All language subtitles for eng 1

This is the Danube,

the most majestic river in Europe.

And on its banks stands Vienna.

Imperial city.

This is its story,

a story peopled by a cast of giants
from Suleiman the Magnificent

to Napoleon, from Mozart and Mahler
to Freud, Hitler and Stalin.

It grew as a bastion of Christendom
against Islam,

of Catholicism against
Protestantism.

And it all happened because of one
family, a family whose empire,

at its greatest, stretched from Peru
to Poland,

from the Netherlands to Naples.

This is the rise and fall of the
House of Habsburg.

This is how Vienna became the
imperial city of Europe,

the paramount city,

the city of the world.

The strategic position of Vienna on
the Danube, between the Black Forest

and the Black Sea, was first
appreciated by the ancient Romans.

They built a forward military base
here

to defend the empire against endless
attacks by Eastern barbarians.

These are the ruins of Vindobona,

the Roman town on the site of
present-day Vienna.

But its real importance was for
future dynasties

who liked to play up its Roman past

to presage their own
future imperial glory.

Creating a heroic narrative for the
city, and for themselves,

the Habsburgs would help transform
Vienna from a small frontier town

to one of the world's greatest
cities.

They would use every medium -
architecture, sculpture, printing,

music and theatrical spectacle

to glorify the city and project
their own power.

That's the point.

This was all an act.

It was all a show.

Vienna would become the inspiration,
the magnet, the stage for Mozart,

Beethoven, Strauss and Mahler.

It would also become an intellectual
hotbed

for some of the most brilliant,

and the most dangerous
thinkers of modern times.

This is the story of empire,

empire of conquerors, courtesans
and composers,

palaces, churches and coffee houses.

But also, the empire of cultures,
of nations, of ideas,

monstrous ideas that killed
millions,

wonderful ideas that helped create
our world.

Yes, in so many ways,

Vienna is the capital of the empire
of the mind.

Following the fall of the
Roman Empire,

Central Europe became
the battlefield

of rival tribes and warlords.

They had much in common -
the Roman legacy, the use of Latin,

and faith in Christianity.

Then in the eighth century, a
brilliant, harsh, Frankish warlord,

Charlemagne, Charles the Great,
managed to unite much of Europe.

Charlemagne created the idea
of a pan-European state,

a new Roman Empire
based on two pillars,

Christianity and a powerful
European king,

known as the Holy Roman Emperor.

In 800, he was crowned
by the Pope in Rome,

and henceforth, the status
of the Holy Roman Emperors

justified their actions
in the name of Christendom.

These Holy Roman Emperors became,
effectively,

kings of a wider Germany,

that later extended to include bits
of modern France, Italy and Bohemia,

with its capital, Prague.

At the edge of this empire

was the relatively insignificant
town of Vienna.

But by the 12th century,
Vienna was becoming an increasingly

important centre of German
civilisation.

Work began on a new church that
would go on to become the mighty

St Stephen's Cathedral,

a masterpiece of Romanesque and
Gothic architecture.

The church was founded in 1137,

the year in which Vienna is first
referred to as a city.

The cathedral's South Tower reaches
446 feet,

still the city's highest point.

And in the centuries ahead,

this cathedral would be the
magnificent stage

for the drama of Vienna.

When the first Habsburg Archduke
became Holy Roman Emperor,

it was here, on the altar,

that he inscribed his
mysterious code of power,

A, E, I, O, U.

And he inscribed them in different
places all across his domains.

And during his lifetime, no-one knew
what they meant.

Had they known, they would have
seemed utterly preposterous.

The Emperor didn't even reveal

whether the code was Latin or
German.

On his deathbed, he revealed what
the letters stood for,

and by the time he revealed them,

they no longer seemed quite so
ridiculous.

Here's what they stood for,

"The whole world is dominated by
Austria."

I'm no German scholar, but these
letters signify, in German,

"Alles Erdreich ist Osterreich
untertan."

During the next 500 years,

Vienna would become the capital of
the Habsburg family monarchy,

and effectively, the headquarters of
the Holy Roman Emperors.

The story of the rise
of the Habsburgs

possesses all the rollicking heroes

and extravagant blood-letting of a
medieval myth.

In 1273, a new prince from a rising
family

was elected king of the Germans.

His name was Rudolf, and he came
from the family of Habsburg.

They'd started in a Swiss castle,

in an eyrie named The Hawk's Nest,
Habsburg.

And now they'd expanded
their holdings into Austria.

Rudolf was 55,

and the electors who chose German
kings

believed he would be no threat.

They were wrong.

Rudolf, though already old
by medieval standards,

would go on to rule from his base
in Vienna for 17 years.

And the Habsburgs would
dominate Europe for the next
half-millennium.

But Rudolf's rise to power
would not go unchallenged.

His principal rival for control of
Middle Europe came from the north -

Ottokar, King of Bohemia.

In 1278, Ottokar,
with his Bohemian army,

began the march southwards
towards the Danube.

Rudolf and his army rode out from
Vienna to meet them.

A decisive battle between
Rudolf von Habsburg,

and Ottokar, King of Bohemia, took
place right here on the Marchfeld,

east of Vienna. The two sides met
in August, 1278, in sweltering heat.

They fought all day, and they fought
themselves to a standstill.

It was so hot that the knights
in their armour

started to faint in droves.

At this point, Rudolf deployed the
fresh brigade of cavalry

he'd hidden right up this hill.

They charged down into the Bohemians
and routed them.

Faced with defeat, the Bohemians
murdered their own king, Ottokar.

He was stripped naked,

butchered and Rudolf displayed his
body in the streets of Vienna.

This was a victory that would mark

the birth of a great European
dynasty,

and transform the fate of Vienna.

When Rudolf died in 1291, it was his
son, Albert, who succeeded him,

first as Duke of Austria, and,
ultimately, as King of the Germans.

Albert was a shrewd and just ruler,
but as a man, he was terrifying,

vicious and arrogant.

His face was distinguished by a
gaping cavity

where his eye should have been.

When some enemies had tried to
poison him,

his doctors insisted that he be hung
upside down

for long periods of time

to allow the poison to seep out.

In the process, somehow, he'd lost
his eye.

Everyone called him Albert One Eye.

Albert had a fearsome reputation,
not only with his many foes,

but also within his own family,

and eventually this would be his
undoing.

On May Day, 1308, Albert rode out
with his entourage,

who included his 19-year-old
nephew, John.

As they rode, John tried to persuade
his uncle to return the lands

he'd taken from his family.

Albert refused.

John, furious,

rowed across the river and gathered
together a posse of assassins.

When Albert himself crossed, they
lay in wait, fell upon him,

and stabbed him. They left him dying
in a pool of his blood.

The murderers fled,

only to be ruthlessly hunted down
by Albert's successors.

One day of brutal revenge, presided
over by his children,

saw 63 of John's relatives beheaded.

As blood spurted from them, Albert's
daughter cried out in ecstasy,

"This is like being bathed
in May dew."

The bitter family feud would halt
the rise of Vienna,

and keep the Habsburgs out of power
for 30 years.

But they were still one of the most
powerful families

within the Holy Roman Empire.

They needed a statesman.

And now they produced a young man
of astonishing vision and guts,

Rudolf IV, the Founder.

Rudolf inherited the Habsburg lands
at just 19.

But he'd been brought up at the
court of the Holy Roman Emperor,

his father-in-law,

and from the start, he was wildly
ambitious, creative,

a visionary, energetic, and I've
come here to the Habsburg Archives

to see his most ingenious creation.

Rudolf craved the ultimate prize,
the imperial crown.

But he didn't have the same status
as the German prince electors

who chose both the German king
and the emperor.

So Rudolf came up with a cunning
plan -

he invented the title archduke

to make his family more important
than their rivals.

Kathrin Kininger is a medieval
specialist at the archives,

and she's going to show me how he
did it.

Kathrin, tell me what this document
is,

and why it's so important.

So this is one of the most famous

medieval documents of Austrian
history.

It claims to be of the 12th century,
but actually,

it was made in the middle of the
14th century.

It's a forgery. And what does it
claim?

So the purpose of the forgery

was to increase the prestige
of the Habsburg family of Austria,

the Habsburg dynasty.

And didn't he invent some titles
in here?

Yeah, for example, he invented the
title archduke.

It was an invention of Rudolf IV.

And how do we know this is a
forgery?

Actually, it's quite difficult,

because the forgery is really,
really, very good.

When you look at it,

everything from the outside looks
quite authentic

because they use the seal,

this is the original seal of
Frederick I,

and they transferred it from the
original document to the forgery.

And that's up to the 19th century,

everyone believed that it was the
real thing.

All cities have their founding
myths,

but none have been based on quite
such a brazen fraud.

And it would work for centuries.

It was a challenge to the ruling
Holy Roman Emperor of the time,

Charles VI, King of Bohemia, and it
wasn't just political either.

Rudolf also wanted Vienna to rival
the Bohemian capital, Prague.

Rudolf embellished and promoted both
his dynasty and his capital.

He invented a new title for himself,
Archduke of Austria,

which placed him above all the other
princes and dukes.

And in Vienna, he remodelled
St Stephen's Cathedral

and he founded this.

In 1365, he created
Vienna University,

one of the oldest in Europe.

Even today, it's known
as Alma Mater Rudolphina.

Rudolf had laid the foundations
for Vienna

to become one of Europe's great
cities.

Had he lived longer, who knows
what he might have achieved?

But sadly, for Vienna and
the Habsburgs, he died at just 26.

But Rudolf's embellishment of Vienna
had not been cheap,

and he'd had to borrow to pay for
it.

The Habsburg dukes depended on
the Jews for financial loans,

like many medieval rulers.

It was a close relationship - the
Jews lived under royal protection.

This Judenplatz was the site
of the Jewish city

where the Jews all lived,

and this, now the
Holocaust Memorial,

was the site of the community's
synagogue.

The Royal Court was right next door.

But this relationship was
ambivalent. It led to resentment.

And in 1421, it exploded in a savage
pogrom against the Jewish community.

Now Archduke Albert V
turned against the Jews,

first crippling them with taxes,

then torturing them
when they couldn't pay.

The pogrom climaxed with the
lynching,

torturing and burning at the stake
of hundreds of Jews,

as the Jewish community
was systematically destroyed.

Finally, the Duke issued a decree

that all Jewish children
under the age of 15

should be abducted and forcibly
converted to Christendom.

The surviving Jews retired
to their community synagogue

and locked themselves in. After a
siege of two or three days,

they committed suicide en masse
by setting the synagogue alight.

A Christian merchant of the time

gleefully celebrated the Jewish
tragedy

by putting up this plaque which
reads, "The raging fire of 1421

"cleansed the city of the vile
crimes of the Hebrew dogs."

The boundless ambitions
of the House of Habsburg

finally reached their fulfilment

with the unlikely figure
of Frederick III.

In 1442, he was crowned Emperor by
the Pope in Rome.

Frederick was the first
Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor,

the first of many,

and everything about him was big -

his ambitions, the length of his
reign, and his mountainous stomach.

He was known as Frederick the Fat.

He was shrewd, patient,
long-suffering,

but also notoriously sluggish and
vacillating.

The Pope said that he wanted to
conquer the world

whilst sitting down.

And in Germany, his nickname was the
Arch Sleepyhead of the empire.

On becoming Emperor,

he confirmed Rudolf the Founder's
forged document.

And henceforth, the Habsburgs would
always be Archdukes of Austria.

This is the Hofberg, the ancient
city fortress of Vienna.

And when Frederick III,
Frederick the Fat,

became Holy Roman Emperor,

this became his imperial
headquarters.

But Frederick's ambitions
always exceeded

both his energy and his resources.

And it wasn't long before his rivals
were circling.

Ever since the murder
of Albert One Eye,

the House of Habsburg
had been deeply divided.

Now Frederick was challenged by his
own brother, another Albert,

who marched on Vienna in 1462,

intending to wrest power from him
and his son and heir, Maximilian.

Albert allied himself
with the Bohemian warlord,

and, together, they came down to
Vienna and besieged Fat Frederick,

his wife, and Maximilian
here at the Hofberg.

This is, in fact, one of the very
few parts of the Hofburg Palace

that dates from Frederick's time.

It looked like everything was lost,

but Frederick endured all this
with his usual mixture

of sleepy patience and obstinate
tenacity

that all would turn out right.

And so it did.

The siege was lifted, Albert died,
and Frederick swallowed his lands.

But these family feuds
had distracted him

from a greater danger -

his dynamic neighbour,
the King of Hungary, Matthias.

In 1482, Matthias attacked Vienna.
Frederick ingloriously fled.

He'd lost his capital.

But once again, Frederick succeeded
by simply outliving his enemies.

And when Matthias died, he retook
Vienna without a fight.

In celebration, he finished
the building of St Stephen's,

and it was he who inscribed the
letters of his code -

A, E, I, O, U -

"The whole world is dominated
by Austria," - on the altar.

And he designed a special place
for himself, centre stage.

When he died in 1493, he'd ruled
longer than his supposed ancestor,

the Roman Emperor Augustus.

During his long reign,
Frederick the Fat

had endured an astonishing
number of disasters.

And yet he triumphed in the end.

He'd even lost a leg to diabetes,
and survived that.

But when he finally died,
appropriately,

it was from overeating.

And here's his tomb.

And as you can see, it's an amazing
masterpiece.

And look at these little creatures,

the elaborate decoration, these
arches.

Here are the good things in his
life, the holy works,

and here is all the evil he
overcame.

What you have up here,

in immaculate detail,

is a surprisingly slim-fit version
of Frederick the Fat,

with all the accoutrements, the
paraphernalia of power, the sword,

the shield, the sceptre.

Before he died, Frederick pulled off
one last victory

for the House of Habsburg.

And it wasn't on a battlefield,

it was in the marriage chamber.

He married his son and heir,
Maximilian, to Mary of Burgundy,

the richest heiress in Europe.

She was heiress to the
Duchy of Burgundy,

that, in those days, contained the
Netherlands, Belgium,

Luxembourg and swathes of
Eastern France.

It would make the Habsburgs the
greatest dynasty in Europe.

"Let others wage war," went the
saying,

"But you, happy Austria, shall
marry."

Maximilian's brilliant match to
Mary of Burgundy

was just the first of
the three weddings

that would raise Vienna from
Germanic to world capital.

Maximilian was as gifted a warlord
as he was a matchmaker.

Maximilian couldn't have been more
different

from his flabby, sleepy father.

Or from the cliche

of the weak-chinned Habsburgs
of the 19th century.

He was an exuberant, swaggering
swashbuckler,

nicknamed the German Hercules.

"I laughed, I danced, I jousted,
I paid court to the ladies,"

he wrote in his autobiography.

"But most of all, I just laughed
wholeheartedly."

But his greatest achievements were
in his marriage alliances.

First he married his son,
Philip the Handsome,

to Juana of Spain,

daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella.

When they died, the Habsburgs
inherited the Spanish Empire.

But Maximilian wasn't finished yet.

Towards the end of his life,
in 1515,

Maximilian pulled off

a second astonishing marriage coup
for the dynasty.

He married his grandchildren,
his grandson, Ferdinand,

and his granddaughter, to the heirs
to the Kingdoms of Hungary,

Bohemia and Croatia.

In an age of extremely high infant
mortality,

even Maximilian couldn't
have expected

all his marriage alliances
to come good.

But as it happened,

he and the House of Habsburg were
extremely lucky.

His marriage alliances delivered to
the House of Habsburg

not only Spain, not only the
Spanish Empire,

but also the thrones of Bohemia,
Hungary, and Croatia.

It would make the Habsburgs the
greatest family empire

the world had ever known.

Maximilian was determined that his
achievements would not go unnoticed.

He'd be aided in this mission by the
invention of the printing press.

The Emperor Maximilian had used
marriage alliances and war

to promote the House of Habsburg.

But now he was one of the first
rulers

to use the new medium of printing

to project his majesty and
magnificence.

And I'm here at the Albertina Museum
to see how he did it.

These famous but rarely seen works
are held in storage at this museum.

But they've offered to take them out
and show them to us.

Christof Metzger is head of the
Albertina's graphic art collection.

This is the first sheet.

And now you can make a sequence
of altogether

more than 40 metres.

One of the largest ever made,

Maximilian's print depicts his
travels around the empire.

But it's also meant to resemble the
triumphal processions

of the Roman Emperors.

Just tell me about, you know,
what was done with these -

these were printed and then sent
around the Holy Roman Empire?

Yes, yes,

using the very, very modern medium
of printing.

And if you want to have an
impression how this has been made,

we have here the wood block of the
artists of this procedure.

The detail is so intricate.

You fill it with ink, you cover it
with ink,

you take a sheet of paper,

you put it on the coloured wood
block...

..make a little pressure on it.

And afterwards, you have the final
print.

This was the latest technology in
1518, or whatever,

it was like Twitter or Facebook
today.

Yes. This was the new medium.

That's the new medium, and the
first possibility, really,

to create art as a mass product.

Fascinating.

But there's also a colour version

of Maximilian's triumphal
procession,

hand-drawn and hand-painted.

This has been the most precious
version for the emperor,

and the imperial family.

The printed version was for

nearly everybody.

I think it's a thing of
breathtaking beauty.

It's one of the greatest treasures
in Vienna.

Am I right in saying that it's only
been exhibited

about two or three times in 500
years?

Very, very rare occasions.

Can I look at it a bit more closely?

Yes, of course.

I'd just like to look at some of the
detail on it.

I love this horse here, this
caparisoned horse,

with these eagles on it.

Now, who is this?

These two horsemen introduce the
carriage of the imperial family.

I think nothing really approaches
the resplendent bling

of this gold-worked armour.

So moving this way, now we approach,

we suddenly see somebody very
important is coming,

because look, there's one, two...

there's 12 horses... 12.

..each ridden by a postilion,

that are pulling a giant carriage.

And who is in this carriage?

Well, this is Maximilian himself,
isn't it?

Let's look at him.

This is, in effect,
the story we're about to tell.

So we have Maximilian, and then we
have his son, Philip the Handsome,

who was married to Juana of Spain.

And there we see their children,
the future Emperor Charles V,

and the future Emperor Ferdinand,
his brother.

So, in effect,

this carriage contains the future
destiny of the House of Habsburg,

and of Europe itself,

for the next 100 years.

Maximilian was ready to die.

He travelled everywhere
with his own coffin

and he specified that on his death,

he was to be treated
like a common sinner,

his teeth pulled out of his body,
his hair shorn,

and his cadaver scourged with whips.

When he died, his heir
was not his son,

Philip the Handsome, who'd
predeceased him, but his grandson,

Charles V, who inherited
all his vast domains.

But it was too much for any one man,

and so he brought his brother,
Ferdinand,

who'd been brought up in Spain,
speaking only Spanish,

and gave him the Austrian
lands and Vienna.

From now on,
this is Ferdinand's story.

In 1521, Ferdinand I
became Archduke of Austria.

But when his brother-in-law,

the King of Hungary,
Croatia and Bohemia,

was killed in battle
by the Ottoman Turks,

he inherited those lands as well.

Ferdinand was now in charge of
defending the entire eastern flank

of Christendom from the looming
threat of the Ottomans and Islam.

The Sultan of the Ottomans
was Suleiman I,

known to history as
Suleiman the Magnificent.

In 1529 he marched on the city
with an army of 300,000 men.

Ruling an empire that stretched from
Iraq to Africa and the Balkans,

Suleiman the Magnificent saw himself
as a Roman emperor,

an Islamic caliph
and a Turkish sultan.

Now 35, in his prime, he'd already

taken the cities of Belgrade and
Buda.

And he was advancing into Hungary,

defeating the Hungarians and

Bohemians and killing
their young king.

This allowed Ferdinand
to claim those thrones,

but it also started the duel between

the two greatest dynasties
of their time,

the Ottomans versus the Habsburgs.

As he advanced on Vienna, this
wasn't just a battle for a city,

it was a battle for Christendom
and Europe itself.

Christendom was in peril.

In September, the Ottoman army
camped right

here on the outskirts of Vienna.

Suleiman commanded the siege
of Vienna from his tent,

pitched on this spot.

But he'd started late in the year -

winter was coming,
supplies were low

and then his troops mutinied.

He'd never been defeated before,

and so he ordered a final assault
on the city.

And when it failed,
he reluctantly retreated.

Afterwards, the Habsburgs celebrated
by building this palace on the site.

But it wasn't over.

This was the beginning of a titanic
struggle that lasted 200 years.

But Islam wasn't the only threat to
Vienna and the House of Habsburg.

Martin Luther had launched
his protest against

papal abuses in Germany

and the Protestant Reformation
of the church had now

spread into Bohemia as well.

Ferdinand went to war,
and he managed to contain

the Protestant threat.

But his grandson didn't just
compromise with Protestantism,

he actively encouraged
religious diversity.

Crowned emperor in 1576,

his portrait hangs here
in the Art History Museum.

This is Rudolf II,

the mercurial Holy Roman Emperor
who ruled for 30 years.

And here you can see the exhaustion
on his face.

But for three decades he had
dazzled, amused

and worried all of Europe
with his crazy antics.

He was known as Rudolf the Mad.

He had a court filled with
necromancers, magicians, alchemists,

Jewish Kabbalists.

He wasn't interested in politics,

he was bored by religious politics
which obsessed everybody else.

What interested him was collecting
great art, a quest for beauty

and truth and magic.

He was a mystic. He was a collector.

He was a connoisseur.

Everything he did was extraordinary.

He had, for example, a pet tiger
that wandered his castles,

occasionally eating his courtiers.

He loved boys, he loved girls,
he fathered many bastards.

His sex life shocked everybody.

But he was always on the verge
of madness.

Rudolf amassed one of the most
impressive art collections in Europe

with works by Durer, Brueghel and
the Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

The style of Rudolf's court painter

and impresario of court
spectacles, Arcimboldo,

tells you a lot about
the fantastical atmosphere

at Rudolf the Mad's court.

Arcimboldo loved to portray
courtiers and even

royalty using everyday objects.

Here, this man's nose
is a gherkin, for example.

His chin is a pear.

Arcimboldo's signature
is in the straw.

His most famous painting is not kept
in Vienna,

but in a museum in Sweden.

This is Arcimboldo's masterpiece.
It is Rudolf II himself.

The emperor commissioned this.
He loved it -

he had it hanging
in his imperial bedchamber.

And he insisted that his own nose
should appear as a pear.

He is Vertumnus, Roman god
of fecundity and of fruit.

And that's how Rudolf saw himself.

But, you have to ask,

what to make of a Holy Roman Emperor
who wanted himself portrayed

as a living fruit salad.

And his own family, the Habsburgs,
were deeply unamused about this.

They didn't just regard him as a
fruit salad, or a fruit cake,

for that matter. To them,
his mysticism, his madness,

his tolerance of Protestantism made

him not just a nutter
but more than that,

a danger to the dynasty, to God,
to Christendom itself.

In 1609, Rudolf formally granted
tolerance to

the Protestants of Bohemia.

For his family and the Pope,
this was a step too far.

They began to plot against him.

In 1611, Rudolf's own brother
Matthias overthrew him.

Rudolf died nine months later.

Although he saw himself as an
advocate for religious tolerance,

his legacy had a dark side.

The Habsburg Empire
was created by marriage,

and they tried to keep it together
by intermarriage within the family.

But it wasn't long before these
incestuous unions had started to

produce a few depraved psychopaths.

Rudolf the Mad's son, Don Julius,
was even madder than his father.

Finally, he kidnapped a barber's
daughter, dismembered her,

sliced off her ears, cut off her
breasts

and was finally found cradling her
earless head,

covered in his own blood
and excrement.

Such were the macabre secrets
of the house of Austria.

Matthias's rule was short lived.

But the same cannot be said for the
Catholic fervour of the Habsburgs,

which now faced a new challenge
from the Protestants of Prague,

just 180 miles to the north.

The age of tolerance was dead.

The Catholic counterreformation
was on the march.

The new Habsburg monarch,
Ferdinand II, was a religious bigot,

a Catholic zealot.

He revoked the tolerance of the

Protestants of Bohemia, and they
rebelled.

The result was the
Defenestration of Prague.

Every schoolboy's favourite,

defenestration means throwing
someone out of the window.

And throwing people out of windows
was a bit of a national pastime

in Bohemia. This was the second
Defenestration of Prague.

Four of Ferdinand's Catholic

ministers were grabbed by the mob
and tossed out of the window.

The drop was 70 feet.

Astonishingly, all four survived
the fall.

To Ferdinand and the Catholics
this was a miracle -

the Virgin Mary had intercepted them
and softened their fall.

To the Protestants, they had simply
survived by landing

in a heap of dung.

But Ferdinand celebrated by making
one of the lords

Baron von Hohenfall,

Baron of the High Fall.

Nonetheless, Bohemia and the

Protestants were now in open
rebellion.

This was war.

Ferdinand was determined
to regain Bohemia.

He sent an army to march on Prague.

In 1620, Ferdinand and the Catholics

defeated the Protestants at the
Battle of White Mountain.

And when he retook Prague, he
unleashed a terrible revenge.

27 of the leading Protestant lords
were tortured, dismembered,

executed in the main town square,
their heads hung from meat hooks.

This was the beginning
of the Thirty Years' War,

a savage religious war and a brutal
tournament of power that ultimately

drew in most of the powers
of Europe.

And for the Europeans themselves,
it was a disaster.

Out of a population of around
78 million,

somewhere between three and 12
million perished.

That's as much as 15%.

This was a European catastrophe.

But war would be the making of one
man, who seemed born for battle.

Albrecht Wenzel von Wallenstein was
one of the greatest generals

the Habsburgs ever fielded.

And he was the ultimate over-mighty
swaggering warlord

of the Thirty Years' War.

At the war's opening he offered
himself with 100,000 men to

Emperor Ferdinand.

He thrashed all the emperor's
enemies - Danes, Protestants,

Swedes, and became
commander-in-chief.

But he forced the emperor
to make him Duke of Friedland,

and amassed a vast, personal
fiefdom.

Soon he was even threatening
the emperor himself.

Ferdinand now feared that
Wallenstein wouldn't rest until he

dominated all of Central Europe.

In 1634, Ferdinand gathered together
in Vienna a tribunal that condemned

Wallenstein was a traitor.

He was to be brought back to Vienna,
dead or alive.

The hit squad was a group of Irish
dragoons under an Irishman,

Walter Butler. First they burst into
the tavern where Wallenstein's

entourage and henchmen were asleep.
They murdered them all.

And then, finally, burst into
Wallenstein's own bedroom.

As he lay in bed, they ran him
through with a halberd,

and there died, bled out on the bed
in some remote lodgings,

the greatest general of the
Thirty Years' War.

The warlord who had dared to
challenge the emperor himself.

But this was not just a war
fought by generals on battlefields.

The Thirty Years' War was also a
battle for hearts and minds.

Ferdinand II recruited the Jesuits,
the holy order,

as soldiers in his army of Christ.

They provided his top advisers,

the tutors for the heir to the
throne, they ran the university,

they took over education.

And as the cloisters took over
the corridors of power,

the joke went like this -

Austria, Osterreich,
had become Cl-Osterreich.

In Austria,
the Counter-Reformation

became known as the
Klosteroffensive.

It would transform
the character of the city.

Ferdinand himself founded this
Jesuit church

in the old university quarter
of Vienna.

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia

finally ended the ruinous
Thirty Years' War.

In wider Europe, there was a
compromise between the Catholics and

Protestants.
But within the Austrian monarchy,

it marked the total victory
of Catholicism.

And that confidence,
that exuberance,

that supremacy of Catholicism,
is expressed here in this church.

Its interior was remodelled in
opulent Baroque style by an Italian

architect and stage designer,
Andrea Pozzo.

The ceiling is a fine example
of a trompe-l'oeil,

creating the optical illusion
of a domed roof.

And Pozzo's background
in stage design is apparent

in the inclusion of these
theatrical boxes on the first floor.

Positioning the Habsburgs
as champions of Catholicism,

Ferdinand laid the foundation stone
for the family Imperial Crypt.

We've been given exclusive access
to this wonderful,

if somewhat eerie place.

When a Habsburg emperor died, his
funeral cortege would come here,

to the Capuchin Chapel to the
Kaisergruft, the Emperor's Crypt.

The doors would be locked, and they
would knock on the doors and say,

"This is the Emperor.
The King of Bohemia."

And they would list all his other
many, many titles, a page long.

"We recognise no-one of that name,"
they would reply.

So they would knock again
and this time,

they would give a shorter version.

And again they would reply,
"We know of no-one of that name."

And finally, they would knock
for the third time.

"Who goes there?" they would say.

And the cortege would answer,

"A penitent sinner."

And then they would open the door.

That was how Habsburgs were buried.

But in spite of their
supposed humility in death,

the Habsburgs were still buried

in these ornate metal
sarcophagi, decorated with skulls,

but also with their many crowns.

And that's the point.
This was all an act.

It was all a show.

A Habsburg emperor lived and died
as an emperor.

Educated by the Jesuits and
originally intended for the church,

Ferdinand's grandson, Leopold I,

was crowned Holy Roman Emperor
in 1658.

The new young emperor, Leopold I,
was no beauty.

Even by the standards of Habsburg
interbreeding,

he was possessed
of the most ginormous jaw

in the whole
history of the family.

Wits at court meanly nicknamed
him Schweinemund von Habsburg.

The Hog Mouth of Habsburg.

In a 50-year rule, he endured
disasters and he endured glories.

He was endearing. He was sweet.

He was untalented but he loved
music. He lived for music.

He was a consummate
if conventional composer.

His tragedy was that he wrote the
requiems for both of his dead wives.

His first wife was a toddler
when she was betrothed to him.

An extraordinary story is told in a
series of portraits that hang in the

Art History Museum.

This is Margarita Teresa, a child
who is the Infanta of Spain.

And from the age of about three,
she was destined to marry her uncle,

Leopold I,
Emperor in Austria, in Vienna.

And this was just another example
of the insane,

and ultimately disastrous policy of

the Habsburg marrying their
relatives.

She was not only his niece, both her
parents were also Habsburgs,

so they were related on many levels.

And because she was far away
in Madrid, and she had to grow up,

the court painter in Spain,
Velazquez,

was commissioned to paint her every
two or three years.

Here's the first painting.

Here in the second painting
she is at five.

And here she is, the third one, at
eight.

The actual marriage took place when
she was 15.

And when they were married,
and they were husband and wife,

she always called her husband
"Uncle."

In the summer of 1666,

Margarita Teresa finally travelled
to Vienna and

their marriage took place
in December that year.

Leopold celebrated his wedding with
a giant allegorical spectacular here

at the Hofburg. Life-size ships,
horses, carriages

hovered above the lake.

Two 60-foot mountains,
Etna and Parnassus,

spurted forth fire like volcanoes.

And the climax came when Leopold

himself excitedly lit 70,000
fireworks

that illuminated the sky above
Vienna,

spelling out the letters
A, E, I, O, U.

Austria dominates the world.

For days, the entire city
was given over

to a series of baroque spectaculars,

including a four-hour equestrian
ballet.

Rudi Risatti is one of the
curators

of an exhibition of baroque
spectacle

at the Vienna Theatre Museum.

He's made an animated film
from original period prints of the

horse ballet, performed in the
Hofburg Square.

Rudi, tell me about the special
effects of the 17th century.

How on earth did they get these
life-size

carriages to seem to float on
water?

They tried through means of illusion
to create wonderful images in the

three-dimensional space.

So, for example, in the horse ballet
you saw

different wagons and
chariots moved by the

force of horses, etc.

The water was not real water,

it was just a combination of
different fabrics and painted parts.

Tell me about other spectaculars
that Leopold put on.

A second big event confirming
the power of the court

was the opera Il Pomo D'oro,

for which Leopold I composed
some parts.

When the Habsburg monarchy
was almost bankrupt,

why did they spend so much
on these spectacular extravaganzas?

Spectacular and theatrical events

were being made just to show
the power of the dynasty.

To finance these extravagant
displays of power,

Leopold had to borrow from
Jewish moneylenders.

They'd finally been allowed
to return to Vienna,

though only permitted to settle
outside the city walls

on the other side of the Danube.

But now, influenced by the rabid
anti-Semitism of his young wife,

Leopold would turn against them

and they were expelled
from the city.

Their synagogue was destroyed and
Leopold built a church on its site.

Soon after the Jewish expulsion,

the city was blighted by an outbreak
of bubonic plague

that claimed over 70,000 lives

and severely weakened its garrison.

This didn't go unnoticed
by a resurgent Ottoman Empire.

Its grand vizier, or prime minister,

was the ferociously ambitious
Kara Mustafa,

and he finally persuaded his sultan
that the time was right

to once again attempt
to take Vienna.

In July, 1683, the Ottoman army,

200,000 strong and under the command
of Kara Mustafa himself,

arrived beneath the walls
of Fortress Vienna.

As the Ottomans besieged the city,

they started to mine underneath the
bastions and walls of its defences.

This is one of the last city walls
that still exists.

Day by day they slowly,
but systematically,

blew up bastion after bastion,

wall after wall, until they were
almost ready to storm the city.

If relief didn't come soon,
Vienna would fall.

Leopold was chiefly concerned
with saving his own skin

and he fled to Linz, more than 100
miles away.

En route he was jeered and spat at
by peasants.

Leopold and the Pope implored
Christian kings to join

a holy league to defend the
embattled city.

And their call was heard.

The leader of the Holy Alliance
was King Jan Sobieski of Poland.

He was the classic beau sabreur and
knight who'd fought in many armies

across Europe.

He'd also been to many foreign
capitals, Paris -

he was a man of culture.

He'd married a beautiful
French wife.

He was hugely overweight,

but he could still stay in the
saddle for 12 or 15 hours at a time.

He knew that if Vienna fell,
Poland would be next.

And that's why he led his 3,000
famous Polish hussars

in their leopard skins
and tiger skins to rescue Vienna.

Sobieski assembled his army here,
in the Vienna Woods,

and on the 12th of September, 1683,

they began to fight their way
towards Vienna.

The battle raged from dawn
till dusk,

until eventually the Christian
forces were ready

for the final charge.

King Jan Sobieski, now joined by the
Bavarian and Saxon contingents,

led 18,000 cavalrymen thundering
down the hill into the Turkish camp.

It's said it's the biggest cavalry
charge in history.

The Turks fled.

Kara Mustafa had given orders that
his favourite concubine and his pet

ostrich must not fall
into enemy hands.

In the grand vizier's opulent tent,

headless girl and headless bird
were found side-by-side.

BELL TOLLS

It was a victory for Christ,
it was a victory for Vienna.

The bells of Saint Stephen's
rang out in joyful celebration.

King Jan Sobieski, by right,
should have waited for

Emperor Leopold to return
before he entered his city.

But the old swashbuckler
just couldn't resist it

and he galloped on into Vienna.

When Leopold finally did return,

there was a frosty meeting between
the two monarchs.

Leopold thanked him
half-heartedly.

"It was a pleasure to perform
this small service for you,"

replied the Polish king
sardonically.

Then he left for Poland.

But Leopold commandeered
the victory for the dynasty.

It was the making of the
House of Habsburg.

Kara Mustafa had failed
in his great enterprise,

much of it due to his own
incompetence.

And he would pay the price.

When the Sultan's deaf-mutes,
his traditional executioners,

arrived, Kara Mustafa knew
why they had come.

He bared his neck, "It is God's
will," he said.

They strangled him with their
bowstring,

and then beheaded him and sent
the head to the Sultan.

But for Vienna, and for the
House of Habsburg,

it was a new beginning, a new era.

The Austrian Habsburgs became a
great power in their own right

for the first time.

They struck east against the
Ottomans,

west against the mighty French.

The empire was striking back,

and Vienna would enter
upon its own golden age.

In the next 100 years,
Vienna would see an extraordinary

flourishing of the arts and the

construction of some of the world's
most spectacular palaces.

This is one of the glories
of 18th-century Vienna.

No wonder it's called Belvedere -
look at this view.

And Vienna would inspire, perhaps,
the most brilliant composer of all,

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I would say he was a rock star!

But it would also come under threat
from one of history's greatest

conquerors, Napoleon Bonaparte.

What makes Vienna the imperial city
it is today?

Find out more through the
Open University's interactive map

of landmarks, language and stories

by heading to bbc.co.uk/vienna

and following the links to the
Open University.