1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rupert (king)

RUPERT (1352-1410), German king, and, as Rupert III., elector palatine of the Rhine, was a son of the elector Rupert II. and Beatrice, daughter of Peter II., king of Sicily. He was born at Amberg on the 5th of May 1352, and from his early years took part in the government of the Palatinate to which he succeeded on his father's death in 1398. He was one of the four electors who met at Oberlahnstein in August 1400 and declared King Wenceslaus deposed. This was followed by the election of Rupert as German king at Rense on the 21st of that month, and by his coronation at Cologne on the 6th of the following January. Winning some recognition in S. Germany, he made an expedition to Italy, where he hoped to receive the imperial crown, and to crush Gian Galleazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. In the autumn of 1401 he crossed the Alps, but his troops, checked before Brescia, melted away, and in 1402 Rupert, too poor to continue the campaign, returned to Germany. The news of this failure increased the disorder in Germany, but the king met with some success in his efforts to restore peace, and in October 1403 he was recognized by Pope Boniface IX. It was only the indolence of Wenceslaus that prevented his overthrow, and in 1406 he was compelled to make certain concessions. The quarrel was complicated by the papal schism, but the king was just beginning to make some headway when he died at his castle of Landskron near Oppenheim on the 18th of May 1410 and was buried at Heidelberg. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick IV. of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremburg, and left three sons and four daughters. Rupert, who earned the surname of clemens, was brave and generous, but his resources were totally inadequate to bear the strain of the German kingship.