[1][2], Louis was born in Munich, the son of Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Matilda, a daughter of King Rudolph I.[3]. Seeing that the entire clergy of the empire, except for the border bishoprics of Liège and Cambrai, had submitted to his rule and that the English held out the prospect of subsidies, Louis had reason to hope that he could confront the French in battle and thereby make the pope yield. This double election was quickly followed by two coronations: Louis was crowned at Aachen - the customary site of coronations - by Archbishop Peter of Mainz, while the Archbishop of Cologne, who by custom had the right to crown the new king, crowned Frederick at Bonn. When Louis’s own imperial vicar forced the pope and Robert to raise the siege of Milan, the heresy proceedings were extended to Louis himself, who was excommunicated in March 1324. In 751, Martel'… Louis the Pious, also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. His reign was marked by incessant diplomatic and military struggles to defend the right of the empire to elect an emperor independently of the papacy, to consolidate his own position, and to improve the status of his family. By isolating John of Bohemia and issuing a formal waiver of his own claims to the Tirol, Louis managed nonetheless to force John to renounce all claims to Italy, to declare himself a vassal, and to acknowledge Louis emperor in 1339. Preparing himself for the war that had become inevitable, Louis died of a heart attack while bear hunting near Munich in the autumn of 1347. The acquisition of these territories and his restless foreign policy had earned Louis many enemies among the German princes. On 19 October 1314, Archbishop Henry II of Cologne chaired an assembly of four electors at Sachsenhausen, south of Frankfurt. Already in 1323, Louis had sent an army to Italy to protect Milan against the Kingdom of Naples, which was together with France the strongest ally of the papacy. Its reaction proved to Frederick that he had been callously used; he now became a loyal co-ruler with Louis. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. [1], In 1323 Louis gave Brandenburg as a fiefdom to his eldest son Louis V after the Brandenburg branch of the House of Ascania had died out. Also the Habsburg dukes stayed loyal to Louis. Yet Louis’s German enemies had not been idle. … As the younger son of Louis II, count Palatine and duke in Upper Bavaria, Louis had no claim to the crown by birth. Once more Louis countered by offering to abdicate, this time in favour of his son, Louis of Brandenburg-Tirol (September 1343). These electors were Archbishop Peter himself, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier and King John of Bohemia - both of the House of Luxembourg - Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg and Duke John II of Saxe-Lauenburg, who contested Rudolph of Wittenberg's claim to the electoral vote. Through their city magistrates and other representatives, they pressed for legitimization of Louis’s rule and the rejection of papal interference. In November 1341 Margaret expelled her Luxembourg husband, whereupon Louis, declaring that the marriage had not been consummated and was therefore void, married her with ill-considered haste to his widowed son, Louis of Brandenburg, on February 10, 1342.