Chapter 16

See Vilmos Fraknoi,Ungarn vor der Schlacht bei Mohács(Budapest, 1886); L. Kupelwieser,Die Kämpfe Ungarns mit den Osmanen bis zur Schlacht bei Mohács(Vienna, 1895); Ignacz Acsády,History of the Hungarian Realm, vol. i. (Hung.) (Budapest, 1902-1904).

JOHN OF BRIENNE(c.1148-1237), king of Jerusalem and Latin emperor of Constantinople, was a man of sixty years of age before he began to play any considerable part in history. Destined originally for the Church, he had preferred to become a knight, and in forty years of tournaments and fights he had won himself a considerable reputation, when in 1208 envoys came from the Holy Land to ask Philip Augustus, king of France, to select one of his barons as husband to the heiress, and ruler of the kingdom, of Jerusalem. Philip selected John of Brienne, and promised to support him in his new dignity. In 1210 John married the heiress Mary (daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Montferrat), assuming the title of king in right of his wife. In 1211, after some desultory operations, he concluded a six years’ truce with Malik-el-Adil; in 1212 he lost his wife, who left him a daughter, Isabella; soon afterwards he married an Armenian princess. In the fifth crusade (1218-1221) he was a prominent figure. The legate Pelagius, however, claimed the command; and insisting on the advance from Damietta, in spite of the warnings of King John, he refused to accept the favourable terms of the sultan, as the king advised, until it was too late. After the failure of the crusade, King John came to the West to obtain help for his kingdom. In 1223 he met Honorius III. and the emperor Frederick II. at Ferentino, where, in order that he might be connected more closely with the Holy Land, Frederick was betrothed to John’s daughter Isabella, now heiress of the kingdom. After the meeting at Ferentino, John went to France and England, finding little consolation; and thence he travelled to Compostella, where he married a new wife, Berengaria of Castile. After a visit to Germany he returned to Rome (1225). Here he received a demand from Frederick II. (who had now married Isabella) that he should abandon his title and dignity of king, which—so Frederick claimed—had passed to himself along with the heiress of the kingdom. John was now a septuagenarian “king in exile,” but he was still vigorous enough to revenge himself on Frederick, by commanding the papal troops which attacked southern Italy during the emperor’s absence on the sixth crusade (1228-1229). In 1229 John, now eighty years of age, was invited by the barons of the Latin empire of Constantinople to become emperor, on condition that Baldwin of Courtenay should marry his second daughter and succeed him. For nine years he ruled in Constantinople, and in 1235, with a few troops, he repelled a great siege of the city by Vataces of Nicaea and Azen of Bulgaria. After this last feat of arms, which has perhaps been exaggerated by the Latin chroniclers, who compare him to Hector and the Maccabees, John died in the habit of a Franciscan friar. An aged paladin, somewhat uxorious and always penniless, he was a typical knight errant, whose wanderings led him all over Europe, and planted him successively on the thrones of Jerusalem and Constantinople.

The story of John’s career must be sought partly in histories of the kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Latin Empire of the East, partly in monographs. Among these, of which R. Röhricht gives a list (Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem, p. 699, n. 3), see especially that of E. de Montcarmet,Un chevalier du temps passé(Limoges, 1876 and 1881).

JOHN III.(Sobieski) (1624-1696), king of Poland, was the eldest son of James Sobieski, castellan of Cracow, and Theofila Danillowiczowna, grand-daughter of the great Hetman Zolkiewski. After being educated at Cracow, he made the grand tour with his brother Mark and returned to Poland in 1648. He served against Chmielnicki and the Cossacks and was present at the battles of Beresteczko (1651) and Batoka (1652), but was one of the first to desert his unhappy country when invaded by the Swedes in 1654, and actually assisted them to conquer the Prussian provinces in 1655. He returned to his lawful allegiancein the following year and assisted Czarniecki in his difficult task of expelling Charles X. of Sweden from the central Polish provinces. For his subsequent services to King John Casimir, especially in the Ukraine against the Tatars and Cossacks, he received the grand bâton of the crown, or commandership-in-chief (1668). He had already (1665) succeeded Czarniecki as acting commander-in-chief. Sobieski had well earned these distinctions by his extraordinary military capacity, but he was now to exhibit a less pleasing side of his character. He was in fact a typical representative of the unscrupulous self-seeking Polish magnates of the 17th century who were always ready to sacrifice everything, their country included, to their own private ambition. At the election diet of 1669 he accepted large bribes from Louis XIV. to support one of the French candidates; after the election of Michael Wisniowiecki (June 19, 1669) he openly conspired, again in the French interest, against his lawful sovereign, and that too at the very time when the Turk was ravaging the southern frontier of the republic. Michael was the feeblest monarch the Poles could have placed upon the throne, and Sobieski deliberately attempted to make government of any kind impossible. He formed a league with the primate Prazmowski and other traitors to dethrone the king; when (1670) the plot was discovered and participation in it repudiated by Louis XIV., the traitors sought the help of the elector of Brandenburg against their own justly indignant countrymen. Two years later the same traitors again conspired against the king, at the very time when the Turks had defeated Sobieski’s unsupported lieutenant, Luzecki, at Czertwertyworska and captured the fortress of Kamieniec (Kamenetz-Podolskiy), the key of south-eastern Poland, while Lemberg was only saved by the valour of Elias Lancki. The unhappy king did the only thing possible in the circumstances. He summoned thetuszenia pospolite, or national armed assembly; but it failed to assemble in time, whereupon Michael was constrained to sign the disgraceful peace of Buczacz (Oct. 17, 1672) whereby Poland ceded to the Porte the whole of the Ukraine with Podolia and Kamieniec. Aroused to duty by a series of disasters for which he himself was primarily responsible, Sobieski now hastened to the frontier, and won four victories in ten days. But he could not recover Kamieniec, and when thetuszenia pospolitemet at Golenba and ordered an inquiry into the conduct of Sobieski and his accomplices he frustrated all their efforts by summoning a counter confederation to meet at Szczebrzeszyn. Powerless to oppose a rebel who was at the same time commander-in-chief, both the king and the diet had to give way, and a compromise was come to whereby the peace of Buczacz was repudiated and Sobieski was given a chance of rehabilitating himself, which he did by his brilliant victory over an immense Turkish host at Khotin (Nov. 10, 1673). The same day King Michael died and Sobieski, determined to secure the throne for himself, hastened to the capital, though Tatar bands were swarming over the frontier and the whole situation was acutely perilous. Appearing at the elective diet of 1674 at the head of 6000 veterans he overawed every other competitor, and despite the persistent opposition of the Lithuanians was elected king on the 21st of May. By this time, however, the state of things in the Ukraine was so alarming that the new king had to hasten to the front. Assisted by French diplomacy at the Porte (Louis XIV. desiring to employ Poland against Austria), and his own skilful negotiations with the Tatar khan, John III. now tried to follow the example of Wladislaus IV. by leaving the guardianship of the Ukraine entirely in the hands of the Cossacks, while he assembled as many regulars and militiamen as possible at Lemberg, whence he might hasten with adequate forces to defend whichever of the provinces of the Republic might be in most danger. But the appeal of the king was like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and not one gentleman in a hundred hastened to the assistance of the fatherland. Even at the end of August Sobieski had but 3000 men at his disposal to oppose to 60,000 Turks. Only his superb strategy and the heroic devotion of his lieutenants—notably the converted Jew, Jan Samuel Chrzanowski, who held the Ottoman army at bay for eleven days behind the walls of Trembowla—enabled the king to remove “the pagan yoke from our shoulders”; and he returned to be crowned at Cracow on the 14th of February 1676. In October 1676, in his entrenched camp at Zaravno, he with 13,000 men withstood 80,000 Turks for three weeks, and recovered by special treaty two-thirds of the Ukraine, but without Kamieniec (treaty of Zaravno, Oct. 16, 1676).

Having now secured peace abroad Sobieski was desirous of strengthening Poland at home by establishing absolute monarchy; but Louis XIV. looked coldly on the project, and from this time forth the old familiar relations between the republic and the French monarchy were strained to breaking point, though the final rupture did not come till 1682 on the arrival of the Austrian minister, Zerowski, at Warsaw. After resisting every attempt of the French court to draw him into the anti-Habsburg league, Sobieski signed the famous treaty of alliance with the emperor Leopold against the Turks (March 31, 1683), which was the prelude to the most glorious episode of his life, the relief of Vienna and the liberation of Hungary from the Ottoman yoke. The epoch-making victory of the 12th of September 1683 was ultimately decided by the charge of the Polish cavalry led by Sobieski in person. Unfortunately Poland profited little or nothing by this great triumph, and now that she had broken the back of the enemy she was left to fight the common enemy in the Ukraine with whatever assistance she could obtain from the unwilling and unready Muscovites. The last twelve years of the reign of John III. were a period of unmitigated humiliation and disaster. He now reaped to the full the harvest of treason and rebellion which he himself had sown so abundantly during the first forty years of his life. A treasonable senate secretly plotting his dethronement, a mutinous diet rejecting the most necessary reforms for fear of “absolutism,” ungrateful allies who profited exclusively by his victories—these were his inseparable companions during the remainder of his life. Nay, at last his evil destiny pursued him to the battlefield and his own home. His last campaign (in 1690) was an utter failure, and the last years of his life were embittered by the violence and the intrigues of his dotingly beloved wife, Marya Kazimiera d’Arquien, by whom he had three sons, James, Alexander and Constantine. He died on the 17th of June 1696, a disillusioned and broken-hearted old man.

See Tadeusz Korzon,Fortunes and Misfortunes of John Sobieski(Pol.) (Cracow, 1898); E. H. R. Tatham,John Sobieski(Oxford, 1881); Kazimierz Waliszewski,Archives of French Foreign Affairs, 1674-1696, v. (Cracow, 1881); Ludwik Piotr Leliwa,John Sobieski and His Times(Pol.) (Cracow, 1882-1885); Kazimierz Waliszewski,Marysienka Queen of Poland(London, 1898); Georg Rieder,Johann Sobieskiin Wien (Vienna, 1882).

(R. N. B.)

JOHN I.(1357-1433), king of Portugal, the natural son of Pedro I. (el Justicieiro), was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of April 1357, and in 1364 was created grand-master of Aviz. On the death of his lawful brother Ferdinand I., without male issue, in October 1383, strenuous efforts were made to secure the succession for Beatrice, the only child of Ferdinand I., who as heiress-apparent had been married to John I. of Castile (Spain), but the popular voice declared against an arrangement by which Portugal would virtually have become a Spanish province, and John was after violent tumults proclaimed protector and regent in the following December. In April 1385 he was unanimously chosen king by the estates of the realm at Coimbra. The king of Castile invaded Portugal, but his army was compelled by pestilence to withdraw, and subsequently by the decisive battle of Aljubarrota (Aug. 14, 1385) the stability of John’s throne was permanently secured. Hostilities continued intermittently until John of Castile died, without leaving issue by Beatrice, in 1390. Meanwhile the king of Portugal went on consolidating the power of the crown at home and the influence of the nation abroad. In 1415 Ceuta was taken from the Moors by his sons who had been born to him by his wife Philippa, daughter of John, duke of Lancaster; specially distinguished in the siege was Prince Henry (q.v.) afterwards generally known as “the Navigator.” John I., sometimes surnamed “the Great,” and sometimes “father of his country,” died on the11th of August 1433, in the forty-eighth year of a reign which had been characterized by great prudence, ability and success; he was succeeded by his son Edward or Duarte, so named out of compliment to Edward III. of England.

See J. P. Oliveira Martins,Os filhos de D. João I.andA vida de Nun’ Alvares(Lisbon, 2nd ed. 1894).

JOHN II.(1455-1495), the Perfect, king of Portugal, succeeded his father, Alphonso V., in August 1481. His first business was to curtail the overgrown power of his aristocracy; noteworthy incidents in the contest were the execution (1483) of the duke of Braganza for correspondence with Castile, and the murder, by the king’s own hand, of the youthful duke of Viseu for conspiracy. This reign was signalized by Bartholomeu Diaz’s discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Maritime rivalry led to disputes between Portugal and Castile until their claims were adjusted by the famous treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494). John II. died, without leaving male issue, in October 1495, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Emmanuel (Manoel) I.

See J. P. Oliveira Martins,O principe perfeito(Lisbon, 1895).

JOHN III.(1502-1557), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon, on the 6th of June 1502, and ascended the throne as successor of his father Emmanuel I. in December 1521. In 1524 he married Catherine, sister to the Emperor Charles V., who shortly afterwards married the infanta Isabella, John’s sister. Succeeding to the crown at a time when Portugal was at the height of its political power, and Lisbon in a position of commercial importance previously unknown, John III., unfortunately for his dominions, became subservient to the clerical party among his subjects, with disastrous consequences to the commercial and social prosperity of his kingdom. He died of apoplexy on the 6th of June 1557, and was succeeded by his grandson Sebastian, then a child of only three years.

JOHN IV.(1603-1656), the Fortunate, king of Portugal, was born at Villaviciosa in March 1603, succeeded to the dukedom of Braganza in 1630, and married Luisa de Guzman, eldest daughter of the duke of Medina Sidonia, in 1633. By the unanimous voice of the people he was raised to the throne of Portugal (of which he was held to be the legitimate heir) at the revolution effected in December 1640 against the Spanish king, Philip IV. His accession led to a protracted war with Spain, which only ended with the recognition of Portuguese independence in a subsequent reign (1668). He died on the 6th of November 1656, and was succeeded by his son Alphonso VI.

JOHN V.(1689-1750), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 22nd of October 1689, and succeeded his father Pedro II. in December 1706, being proclaimed on the 1st of January 1707. One of his first acts was to intimate his adherence to the Grand Alliance, which his father had joined in 1703. Accordingly his general Das Minas, along with Lord Galway, advanced into Castile, but sustained the defeat of Almanza (April 14). In October 1708 he married Maria Anna, daughter of Leopold I., thus strengthening the alliance with Austria; the series of unsuccessful campaigns which ensued ultimately terminated in a favourable peace with France in 1713 and with Spain in 1715. The rest of his long reign was characterized by royal subservience to the clergy, the kingdom being administered by ecclesiastical persons and for ecclesiastical objects to an extent that gave him the best of rights to the title “Most Faithful King,” bestowed upon him and his successors by a bull of Pope Benedict XIV. in 1748. John V. died on the 31st of July 1750, and was succeeded by his son Joseph.

JOHN VI.(1769-1826), king of Portugal, was born at Lisbon on the 13th of May 1769, and received the title of prince of Brazil in 1788. In 1792 he assumed the reins of government in name of his mother Queen Mary I., who had become insane. He had been brought up in an ecclesiastical atmosphere, and, being naturally of a somewhat weak and helpless character, was but ill adapted for the responsibilities he was thus called on to undertake. In 1799 he assumed the title of regent, which he retained until his mother’s death in 1816. (For the political history of his regency, seePortugal.) In 1816 he was recognized as king of Portugal but he continued to reside in Brazil; the consequent spread of dissatisfaction resulted in the peaceful revolution of 1820, and the proclamation of a constitutional government, to which he swore fidelity on his return to Portugal in 1822. In the same year, and again in 1823, he had to suppress a rebellion led by his son Dom Miguel, whom he ultimately was compelled to banish in 1824. He died at Lisbon on the 26th of March 1826, and was succeeded by Pedro IV.

JOHN(1801-1873), king of Saxony, son of Prince Maximilian of Saxony and his wife Caroline of Parma (d. 1804), was born at Dresden on the 12th of December 1801. As a boy he took a keen interest in literature and art (also in history, law, and political science), and studied with the greatest ardour classical and German literature (Herder, Schiller, Goethe). He soon began to compose poetry himself, and drew great inspiration from a journey in Italy (1821-1822), the pleasure of which was however darkened by the death of his brother Clemens. In Pavia the prince met with Biagioli’s edition of Dante, and this gave rise to his lifelong and fruitful studies of Dante. The first part of his German translation of Dante was published in 1828, and in 1833 appeared the complete work, with a valuable commentary, which met with a great success. Several new editions appeared under his constant supervision, and he collected a complete library of works on Dante.

On his return from Italy he was betrothed to Princess Amalia of Bavaria, daughter of King Maximilian Joseph. He thus became the brother-in-law of Frederick William IV., king of Prussia, with whom he had a deep and lasting friendship. His wife Amalia died on the 8th of November 1877, having borne him nine children, two of whom, Albert and George, later became kings of Saxony.

On his return to Dresden, John was called in 1822 to the privy board of finance (Geheimes Finanzkollegium) and in 1825 became its vice-president. Under the leadership of the president, Freiherr von Manteuffel, he acquired a thorough knowledge of administration and of political economy, and laid the foundations of that conservatism which he retained throughout life. These new activities did not, however, interrupt his literary and artistic studies. He came into still closer relations with politics and government after his entry into the privy council in 1830. During the revolution in Saxony he helped in the pacification of the country, became commandant of the new national guard, the political tendencies of which he tried to check, and took an exceptionally active part in the organization of the constitution of the 4th of September 1831 and especially in the deliberations of the upper chamber, where he worked with unflagging energy and great ability. Following the example of his father, he taught his children in person, and had a great influence on their education. On the 12th of August 1845, during a stay at Leipzig, the prince was the object of hostile public demonstrations, the people holding him to be the head of an alleged ultramontane party at court, and the revolution of 1848 compelled him to interrupt his activities in the upper chamber. Immediately after the suppression of the revolution he resumed his place and took part chiefly in the discussion of legal questions. He was also interested in the amalgamation of the German historical and archaeological societies. On the death of his brother Frederick Augustus II., John became, on the 9th of August 1854, king of Saxony. As king he soon won great popularity owing to his simplicity, graciousness and increasingly evident knowledge of affairs. In his policy as regards the German confederation he was entirely on the side of Austria. Though not opposed to a reform of the federal constitution, he held that its maintenance under the presidency of Austria was essential. This view he supported at the assembly of princes at Frankfort in August and September 1863. He was unable to uphold his views against Prussia, and in the war of 1866 fought on the side of Austria. It was with difficulty that, on the conclusion of peace, Austrian diplomacy succeeded in enabling the king to retain his crown. After 1866 King John gradually became reconciled to the new state of affairs. He entered the North Germanconfederation, and in the war of 1870-71 with France his troops fought with conspicuous courage. He died at Dresden on the 29th of October 1873.

See J. Petzholdt, “Zur Litteratur des Königs Johann,”Neuer Anzeiger für Bibliographie(1858, 1859, 1871, 1873, 1874); “Aphorismen über unsern König J.,”Bote von Geising(1866-1869);Das Büchlein vom König Johann(Leipzig, 1867); H. v. Treitschke,Preussische Jahrbücher23 (1869); A. Reumont, “Elogio di Giovanni, Rè di Sassonia,”Dagli Atti della Accademia della Crusca(Florence, 1874); J. P. von Winterstein,Johann, König von Sachsen(Dresden, 1878), and inAllgemeine Deutsche Biographie(1881); H. Ermisch,Die Wettiner und die Landesgeschichte(Leipzig, 1902); O. Kaemmel,Sächsische Geschichte(Leipzig, 1899, Sammlung Göschen).

(J. Hn.)

JOHN I.(d. 1294), duke of Brabant and Lorraine, surnamed the Victorious, one of the most gifted and chivalrous princes of his time, was the second son of Duke Henry III. and Aleidis of Burgundy. In 1267 his elder brother Henry, being infirm of mind and body, was deposed in his favour. In 1271 John married Margaret, daughter of Louis IX. of France, and on her death in childbirth he took as his second wife (1273) Margaret of Flanders, daughter of Guy de Dampierre. His sister Marie was espoused in 1275 to Philip III. (the Bold) of France, and during the reign of Philip and his son Philip IV. there were close relations of friendship and alliance between Brabant and France. In 1285 John accompanied Philip III. in his expedition against Peter III., king of Aragon, but the duchy of Limburg was the scene of his chief activity and greatest successes. After the death of Waleran IV. in 1279 the succession to this duchy was disputed. His heiress, Ermengarde, had married Reinald I. count of Gelderland. She died childless, but her husband continued to rule in Limburg, although his rights were disputed by Count Adolph of Berg, nephew to Waleran IV. (see Limburg). Not being strong enough to eject his rival, Adolph sold his rights to John of Brabant, and hostilities broke out in 1283. Harassed by desultory warfare and endless negotiations, and seeing no prospect of holding his own against the powerful duke of Brabant, Reinald made over his rights to Henry III. count of Luxemburg, who was a descendant of Waleran III. of Limburg. Henry III. was sustained by the archbishop of Cologne and other allies, as well as by Reinald of Gelderland. The duke of Brabant at once invaded the Rhineland and laid siege to the castle of Woeringen near Bonn. Here he was attacked by the forces of the confederacy on the 5th of June 1288. After a bloody struggle John of Brabant, though at the head of far inferior numbers, was completely victorious. Limburg was henceforth attached to the duchy of Brabant. John consolidated his conquest by giving his daughter in marriage to Henry of Luxemburg (1291). John the Victorious was a perfect model of a feudal prince in the days of chivalry, brave, adventurous, excelling in every form of active exercise, fond of display, generous in temper. He delighted in tournaments, and was always eager personally to take part in jousts. On the 3rd of May 1294, on the occasion of some marriage festivities at Bar, he was wounded in the arm in an encounter by Pierre de Bausner, and died from the effects of the hurt.

Bibliography.—H. Barlandus,Rerum gestarum a Brabantiae ducibus historia usque in annum 1526(Louvain, 1566); G. C. van der Berghe,Jean le Victorieux, duc de Brabant(1259-1294), (Louvain, 1857); K. F. Stallaert,Gesch. v. Jan I. van Braband en zijne tijdvak(Brussels, 1861); A. Wauters,Le Duc Jean Ieret le Brabant sous le règne de ce prince(Brussels, 1859).

JOHN,orHans(1513-1571), margrave of Brandenburg-Cüstrin, was the younger son of Joachim I., elector of Brandenburg, and was born at Tangermünde on the 3rd of August 1513. In spite of thedispositio Achilleawhich decreed the indivisibility of the electorate, John inherited the new mark of Brandenburg on his father’s death in July 1535. He had been brought up as a strict Catholic, but soon wavered in his allegiance, and in 1538 ranged himself definitely on the side of the Reformers. About the same time he joined the league of Schmalkalden; but before the war broke out between the league and the emperor Charles V. the promises of the emperor had won him over to the imperial side. After the conclusion of the war, the relations between John and Charles became somewhat strained. The margrave opposed theInterim, issued from Augsburg in May 1548; and he was the leader of the princes who formed a league for the defence of the Lutheran doctrines in February 1550. The alliance of these princes, however, with Henry II., king of France, does not appear to have commended itself to him and after some differences of opinion with Maurice, elector of Saxony, he returned to the emperor’s side. His remaining years were mainly spent in the new mark, which he ruled carefully and economically. He added to its extent by the purchase of Beeskow and Storkow, and fortified the towns of Cüstrin and Peitz. He died at Cüstrin on the 13th of January 1571. His wife Catherine was a daughter of Henry II., duke of Brunswick, and as he left no sons the new mark passed on his death to his nephew John George, elector of Brandenburg.

See Berg,Beiträge zur Geschichte des Markgrafen Johann von Küstrin(Landsberg, 1903).

JOHN(1371-1419), called the Fearless (Sans Peur), duke of Burgundy, son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders, was born at Dijon on the 28th of May 1371. On the death of his maternal grandfather in 1384 he received the title of count of Nevers, which he bore until his father’s death. Though originally destined to be the husband of Catherine, sister of Charles VI. of France, he married in 1385 Margaret, daughter of Duke Albert of Bavaria, an alliance which consolidated his position in the Netherlands. In the spring of 1396 he took arms for Hungary against the Turks and on the 28th of September was taken prisoner by the Sultan Bayezid I. at the bloody battle of Nicopolis, where he earned his surname of “the Fearless.” He did not recover his liberty until 1397, and then only by paying an enormous ransom. He succeeded his father in 1404, and immediately found himself in conflict with Louis of Orleans, the young brother of Charles VI. The history of the following years is filled with the struggles between these two princes and with their attempts to seize the authority in the name of the demented king. John endeavoured to strengthen his position by marrying his daughter Margaret to the dauphin Louis, and by betrothing his son Philip to a daughter of Charles VI. Like his father, he looked for support to the popular party, to the tradesmen, particularly the powerful gild of the butchers, and also to the university of Paris. In 1405 he opposed in the royal council a scheme of taxation proposed by the duke of Orleans, which was nevertheless adopted. Louis retaliated by refusing to sanction the duke of Burgundy’s projected expedition against Calais, whereupon John quitted the court in chagrin on the pretext of taking up his mother’s heritage. He was, however, called back to the council to find that the duke of Orleans and the queen had carried off the dauphin. John succeeded in bringing back the dauphin to Paris, and open war seemed imminent between the two princes. But an arrangement was effected in October 1405, and in 1406 John was made by royal decree guardian of the dauphin and the king’s children.

The struggle, however, soon revived with increased force. Hostilities had been resumed with England; the duke of Orleans had squandered the money raised for John’s expedition against Calais; and the two rivals broke out into open threats. On the 20th of November 1407 their uncle, the duke of Berry, brought about a solemn reconciliation, but three days later Louis was assassinated by John’s orders in the Rue Barbette, Paris. John at first sought to conceal his share in the murder, but ultimately decided to confess to his uncles, and abruptly left Paris. His vassals, however, showed themselves determined to support him in his struggle against the avengers of the duke of Orleans. The court decided to negotiate, and called upon the duke to return. John entered Paris in triumph, and instructed the Franciscan theologian Jean Petit (d. 1411) to pronounce an apology for the murder. But he was soon called back to his estates by a rising of the people of Liége against his brother-in-law, the bishop of that town. The queen and the Orleans party took every advantage of his absence and had Petit’s discourse solemnly refuted. John’s victory over the Liégeois at Hasbain on the 23rd of September 1408, enabled him to return to Paris, where hewas reinstated in his ancient privileges. By the peace of Chartres (March 9, 1409) the king absolved him from the crime, and Valentina Visconti, the widow of the murdered duke, and her children pledged themselves to a reconciliation; while an edict of the 27th of December 1409 gave John the guardianship of the dauphin. Nevertheless, a new league was formed against the duke of Burgundy in the following year, principally at the instance of Bernard, count of Armagnac, from whom the party opposed to the Burgundians took its name. The peace of Bicêtre (Nov. 2, 1410) prevented the outbreak of hostilities, inasmuch as the parties were enjoined by its terms to return to their estates; but in 1411, in consequence of ravages committed by the Armagnacs in the environs of Paris, the duke of Burgundy was called back to Paris. He relied more than ever on the support of the popular party, which then obtained the reformingOrdonnance Cabochienne(so called from Simon Caboche, a prominent member of the gild of the butchers). But the bloodthirsty excesses of the populace brought a change. John was forced to withdraw to Burgundy (August 1413), and the university of Paris and John Gerson once more censured Petit’s propositions, which, but for the lavish bribes of money and wines offered by John to the prelates, would have been solemnly condemned at the council of Constance. John’s attitude was undecided; he negotiated with the court and also with the English, who had just renewed hostilities with France. Although he talked of helping his sovereign, his troops took no part in the battle of Agincourt (1415), where, however, two of his brothers, Anthony, duke of Brabant, and Philip, count of Nevers, fell fighting for France.

In 1417 John made an attack on Paris, which failed through his loitering at Lagny;1but on the 30th of May 1418 a traitor, one Perrinet Leclerc, opened the gates of Paris to the Burgundian captain, Villiers de l’Isle Adam. The dauphin, afterwards King Charles VI., fled from the town, and John betook himself to the king, who promised to forget the past. John, however, did nothing to prevent the surrender of Rouen, which had been besieged by the English, and on which the fate of the kingdom seemed to depend; and the town was taken in 1419. The dauphin then decided on a reconciliation, and on the 11th of July the two princes swore peace on the bridge of Pouilly, near Melun. On the ground that peace was not sufficiently assured by the Pouilly meeting, a fresh interview was proposed by the dauphin and took place on the 10th of September 1419 on the bridge of Montereau, when the duke of Burgundy was felled with an axe by Tanneguy du Chastel, one of the dauphin’s companions, and done to death by the other members of the dauphin’s escort. His body was first buried at Montereau and afterwards removed to the Chartreuse of Dijon and placed in a magnificent tomb sculptured by Juan de la Huerta; the tomb was afterwards transferred to the museum in thehôtel de ville.

By his wife, Margaret of Bavaria, he had one son, Philip the Good, who succeeded him; and seven daughters—Margaret, who married in 1404 Louis, son of Charles VI., and in 1423 Arthur, earl of Richmond and afterwards duke of Brittany; Mary, wife of Adolph of Cleves; Catherine, promised in 1410 to a son of Louis of Anjou; Isabella, wife of Olivier de Châtillon, count of Penthièvre; Joanna, who died young; Anne, who married John, duke of Bedford, in 1423; and Agnes, who married Charles I., duke of Bourbon, in 1425.

See A. G. P. Baron de Barante,Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne, (Brussels, 1835-1836); B. Zeller,Louis de France et Jean sans Peur(Paris, 1886); and E. Petit,Itinéraire de Philippe le Hardi et de Jean sans Peur(Paris, 1888).

(R. Po.)

1This incident earned for him among the Parisians the contemptuous nickname of “John of Lagny, who does not hurry.”

JOHN(1468-1532), called the Steadfast, elector of Saxony, fourth son of the elector Ernest, was born on the 30th of June 1468. In 1486, when his eldest brother became elector as Frederick III., John received a part of the paternal inheritance and afterwards assisted his kinsman, the German king Maximilian I., in several campaigns. He was an early adherent of Luther, and, becoming elector of Saxony by his brother’s death in May 1525, was soon prominent among the Reformers. Having assisted to suppress the rising led by Thomas Munzer in 1525, he helped Philip, landgrave of Hesse, to found the league of Gotha, formed in 1526 for the protection of the Reformers. He was active at the diet of Spires in 1526, and the “recess” of this diet gave him an opportunity to reform the church in Saxony, where a plan for divine service was drawn up by Luther. The assertions of Otto von Pack that a league had been formed against the elector and his friends induced John to ally himself again with Philip of Hesse in March 1528, but he restrained Philip from making an immediate attack upon their opponents. He signed the protest against the “recess” of the diet of Spires in 1529, being thus one of the original Protestants, and was actively hostile to Charles V. at the diet of Augsburg in 1530. Having signed the confession of Augsburg, he was alone among the electors in objecting to the election of Ferdinand, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand I., as king of the Romans. He was among the first members of the league of Schmalkalden, assented to the religious peace of Nuremberg in 1532, and died at Schweidnitz on the 16th of August 1532. John was twice married and left two sons and two daughters. His elder son, John Frederick, succeeded him as elector, and his younger son was John Ernest (d. 1553). He rendered great services to the Protestant cause in its infancy, but as a Lutheran resolutely refused to come to any understanding with other opponents of the older faith.

See J. Becker,Kurfürst Johann von Sachsen und seine Beziehungen zu Luther(Leipzig, 1890); J. Janssen,History of the German People(English translation), vol. v. (London, 1903); L. von Ranke,Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation(Leipzig, 1882).

JOHN, DON(1545-1578), of Austria, was the natural son of the emperor Charles V. by Barbara Blomberg, the daughter of an opulent citizen of Regensburg. He was born in that free imperial city on the 24th of February 1545, the anniversary of his father’s birth and coronation and of the battle of Pavia, and was at first confided under the name of Geronimo to foster parents of humble birth, living at a village near Madrid; but in 1554 he was transferred to the charge of Madalena da Ulloa, the wife of Don Luis de Quijada, and was brought up in ignorance of his parentage at Quijada’s castle of Villagarcia not far from Valladolid. Charles V. in a codicil of his will recognized Geronimo as his son, and recommended him to the care of his successor. In September 1559 Philip II. of Spain publicly recognized the boy as a member of the royal family, and he was known at court as Don Juan de Austria. For three years he was educated at Alcalá, and had as school companions his nephews, the infante Don Carlos and Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma. With Don Carlos his relations were especially friendly. It had been Philip’s intention that Don John should become a monk, but he showed a strong inclination for a soldier’s career and the king yielded. In 1568 Don John was appointed to the command of a squadron of 33 galleys, and his first operations were against the Algerian pirates. His next services were (1560-70) against the rebel Moriscos in Granada. In 1571 a nobler field of action was opened to him. The conquest of Cyprus by the Turks had led the Christian powers of the Mediterranean to fear for the safety of the Adriatic. A league between Spain and Venice was effected by the efforts of Pope Pius V. to resist the Turkish advance to the west, and Don John was named admiral in chief of the combined fleets. At the head of 208 galleys, 6 galleasses and a number of smaller craft, Don John encountered the Turkish fleet at Lepanto on the 7th of October 1571, and gained a complete victory. Only forty Turkish vessels effected their escape, and it was computed that 35,000 of their men were slain or captured while 15,000 Christian galley slaves were released. Unfortunately, through divisions and jealousies between the allies, the fruits of one of the most decisive naval victories in history were to a great extent lost.

This great triumph aroused Don John’s ambition and filled his imagination with schemes of personal aggrandizement. He thought of erecting first a principality in Albania and the Morea, and then a kingdom in Tunis. But the conclusion by Venice of a separate peace with the sultan put an end to theleague, and though Don John captured Tunis in 1573, it was again speedily lost. The schemes of Don John found no support in Philip II., who refused to entertain them, and even withheld from his half-brother the title of infante of Spain. At last, however, he was appointed (1576) governor-general of the Netherlands, in succession to Luis de Requesens. The administration of the latter had not been successful, the revolt headed by the prince of Orange had spread, and at the time of Don John’s nomination the Pacification of Ghent appeared to have united the whole of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands in determined opposition to Spanish rule and the policy of Philip II. The magic of Don John’s name, and the great qualities of which he had given proof, were to recover what had been lost. He was, however, now brought into contact with an adversary of a very different calibre from himself. This was William of Orange, whose influence was now supreme throughout the Netherlands. The Pacification of Ghent, which was really a treaty between Holland and Zeeland and the other provinces for the defence of their common interests against Spanish oppression, had been followed by an agreement between the southern provinces, known as the Union of Brussels, which, though maintaining the Catholic religion and the king’s authority, aimed at the expulsion of the Spanish soldiery and officials from the Netherlands. Confronted by the refusal of the states general to accept him as governor unless he assented to the conditions of the Pacification of Ghent, swore to maintain the rights and privileges of the provinces, and to employ only Netherlanders in his service, Don John, after some months of fruitless negotiations, saw himself compelled to give way. At Huey on the 12th of February 1577 he signed a treaty, known as the “Perpetual Edict,” in which he complied with these terms. On the 1st of May he made his entry into Brussels, but he found himself governor-general only in name, and the prince of Orange master of the situation. In July he suddenly betook himself to Namur and withdrew his concessions. William of Orange forthwith took up his residence at Brussels, and gave his support to the archduke Matthias, afterwards emperor, whom the states-general accepted as their sovereign. Meanwhile Philip had sent large reinforcements to Don John under the leadership of his cousin Alexander Farnese. At the head of a powerful force Don John now suddenly attacked the patriot army at Gemblours, where, chiefly by the skill and daring of Farnese, a complete victory was gained on the 31st of January 1578. He could not, however, follow up his success for lack of funds, and was compelled to remain inactive all the summer, chafing with impatience at the cold indifference with which his appeals for the sinews of war were treated by Philip. His health gave way, he was attacked with fever, and on the 1st of October 1578, at the early age of 33, Don John died, heartbroken at the failure of all his soaring ambitions, and at the repeated proofs that he had received of the king his brother’s jealousy and neglect.

See Sir W. Stirling Maxwell,Don John of Austria 1547-1575(1883) and the bibliography underPhilip II. of Spain.

JOHN, DON(1629-1679), of Austria, the younger, recognized as the natural son of Philip IV., king of Spain, his mother, Maria Calderon, or Calderona, being an actress. Scandal accused her of a prodigality of favours which must have rendered the paternity of Don John very dubious. He was, however, recognized by the king, received a princely education at Ocaña, and was amply endowed with commanderies in the military orders, and other forms of income. Don John was sent in 1647 to Naples—then in the throes of the popular rising first led by Masaniello—with a squadron and a military force, to support the viceroy. The restoration of royal authority was due rather to the exhaustion of the insurgents and the follies of their French leader, the duke of Guise, than to the forces of Don John. He was next sent as viceroy to Sicily, whence he was recalled in 1651 to complete the pacification of Catalonia, which had been in revolt since 1640. The excesses of the French, whom the Catalans had called in, had produced a reaction, and Don John had not much more to do than to preside over the final siege of Barcelona and the convention which terminated the revolt in October 1652. On both occasions he had played the peacemaker, and this sympathetic part, combined with his own pleasant manners and handsome person with bright eyes and abundant raven-black hair—a complete contrast to the fair complexions of the Habsburgs—made him a popular favourite. In 1656 he was sent to command in Flanders, in combination with the prince of Condé, then in revolt against his own sovereign. At the storming of the French camp at Valenciennes in 1656, Don John displayed brilliant personal courage at the head of a cavalry charge. When, however, he took a part in the leadership of the army at the Dunes in the battle fought against Turenne and the British forces sent over by Cromwell in 1658, he was completely beaten, in spite of the efforts of Condé, whose advice he neglected, and of the hard fighting of English Royalist exiles. During 1661 and 1662 he commanded against the Portuguese in Estremadura. The Spanish troops were ill-appointed, irregularly paid and untrustworthy, but they were superior in numbers and some successes were gained. If Don John had not suffered from the indolence which Clarendon, who knew him, considered his chief defect, the Portuguese would have been hard pressed. The greater part of the south of Portugal was overrun, but in 1663 the Portuguese were reinforced by a body of English troops, and were put under the command of the Huguenot Schomberg. By him Don John was completely beaten at Estremos. Even now he might not have lost the confidence of his father, if Queen Mariana, mother of the sickly infante Carlos, the only surviving legitimate son of the king, had not regarded the bastard with distrust and dislike. Don John was removed from command and sent to his commandery at Consuegra. After the death of Philip IV. in 1665 Don John became the recognized leader of the opposition to the government of Philip’s widow, the queen regent. She and her favourite, the German Jesuit Nithard, seized and put to death one of his most trusted servants, Don José Malladas. Don John, in return, put himself at the head of a rising of Aragon and Catalonia, which led to the expulsion of Nithard on the 25th of February 1669. Don John was, however, forced to content himself with the viceroyalty of Aragon. In 1677, the queen mother having aroused universal opposition by her shameless favour for Fernando de Valenzuela, Don John was able to drive her from court, and establish himself as prime minister. Great hopes were entertained of his administration, but it proved disappointing and short. Don John died on the 17th of September 1679.

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