Rudolf I of Habsburg
Rudolf of Habsburg was elected King of the Romans in 1273 as a minor count whom nobody expected to become dangerous, and he founded the dynasty that ruled central Europe until 1918. The empire had been through the Great Interregnum, nearly two decades in which rival foreign claimants held the title without exercising it and the princes governed themselves. The electors wanted someone weak, and Rudolf at fifty-five held scattered lands in Swabia, Alsace and what is now Switzerland. He turned out to be a formidable and patient operator. His first act was to demand the return of all imperial territory seized since 1245, which was aimed squarely at Ottokar II of Bohemia, the richest and strongest prince in the empire, who held Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola by inheritance and marriage and had refused to acknowledge the election. Rudolf isolated him diplomatically, obtained papal support by promising a crusade and renouncing imperial claims in Italy, and put him under the ban. Ottokar submitted in 1276 and rebelled again, and was killed at the battle on the Marchfeld in August 1278 with Hungarian help. Rudolf then did the thing that mattered: he kept the Austrian duchies, and in 1282 invested his own sons with them, over the objection of princes who understood exactly what he was doing. He never obtained an imperial coronation in Rome and never much tried. He died in 1291, and Austria remained Habsburg for 636 years. The election that made him is worth noting on its own terms. The princes chose deliberately for weakness and got a dynasty, which is the recurring hazard of elective monarchy and one the imperial electors ran into repeatedly over the next five centuries.
- Lived: 1218 CE – 1291 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader
