Podĕbrad, king of Bohemia, and by Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary. A visit to Rome in 1468 to discuss measures against the Turks with Pope Paul II. had no result, and in 1470 Frederick began negotiations for a marriage between his son Maximilian and Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. The emperor met the duke at Treves in 1473, when Frederick, disliking to bestow the title of king upon Charles, left the city secretly, but brought about the marriage after the duke’s death in 1477. Again attacked by Matthias, the emperor was driven from Vienna, and soon handed over the government of his lands to Maximilian, whose election as king of the Romans he vainly opposed in 1486. Frederick then retired to Linz, where he passed his time in the study of botany, alchemy and astronomy, until his death on the 19th of August 1493.
Frederick was a listless and incapable ruler, lacking alike the qualities of the soldier and of the diplomatist, but possessing a certain cleverness in evading difficulties. With a fine presence, he had many excellent personal qualities, is spoken of as mild and just, and had a real love of learning. He had a great belief in the future greatness of his family, to which he contributed largely by arranging the marriage of Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy, and delighted to inscribe his books and other articles of value with the letters A.E.I.O.U. (Austriae est imperare orbi universo; or in German, Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich unterthan). His personality counts for very little in German history. One chronicler says: “He was a useless emperor, and the nation during his long reign forgot that she had a king.” His tomb, a magnificent work in red and white marble, is in the cathedral of St Stephen at Vienna.
See Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, De rebus et gestis Friderici III. (trans. Th. Ilgen, Leipzig, 1889); J. Chmel, Geschichte Kaiser Friedrichs IV. und seines Sohnes Maximilians I. (Hamburg, 1840); A. Bachmann, Deutsche Reichsgeschichte im Zeitalter Friedrichs III. und Maximilians I. (Leipzig, 1884); A. Huber, Geschichte Österreichs (Gotha, 1885–1892); and E. M. Fürst von Lichnowsky, Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg (Vienna, 1836–1844).
FREDERICK III. (c. 1286–1330), surnamed “the Fair,”
German king and duke of Austria, was the second son of the
German king, Albert I., and consequently a member of the
Habsburg family. In 1298, when his father was chosen German
king, Frederick was invested with some of the family lands, and
in 1306, when his elder brother Rudolph became king of Bohemia,
he succeeded to the duchy of Austria. In 1307 Rudolph died,
and Frederick sought to obtain the Bohemian throne; but an
expedition into that country was a failure, and his father’s
murder in May 1308 deprived him of considerable support. He
was equally unsuccessful in his efforts to procure the German
crown at this time, and the relations between the new king,
Henry VII., and the Habsburgs were far from friendly. Frederick
asked not only to be confirmed in the possession of Austria, but to
be invested with Moravia, a demand to which Henry refused to
accede; but an arrangement was subsequently made by which the
duke agreed to renounce Moravia in return for a payment of
50,000 marks. Frederick then became involved in a quarrel with
his cousin Louis IV., duke of Upper Bavaria (afterwards the
emperor Louis IV.), over the guardianship of Henry II., duke
of Lower Bavaria. Hostilities broke out, and on the 9th of
November 1313 he was defeated by Louis at the battle of Gammelsdorf
and compelled to renounce his claim.
Meanwhile the emperor Henry VII. had died in Italy, and a stubborn contest ensued for the vacant throne. After a long delay Frederick was chosen German king at Frankfort by a minority of the electors on the 19th of October 1314, while a majority elected Louis of Bavaria. Six days later Frederick was crowned at Bonn by the archbishop of Cologne, and war broke out at once between the rivals. During this contest, which was carried on in a desultory fashion, Frederick drew his chief strength from southern and eastern Germany, and was supported by the full power of the Habsburgs. The defeat of his brother Leopold by the Swiss at Morgarten in November 1315 was a heavy blow to him, but he prolonged the struggle for seven years. On the 28th of September 1322 a decisive battle was fought at Mühldorf; Frederick was defeated and sent as a prisoner to Trausnitz. Here he was retained until three years later a series of events induced Louis to come to terms. By the treaty of Trausnitz, signed on the 13th of March 1325, Frederick acknowledged the kingship of Louis in return for freedom, and promised to return to captivity unless he could induce his brother Leopold to make a similar acknowledgment. As Leopold refused to take this step, Frederick, although released from his oath by Pope John XXII., travelled back to Bavaria, where he was treated by Louis rather as a friend than as a prisoner. A suggestion was then made that the kings should rule jointly, but as this plan aroused some opposition it was agreed that Frederick should govern Germany while Louis went to Italy for the imperial crown. But this arrangement did not prove generally acceptable, and the death of Leopold in 1326 deprived Frederick of a powerful supporter. In these circumstances he returned to Austria broken down in mind and body, and on the 13th of January 1330 he died at Gutenstein, and was buried at Mauerbach, whence his remains were removed in 1783 to the cathedral of St Stephen at Vienna. He married Elizabeth, daughter of James I., king of Aragon, and left two daughters. His voluntary return into captivity is used by Schiller in his poem Deutsche Treue, and by J. L. Uhland in the drama Ludwig der Bayer.
The authorities for the life of Frederick are found in the Fontes rerum Germanicarum, Band i., edited by J. F. Böhmer (Stuttgart, 1843–1868), and in the Fontes rerum Austriacarum, part i. (Vienna, 1855). Modern works which may be consulted are: E. M. Fürst von Lichnowsky, Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg (Vienna, 1836–1844); Th. Lindner, Deutsche Geschichte unter den Habsburgern und Luxemburgern (Stuttgart, 1888–1893). R. Döbner, Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Ludwig IV. dem Bayer und Friedrich dem Schönen von Österreich (Göttingen, 1875); F. Kurz, Österreich unter König Friedrich dem Schönen (Linz, 1818); F. Krones, Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs (Berlin, 1876–1879); H. Schrohe, Der Kampf der Gegenkönige Ludwig und Friedrich (Berlin, 1902); W. Friedensburg, Ludwig IV. der Bayer und Friedrich von Österreich (Göttingen, 1877); B. Gebhardt, Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte (Berlin, 1901).
FREDERICK II. (1534–1588), king of Denmark and Norway,
son of Christian III., was born at Hadersleben on the 1st of July
1534. His mother, Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg, was the elder
sister of Catherine, the first wife of Gustavus Vasa and the mother
of Eric XIV. The two little cousins, born the same year, were
destined to be lifelong rivals. At the age of two Frederick was
proclaimed successor to the throne at the Rigsdag of Copenhagen
(October 30th, 1536), and homage was done to him at Oslo for
Norway in 1548. The choice of his governor, the patriotic
historiographer Hans Svaning, was so far fortunate that it ensured
the devotion of the future king of Denmark to everything
Danish; but Svaning was a poor pedagogue, and the wild and
wayward lad suffered all his life from the defects of his early
training. Frederick’s youthful, innocent attachment to the
daughter of his former tutor, Anna Hardenberg, indisposed him
towards matrimony at the beginning of his reign (1558). After
the hands of Elizabeth of England, Mary of Scotland and Renata
of Lorraine had successively been sought for him, the council of
state grew anxious about the succession, but he finally married
his cousin, Sophia of Mecklenburg, on the 20th of July 1572.
The reign of Frederick II. falls into two well-defined divisions: (1) a period of war, 1559–1570; and (2) a period of peace, 1570–1588. The period of war began with the Ditmarsh expedition, when the independent peasant-republic of the Ditmarshers of West Holstein, which had stoutly maintained its independence for centuries against the counts of Holstein and the Danish kings, was subdued by a Dano-Holstein army of 20,000 men in 1559, Frederick and his uncles John and Adolphus, dukes of Holstein, dividing the land between them. Equally triumphant was Frederick in his war with Sweden, though here the contest was much more severe, lasting as it did for seven years; whence it is generally described in northern history as the Scandinavian Seven Years’ War. The tension which had prevailed between the two kingdoms during the last years of Gustavus Vasa reached breaking point on the accession of Gustavus’s eldest son Eric XIV. There were many causes of quarrel between the two ambitious young monarchs, but the detention at Copenhagen in 1563 of a splendid matrimonial embassy on its way to Germany,
