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Hungary under Ludwig (Louis) II – King: 1516 – 1526
1516 KB Silver Denier / Denar 15mm (0.45 grams)
Reference: ÉH# 673, H# 841, CNH II# 306A
* LVDOVICVS * R * VNGAR * *, Fourfold coat of arms: Hungarian Árpád stripes, Hungarian double cross, Dalmatian leopard heads, Bohemian lion; in center chest shield Polish Jagellon eagle, in inner pearl circle.
PATRONA * * VNGARIE, Crowned Madonna seated, with child in her right arm.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 Louis II (Czech: Ludvík, Croatian: Ludovik, Hungarian: Lajos, Slovak: Ľudovít; 1 July 1506 – 29 August 1526) was King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia from 1516 to 1526. He was killed during the Battle of Mohács fighting the Ottomans, whose victory led to the Ottoman annexation of Hungary. He had no legitimate issue.
At his premature birth in Buda on 1 July 1506, the court doctors kept him alive by slaying animals and wrapping him in their warm carcasses as a primitive incubator. He was the only son of Vladislaus II Jagiellon and his third wife, Anne of Foix-Candale.
Vladislaus II took steps to ensure a smooth succession by arranging for the boy to be crowned in his own lifetime; the coronation of Louis as king of Hungary took place on 4 June 1508 in Székesfehérvár Basilica, and his coronation as king of Bohemia was held in 11 March 1509 in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
In 1515 Louis II was married to Mary of Austria, granddaughter of Emperor Maximilian I, as stipulated by the First Congress of Vienna in 1515. His sister Anne was married to Mary’s brother Ferdinand, then a governor on behalf of his brother Charles V, and later Emperor Ferdinand I. During the greater part of his reign he was the puppet of the magnates and kept in such penury that he was often obliged to pawn his jewels to get enough food and clothing. His guardians, Cardinal Tamás Bakócz and Count George Brandenburg-Ansbach, shamefully neglected him, squandered the royal revenues and distracted the whole kingdom with their endless dissensions. Matters grew even worse on the death of cardinal Bakócz, when the magnates István Báthory, John Zápolya and István Werbőczy fought each other furiously, and used the diets as their tools.
As king of Bohemia, Louis became known as “Ludovicus the Child”. The first thaler coins were minted during his reign in Bohemia, later giving the name to the dollars used in different countries. These correctly style him as “LVDOVICVS•PRIM•D:GRACIA•REX•BO*” (Louis the First, by the grace of God King of Bohemia).
 After his father’s death in 1516, the minor Louis II ascended to the throne of Hungary and Croatia. Louis was adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1515. When Maximilian I died in 1519, Louis was raised by his legal guardian, his cousin George, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach.
Following the accession to the throne of Suleiman I, the sultan sent an ambassador to Louis II to collect the annual tribute that Hungary had been subjected to. Louis refused to pay the annual tribute and had the Ottoman ambassador executed and sent the head to the Sultan. Louis believed that the Papal States and other Christian States including Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor would help him. This event hastened the fall of Hungary.
Hungary was in a state of near anarchy in 1520 under the rule of the magnates. The king’s finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income. The country’s defenses weakened as border guards went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled. In 1521 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was well aware of Hungary’s weakness.
The Ottoman Empire declared war on the Kingdom of Hungary, Suleiman postponed his plan to besiege Rhodes and made an expedition to Belgrade. Louis failed to coordinate and gather his forces. At the same time, Hungary was unable to get assistance from other European states, which Louis had hoped for. Belgrade and many strategic castles in Serbia were captured by the Ottomans. This was disastrous for Louis’ kingdom; without the strategically important cities of Belgrade and Šabac, Hungary, including Buda, was open to further Turkish conquests.
After the siege of Rhodes, in 1526 Suleiman made a second expedition to subdue all of Hungary. Louis made a tactical error when he tried to stop the Ottoman army in an open field battle with a medieval army, insufficient firearms, and obsolete tactics. On 29 August 1526, Louis led his forces against Suleiman in the disastrous Battle of Mohács. The Hungarian army was surrounded by Ottoman cavalry in a pincer movement, and in the center the Hungarian heavy knights and infantry were repulsed and suffered heavy casualties, especially from the well-positioned Ottoman cannons and well-armed and trained Janissary musketeers.
Nearly the entire Hungarian Royal army was destroyed in nearly 2 hours on the battlefield. During the retreat, the twenty-year-old king died when he fell backwards off his horse while trying to ride up a steep ravine of the Csele stream. He fell into the stream and, due to the weight of his armor, he was unable to stand up and drowned. As Louis had no legitimate children, Ferdinand was elected as his successor in the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, but the Hungarian throne was contested by John Zápolya, who ruled the areas of the kingdom conquered by the Turks as an Ottoman client.
Although Louis II’s marriage remained childless, he probably had an illegitimate child with his mother’s former lady-in-waiting, Angelitha Wass. This son was called John (János in Hungarian). This name appears in sources in Vienna as either János Wass or János Lanthos. The former surname is his mother’s maiden name. The latter surname may refer to his occupation. “Lanthos” means “lutenist”, or “bard”. He received incomes from the Royal Treasury regularly. He had further offspring.
North of the town of Mohacs, there is a 5 meter high monument to the memory of Lajos II. It is located near the site of Louis’ death at the Csele Stream. On the monument there is a bronze plaque which depicts Lajos falling off his horse. On the top of the monument there is a figure of a sleeping lion. Soma Turcsányi, a Hussar lieutenant, at his own expense, constructed the original commemorative column in 1864. It was reconstructed in 1897. The monument was restored by the local government in 1986.
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/220px-Sandro_Botticelli_-_The_Virgin_and_Child_(The_Madonna_of_the_Book)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) A Madonnama donna, meaning ‘my lady’. The Madonna and Child type is very prevalent in Christian iconography, divided into many traditional subtypes especially in Eastern Orthodox iconography, often known after the location of a notable icon of the type, such as the Theotokos of Vladimir, Agiosoritissa, Blachernitissa, etc., or descriptive of the depicted posture, as in Hodegetria, Eleusa, etc.
The term Madonna in the sense of “picture or statue of the Virgin Mary” enters English usage in the 17th century, primarily in reference to works of the Italian Renaissance. In an Eastern Orthodox context, such images are typically known as Theotokos. “Madonna” may be generally used of representations of Mary, with or without the infant Jesus, is the focus and central figure of the image, possibly flanked or surrounded by angels or saints. Other types of Marian imagery have a narrative context, depicting scenes from the Life of the Virginn, e.g. the Annunciation to Mary, are not typically called “Madonna”.
<pthe earliest="" depictions="" of="" mary="" date="" still="" to="" early="" christianity="" (2nd="" 3rd="" centuries),="" found="" in="" the="" catacombs="" rome.="" these="" are="" a="" narrative="" context.="" classical="" "madonna"="" or="" "theotokos"="" imagery="" develops="" from="" 5th="" century,="" as="" marian="" devotion="" rose="" great="" importance="" after="" council="" ephesus="" formally="" affirmed="" her="" status="" "mother="" god="" Theotokos (“God-bearer”) in 431. The Theotokos iconography as it developed in the 6th to 8th century rose to great importance in the high medieval period (12th to 14th centuries) both in the Eastern Orthodox and in the Latin spheres. According to a tradition recorded in the 8th century, Marian iconography goes back to a portrait drawn from life by Luke the Evangelist, with a number of icons (such as the Panagia Portaitissa) claimed to either represent this original icon or to be a direct copy of it. In the Western tradition, depictions of the Madonna were greatly diversified by Renaissance masters such as Duccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, Caravaggio and Rubens (and further by certain modernists, such as Salvador Dalí and Henry Moore) while Eastern Orthodox iconography adheres more closely to the inherited traditional types.
 Hungaryy is a sovereign state in Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west, Austria to the northwest, and Ukraine to the northeast. The country’s capital and largest city is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and the Schengen Area. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
 Following centuries of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Gepids, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád in the Honfoglalás (“homeland-conquest”). His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000 CE, converting the country to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541-1699), Hungary came under Habsburg rule, and later formed a significant part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918).
Hungary’s current borders were first established by the Treaty of Trianon (1920) after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, and 32% of ethnic Hungarians. Following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary came under the influence of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship (1947-1989). The country gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal opening of its previously-restricted border with Austria in 1989, which accelerated the collapse of the Eastern Bloc.
On 23 October 1989, Hungary again became a democratic parliamentary republic, and today has a high-income economy with a very high Human Development Index. Hungary is a popular tourist destination attracting 10.675 million tourists a year (2013). It is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second-largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (the Hortobágy National Park).
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