The Legend of Maximilian I, the Last Knight
Maximilian von Habsburg (1459–1519) had an extraordinary number of lofty titles in life, not least that of Holy Roman Emperor, but he has gained another in death: ’The Last Knight’.
A 19th century Austrian politician, von Auesperg, wrote a poem in the style of the mediaeval epic ‘the Song of the Nibelungs’ about the knightly prowess of the erstwhile Emperor. As you do. Its name was ‘the Last Knight.’ Max — as we shall call him henceforth, with gleeful disregard for his abundance of high-falutin labels — would probably have been delighted.
That Max’s knightly reputation survived many hundreds of years after his death just goes to show how successful he was at creating an image of chivalric glory. Without prejudice to their relative mightiness, Max used the pen and the sword to create that impression. His court was a centre for the composition of romances of chivalry; he even wrote his own where the main character was him. Max also held, and fought at, a great many magnificent tournaments. His patronage of the imperial armoury at Innsbruck attached his name to the most famous style of the era: Maximilian armour. Readers may be familiar with this kind of fluted plate from the armour of Henry VIII, who followed the fashions set by Max’s grand displays very closely. Henry even pilfered Max’s armourers for his shiny new armoury at Greenwich. It wasn’t just the armour at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold — where Henry and Francis I of France competed in lavish style in lieu of going to war — which copied the Emperor. The whole opulent event was heavily influenced by the modes Max made.
It worked to associate Max with knighthood. Natalie Anderson — whose PhD thesis provides a wealth of information on Max’s tournaments — notes that contemporary evaluations of Max vary wildly. Some say he was quick-witted, others dull; some say he was a great tactician, some say he was indecisive. Commentators no less great than Machiavelli and Erasmus paint sharply different portraits. Old Nick describes a perfect storm of a man both conniving and impressionable, Erasmus tells of a peace-loving ruler considerate of his subjects’ needs. Yet despite all that, everyone agrees he was a marvellous knight, a real genius with a lance and a gracious sportsman. It’s that impression which stuck. Anderson points out that it’s nothing short of a miracle to be remembered other than how Machiavelli himself depicts you!
Perhaps a formative inspiration was the extravagant court of Burgundy’s Charles the Bold, where tiny Max spent some time. The favourite extravagance I read about is from the time of Charles’ father, Philip the Good, who had musicians play while seated in a giant pasty; no, I don’t know any more details than that! One visitor compared Philip’s court — which Charles strove to emulate — to that of King Arthur, though I don’t remember anything about stages made of baked goods in Mallory. Still, I think this comparison is an important detail. Contemporaries were reinventing the legend of Arthur to reflect their standards of glory, reimagining the past as a perfected present, when all the things we desire now were fulfilled.
Indeed, the people of the era were struggling with the changing nature of warfare. Knights were diminishing in their role on the battlefield. It’s not that knights weren’t still around, for heavily armoured bastards touting lances from atop horses would remain important for another half century or so after Max died, but they were undoubtedly no longer the decisive force they had been. As always the reasons for this are manifold and complicated, but I believe it’s fair to say that the critical thing is how armies of professional mercenaries were becoming cheaper and more effective than feudal levies. Well-equipped, disciplined infantry en masse could neutralise knights. Neutralise is a bit of a bland term. Charles the Bold himself was killed by such mercenaries. He and his army were annihilated by Swiss pikemen. One important aspect of this swing toward foot soldiers is the massive expansion in the use of firearms. The French victory at Castillon in 1453, in retrospect the battle that permanently concluded the Hundred Years’ War, is put down to the devastating effect of their cannons. Max was far from blind to these developments. ’Twas none other than he, the Last Knight, behind the formation of the Landsknechte, the German equivalents to those mercenary groups like the Swiss Pikemen associated with a particular nationality, and one day these men would become synonymous with the era’s brand of warfare.
Max, then, was (successfully) mobilising the popular idea of chivalry to legitimise his rule, appearing a knight in an age of mercenaries, even while keenly engaging in violent zeitgeist. It reminds me of the age to which he was supposedly harking back. Edward III of England is justly afforded the epithet of ‘chivalry nerd’ by Horrible Histories. About a century and a half before Max’s time he presided over a flowering of chivalric practices in England, very much including grandiose tournaments and references to their version of Arthur. Edward also started the aforementioned Hundred Years War. He unleashed blood and strife on the land we now call France, a time of much misery and death that would feature mercenary ‘free companies’ and end in cannon smoke. Chivalry was always an unrealised ideal.
Are we to conclude therefore that Max’s ‘Last Knight’ image is a double lie? First, we have nothing but a veneer of knightliness on Max. Take off the fancy fluted helmet and there’s the face of a cynic beneath. Then, second, there’s the fact that there never was an age of chivalry to which to hark back; he can’t have been the last of a dying breed if the breed didn’t live at all. By that reading, von Auesperg is just a 19th century romantic swallowing the propaganda. It’s just a legend and nothing more.
Well, all of that is hard to avoid, but I contend it misses so much to leave it there. Just because a legend isn’t an accurate reflection of the whole truth, or just because the ideal wasn’t realised, that doesn’t mean it’s worthless.
The very fact that the ideal of knightliness has worked to conjure an enduring image of Max is testament to how useful it was as a tool to legitimise his rule. But while that lesson was not lost on Henry VIII or Francis I or the other ‘Renaissance princes’, it wasn’t long after Max was pushing up imperial daisies that knightliness and kingliness more or less parted ways. No longer did people look for their rulers to be composers of love poetry and masters at the tilt. Of the last few knightly monarchs, Max fittingly outstripped the competition by presenting himself best. Insofar as Max was the last ruler to really embrace chivalry as a primary principle of his legitimacy, he really was the Last Knight.
But even if it lost a connection to the crown, the idea endured. Chivalry was reinvented again and again in response to the wants and needs of each time and place. Max did it, yes, and so did von Auesperg when he wrote that poem. Even in our own day it remains bizarrely popular — why am I writing about this subject, after all? From this point of view, the problem with Max claiming the title of ‘Last Knight’ is that there are many pretenders. There always seems to be someone else who wants to take it up. It’s like a shapeless phantasm we summon and drape in the clothes of our own context. Chivalry isn’t dead, it’s undead.
