Celebrated on the same day as the Treaty of Versailles, which sealed the fate of Germany at the end of the Great War, it is a much less commemorated event which was nevertheless decisive in the history of Europe. On June 28, 1519, after a bitter game of diplomatic influence and financial negotiations, the young King of Spain, Charles I, grandson of Emperor Maximilian (1459-1519), was elected king. of the Romans and thus acceded to the head of the Holy Roman Empire, under the name of Charles V. The Habsburgs defeat the King of France, Francis I.
From that day, the kingdom will be surrounded by the Austrian dynasty for almost two centuries. Coalitions and wars, pragmatic alliances, marriages and territorial cessions, the whole history of Europe seems determined by this summer day in 1519, when the great project of Emperor Maximilian was accomplished. The method and legacy of this monarch are at the heart of Manfred Corrine’s documentary.
Constant determination
The man showed constant determination. The last representative of a world obsessed with the codes and values ??of ideal chivalry, he was flawlessly politically lucid. Son of Austrian Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493), the young man suffered from his father’s severity, to the point of stuttering. He attended, fascinated, in 1473, the meeting, in Trier (Germany), of his father and the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (1433-1477). If the talks of union between the dynasties turn short, the splendor of the Burgundian dazzles the teenager.
When Charles perished before Nancy in 1477, his only daughter, Marie, was more than ever a choice prize. While Louis XI covets her for his dauphin, Frederick III manages to marry his heir to the young woman. And this, despite the impecuniosity of the promised who must wait in Cologne for the money of the Duchess Marie, in order to be able to go to Ghent (Belgium), where their marriage must be celebrated. The union, happy, does not last, Marie dies following a fall from a horse, in March 1482.
Henceforth beneficiary, in the name of their son, Philippe (1478-1506), of the wealth of Burgundy, Maximilien would endeavor to apply to the Duchy of Austria, later to the Holy Empire, the reforms which would make these States a modern power. By a matrimonial strategy which weaves a veritable net enclosing this France which failed to rob Marie from him, Maximilien assures the Habsburg dynasty a recovery and an ascent which are not long in radiating on the world, old and new.
Sober and precise, this documentary favors information and the strategic logic of the emperor without overbidding in the reconstructions. The choice of dialogue between Maximilien and his daughter, Marguerite, another major politician, is particularly clever.
