Print - Die Welt der Habsburger

Rudolf II and the
problems of Habsburg
rule
The threat from the expansion of the Ottoman Empire,
sectarian conflicts and centrifugal tendencies in the
heterogeneous Monarchy dominated Habsburg policy
at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
As ruler over his Central European territories, Rudolf was soon
confronted with the differences to the Spanish monarchy.
Whereas Spain was a centrally governed state with a clearly
regulated succession, Rudolf was here confronted with varied
groups of lands constituting a loose association of territories
under the rule of a common monarch. The Austrian group of
lands and the lands of the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns
had differing legal traditions and were very far from being a
nation state.
This was even truer of the situation in the Empire: while the
emperor was its sovereign, the efforts of the dynasty to unite
the electors, who often had diverging religious and political
agendas, had hitherto always failed.
It was not only in the Empire but also in some of the Habsburg
monarchy lands that Rudolf was merely the formal sovereign
with few opportunities for direct intervention. Due to divisions
of the dynastic line the western group of lands consisting of
Tyrol and the Forelands, as well as the Inner Austrian group
since the death of Maximilian II had been ruled by separate lines
of the dynasty, while Lower and Upper Austria were ruled more
or less independently by Rudolf’s brothers as governors with
extensive rights. Thus Rudolf ruled directly only in Bohemia
and Hungary.
Hungary, or rather, the third of the medieval kingdom that was
under Habsburg rule, was constantly under threat from
Turkish invasion. Phases of relative calm were followed by
campaigns of conquest that demanded heightened defensive
measures from the Habsburg rulers. Wary of the enormous
Ottoman strike capability, the Habsburgs pursued a passive
rather than active military strategy.
The young and ambitious Rudolf initially decided on a policy of
attack, keen to secure himself fame as the ‘defender of
Christendom’. He gave birth to the rather far-fetched plan of
creating an alliance of the Christian rulers of Eastern Europe
under imperial leadership. In 1591 an offensive was launched
against the Ottomans, with pro-Habsburg propaganda prating
about a new crusade. The so-called Long Turkish War dragged
on for fifteen years but did not result in any decisive changes,
leading if anything to the slow erosion of Rudolf’s power
in Hungary.
The war with the Turks also exposed a structural problem of
the Habsburg Monarchy. The war had been financed only with
the cooperation of the Estates of the Austrian and Bohemian
lands. However, they opposed the ruling dynasty in matters of
religion, as the Reformation had here fallen on fertile soil.
A special situation obtained in Bohemia, where religious
pluralism was flourishing. Since the Hussite movement in the
fifteenth century very few of the structures of the Catholic
Church had remained in place. With the growing influence of
the Lutheran Reformation, the Catholics in the Bohemian lands
were now a vanishing minority. The defender of religious
pluralism was the economically robust and politically confident
Bohemian nobility. While the presence of Rudolf in Prague
bolstered royal authority, the influence of Spain on the Catholic
party together with that of various Lutheran and Calvinist
powers in the Protestant camp led to ever-widening sectarian
alienation, and the positions on either side became entrenched.
Author
Martin Mutschlechner
Literature
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