Ep. 200 – Divide and Lose, the Leipziger Teilung

Martin Rady in his highly amusing and exceptionally well written book on the Habsburg said: “The remainder of Rudolf’s reign up to his death in 1291 was a failure. He did not manage to have himself cr...

21 Mar 202432min

This week we will look at what the poor count Rudolf of Habsburg does once he had been elected King of the Romans. This is not the first time the electors have chosen a man of much more modest means t...

14 Mar 202434min

On October 1, 1273 seven princes elected a new king of the Romans. Their choice was a momentous one that set European history further down its path away from a universal empire to separate kingdoms an...

7 Mar 202437min

This episode is something I never thought I would do, it is a run through the history of the Holy Roman Empire from 919 AD to 1250, pretty much most of the periods I have covered so far. Why do it? If...

29 Feb 202450min

This week we will talk about the end of the rule of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia. Instead of a land ruled by a chivalric order answering to the pope, Prussia became a secular state, ruled by a prot...

8 Feb 202429min

The theocratic state of the Teutonic Knights had survived the devastating defeat at Tannenberg with most of its territory intact. But underneath the foundations of the edifice are crumbling. The econo...

1 Feb 202428min

Last week we ended with the famous battle of Tannenberg or as the Poles would call it Grunwald and the Lithuanians Zalgiris. This battle is not just famous for its outcome but also for the various acc...

25 Jan 202426min

This week we look at the reasons the golden age of the Teutonic knights came to an abrupt end at the beginning of the 15th century. It is a sequence of events that involve some remarkable Polish and L...

18 Jan 202441min