The ginger fox who collected crowns across medieval Europe
Nicknamed the ginger fox for his red hair, Sigismund of Luxembourg was betrothed at six to an infant Hungarian princess. That match started a career in which he became king of Hungary and Croatia, King of the Romans, king of Bohemia and finally Holy Roman Emperor, assembling a domain nearly as large as the later Habsburg Empire.
Born in 1368, a son of Emperor Charles IV, Sigismund was sent at ten to the Hungarian court after his father's death, where he learned the language and became devoted to his adopted country. At thirteen he went to Krakow to learn Polish, hoping for the Polish crown too, but Polish nobles would not accept a German ruler and chose his fiancee's younger sister Jadwiga instead.
His Hungarian throne was precarious. He married Mary in 1385, but rebel nobles seized her and her mother in 1387, killing the mother. Crowned that March, Sigismund had to buy baronial support by handing over large chunks of royal property and pawning Brandenburg to a cousin, and nine years of struggle followed before rivals backing Ladislaus of Naples were subdued. Mary died in 1395, leaving him sole ruler.
The next year he led a crusade against the Ottomans that ended in crushing defeat at Nicopolis. He responded by founding the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks. He was a driving force behind the Council of Constance from 1414 to 1418, which ended the Papal Schism but also triggered the Hussite Wars that consumed his later life. He was crowned emperor in 1433 and died in 1437, the last male of his dynasty.
Historian Thomas Brady Jr. credited him with a breadth of vision unseen in a German monarch since the 13th century, since he understood that empire and Church needed reform together. Money troubles, outside pressures and his own mistakes left that vision unfinished, and it passed to the Habsburgs. Recent scholarship, particularly in East-Central Europe, tends to blame his failures on limited resources rather than personal weakness.
Source: Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
