Sigismund was perhaps the most interesting of the late medieval rulers of Germany. He managed to gain control of Hungary, to end the Great Schism at the Council of Constance, to be crowned Emperor in Rome and, after years of struggle, to be accepted as king of Bohemia. This is all the more extraordinary in view of his meagre financial resources and the constant demands made on them by the advances of the Turks and Venice's attack on his southern territories. To write a biography of this cosmopolitan figure, material in many languages needs to be consulted, including Hungarian and Czech. Jorg K. Hoensch has made impressive inroads into this Central European literature to write the first major German-language biography of Sigismund for a century and a half in Kaiser Sigismund. Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, 1368-1437 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996; pp. 652. DM86). It is shaped as a narrative with a few chapters tacked on to overview his personality and his circle over the whole reign. Hoensch has taken a sensibly critical attitude to the contemporary narrative sources, particularly Eberhard Windecke's Denkwurdigkeiten and bases all his judgements on a review of the evidence, which convinces in most cases, though perhaps not in his argument that Sigismund had no particular prejudice against the Jews. There is a brief reference to Wycliffe as a Scot, but otherwise the text impresses greatly in its thoroughness and accuracy. For Hoensch, Sigismund made the best of a bad job. Inadequately resourced, facing enemies on a broad front, he none the less maintained his authority and won the respect of many contemporaries, the Czechs, he concedes, being notable exceptions. The narrative format reduces the author's scope for broader perspectives. While he is scrupulous in sketching the background of the events he describes, whether the development of the Schism or the problems of the Teutonic Order, analysis of long-term developments is sketchy. Sigismund's many failings, ranging from unpunctuality to dishonesty, are fairly assessed, as are his failure to produce a workable system for maintaining the public peace in Germany and to provide a lasting and effective defensive system against the Turks. There are many useful appendices, covering such matters as currency equivalencies, the foreign equivalents of German place names and Sigismund's itineraries day by day. Ail in all, this is a most useful general work of reference, which has the merit of also being a readable study of one of the most important figures of the later Middle Ages.

DAVID, ELTIS

Eton College