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Documentary, BBC - Vienna- Empire, Dynasty and Dream - Part 1 - The Habsburgs Rise to Power
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00:00This is the Danube, the most majestic river in Europe, and on its banks stands Vienna,
00:15imperial city. This is its story, a story peopled by a cast of giants, from Suleiman
00:22the Magnificent to Napoleon, from Mozart and Mahler to Freud, Hitler and Stalin. It grew
00:29as a bastion of Christendom against Islam, of Catholicism against Protestantism, and it
00:36all happened because of one family, a family whose empire at its greatest stretched from
00:41Peru to Poland, from Netherlands to Naples. This is the rise and fall of the House of Habsburg.
00:49This is how Vienna became the imperial city of Europe, the paramount city, the city of the world.
00:59The strategic position of Vienna on the Danube between the Black Forest and the Black Sea
01:09was first appreciated by the ancient Romans.
01:17They built a forward military base here to defend the empire against endless attacks by eastern
01:24barbarians. These are the ruins of Vindobina, the Roman town on the site of present-day Vienna,
01:33but its real importance was for future dynasties who liked to play up its Roman past to presage
01:40their own future imperial glory. Creating a heroic narrative for the city and for themselves,
01:49the Habsburgs would help transform Vienna from a small frontier town to one of the world's greatest
01:56cities. They would use every medium, architecture, sculpture, printing, music and theatrical spectacle
02:05to glorify the city and project their own power. And that's the point. This was all an act. It was all a show.
02:14Vienna would become the inspiration, the magnet, the stage for Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Mahler.
02:21It would also become an intellectual hotbed for some of the most brilliant and the most dangerous
02:27thinkers of modern times.
02:28This is the story of empire, empire of conquerors, courtesans and composers, palaces, churches and
02:40coffee houses, but also the empire of cultures, of nations, of ideas, monstrous ideas that killed millions,
02:50wonderful ideas that helped create our world. Yet in so many ways, Vienna is the capital of the
02:58empire of the mind.
03:13Following the fall of the Roman empire, central Europe became the battlefield of rival tribes and
03:19warlords, but they had much in common, the Roman legacy, the use of Latin and faith in Christianity.
03:29Then in the 8th century, a brilliant, harsh, Frankish warlord, Charlemagne, Charles the Great, managed to unite much of Europe.
03:39Charlemagne created the idea of a pan-European state, a new Roman empire based on two pillars,
03:47Christianity and a powerful European king known as the Holy Roman Emperor. In 800, he was crowned by the Pope in Rome
03:57and henceforth, the status of the Holy Roman Emperor justified their actions in the name of Christendom.
04:06These Holy Roman Emperors became effectively kings of a wider Germany that later extended to include bits of
04:14modern France, Italy and Bohemia with its capital, Prague.
04:18At the edge of this empire was the relatively insignificant town of Vienna, but by the 12th
04:28century, Vienna was becoming an increasingly important centre of German civilisation.
04:36Work began on a new church that would go on to become the mighty St. Stephen's Cathedral,
04:43a masterpiece of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.
04:49The church was founded in 1137, the year in which Vienna is first referred to as a city.
04:56The cathedral's south tower reaches 446 feet, still the city's highest point, and in the centuries
05:04ahead, this cathedral would be the magnificent stage for the drama of Vienna.
05:13When the first Habsburg Archduke became Holy Roman Emperor, it was here on the altar that he
05:19inscribed his mysterious code of power, A-E-I-O-U.
05:25And he inscribed them to different places all across his domains, and during his lifetime,
05:32no-one knew what they meant.
05:34Had they known, they would have seemed utterly preposterous.
05:38The emperor didn't even reveal whether the code was Latin or German.
05:43On his deathbed, he revealed what the letters stood for, and by the time he revealed them,
05:48they no longer seemed quite so ridiculous, and here's what they stood for.
05:52The whole world is dominated by Austria.
05:58I'm no German scholar, but these letters signify in German,
06:03Alles Oerderreich ist Österreich untertan.
06:08During the next 500 years, Vienna would become the capital of the Habsburg family monarchy,
06:15and effectively, the headquarters of the Holy Roman Emperors.
06:20The story of the rise of the Habsburgs possesses all the rollicking heroes and
06:25extravagant bloodletting of a medieval myth.
06:29In 1273, a new prince from a rising family was elected king of the Germans. His name was
06:37Rudolf, and he came from the family of Habsburg. They'd started in a Swiss castle,
06:43in an area named the Hawk's Nest, Habsburg, and now they'd expanded their holdings into Austria.
06:51Rudolf was 55, and the electors who chose German kings believed he would be no threat. They were wrong.
07:04Rudolf, though already old by medieval standards, would go on to rule from his base in Vienna for 17 years,
07:12and the Habsburgs would dominate Europe for the next half millennium.
07:19But Rudolf's rise to power would not go unchallenged.
07:23His principal rival for control of middle Europe came from the north, Otakar, king of Bohemia.
07:30In 1278, Otakar, with his Bohemian army, began the march southwards towards the Danube.
07:41Rudolf and his army rode out from Vienna to meet them.
07:49A decisive battle between Rudolf von Habsburg and Otakar, king of Bohemia, took place right here on the
07:55Marchfeld, east of Vienna. Two sides met in August 1278, in sweltering heat. They fought all day and
08:05they fought themselves to a standstill. It was so hot that the knights in their armour started to faint in droves.
08:12At this point, Rudolf deployed the fresh brigade of cavalry he'd hidden right up this hill.
08:30They charged down into the Bohemians and routed them.
08:35Faced with defeat, the Bohemians murdered their own king, Otakar. He was stripped naked,
08:41butchered and Rudolf displayed his body in the streets of Vienna.
08:50This was a victory that would mark the birth of a great European dynasty and transform the fate of Vienna.
09:01When Rudolf died in 1291, it was his son, Albert, who succeeded him, first as Duke of Austria and
09:08ultimately as king of the Germans.
09:13Albert was a shrewd and just ruler, but as a man, he was terrifying, vicious and arrogant.
09:21His face was distinguished by a gaping cavity where his eye should have been.
09:26When some enemies had tried to poison him, his doctors insisted that he be hung upside down
09:31for long periods of time to allow the poison to seep out. In the process, somehow, he'd lost his eye.
09:38Everyone called him Albert One-Eye.
09:48Albert had a fearsome reputation, not only with his many foes, but also within his own family.
09:53And eventually, this would be his undoing.
09:59On May Day 1308, Albert rode out with his entourage, who included his 19-year-old nephew, John.
10:06As they rode, John tried to persuade his uncle to return the lands he'd taken from his family.
10:12Albert refused.
10:14John, furious, rode across the river and gathered together a posse of assassins.
10:19When Albert himself crossed, they lay in wait, fell upon him and stabbed him.
10:25They left him dying in a pool of his blood.
10:32The murderers fled, only to be ruthlessly hunted down by Albert's successors.
10:38One day of brutal revenge, presided over by his children, saw 63 of John's relatives beheaded.
10:46As blood spurted from them, Albert's daughter cried out in ecstasy.
10:50This is like being bathed in May Dew.
10:58The bitter family feud would halt the rise of Vienna and keep the Habsburgs out of power for 30 years.
11:06But they were still one of the most powerful families within the Holy Roman Empire.
11:14They needed a statesman, and now they produced a young man of astonishing vision and guts.
11:21Rudolf IV, the founder.
11:27Rudolf inherited the Habsburg lands at just 19.
11:31But he'd been brought up at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, his father-in-law.
11:35And from the start, he was wildly ambitious, creative, a visionary, energetic.
11:42And I've come here to the Habsburg archives to see his most ingenious creation.
11:50Rudolf craved the ultimate prize, the imperial crown, but he didn't have the same status as the
12:04German prince-electors who chose both the German king and the emperor.
12:09So Rudolf came up with a cunning plan.
12:11He invented the title archduke to make his family more important than their rivals.
12:17Catherine Kinniger is a medieval specialist at the archives, and she's going to show me how he did it.
12:28Catherine, tell me what this document is and why it's so important.
12:31So this is one of the most famous medieval documents of Austrian history.
12:37It claims to be of the 12th century, but actually it was made in the middle of the 14th century.
12:43It's a forgery.
12:44And what does it claim?
12:45Catherine Kinniger, So the purpose of the forgery was to increase the prestige of the
12:50Habsburg family, of Austria and the Habsburg dynasty.
12:54And didn't he invent some titles in here?
12:57Catherine Kinniger, Yeah.
12:57For example, he invented the title archduke.
13:00It was an invention of Rudolf IV.
13:04And how do we know this is a forgery?
13:06Catherine Kinniger, Actually, it's quite difficult because the forgery is really, really,
13:10very good.
13:11When you look at it, everything from the outside looks quite authentic because they used the seal.
13:19This is the original seal of Frederick I, and they transferred it from the original document to the forgery.
13:27And thus, up to the 19th century, everyone believed that it was the real thing.
13:32All cities have their founding myths, but none have been based on quite such a brazen fraud.
13:43And it would work for centuries.
13:45It was a challenge to the ruling Holy Roman Emperor of the time, Charles VI, King of Bohemia.
13:53And it wasn't just political, either.
13:54Rudolf also wanted Vienna to rival the Bohemian capital, Prague.
14:00Rudolf embellished and promoted both his dynasty and his capital.
14:15He invented a new title for himself, Archduke of Austria,
14:19which placed him above all the other princes and dukes.
14:22And in Vienna, he remodeled St. Stephen's Cathedral, and he founded this.
14:28In 1365, he created Vienna University, one of the oldest in Europe.
14:35Even today, it's known as Alma Mater Rudolf Ener.
14:45Rudolf had laid the foundations for Vienna to become one of Europe's great cities.
14:50Had he lived longer, who knows what he might have achieved.
14:53But, sadly, for Vienna and the Habsburgs, he died at just 26.
15:01But Rudolf's embellishment of Vienna had not been cheap,
15:05and he'd had to borrow to pay for it.
15:08The Habsburg dukes depended on the Jews for financial loans,
15:21like many medieval rulers.
15:22It was a close relationship.
15:24The Jews lived under royal protection.
15:26This Judenplatz was the site of the Jewish city, where the Jews all lived.
15:32And this, now the Holocaust Memorial, was the site of the community's synagogue.
15:37The royal court was right next door.
15:40But this relationship was ambivalent.
15:43It led to resentment.
15:44And in 1421, it exploded in a savage pogrom against the Jewish community.
15:50Now, Archduke Albert V turned against the Jews,
16:01first crippling them with taxes, then torturing them when they couldn't pay.
16:07The pogrom climaxed with the lynching, torturing and burning at the stake of hundreds of Jews,
16:14as the Jewish community was systematically destroyed.
16:17And finally, the Duke issued a decree that all Jewish children under the age of 15
16:23should be abducted and forcibly converted to Christendom.
16:27The surviving Jews retired to their community synagogue and locked themselves in.
16:32After a siege of two or three days, they committed suicide en masse by setting the synagogue alight.
16:39A Christian merchant of the time gleefully celebrated the Jewish tragedy by putting up this plaque,
16:54which reads,
16:55The raging fire of 1421 cleansed the city of the vile crimes of the Hebrew dogs.
17:08The boundless ambitions of the House of Habsburg finally reached their fulfilment,
17:13with the unlikely figure of Frederick III.
17:16In 1442, he was crowned emperor by the Pope in Rome.
17:23Frederick was the first Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, the first of many,
17:27and everything about him was big.
17:29His ambitions, the length of his reign, and his mountainous stomach.
17:34He was known as Frederick the Fat.
17:37He was shrewd, patient, long-suffering, but also notoriously sluggish and vacillating.
17:44The Pope said that he wanted to conquer the world while sitting down,
17:48and in Germany, his nickname was the Arch Sleepyhead of the Empire.
17:58On becoming emperor, he confirmed Rudolf the Founder's forged document,
18:04and henceforth, the Habsburgs would always be Archdukes of Austria.
18:11This is the Hofburg, the ancient city fortress of Vienna,
18:16and when Frederick III, Frederick the Fat, became Holy Roman Emperor,
18:20this became his imperial headquarters.
18:25But Frederick's ambitions always exceeded both his energy and his resources,
18:30and it wasn't long before his rivals were circling.
18:34Ever since the murder of Albert One-Eye,
18:41the House of Habsburg had been deeply divided.
18:45Now Frederick was challenged by his own brother, another Albert,
18:49who marched on Vienna in 1462, intending to wrest power from him
18:54and his son and heir Maximilian.
18:59Albert allied himself with a bohemian warlord,
19:02and together they came down to Vienna and besieged Fat Frederick, his wife,
19:08and Maximilian here at the Hofburg.
19:11This is, in fact, one of the very few parts of the Hofburg Palace that dates from Frederick's time.
19:18It looked like everything was lost, but Frederick endured all this with his usual mixture of sleepy
19:25patience and obstinate tenacity that all would turn out right, and so it did.
19:32The siege was lifted.
19:34Albert died, and Frederick swallowed his lambs.
19:41But these family feuds had distracted him from a greater danger.
19:46His dynamic neighbour, the king of Hungary, Matthias.
19:55In 1482, Matthias attacked Vienna.
19:59Frederick ingloriously fled.
20:01He'd lost his capital.
20:03But once again, Frederick succeeded by simply outliving his enemies,
20:11and when Matthias died, he retook Vienna without a fight.
20:20In celebration, he finished the building of St. Stephen's,
20:23first of all, and it was he who inscribed the letters of his code, A-E-I-O-U.
20:29The whole world is dominated by Austria on the altar.
20:37And he designed a special place for himself, centre stage.
20:42When he died in 1493, he ruled longer than his supposed ancestor, the Roman Emperor Augustus.
20:51During his long reign, Frederick the Fat had endured an astonishing number of disasters,
20:57and yet he triumphed in the end.
20:59He'd even lost a leg to diabetes and survived that.
21:02But when he finally died appropriately, it was from overeating.
21:06And here's his tomb.
21:08And as you can see, it's an amazing masterpiece.
21:11And look at these little creatures, the elaborate decoration, these arches.
21:20Here are the good things in his life, the holy works, and here is all the evil he overcame.
21:32You have up here, in immaculate detail, is a surprisingly slim-fit version of Frederick the Fat,
21:40with all the accoutrements, the paraphernalia of power, the sword, the shield, the sceptre.
21:49Before he died, Frederick pulled off one last victory for the House of Habsburg,
21:54and it wasn't on a battlefield. It was in the marriage chamber.
21:58He married his son and heir, Maximilian, to Mary of Burgundy, the richest heiress in Europe.
22:05She was heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, that in those days contained the Netherlands, Belgium,
22:12Luxembourg, and swathes of eastern France. It would make the Habsburgs the greatest dynasty in Europe.
22:21Let others wage war, went the saying, but you, happy Austria, shall marry. Maximilian's brilliant
22:34match to Mary of Burgundy was just the first of the three weddings that would raise Vienna from
22:41Germanic to world capital. Maximilian was as gifted a warlord as he was a matchmaker.
22:55Maximilian couldn't have been more different from his flabby, sleepy father, or from the cliche of the
23:01the weak-chinned Habsburgs of the 19th century. He was an exuberant, swaggering swashbuckler, nicknamed
23:09the German Hercules. I laughed, I danced, I jousted, I paid court to the ladies he wrote in his autobiography,
23:18but most of all, I just laughed wholeheartedly.
23:27But his greatest achievements were in his marriage alliances. First, he married his son,
23:34Philip the Handsome, to Juana of Spain, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.
23:40When they died, the Habsburgs inherited the Spanish Empire. But Maximilian wasn't finished yet.
23:57Towards the end of his life in 1515, Maximilian pulled off a second astonishing marriage coup for the
24:04dynasty. He married his grandchildren, his grandson Ferdinand and his granddaughter, to the heirs, to the
24:12kingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia. In an age of extremely high infant mortality, even Maximilian
24:23couldn't have expected all his marriage alliances to come good. But as it happened, he and the house
24:30of Habsburg were extremely lucky. His marriage alliances delivered to the house of Habsburgs not
24:37only Spain, not only the Spanish Empire, but also the thrones of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. It would make
24:46the Habsburgs the greatest family empire the world had ever known. Maximilian was determined that his
24:57achievements would not go unnoticed. He'd be aided in this mission by the invention of the printing press.
25:08The Emperor Maximilian had used marriage alliances and war to promote the house of Habsburg. But now he
25:14was one of the first rulers to use the new medium of printing to project his majesty and magnificence.
25:22And I'm here at the Albertina Museum to see how he did it.
25:29These famous but rarely seen works are held in storage at this museum, but they've offered to take
25:37them out and show them to us. Christoph Metzger is head of the Albertina's graphic art collection.
25:45This is the first sheet and now you can make a sequence of altogether more than 40 metres.
25:56One of the largest ever made, Maximilian's print depicts his travels around the empire,
26:02but it also is meant to resemble the triumphal processions of the Roman emperors.
26:07Just tell me about what was done with these. These were printed and then sent around the Holy Roman Empire.
26:17Yes, yes. Using the very, very modern medium of printing. And if you want to have an impression
26:27how this has been made, we have here the woodblock of the artists of this, the detail is so intricate.
26:37You fill it with ink, you cover it with ink, you take a sheet, a paper, you put it on the colored woodblock,
26:47make a little pressure on it, and afterwards you have the final print.
26:55This was the latest technology in 1518 or whatever. It was like Twitter or Facebook today.
27:02It was like this was the new medium that allowed...
27:04That's the new medium and the first possibility really to create art as a mass product.
27:12Fascinating.
27:14But there's also a color version of Maximilian's triumphal procession, hand-drawn and hand-painted.
27:21This has been the most precious version for the emperor and the imperial family.
27:29The printed version was for nearly everybody.
27:35I think it's a thing of breathtaking beauty, and I think it's one of the greatest treasures in Vienna.
27:42And am I right in saying that it's only been exhibited about two or three times in 500 years?
27:49In very, very rare occasions.
27:51Can I look at it in closer, look at it a bit more closely?
27:54Yes, of course.
27:54Because you've got it, of course.
27:55I'd just like to look at some of the detail on it.
27:58I love this, I love this horse here with the, this, the comparison horse with these eagles on it.
28:05Now, who is this?
28:06These two horsemen introduce the carriage of the imperial family.
28:14I think nothing really approaches the resplendent bling of this gold-worked armor.
28:23So, moving this way, so now we approach this way, we suddenly see somebody, somebody very important is
28:29coming because look, there's one, there's 12 horses, each ridden by a postillion, that are pulling a giant
28:37carriage. And who is in this carriage? Well, this, this is Maximilian himself, isn't it?
28:43Here, let's look at him. This is, in effect, the story we're about to tell. So we have Maximilian,
28:49and then we have his son, Philip the Handsome, who, who's, who's, um, married to Juana of Spain.
28:59And there we see their children, the future Emperor Charles V and the future Emperor Ferdinand,
29:07his brother. So, in effect, this carriage contains the future destiny of the House of Habsburg
29:15and of, and of Europe itself for the next hundred years.
29:24Maximilian was ready to die. He travelled everywhere,
29:27with his own coffin. And he specified that on his death, he was to be treated like a common sinner,
29:33his teeth pulled out of his body, his hair shorn, and his cadaver scourged with whips.
29:39When he died, his heir was not his son, Philip the Handsome, who'd predeceased him,
29:45but his grandson, Charles V, who inherited all his vast domains. But it was too much for any one man,
29:54and so he brought his brother Ferdinand, who'd been brought up in Spain, speaking only Spanish,
30:00and gave him the Austrian lands and Vienna. From now on, this is Ferdinand's story.
30:08In 1521, Ferdinand I became Archduke of Austria. But when his brother-in-law, the king of Hungary,
30:20Croatian Bohemia, was killed in battle by the Ottoman Turks, he inherited those lands as well.
30:27Ferdinand was now in charge of defending the entire eastern flank of Christendom from the looming threat
30:36of the Ottomans and Islam.
30:42The Sultan of the Ottomans was Suleiman I, known to history as Suleiman the Magnificent.
30:49In 1529, he marched on the city with an army of 300,000 men.
31:03Ruling an empire that stretched from Iraq to Africa and the Balkans,
31:09Suleiman the Magnificent saw himself as a Roman emperor, an Islamic caliph and a Turkish sultan,
31:16now 35, in his prime. He'd already taken the cities of Belgrade and Buda, and he was advancing
31:24into Hungary, defeating the Hungarians and Bohemians and killing their young king.
31:29This allowed Ferdinand to claim those thrones, but it also started the duel between the two
31:37greatest dynasties of their time, the Ottomans versus the Habsburgs. As he advanced on Vienna,
31:44this wasn't just a battle for a city. It was a battle for Christendom and Europe itself.
31:50Christendom was in peril.
31:57In September, the Ottoman army camped right here on the outskirts of Vienna.
32:03Suleiman commanded the siege of Vienna from his tent pitched on this spot, but he'd started late
32:11in the year. Winter was coming, supplies were low, and then his troops mutinied. He'd never been
32:17defeated before, and so he ordered a final assault on the city, and when it failed, he reluctantly
32:24retreated. Afterwards, the Habsburgs celebrated by building this palace on the site. But it wasn't over.
32:33This was the beginning of a titanic struggle that lasted 200 years.
32:43But Islam wasn't the only threat to Vienna and the House of Habsburg. Martin Luther had launched
32:51his protest against papal abuses in Germany, and the Protestant Reformation of the Church
32:57had now spread to Bohemia as well. Ferdinand went to war, and he managed to contain the Protestant
33:05threat. But his grandson didn't just compromise the Protestantism, he actively encouraged religious
33:12diversity. Crowned emperor in 1576, his portrait hangs here in the Art History Museum.
33:20This is Rudolf II, the mercurial Holy Roman Emperor, who ruled for 30 years. And here you can see the
33:26exhaustion on his face. But for three decades, he had dazzled, amused, and worried all of Europe with his
33:35crazy antics. He was known as Rudolf the Mad. He had a court filled with necromancers, magicians,
33:43alchemists, Jewish cabalists. He wasn't interested in politics. He was bored by religious politics,
33:49which obsessed everybody else. What interested him was collecting great art, a quest for beauty,
33:55and truth, and magic. He was a mystic. He was a collector. He was a connoisseur. Everything he did
34:02was extraordinary. He had, for example, a pet tiger that wandered his castles, occasionally eating his
34:09courtiers. He loved boys. He loved girls. He fathered many bastards. His sex life shocked everybody. But he
34:17was always on the verge of madness.
34:25Rudolf amassed one of the most impressive art collections in Europe, with works by Dürer,
34:30Bruegel, and the Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
34:36The style of Rudolf's court painter and impresario of court spectacles, Arcimboldo, tells you a lot
34:44about the fantastical atmosphere at Rudolf the Mad's court. Arcimboldo loved to portray courtiers,
34:52and even royalty, using everyday objects. I mean, here, this man's nose is a gherkin,
34:58for example. His chin is a pear. Arcimboldo's signature is in the straw.
35:04His most famous painting is not kept in Vienna, but in a museum in Sweden.
35:08This is Arcimboldo's masterpiece. It's Rudolf II himself. The emperor commissioned this. He loved
35:19it. He had it hanging in his imperial bedchamber, and he insisted that his own nose should appear
35:26as a pear. He is Vertumnus, Roman god of fecundity and of fruit. And that's how Rudolf saw himself. But
35:35you have to ask what to make of a Holy Roman emperor who wanted himself portrayed as a living
35:42fruit salad. And his own family, the Habsburgs, were deeply unamused about this. They didn't just
35:48regard him as a fruit salad or a fruit cake, for that matter. To them, his mysticism, his madness,
35:56his tolerance of Protestantism made him not just a nutter, but more than that, a danger to the dynasty,
36:05God, to Christendom itself.
36:14In 1609, Rudolf formally granted tolerance to the Protestants of Bohemia. For his family
36:20and the Pope, this was a step too far. They began to plot against him. In 1611,
36:27Rudolf's own brother Matthias overthrew him.
36:36Rudolf died nine months later. Although he saw himself as an advocate for religious tolerance,
36:43his legacy had a dark side.
36:45The Habsburg empire was created by marriage, and they tried to keep it together by intermarriage
36:53within the family. But it wasn't long before these incestuous unions had started to produce
36:59a few depraved psychopaths. Rudolf the mad son, Don Julio, was even madder than his father.
37:08Finally, he kidnapped a barber's daughter, dismembered her, sliced off her ears, cut off her breasts,
37:16and was finally found cradling her earless head, covered in his own blood and excrement.
37:24Such were the macabre secrets of the House of Austria.
37:34Matthias' rule was short-lived, but the same cannot be said for the Catholic further of the Habsburgs,
37:40which now faced a new challenge from the Protestants of Prague, just 180 miles to the north.
37:47The age of tolerance was dead. The Catholic counter-reformation was on the march. The new
37:54Habsburg monarch, Ferdinand II, was a religious bigot, a Catholic zealot. He revoked the tolerance
38:02of the Protestants of Bohemia, and they rebelled. The result was the defenestration of Prague,
38:09every schoolboy's favorite. Defenestration means throwing someone out of a window, and throwing people
38:16out of windows was a bit of a national pastime in Bohemia. This was the second defenestration of Prague.
38:23Four of Ferdinand's Catholic ministers was grabbed by the mob and tossed out of the window.
38:35The drop was 70 feet.
38:41Astonishingly, all four survived the fall. To Ferdinand and the Catholics, this was a miracle.
38:48The Virgin Mary had intercepted them and softened their fall. To the Protestants, they'd simply
38:54survived by landing in a heap of dung. But Ferdinand celebrated by making one of the lords Baron von
39:01Hohenfall, Baron of the High Fall. Nonetheless, Bohemia and the Protestants were now in open rebellion.
39:11This was war.
39:19Ferdinand was determined to regain Bohemia. He sent an army to march on Prague.
39:24In 1620, Ferdinand and the Catholics defeated the Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain.
39:34And when he retook Prague, he unleashed a terrible revenge. 27 of the leading Protestant lords were
39:42tortured, dismembered, executed in the main town square. Their heads hung from meat hooks.
39:49This was the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. A savage religious war and a brutal tournament of power
39:56that ultimately drew in most of the powers of Europe. And for the Europeans themselves,
40:02it was a disaster. Out of a population of around 78 million, somewhere between 3 and 12 million
40:11perished. That's as much as 15%. This was a European catastrophe.
40:17But war would be the making of one man who seemed born for battle. Albert Wenzel von Wallenstein was
40:30one of the greatest generals the Habsburgs ever fielded. And he was the ultimate, over-mighty,
40:36swaggering warlord of the Thirty Years' War. At the war's opening, he offered himself with 100,000 men
40:44to Emperor Ferdinand. He thrashed all the Emperor's enemies, Danes, Protestants, Swedes,
40:51and became Commander-in-Chief. But he forced the Emperor to make him Duke of Friedland and amassed
40:57a vast personal fiefdom. Soon, he was even threatening the Emperor himself.
41:06Ferdinand now feared that Wallenstein wouldn't rest until he dominated all of Central Europe.
41:18In 1634, Ferdinand gathered together in Vienna a tribunal that condemned Wallenstein as a traitor.
41:27He was to be brought back to Vienna, dead or alive. The hit squad was a group of Irish dragoons,
41:35under an Irishman, Walter Butler. First, they burst into the tavern, where Wallenstein's entourage and
41:42henchmen were asleep. They murdered them all, and then, finally, burst into Wallenstein's own bedroom.
41:49As he lay in bed, they ran him through with a halberd, and there died, bled out on the bed in some remote
41:56lodgings, the greatest general of the Thirty Years' War, the warlord who had dared to challenge the Emperor himself.
42:03But this was not just a war fought by generals on battlefields. The Thirty Years' War was also
42:15a battle for hearts and minds. Ferdinand II recruited the Jesuits, the Holy Order,
42:21as soldiers in his army of Christ. They provided his top advisers, the tutors for the heir to the throne.
42:29They ran the university. They took over education. And as the cloisters took over the quarrels of power,
42:36the joke went like this. Austria, Oosterreich, had become Kloosterreich.
42:42In Austria, the Counter-Reformation became known as the Klooster Offensive. It would transform the
42:52character of the city. Ferdinand himself founded this Jesuit church in the old university quarter of Vienna.
43:03In 1648, Treaty of Westphalia finally ended the ruinous Thirty Years' War. In wide Europe, there was a
43:11compromise between the Catholics and the Protestants. But within the Austrian monarchy, it marked the
43:17total victory of Catholicism. And that confidence, that exuberance, that supremacy of Catholicism is
43:26expressed here in this church.
43:33Its interior was remodelled in opulent Baroque style by an Italian architect and stage designer,
43:40Andrea Pozzo.
43:43The ceiling is a fine example of a trompe d'oeil, creating the optical illusion of a domed roof.
43:52And Pozzo's background and stage design is apparent in the inclusion of these theatrical boxes on the
43:59first floor.
43:59Pozzo's background and stage design is a great place for the family imperial crypt.
44:07Positioning the Habsburgs as champions of Catholicism, Ferdinand laid the foundation
44:13stone for the family imperial crypt.
44:19We've been given exclusive access to this wonderful, if somewhat eerie, place.
44:25When a Habsburg emperor died, his funeral cortege would come here to the Capuchin chapel,
44:35to the Kaiser Cruft, the emperor's crypt.
44:40The doors would be locked and they would knock on the doors and say,
44:44this is the emperor, the king of Bohemia.
44:48And they would list all his other many, many titles, a page long.
44:53We recognise no one of that name, they would reply.
44:57So they would knock again, and this time they would give a shorter version.
45:02And again they would reply, we know of no one of that name.
45:07And finally they would knock for the third time.
45:09Who goes there, they would say.
45:12And the cortege would answer, a penitent sinner.
45:16And then they would open the door.
45:18That was how Habsburgs were buried.
45:26But in spite of their supposed humility and death, the Habsburgs were still buried in these
45:32ornate metal sarcophagi decorated with skulls, but also with their many crowns.
45:43And that's the point.
45:44This was all an act.
45:46It was all a show.
45:47The Habsburg emperor lived and died as an emperor.
46:02The Habsburg emperor lived and died as an emperor.
46:12Educated by the Jesuits and originally intended for the church,
46:16Ferdinand's grandson, Leopold I, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1658.
46:26The new young emperor, Leopold I, was no beauty.
46:31Even by the standards of Habsburg interbreeding,
46:34he was possessed of the most ginormous jaw in the whole history of the family.
46:39Wits at court mainly nicknamed him Schweinermal von Habsburg, the Hogmouth of Habsburg.
46:47In a 50-year rule, he endured disasters and he endured glories.
46:52He was endearing.
46:54He was sweet.
46:55He was untalented.
46:57But he loved music.
46:59He lived for music.
47:00He was a consummate, if conventional composer.
47:04His tragedy was that he wrote the requiems for both of his dead wives.
47:11His first wife was a toddler when she was betrothed to him.
47:16An extraordinary story is told in a series of portraits that hang in the Art History Museum.
47:22This is Margarita Teresa, a child who was the Infanta of Spain.
47:29And from the age of about three, she was destined to marry her uncle, Leopold I, Emperor in Austria, in Vienna.
47:38And this was just another example of the insane and ultimately disastrous policy of the Habsburgs marrying their relatives.
47:47She was not only his niece.
47:49Both her parents were also Habsburgs, so they were related on many levels.
47:55And because she was far away in Madrid and she had to grow up, the court painter in Spain, Velazquez, was commissioned to paint her every two or three years.
48:05Here's the first painting.
48:08Here in the second painting, she is at five.
48:12And here she is, the third one, at eight.
48:16The actual marriage took place when she was 15.
48:20And when they were married and they were husband and wife, she always called her husband, Uncle.
48:33In the summer of 1666, Margarita Teresa finally travelled to Vienna.
48:38And their marriage took place in December that year.
48:45Leopold celebrated his wedding with a giant allegorical spectacular here at the Hofburg.
48:52Life-size ships, horses, carriages hovered above a lake.
48:58Two 60-foot mountains, Etna and Parnassus, spurted forth fire like volcanoes.
49:05And the climax came when Leopold himself excitedly lit 70,000 fireworks that illuminated the sky above Vienna, spelling out the letters A-E-I-O-U.
49:21Austria dominates the world.
49:24For days, the entire city was given over to a series of Baroque spectaculars, including a four-hour equestrian ballet.
49:43Rudy Rizzati is one of the curators of an exhibition of Baroque spectacle at the Vienna Theatre Museum.
49:50He's made an animated film from original period prints of the Horse Ballet, performed in the Hofburg Square.
50:10Rudy, tell me about the special effects of the 17th century.
50:14How on earth did they get these life-size carriages to seem to float on water?
50:19They tried, through means of illusion, to create wonderful images in the three-dimensional space.
50:28So, for example, in the Horse Ballet, you saw different bagons and chariots moved by the force of horses, etc.
50:37The water was no real water.
50:41It was just a combination of different fabrics and painted parts.
50:47Tell me about other spectaculars that Leopold put on.
50:52A second big event confirming the power of the court was the opera Il Pomodoro,
51:00for which Leopold I composed some parts.
51:04When the Habsburg monarchy was almost bankrupt, why did they spend so much on these spectacular extravaganzas?
51:12Spectaculous and theatrical events were being made just to show the power of a dynasty.
51:19To finance these extravagant displays of power, Leopold had to borrow from Jewish moneylenders.
51:28They'd finally been allowed to return to Vienna,
51:31though only permitted to settle outside the city walls, on the other side of the Danube.
51:38But now, influenced by the rabid anti-Semitism of his young wife,
51:43Leopold would turn against them, and they were expelled from the city.
51:50Their synagogue was destroyed, and Leopold built a church on its site.
51:58Soon after the Jewish expulsion, the city was blighted by an outbreak of bubonic plague
52:03that claimed over 70,000 lives and severely weakened its garrison.
52:11This didn't go unnoticed by a resurgent Ottoman Empire.
52:17Its grand vizier, or prime minister, was the ferociously ambitious Kara Mustafa,
52:24and he finally persuaded his sultan that the time was right
52:27to once again attempt to take Vienna.
52:33In July 1683, the Ottoman army, 200,000 strong and under the command
52:40of Kara Mustafa himself, arrived beneath the walls of Fortress Vienna.
52:46As the Ottomans besieged the city,
52:49they started to mine underneath the bastions and walls of its defensives.
52:54This is one of the last city walls that still exist.
52:59Day by day, they slowly but systematically blew up,
53:04bastion after bastion, wall after wall,
53:07until they were almost ready to storm the city.
53:10If relief didn't come soon, Vienna would fall.
53:14Leopold was chiefly concerned with saving his own skin
53:27and he fled to Linz, more than 100 miles away.
53:31En route, he was jeered and spat at by peasants.
53:34Leopold and the Pope implored Christian kings to join a holy league
53:46to defend the embattled city, and their call was heard.
53:52The leader of the Holy Alliance was King Jan Sobieski of Poland.
53:56He was the classic Beaux-Sabreux knight
53:59who'd fought in many armies across Europe.
54:02He'd also been to many foreign capitals, Paris.
54:05He was a man of culture.
54:06He'd married a beautiful French wife.
54:09He was hugely overweight,
54:11but he could still stay in the saddle for 12 or 15 hours at a time.
54:16He knew that if Vienna fell, Poland would be next,
54:20and that's why he led his 3,000 famous Polish hussars
54:24in their leopard skins and tiger skins to rescue Vienna.
54:28Sobieski assembled his army here, in the Vienna woods,
54:37and on 12 September 1683, they began to fight their way towards Vienna.
54:46The battle raged from dawn till dusk,
54:49until eventually the Christian forces were ready for the final charge.
54:52Kinyan Sobieski, now joined by the Bavarian and Saxon contingents,
55:00led 18,000 cavalrymen thundering down the hill into the Turkish camp.
55:06It's said it's the biggest cavalry charge in history.
55:09The Turks fled.
55:11Karim Mustafa had given orders that his favourite concubine
55:15and his pet ostrich must not fall into enemy hands.
55:20In the Grand Vizier's opulent tent,
55:23headless girl and headless bird were found side by side.
55:28It was a victory for Christ.
55:36It was a victory for Vienna.
55:41The bells of St Stephen's rang out in joyful celebration.
55:48King Jan Sobieski, by rights,
55:50should have waited for Emperor Leopold to return
55:53before he entered his city.
55:55But the old swashbuckler just couldn't resist it,
55:58and he galloped on into Vienna.
56:01When Leopold finally did return,
56:04there was a frosty meeting between the two monarchs.
56:07Leopold thanked him half-heartedly.
56:10It was a pleasure to perform this small service for you,
56:14replied the Polish king sardonically.
56:17Then he left for Poland.
56:19But Leopold commandeered the victory for the dynasty.
56:22It was the making of the House of Habsburg.
56:26Karim Mustafa had failed in his great enterprise,
56:48much of it due to his own incompetence,
56:51and he would pay the price.
56:52When the sultan's death mutes,
56:55his traditional executioners arrived.
56:58Karim Mustafa knew why they had come.
57:01He bared his neck.
57:02It is God's will, he said.
57:04They strangled him with their bowstring
57:06and then beheaded him and sent the head to the sultan.
57:10But for Vienna and for the House of Habsburg,
57:13it was a new beginning, a new era.
57:16The Austrian Habsburgs became a great power
57:18in their own right for the first time.
57:20They struck east against the Ottomans,
57:23west against the mighty French.
57:26The empire was striking back
57:28and Vienna would enter upon its own golden age.
57:32In the next hundred years,
57:38Vienna would see an extraordinary flourishing of the arts
57:42and the construction of some of the world's most spectacular palaces.
57:46This is one of the glories of 18th century Vienna.
57:49No wonder it's called Belvedere.
57:51Look at this view.
57:51And Vienna would inspire perhaps the most brilliant composer of all,
57:58Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
58:00I would say he was a rock star.
58:03But it would also come under threat
58:05from one of history's greatest conquerors,
58:08Napoleon Bonaparte.
58:10What makes Vienna the imperial city it is today?
58:14Find out more through the Open University's interactive map
58:19of landmarks, language and stories
58:22by heading to bbc.co.uk forward slash Vienna
58:28and following the links to the Open University.
58:36Putting 50 of our feline friends under 24-hour surveillance
58:41next on BBC4,
58:43the world beyond the cat flap coming up
58:45with Horizon and the secret life of the cat.
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