Although, Leopold Loeffler saw himself as the great supporter of freedom and national sovereignty, at least some of his commissions painted for the Austrian court inadvertently also glorified the military victories of the Habsburgs over less fortunate nations. In 1860 Loeffler produced a battle scene for Archduke Rudolf, showing the victorious Emperor Rudolph I of Germany in 1278, destroying the Czech ruler Ottokar II of Bohemia in the Battle on the Marchfeld () at Dürnkrut. The battle was lost in an ambush attack, a dishonorable act by the rules of knighthood. Most importantly, it also took away the Czech hopes of freedom for centuries to come. Such ideologically motivated depictions of imperial history of Austria-Hungary did not contribute to Loeffler's popularity in his native land under the foreign domination.