ABSTRACT
A young man burning with ambition as befitted his youth but without means, the archduke Maximilian made a good start to his career through his father's careful contriving: he married the heiress of the kingdom of Burgundy. This first success encouraged him to contract many other marriage alliances and to be active in all directions at the point when the House of Austria's interests had become European rather than narrowly local. While his numerous military interventions, with the exception of his very earliest in the Low Countries, rarely bore fruit, his clever marriage strategy allowed his grandson to become, in the space of a generation, the last emperor of the West worthy of that name, thus realizing the proud device of Frederick III: AEIOU (Austriae est imperare orbi universo).
