Louis I of Hungary

Childhood and youth (1326–1342)

Born on 5 March 1326, Louis was the third son of Charles I of Hungary and his wife, Elizabeth of Poland. He was named for his father's uncle, Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, canonised in 1317. The first-born son of his parents, Charles, died before Louis was born. Louis became his father's heir after the death of his brother Ladislaus in 1329.

He had a liberal education by the standards of his age and learned French, German and Latin. He showed a special interest in history and astrology. A cleric from Wrocław, Nicholas Neszmélyi, taught him the basic principles of Christian faith. However, Louis's religious zeal was due to his mother's influence. In a royal charter, Louis remembered that in his childhood, a knight of the royal court, Peter Poháros, often carried him on his shoulders. His two tutors, Nicholas Drugeth and Nicholas Tapolcsányi, saved the lives of both Louis and his younger brother, Andrew, when Felician Záh attempted to assassinate the royal family in Visegrád on 17 April 1330.

Louis was only nine when he stamped a treaty of alliance between his father and John of Bohemia. A year later, Louis accompanied his father in invading Austria. On 1 March 1338, John of Bohemia's son and heir, Charles, Margrave of Moravia, signed a new treaty with Charles I of Hungary and Louis in Visegrád. According to the treaty, Charles of Moravia acknowledged the right of Charles I's sons to succeed their maternal uncle, Casimir III of Poland, if Casimir died without a male issue. Louis also pledged that he would marry the margrave's three-year-old daughter, Margaret.

Casimir III's first wife, Aldona of Lithuania, died on 26 May 1339. Two leading Polish noblemen – Zbigniew, chancellor of Kraków, and Spycimir Leliwita – persuaded Casimir, who had not fathered a son, to make his sister, Elizabeth, and her offspring his heirs. According to the 15th-century Jan Długosz, Casimir held a general sejm in Kraków where "the assembled prelates and nobles" proclaimed Louis as Casimir's heir, but the reference to the sejm is anachronistic. Historian Paul W. Knoll writes that Casimir preferred his sister's family to his own daughters or a member of a cadet branch of the Piast dynasty, because he wanted to ensure the king of Hungary's support against the Teutonic Knights. Louis's father and uncle signed a treaty in Visegrád in July whereby Casimir III made Louis his heir if he died without a son. In exchange, Charles I pledged that Louis would reoccupy Pomerania and other Polish lands lost to the Teutonic Order without Polish funds and would only employ Poles in the royal administration in Poland.

Reign

First years (1342–1345)

Charles I died on 16 July 1342. Five days later, Csanád Telegdi, Archbishop of Esztergom, crowned Louis king with the Holy Crown of Hungary in Székesfehérvár. Although Louis had attained the age of majority, his mother Elizabeth "acted as a sort of co-regent" for decades, because she exerted a powerful influence on him. Louis inherited a rich treasury from his father, who had strengthened royal authority and ruled without holding Diets during the last decades of his reign.

Louis introduced a new system of land grants, excluding the grantee's brothers and other kinsmen from the donation in contrast with customary law: such estates escheated to the Crown if the grantee's last male descendants died. On the other hand, Louis often "promoted a daughter to a son", that is authorized a daughter to inherit her father's estates, although customary law prescribed that the landed property of a deceased nobleman who had no sons was to be inherited by his kinsmen. Louis often granted this privilege to the wives of his favorites. Louis also frequently authorized landowners to apply capital punishment in their estates, limiting the authority of the magistrates of the counties.

William Drugeth, an influential advisor of Louis's late father, died in September 1342. He bequeathed his landed property to his brother, Nicholas, but Louis confiscated those estates. In late autumn, Louis dismissed his father's Voivode of Transylvania, Thomas Szécsényi, although Szécsényi's wife was a distant cousin of the queen mother. Louis especially favored the Lackfis: eight members of the family held high offices during his reign. Andrew Lackfi was the commander of the royal army during the first war of Louis's reign. In late 1342 or early 1343, he invaded Serbia and restored the Banate of Macsó, which had been lost during his father's reign.

Robert, King of Naples died on 20 January 1343. In his testament, he declared his granddaughter, Joanna I, his sole heir, excluding Louis's younger brother, Andrew, Joanna's husband, from becoming co-ruler. Louis and his mother regarded this as an infringement of a previous agreement between the late kings of Naples and Hungary. He visited his bride's father, Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, in Prague to persuade him to intervene on Andrew's behalf with Charles's former tutor, Pope Clement VI, the overlord of the Kingdom of Naples. Louis also sent envoys to his Neapolitan relatives and the high officials of the kingdom, urging them to promote his brother's interests. Their mother, Elizabeth, left for Naples in the summer, taking with her almost the whole royal treasure, including more than 6,628 kilograms (14,612 lb) of silver and 5,150 kilograms (11,350 lb) of gold. During her seven-month-long stay in Italy, she was only able to persuade her daughter-in-law and the pope to promise that Andrew would be crowned as Joanna's husband.

Neapolitan campaigns (1345–1350)

Louis's brother Andrew was murdered in Aversa on 18 September 1345. Louis and his mother accused Queen Joanna I, Robert, Prince of Taranto, Charles, Duke of Durazzo and other members of the Neapolitan branches of the Capetian House of Anjou of plotting against Andrew. In his letter of 15 January 1346 to Pope Clement VI, Louis demanded that the pope dethrone the "husband-killer" queen in favor of Charles Martel, her infant son by Andrew. Louis also laid claim to the regency of the kingdom during the minority of his nephew, referring to his patrilinear descent from the first-born son of Robert, King of Naples's father, Charles II of Naples. He even promised to increase the amount of yearly tribute that the kings of Naples would pay to the Holy See. After the pope failed to fully investigate Andrew's murder, Louis decided to invade southern Italy. In preparation for the invasion, he sent his envoys to Ancona and other Italian towns before summer 1346.

While his envoys negotiated in Italy, Louis marched to Dalmatia to relieve Zadar, but the Venetians bribed his commanders. When the citizens broke out and attacked the besiegers on 1 July, the royal army failed to intervene, and the Venetians overcame the defenders outside the walls of the town. Louis withdrew but refused to renounce Dalmatia, although the Venetians offered to pay 320,000 golden florins as compensation. Lacking military support from Louis, however, Zadar surrendered to the Venetians on 21 December 1346.

Louis sent small expeditions one after another to Italy at the beginning of his war against Joanna I, because he did not want to harass the Italians who had suffered from a famine the previous year. His first troops departed under the command of Nicholas II Vásári, Bishop of Nyitra (now Nitra in Slovakia), on 24 April 1347. Louis also hired German mercenaries. He departed from Visegrád on 11 November. After marching through Udine, Verona, Modena, Bologna, Urbino, and Perugia, he entered the Kingdom of Naples on 24 December near L'Aquila, which had yielded to him.

Queen Joanna I remarried, wedding a cousin, Louis I of Naples, and fled to Marseille on 11 January 1348. Their other relatives, Robert of Taranto and Charles of Durazzo, visited Louis in Aversa to yield to him. Louis received them amicably and convinced them to persuade their brothers, Philip of Taranto and Louis of Durazzo, to join them. After their arrival, King Louis's "smile was replaced by the harshest expression as he unveiled with terrible words the true feelings he had for the princes and that he had kept hidden until then", according to the contemporaneous Domenico da Gravina. He repeated his former accusations, blamed his kinsmen for his brother's murder, and had them captured on 22 January. The next day Charles of Durazzo – the husband of Joanna I's sister, Mary – was beheaded upon Louis's orders. The other princes were kept captive and sent to Hungary, together with Louis's infant nephew, Charles Martel.

Expansion (1350–1358)

Casimir III of Poland urged Louis to intervene in his war with the Lithuanians who had occupied Brest, Volodymyr-Volynskyi, and other important towns in Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia in the previous years. The two monarchs agreed that Halych and Lodomeria would be integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary after Casimir's death. Casimir also authorised Louis to redeem the two realms for 100,000 florins if Casimir fathered a son. Louis led his army to Kraków in June 1351. Because Casimir fell ill, Louis became the sole commander of the united Polish and Hungarian army. He invaded the lands of the Lithuanian prince, Kęstutis, in July. Kęstutis seemingly accepted Louis's suzerainty on 15 August and agreed to be baptised, along with his brothers, in Buda. However, Kęstutis did nothing to fulfill his promises after Polish and Hungarian troops were withdrawn. In an attempt to capture Kęstutis, Louis returned, but he could not defeat the Lithuanians, who even killed one of his allies, Bolesław III of Płock, in battle. Louis returned to Buda before 13 September. A papal legate visited Louis to persuade him to wage war against Stefan Dušan, Emperor of the Serbs, who had forced his Catholic Church subjects to be re-baptised and join the Serbian Orthodox Church.

To deal with the grievances of the Hungarian noblemen, Louis held a Diet in late 1351. He confirmed all but one of the provisions of the Golden Bull of 1222, declaring that all noblemen enjoyed the same liberties in his realms. He rejected only the provision that authorized noblemen who died without a son to freely bequeath their estates. Instead, he introduced an entail system, prescribing that the estates of a nobleman who had no male descendants passed to his kinsmen, or if there were no male relatives to the Crown, upon his death. At the same Diet, Louis ordered that all landowners were to collect the "ninth", that is, one tenth of specified agricultural products, from the peasants who held plots on their estates. On the other hand, he confirmed the right of all peasants to freely move to another landowner's estates.

The "general accord" between Louis and the royal couple of Naples "was accepted by both sides" during 1351, according to the contemporaneous Niccolò Acciaioli. Joanna I and her husband returned to the Kingdom of Naples and Louis's troops were withdrawn. Louis even renounced the ransom that Joanna I had promised to pay for the liberation of the imprisoned Neapolitan princes, stating that he had not gone to "war for greed, but to avenge the death of his brother". Louis continued to use the titles of his grandfather, Charles Martel of Anjou (the firstborn son of Charles II of Naples), styling himself as "Prince of Salerno and lord of Monte Sant'Angelo".

Wars in the Balkans (1358–1370)

Serbia started to disintegrate after the death of Stefan Dušan. According to Matteo Villani, an unidentified Serbian lord sought Hungarian assistance against his more powerful (and also unnamed) enemy in the late 1350s. Historians John Van Antwerp Fine, Jr. and Pál Engel write that the Serbian lord was a member of the Rastislalić family; Gyula Kristó and Iván Bertényi identify him as Lazar Hrebeljanović. Royal charters of 1358 show that Hungarian troops fought in Serbia in October 1358. The next summer Louis also marched to Serbia, but Stefan Uroš V of Serbia avoided battle.

Louis and the royal army stayed in Transylvania in November 1359 and January 1360, implying that he planned a military expedition against Wallachia or another neighboring territory. A charter of 1360 said that a Romanian voivode, Dragoș of Giulești, restored Louis's suzerainty in Moldavia after a rebellion of local Romanians. According to most Moldavian chronicles, Dragoș, who is sometimes identified with Dragoș of Giulești and sometimes as Dragoș of Bedeu, departed "from the Hungarian country, from Maramureș" at the head of his retinue, crossed the Carpathian Mountains while chasing an aurochs and settled in the valley of the Moldova River in 1359. The same chronicles presented this "dismounting" by Dragoș as a decisive step towards the development of the Principality of Moldavia. Another Romanian voivode, Bogdan, who had rebelled against Louis and plundered the estates of the Romanian landowners loyal to the king already in the 1340s, departed from Hungary and invaded Moldavia in the early 1360s. Bogdan expelled the descendants of Louis's vassal, Dragoș, from the principality. According to John of Küküllő, Louis launched several expeditions against Bogdan, but their dates cannot be determined. Bogdan ruled Moldavia as an independent prince.

Upon the pope's request, Louis sent Hungarian troops to relieve Bologna, which was besieged by Bernabò Visconti's troops. After Visconti lifted the siege, Louis's mercenaries pillaged the region and refused to cooperate with the papal legate; Louis had the commander of the army imprisoned. After a conflict emerged between Emperor Charles IV and Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, rumors spread about a conspiracy to dethrone the emperor in favor of Louis or Rudolf. Charles IV, Rudolf IV and Louis met in Nagyszombat (now Trnava in Slovakia) in May. The emperor and the duke mutually surrendered their claims to the other party's realms. Louis also persuaded the emperor to renounce his suzerainty over the Duchy of Płock in Poland.

Union with Poland and reforms (1370–1377)

Casimir III of Poland died on 5 November 1370. Louis arrived after his uncle's funeral and ordered the erection of a splendid Gothic marble monument to the deceased king. He was crowned king of Poland in the Kraków Cathedral on 17 November. Casimir III had willed his patrimony – including the duchies of Sieradz, Łęczyca and Dobrzyń – to his grandson, Casimir IV, Duke of Pomerania. However, the Polish prelates and lords were opposed to the disintegration of Poland and Casimir III's testament was declared void. Louis visited Gniezno and made his Polish mother, Elizabeth, regent before returning to Hungary in December. His uncle's two surviving daughters (Anna and Jadwiga) accompanied him, and the Polish Crown Jewels were transferred to Buda, which raised discontent among Louis's new subjects. Louis's wife gave birth to a daughter, Catherine, in 1370, seventeen years after their marriage; a second daughter, Mary, was born in 1371. Thereafter Louis's made several attempts to safeguard his daughters' right to succeed him.

During a war between Emperor Charles IV and Stephen II, Duke of Bavaria, Louis intervened on the duke's behalf and the Hungarian army invaded Moravia. After the duke and the emperor signed a peace treaty, Louis and the emperor agreed upon the betrothal of their children early the next year. The Ottomans annihilated the Serbian armies in the Battle of Marica on 26 September 1371. Lazar Hrebeljanović, one of the Serbian lords, swore loyalty to Louis. Pope Gregory XI urged Louis to resist the Ottomans but also pleaded with him to send reinforcements to Italy to fight against Bernabò Visconti. A war broke out between the Republic of Venice and Francesco I da Carrara, Lord of Padova, who was an ally of Louis, in the summer of 1372. Louis sent reinforcements to Italy to assist Francesco da Carrara. The Venetians defeated the Hungarian troops at Treviso and captured its commander, Nicholas Lackfi, forcing Louis I to sign a peace treaty on 23 September 1373.

Louis and the representatives of the Polish nobility started negotiations of Louis's succession in Poland in the autumn of 1373. After a year of negotiations, he issued the so-called Privilege of Koszyce on 17 September 1374, reducing the tax that Polish noblemen paid to the king by about 84% and promising remuneration to noblemen who participated in foreign military campaigns. In exchange, the Polish lords confirmed the right of Louis's daughters to inherit Poland.

Louis invaded Wallachia in May 1375 because the new prince of Wallachia, Radu I, had formed an alliance with the Bulgarian ruler, Ivan Shishman, and the Ottoman Sultan Murad I. The Hungarian army routed the united forces of the Wallachians and their allies, and Louis occupied the Banate of Severin, but Radu I did not yield. During the summer, Wallachian troops stormed into Transylvania and Ottomans pillaged the Banat.

Last years (1377–1382)

Tvrtko I of Bosnia had himself crowned king, adopting the title of "King of Serbia, Bosnia and the Coastland", in 1377. Whether Louis had approved Tvrtko's coronation cannot be decided. A new war broke out between Venice and Genoa in 1378. Louis supported the Genoese and Trogir became the regular base of the Genoese fleet, which transformed Dalmatia into an important theater of war. Louis also sent reinforcements to Francesco I da Carrara to fight against the Venetians.

The cardinals who had turned against Pope Urban VI elected a new pope, Antipope Clement VII on 20 September 1378, which gave rise to the Western Schism. Louis acknowledged Urban VI as the legitimate pope and offered him support to fight against his opponents in Italy. As Joanna I of Naples decided to join Clement VII's camp, Pope Urban VI excommunicated and dethroned her on 17 June 1380. The pope acknowledged Charles III of Naples, who had lived in Louis's court, as the lawful king of Naples. After Charles III of Naples promised that he would not claim Hungary against Louis's daughters, Louis dispatched him to invade Southern Italy at the head of a large army. Within a year, Charles III of Naples occupied the Kingdom of Naples and forced Queen Joanna to surrender to him on 26 August 1381.

The envoys of Louis and Venice had meanwhile started negotiations on a new peace treaty, which was signed in Turin on 24 August 1381. According to the treaty, Venice renounced Dalmatia and also promised to pay 7,000 golden florins as an annual tribute to Hungary. Louis also stipulated that Venice was to transfer the relics of St Paul of Thebes to the newly established Pauline monastery at Budaszentlőrinc.

Royal charters referred to military actions in Lodomeria and Wallachia in the first half of 1382, but no further information of those wars was preserved. Louis, whose health was quickly deteriorating, invited the representatives of the Polish prelates and lords for a meeting in Zólyom (now Zvolen in Slovakia). Upon his demand, the Poles swore loyalty to his daughter, Mary, and her fiancé, Sigismund of Luxemburg, on 25 July 1382. Louis died in Nagyszombat (now Trnava in Slovakia) in the night on 10 or 11 September 1382. He was buried in the Székesfehérvár Cathedral in a chapel that had been built upon his orders.

Family

Louis's first wife, Margaret, was the oldest child of Charles, Margrave of Moravia, and his first wife, Blanche of Valois. Margaret was born in 1335. The exact date of the marriage of Louis and Margaret is unknown, but it occurred between 1342 and 1345. Margaret died childless on 7 September 1349.

According to the Chronicle of Parthénope , the Neapolitan princes whom Louis had imprisoned during his first campaign in Southern Italy proposed that he marry Queen Joanna I's younger sister and heir, Mary. She was the widow of Charles of Durazzo, who had been executed on Louis's orders. During the siege of Aversa in the summer of 1350, Louis met her envoy in the nearby Trentola-Ducenta and the terms of their marriage were accepted. However, Mary was forced to marry Robert of Baux after Louis left Southern Italy.

Louis married his second wife, Elizabeth, around 20 June 1353. Elizabeth was the daughter of Stephen II, Ban of Bosnia, and Stephen's wife, Elizabeth of Kuyavia. Louis and his new wife were within the prohibited degree of kinship, because Louis's mother and his wife's grandmother were cousins, but they applied for a papal dispensation only about four months after their marriage. Historian Iván Bertényi says that this haste suggests that Elizabeth, who had been living in the court of Louis's mother, was pregnant at the time of the marriage. If this theory is valid, Louis's and his wife's first child was stillborn. Their next child, Catherine, was born in 1370 and died in 1378. The next daughter, Mary, who would succeed Louis in Hungary, was born in 1371. Louis's youngest daughter, Jadwiga, who was born in 1373, became queen regnant of Poland.

Legacy

Louis was the only Hungarian monarch to receive the epithet "Great". He was mentioned under this byname not only in Hungarian chronicles in the 14th and 15th centuries, but also in a 17th-century genealogy of the Capetians. Both his chivalrous personality and his successful military campaigns contributed to the development of his fame as a "great king". Louis waged wars in almost each year during his reign. Louis "always desired peace at home and war abroad for neither can be made without the other", according to Antonio Bonfini's late 15th century chronicle. Historian Enikő Csukovits writes that Louis' military actions show that he continued and accomplished his father's policy through recovering Croatia and Dalmatia and waging wars in Southern Italy, in Lithuania and in the Balkan Peninsula. On the other hand, Pál Engel says that Louis's "expeditions often lacked a realistic goal and sometimes even a reasonable pretext ... it was war itself that gave him pleasure".

In the age of Romantic nationalism, Hungary during Louis's reign was described as an empire "whose shores were washed by three seas" in reference to the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas. For instance, in 1845 the poet Sándor Petőfi referred to Louis's reign as a period when "the falling stars of the north, the east and the south were all extinguished in Hungarian seas". Poland remained an independent country during Louis's reign and its borders did not extend to the Baltic Sea, and Louis' suzerainty along the northwestern shores of the Black Sea was also uncertain.

In Polish historiography, two contrasting evaluations of Louis' reign in Poland coexisted. The "pessimistic" tradition can be traced back to the views of the late 14th century Jan of Czarnków, who was banished from Poland during Louis' reign. Czarnków emphasized that "there was no stability in the Kingdom of Poland" and the royal officials "continually pillaged the property of the poor people" during Louis' reign. According to the "optimistic" historiographic tradition, Louis continued Casimir the Great's policy of preserving the unity of Poland against the separatist magnates of Greater Poland with the assistance of lords from Lesser Poland.

John of Küküllő emphasized that Louis "ruled neither with passion, nor with arbitrariness, but rather as the guardian of righteousness". Antonio Bonfini also described Louis as a just king wandering among his subjects in disguise to protect them from the royal officials' arbitrary acts. Even Jan of Czarnków underlined that Louis "did not rule in an absolute manner; on the contrary, the foundations [...] of [the Poles'] freedom were laid by him".