000-3973-7 .
- Stephan Vajda: Felix Austria. A history of Austria. Ueberreuter, Vienna and Heidelberg 1980, ISBN 3-8000-3168-X .
- Wilhelm Edler von Janko : Rudolf von Habsburg and the Battle of Dürnkrut on Marchfelde; for the 600th anniversary of August 26, 1278 , Vienna 1878 ( in the Internet archive ).
Web links
- Overview of the Habsburgs of this time
- List of important battles in the Middle Ages
- Medieval timeline
- Musical Ottokar
- Jedenspeigen today
- Entry on the battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen in the database of the state's memory for the history of the state of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )
Individual evidence
- ↑ In a source, Perthold von Kapellen led the so-called Corps de Reserv there. Aquilin Julius Caesar : State and church history of the Duchy of Steyermark: From the government of the Austrian-Babenberg to the Austrian-Habspurgian sovereigns in the Steyermark. Volume 4, Graz 1786, p. 381 ( Google eBook, full view in Google book search).
- ^ Aegidius Tschudi : Chronicon Helveticum. Volume I, p. 187.
- ↑ Jedenspeigen: Battle of Destiny for Europe. In: Landesstudio Niederösterreich. Retrieved August 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Memorial stone for the battle in 1278. In: marterl.at. Retrieved July 25, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Andreas Kusternig (ed.): 700 years battle near Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen: [1278–1978]. Exhibition in Jedenspeigen Castle, May 13th – October 29th, 1978 (= catalog of the Lower Austrian State Museum. NF, 79). Office of the Lower Austrian Provincial Government, Vienna 1978, p. 89.
- ^ Blamauer, Adolf Albin, 1847-1923. Ottokarkreuz [...] at the Weidenbach near Dürnkrut. In: noel.gv.at. Retrieved July 25, 2020 .
- ↑ Ottokarkreuz. In: marterl.at. Retrieved July 25, 2020 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 28 ′ 53.4 " N , 16 ° 52 ′ 38.3" E