Louis I of Hungary

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Louis the Great. Drawing by Jan Matejko.

Louis I the Great (Hungarian: I. (Nagy) Lajos, Polish: Ludwik Węgierski) (1326 Visegrád - 1382 Trnava) was a King of Hungary and Poland in the late 14th century. He was named after his uncle, Saint Louis of Toulouse

1 Life
2 Children
3 Legacy
4 See also

[edit] Life

Louis became king of Hungary in 1342 at the death of his father. He was the son of Charles I, King of Hungary, and was the head of the Angevin minor branch (Anjou-Sicily) and a member of the Capetian royal dynasty. Louis' mother was Elisabeth of Poland, daughter of Ladislaus the Short, and sister of Casimir III the Great, King of Poland and the last ruler of Piast dynasty, who died 1370.

Louis the Great led armies many times. His best known campaigns are those for the throne of Naples, but he defeated Venice, and fought in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Wallachia etc., and against the Golden Horde. The first Ottoman Hungarian clash was during his reign. Louis I also established an Adriatic fleet.

He found the first university in Hungary in the city of Pécs and made latinization efforts in the Kingdom.

In 1351 he reissued the Golden Bull of 1222 -though in a modified form- which ensured the constitutional rights of the nobility. His laws introduced the entail system, which regulated the inheritance of the land owning nobility.

The Polish Piasts died out in 1370, when Casimir III left only female issue and had only one grandson. Since arrangements had been made for Louis' succession as early as 1355, he became King of Poland upon his grandfather's death in right of (and practically together with) his mother Elisabeth of Poland, who held much of the practical power until her death in 1380.

Image:Armoiries Louis Hongrie.png

In 1342, Louis married his first wife, Margaret of Luxemburg (1335-1349), underaged daughter of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, who died while still a minor. He then married his second wife, Elisabeth of Bosnia, daughter of Stephen II of Bosnia and Elisabeth of Kujavia, in 1353. Her maternal grandfather was Casimir of Kuyavia, son of Ziemomysl of Kuyavia and Salome of Eastern Pomerania. Ziemomysł, Elisabeth's great-grandfather, was a Polish prince and the brother of Vladislav I of Poland, Louis's grandfather. Elisabeth's father was Louis's vassal in southern frontiers of Hungary. He died in 1382.

[edit] Children

Louis had three daughters, all born of his second wife:

Catherine (1370-78)
Mary, Queen of Hungary, wife of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, at that time Margrave of Brandenburg
Hedwig (Queen Jadwiga of Poland).

[edit] Legacy

When Louis died in 1382, the Hungarian throne was inherited by Mary. In Poland, however, the lords of Lesser Poland (the virtual rulers of Poland) did not want to continue the personal union with Hungary, nor to accept Mary's fiancé Sigismund as a regent. They therefore chose Mary's younger sister, Jadwiga, as their new monarch. After two years of negotiations with Jadwiga's mother, Dowager Queen Elisabeth of Hungary (Elisabeth of Bosnia) who was regent of Hungary, and a civil war in Greater Poland (1383), Jadwiga finally came to Kraków and was crowned King (sic) of Poland on 16 November 1384. The masculine gender in her title was intended to underline the fact that she was a monarch in her own right, not a queen consort.

Names in other languages: Hungarian: I (Nagy) Lajos, Polish: Ludwik Węgierski, Slovak: Ľudovít I (Veľký)

[edit] See also

History of Poland (966-1385)
(French) Armorial of the House Anjou-Sicily
(French) House of Anjou-Sicily

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Preceded by: Charles I	King of Hungary 1342–1382	Succeeded by: Mary
Preceded by: Casimir III	King of Poland 1370–1382	Succeeded by: Jadwiga