page_title: Jadwiga of Poland
section_title: Refusal of William (1385)
hierarchical_section_title: Jadwiga of Poland / Reign / Refusal of William (1385)
caption_attribution_description: Dymitr z Goraja
context_page_description: Jadwiga, also known as Hedwig, was the first female monarch of the Kingdom of Poland, reigning from 16 October 1384 until her death. She was the youngest daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland, and his wife Elizabeth of Bosnia. Jadwiga was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou, but she had more close forebears among the Polish Piasts. In 1997 she was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
  In 1375 it was planned that she would eventually marry William of Austria, and she lived in Vienna from 1378 to 1380. Jadwiga's father is thought to have regarded her and William as his favoured successors in Hungary after the 1379 death of her eldest sister, Catherine, since the Polish nobility had that same year pledged their homage to Louis' second daughter, Mary, and Mary's fiancé, Sigismund of Luxemburg. However, Louis died, and in 1382, at her mother's insistence, Mary was crowned "King of Hungary". Sigismund of Luxemburg tried to take control of Poland, but the Polish nobility countered that they would be obedient to a daughter of King Louis only if she settled in Poland. Queen Elizabeth then chose Jadwiga to reign there, but did not send her to Kraków to be crowned.
context_section_description: The Polish lords did not want to accept Jadwiga's fourteen-year-old fiancé, William of Habsburg, as their sovereign. They thought that the inexperienced William and his Austrian kinsmen could not safeguard Poland's interests against its powerful neighbours, especially the Luxemburgs which controlled Bohemia and Brandenburg, and had a strong claim on Hungary. According to Halecki, the lords of Lesser Poland were the first to suggest that Jadwiga should marry the pagan duke Jogaila of Lithuania.
  Jogaila sent his envoys – including his brother, Skirgaila, and a German burgher from Riga, Hanul –  to Kraków to request Jadwiga's hand in January 1385. Jadwiga refused to answer, stating only that her mother would decide. Jogaila's two envoys left for Hungary and met Queen Elizabeth. She informed them that "she would allow whatever was advantageous to Poland and insisted that her daughter and the prelates and nobles of the Kingdom had to do what they considered would benefit Christianity and their kingdom", according to Jan Długosz's chronicle. The nobles from Kraków, Sandomierz and Greater Poland assembled in Kraków in June or July and the "majority of the more sensible" voted for the acceptance of Jogaila's marriage proposal.
  In the meantime, William's father, Leopold III hurried to Buda in late July 1385, demanding the consummation of the marriage between William and Jadwiga before 16 August. Queen Elizabeth confirmed the previous agreements about the marriage, ordering Vladislaus II of Opole to make preparations for the ceremony. According to canon law, Jadwiga's marriage sacrament could only be completed before her twelfth birthday if the competent prelate testified her precocious maturity. Demetrius, Archbishop of Esztergom, issued the necessary document. William went to Kraków in the first half of August, but his entry to Wawel Castle was barred. Długosz states that Jadwiga and William would only be able to meet in the nearby Franciscan convent.
  Contemporary or nearly contemporaneous records of the completion of the marriage between William and Jadwiga are contradictory and unclear. The official accounts of the municipal authorities of Kraków record that on 23 August 1385 an amnesty was granted to the prisoners in the city jail on the occasion of the celebration of the Queen's marriage. On the other hand, a contemporary Austrian chronicle, the Continuatio Claustroneubuzgis states that the Poles had tried to murder William before he consummated the marriage. In the next century, Długosz states that William was "removed in a shameful and offensive manner and driven from the castle" after he entered "the Queen's bedchamber"; but the same chronicler also mentions that Jadwiga was well aware that "many people knew that ... she had for a fortnight shared her bed with Duke William and that there had been physical consummation".
  On the night when William entered the queen's bedchamber, a group of Polish noblemen broke into the castle, forcing William to flee, according to Długosz. After this humiliation, Długosz continues, Jadwiga decided to leave Wawel and join William, but the gate of the castle was locked. She called for "an axe and [tried] to break it open", but Dymitr of Goraj convinced her to return to the castle. Oscar Halecki says that Długosz's narrative "cannot be dismissed as a romantic legend"; Robert I. Frost writes that it is a "tale, almost certainly apocryphal". There is no doubt, however, that William of Austria was forced to leave Poland.
caption: Dymitr of Goraj by Jan Matejko depicts Jadwiga trying to break the castle gate to join William
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