Battle for the empire

The King's Cross, set up to commemorate the defeat and death of Adolf of Nassau On 2 July 1298 the armies of Adolf of Nassau and Duke Albrecht of Austria faced each other at Göllheim, between Kaiserslautern and Worms in south-west Germany. The battle was fought over the decision of the prince electors of the Holy Roman Empire, without electoral act, to dethrone Adolf as King of the Romans and replace him with Albrecht.

There was a long-standing rivalry between the two. Albrecht was meant to be elected king in 1291, but the electors considered him too powerful and feared a hereditary monarchy: Albrecht's father, Rudolph I, had been the previous king. Instead they elected Adolf  in the belief that he would principally serve the interests of the electors. Adolf was relatively poor, and had to agree to make all kinds of concessions to the electors in exchange for their support. In short, they wanted a puppet king.

Adolf proved to be the opposite. In 1294 war broke out between England and France, which gave him an opportunity to extend his power base within the empire. Edward I of England recruited Adolf as part of his 'Grand Alliance' against the French, and agreed to pay him £60,000 in English sterling for his services. This was to be paid in three instalments. The first two were paid over by Christmas 1294, but instead of fighting the French Adolf used Edward's money to wage war against his own subjects. In two bloody and brutal campaigns he annexed Thuringia and other lands in east-central Germany and added them  to his power base. Now he could rule in deed as well as in name.

Adolf's policy backfired. The wars in Thuringia alienated his subjects, and his misuse of English money angered the nobles, who thought he should have distributed it among them. His growing unpopularity gave the electors an excuse to formally depose Adolf, and in June 1298 they declared he was unworthy of office and had forfeited his royal dignity. Duke Albrecht of Austria was then invited to take the crown.

Adolf was determined to fight for his rights. The two sides raised armies and advanced to meet in pitched battle at Göllheim. It was unusual for a war in this period to be decided by a single battle, but the issue had to be settled quickly. Which of these men would sit on the imperial throne? 

On 2 July Albrecht positioned his troops in a strategically favourable position on the Hasenbuhl, a hill near the village of Göllheim. The exact size of the armies is unknown, though Albrecht would have raised men from his duchies of Austria and Styria, as well as contingents from the Hapsburg territories of Hungary and Switzerland and those of his ally Henry II, Prince-Bishop of Constance. Adolf's men were drawn from his home county of Taunus, the Electoral Palatinate within the empire, Franconia, Lower Bavaria, Alsace and St Gallen.

The battle itself, otherwise known as The Battle of Hasenbuhl and the King's Cross, lasted from early morning until later afternoon. There were three separate engagements, and the battle remained undecided for many hours. At last, in the third and decisive engagement, Adolf tried to cut his way through the press and kill his rival in person. According to a French chronicle, the Chronia Regum Francorum, Adolf was thrown from his horse by a Welshman:

"And though King Adolph acted with vigour that day, in the end, however, a Welshman leaped onto his horse behind him and tried to cut his throat; when he was unable to do so, he dropped his weapons and threw him onto the ground where he was immediately captured by the duke of Brabant. The duke of Austria also saw this and ordered his head cut off by one of his squires."

If this account can be trusted, Adolf's downfall was brought about by a Welsh soldier in  the service of Duke Albrecht. Why would a Welshman have been present at a battle in Germany? The obvious conclusion is that he was an agent of Edward I, sent by the English king to exact revenge on Adolf. Edward had his hands full at this time with the campaign in Scotland against William Wallace, but it seems he had not forgotten the man who stole his money a few years earlier. Other accounts state that Adolf was unhorsed by Albrecht himself, and then cut to pieces on the ground by Austrian soldiers.

Whatever the truth, Adolf was killed on the field and his army immediately took to flight. Albrecht was crowned King of the Germans at Aachen Cathedral on 24 August. He got to savour his truimph for ten years, until he was murdered at Windisch on the Reuss River by his nephew Duke John of Swabia, afterwards known as Duke John the Parricide.  And so it went on.
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