Under Rudolph of Habsburg, a powerful European dynasty was launched, one of the longest lived in history. The Habsburg grip on much of central Europe would last until the end of World War I in 1918. During the next 2 centuries a series of annexations and consolidations of power brought both Carinthia (1335) and the Tyrol (1363) under Habsburg control.
Many of these Habsburg rulers are long forgotten, but an exception is Rudolf IV (1339-65). Known as "The Founder," he laid the cornerstone of what was later consecrated as St. Stephan's Cathedral. He also founded the University of Vienna as a response to the university in neighboring Prague.
A turning point in the dynasty came in 1453, when Friedrich II was elected Holy Roman Emperor. He ruled from a power base in Vienna. By 1469, Vienna had been elevated to a bishopric, giving the city wide-ranging secular and religious authority.
Friedrich's power was not always steady -- he lost control of both Bohemia and Hungary, each of which elected a king. In 1485, he was driven from Vienna by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus, who ruled for a 5-year period from Vienna's Hofburg.
In 1490, Corvinus died and civil war broke out in Hungary. Maximilian I (1459-1519), Friedrich's son, took advantage of the situation in Hungary to regain control of much of the territory his father had lost.
The Habsburgs did not always conquer territory. Sometimes they succeeded through politically expedient marriages, a series of which brought Spain, Burgundy, and the Netherlands into their empire. In 1496, 4 years after Spanish colonization of the New World, a Habsburg, Phillip the Fair, married the Spanish infanta (heiress), a union that produced Charles I (Carlos I), who became ruler of Spain and its New World holdings in 1516. Three years later, he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor as Charles V. Charles ceded control of Austria to his Vienna-based younger brother, Ferdinand, in 1521. Ferdinand later married Anna Jagiello, heiress to Hungary and Bohemia, adding those countries to the empire.
In 1526, discontent in Vienna broke into civil war. Ferdinand responded with brutal repression and a new city charter that placed the city directly under Habsburg control.
