Austrian-Hungarian War (1477-1488)

Austrian–Hungarian War (1477–1488)

Matthias marching into Vienna

Date	1477–1488
Location	Lower Austria, Holy Roman Empire
Result	Decisive Hungarian victory The Black Army captures Vienna

Belligerents

Holy Roman Empire

Kingdom of Hungary

Commanders and leaders

Units involved

The Austrian–Hungarian War was a military conflict between the Kingdom of Hungary under Mathias Corvinus and the Habsburg Archduchy of Austria under Frederick V (also Holy Roman Emperor as Frederick III). The war lasted from 1477 to 1488 and resulted in significant gains for Matthias, which humiliated Frederick, but which were reversed upon Matthias' sudden death in 1490.

Matthias and Frederick III/V had been rivals stretching back to Matthias' succession as King of Hungary in 1458 after the early death of Frederick's Habsburg cousin King Ladislaus the Posthumous. At this time, Frederick held the Holy Crown of Hungary and was a candidate for becoming Hungarian king himself. Matthias, backed by the Bohemian king George of Poděbrady whose daughter Catherine (1449–1464) he married in 1461, finally prevailed: the two rivals settled their disagreements in 1463 with the Treaty of Wiener Neustadt, in which Frederick recognized the de facto King of Hungary and returned the Holy Crown to Matthias for a heavy ransom.

With the consent of Pope Paul II, Matthias invaded Moravia in 1468, instigating the Bohemian War with his former ally George of Poděbrad, on the pretext of protecting Catholicism against the Hussite movement - in fact to depose his father-in-law King George. Welcomed by the German nobility in Silesia and the Lusatias, as well as by the Catholic Czechs in Moravia, Matthias acquired these territories for himself and in 1469 pronounced himself Bohemian king in Olomouc. Never able to seize the capital Prague however, Matthias' war would drag on with Poděbrad's successor, the Polish prince Vladislaus Jagiellon, until the latter recognized Matthias' gains in the 1478 Treaty of Brno.

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