Andrew II of Hungary

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Andrew II of Hungary with queen Gertrude von Andechs-Meranien

Andrew II, called the Jerosolimitan (Hungarian: András or Endre, Slovak: Ondrej, Croatian: Andrija I.) (c. 1175 – October 26, 1235) was king of Hungary from 1205 until 1235 as a member of Árpád dynasty.

Andrew was a son of King Bela III. Even after his unsuccessful rebellion against his brother he was named regent by his older brother Emeric for the minority of Ladislaus III. He succeeded his nephew, the infant Ladislaus III after his death, as King of Hungary in 1205.

Few other royal reigns were as detrimental to the Hungarian realm as Andrew's. Valiant, enterprising, pious as he was, all these fine qualities were ruined by a reckless good nature which never thought of the future. He declared in a decree that the generosity of a king should be limitless, and he followed this principle throughout his reign. He gave away everything - money, villages, domains, whole counties - to the utter impoverishment of the treasury, thereby rendering the crown, for the first time in Hungarian history, dependent upon the great nobility eager for personal gain.

In all matters of government, Andrew was equally reckless and haphazard. He was directly responsible for the beginnings of the feudal anarchy which led to the extinction of the Árpáds dynasty at the end of the 13th century. The great nobles did not even respect the lives of the royal family, for Andrew was recalled from a futile attempt to reconquer Galicia through the murder of his first wife Gertrude of Merania in 1213 by rebellious nobles jealous of the influence of her relatives.

In 1215 he married Iolanthe (Yolande de Courtenay) of France, but in 1217 was compelled by Pope Honorius III to lead the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land, which he undertook in hopes of being elected Latin emperor of Constantinople. The crusade was not popular in Hungary, but Andrew contrived to collect 15,000 men together, whom he led to Venice. In order to finance his crusade he had to appoint Muslim businessmen to important economic positions. He was accused of giving his kingdom to the hands of Muslims in order to free a far away land from them. After the surrender of Hungarian claims on Zara (Zadar), about two-thirds of the crusaders were conveyed to Acre. Nevertheless the whole expedition was a forlorn hope. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was by this time reduced to a strip of coast about 440 mi² in extent, and after a drawn battle with the Turks on the Jordan River on November 10, 1217 and fruitless assaults on the fortresses of the Lebanon and on Mount Tabor, Andrew started home (January 18, 1218) through Antioch (Antakya), Iconium (Konya), Constantinople, and Bulgaria. On his return he found the feudal barons in the ascendant, and they extorted from him the Golden Bull.

He invited to the kingdom the Teutonic Order and offered them lands in Transylvania to defend the borders from the nomadic Cumans. But he had to expel them in 1225, because they tried to form an independent principality from the lands given to them.

Andrew's last exploit was to defeat an invasion of Frederick II of Austria in 1234. That same year he married his third wife, Beatrice of Este.