Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/588

 538 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE riage, inheritance, and war. He had also shown military ability in the employ of the cities of Basel, Zurich, and Strassburg, and had been marshal at the Bohemian court. He was fifty-five years old when chosen emperor and was a man of unusual height — seven feet tall, says a chronicle of the time. He was an affable, energetic, and popular warrior. Rudolf's main achievement was to recover Austria, Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia from Ottocar and then to keep them — with the exception of Carinthia which he gave to his ally, the Count of Tyrol — as his own possessions. He was so occupied with Austria that he did not intervene in Italian affairs, and allowed French influence to increase in Lorraine and the County of Burgundy. His scheme of re- constituting the Kingdom of Aries in the regions along the Rhone failed. Especially in the entire north of Germany did he exert little influence. In the south he tried to check private wars by "land -peaces" — in which the states of a certain region would cooperate to keep the peace — and to collect taxes especially from the towns, which during the absence of Frederick II in Italy and the Interregnum had attained to prosperity and self-government. Sometimes he summoned representatives of the cities to him in order to procure a subsidy, but not in company with the ecclesias- tical and lay princes. Often he went instead to the cities or dealt with each separately, so that he failed to establish a Parliament or Estates General as his contemporaries, Edward I and Philip IV, did. Rudolf was not able to hand on the Empire to his son Albert. Instead the electors chose Adolf of Nassau (1292- Upe and 1 298), but he proved even more eager to increase downs of the the possessions of his own family at the expense of others than Rudolf had been. The electors accordingly turned back to Albert who met Adolf in a battle which was decided by Adolf's death. After Albert's reign, however, the electors again passed by the House of Haps- burg and chose Henry VII of Luxemburg (1308-1313), who proceeded to acquire the Kingdom of Bohemia for himself and his descendants. In 13 14 there was another double