15.8. 1307 Henry of Carinthia became King of Bohemia again

Henry of Carinthia was judged by many as a weak ruler. He was King of Bohemia for four years. His second coronation took place in mid-August 1307. Eventually he was succeeded on the throne by John of Luxembourg.

In the Bohemian kingdom, after the tragic death of Wenceslas III, Duke Henry of Carinthia, married to the king's sister Anna, claimed the throne. But the Roman king Albrecht I. declared Bohemia a vacant imperial fief, had the Bohemian lords elect his son Rudolf as the new ruler, and married him to the young widow Eliška Rejčka for security.

But even this Rudolf, nicknamed Kaše for his conspicuously modest table manners, did not enjoy the Prague throne for long. Already in the following year he died during the siege of Horažďovice, allegedly due to dysentery. However, it was also suspected that he was actually poisoned, and some chroniclers slandered him for having made love to the sexually amorous Eliška Rejčka to death.

After Rudolf's untimely death, the Roman king Albrecht wanted to push another son, Fridrich, onto the Bohemian throne, whom chroniclers gave the more flattering appellation of Sličný. "But his candidacy was supported only by the Moravian lords, while the Bohemian nobility chose Henry of Carinthia again. For some time war was imminent, but the aforementioned murder of the Roman king Albrecht put an end to Habsburg ambitions. Frederick concluded a peace treaty with Corinth, and for a compensation of 45,000 talents of silver he renounced his claims to Bohemia. and undertook to surrender all the towns and castles he had seized from us," writes Jan Bauer in Women of the House of Luxembourg.

Henry of Carinthia was, however, according to many a weak monarch. František Palacký, for example, characterised him as such. "However sturdy his stature, he seems to have been utterly incapable of ruling a somewhat larger empire, and of keeping in check a people as exuberant and mobile as the Bohemians of his time," he wrote.

He was unable, for example, to counter the revolt of the wealthy patricians of Kutná Hora and Prague demanding their share of power. In February 1309, the rebels even captured a royal who was spending the night in the Sedlec monastery near Kutná HoraJindřich of Lipá, his friend Jan of Vartemberk, and murdered the Kutná Hora snitch Jan of Rožmitál. In Prague, the townspeople captured the highest purgatory, Hynek Berka of Dubá.

As time passed, proposals for a new monarch to replace King Henry of Carinthia on the Czech throne began to emerge among the opponents of King Henry of Carinthia. The name of John of Luxembourg was mentioned. "Henry of Carinthia looked with all his strength to hold on to the throne. He therefore summoned to the country a brave Carinthian lord, Henry Aufenstein, with several hundred warriors, who allbut by their violence they increased the hatred of the population," says the Homeland of Moravia.

Henry finally lost the Bohemian throne in 1310, when he was replaced by John of Luxembourg. He had the support of the Roman-German King Henry VII of Luxembourg.

Sources:
Jan Bauer, Women of the House of Luxembourg
Homeland of Moravia
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