When Richard died in 1272, the
electoral
princes were spurred into action by Pope
Gregory X
, who desired the election of a German monarch sympathetic toward a Crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land. The princes, dreading an overly powerful king, rejected the advances of Philip III of
France
and Otakar. In 1273 they chose instead
Rudolf
of Habsburg, a minor count of Swabia who lacked the strength to regain the crown domains the electors had usurped during the Great Interregnum. Papal diplomacy persuaded
Alfonso X
to abandon his pretensions to the throne; but Otakar denounced the election on the ground that the duke of
Bavaria
had voted as lay
elector
in his stead. Rudolf I allied himself with the Wittelsbach family of Bavaria and with other envious neighbours of Otakar, who was defeated and slain in 1278. The duchies of
Austria
and
Styria
, overrun by Otakar during the Interregnum, were declared vacant and conferred jointly on Rudolf’s sons
Albert
and
Rudolf in 1282. These acquisitions placed the Habsburgs in the first rank of the German territorial princes and lent
impetus
to a gradual shift in the political
centre of gravity
from the
Rhineland
to eastern and southern Germany. The growing Habsburg power, however, disquieted the electoral princes, who frustrated the king’s attempts to secure the election of his elder son Albert in 1287 and of his younger son Rudolf in 1290.
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On the death of Rudolf I in 1291, the electors averted the danger of a hereditary Habsburg monarchy by choosing Count
Adolf
of Nassau as his successor. Adolf, possessing only a small patrimony to the south of the river Lahn, strengthened himself financially by promising military aid to and receiving subsidies from both sides in the then current Anglo-French war. He took possession of Meissen when the cadet branch of the
Wettin dynasty
died out, and he used his foreign subsidies to purchase
Thuringia
in 1295. He was thus able to adopt a more independent attitude toward his electors. On June 23, 1298, five of the electors pronounced Adolf unfit to rule and
deposed
him; on the following day they elected Albert of Austria in his stead. Albert marched westward from Austria at the head of a large army, and, in a battle at
Gollheim, Adolf was slain and his supporters fled.
By restoring the Habsburg Albert I (ruled 1298?1308) to the kingship, the electors placed themselves in jeopardy. The new ruler, backed by the ample resources of his Austrian dominions, was more powerful and unscrupulous than his predecessor. The electors regarded his treaty of friendship with
Philip IV
of France (1299) as a move to enlist French support for the election of his son Rudolf as his successor in Germany. In 1300 his attempt to seize Holland and Zeeland as a vacant fief of the empire was rightly interpreted by the electors as an effort to establish Habsburg influence on the lower Rhine. The four prince-electors of the Rhineland (the archbishops of
Mainz
, Trier, and
Cologne
and the count palatine) conspired to depose Albert. But Albert wrecked the design by decisive military action in 1301?02, and he sealed his victory over the electors by obtaining confirmation in 1303 of his election from Pope
Boniface VIII
in return for an unprecedented oath of fealty and obedience to the papacy. Albert subsequently renewed Adolf’s claims to Meissen and Thuringia, but his authority there was still disputed when he was assassinated in 1308. Albert had temporarily tamed the electoral princes,
placated
the papacy, and renounced intervention in Italy; but this policy foundered at his death, and the electors were given a fresh opportunity to reassert their influence over the German monarchy.
The princes, released from Albert’s heavy hand, sought a servant, not a master. Archbishop
Baldwin of Trier sponsored the candidacy of his brother, Count Henry of Luxembourg, who was elected at
Frankfurt am Main
in 1308 as
Henry VII
. The
house of Luxembourg
(Luxemburg) was not a major territorial power, and Henry lost no time in
exploiting
his new status to extend its possessions. Under his direction the
Diet of Frankfurt
(1310) closed the long-disputed question of the
Bohemian
succession by awarding the kingdom, with the consent of the Bohemian estates, to Henry’s son
John
. Thus, in common with the Habsburgs, the main weight of Luxembourg interests gravitated eastward. But Henry, unlike his Habsburg predecessors, dreamed of a restoration of the ancient authority of the empire in
Italy
. His Italian expedition (1310?13) opened brilliantly, and in 1312 he was crowned
Holy Roman emperor
at Rome. The old fear of German domination, however, stiffened the resistance of the Italian states. Pope
Clement V
was alarmed by Henry’s preparations to invade the kingdom of Naples, a papal fief, and threatened excommunication. A renewed collision of empire and papacy seemed
imminent
when Henry died in 1313.