Ulrich II, Count of Celje
Ulrich II of Celje (* 1406, † November 9, 1456 in Belgrade ) was Princely Count of Cilli.
Life
Ulrich was the son of Count Frederick II of Celje and Elizabeth of Frangepán / Francopan. From Ulrich's youth little is known. To 1432 he married Catherine, daughter of George Brankovic. An anonymous chronicler Cillier to have commented that connection as follows:
" Count Ulrich had to wife the daughter of a powerful lord and prince Đurđe, Despot of Serbia. She was not of our faith, she was of Greek beliefs and lived according to their faith, had priests and chaplains of their faith and they rarely participated in fairs and worship of our faith. "
His influence on the affairs of Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire turned early to his father in the shadows, with which he was charged by the Emperor Sigismund together in 1436 in the imperial princes. This excited feuds with the Habsburgs, the overlords of Cilli were, but eventually ended up in an alliance with the Habsburg king Albert II, who made Ulrich for a while his viceroy in Bohemia.
According to Albrecht 's death in 1439, Ulrich took the widow Elisabeth and led the coronation of her underage son Ladislaus V. 1440th There followed a feud with the Hunyadi, aggravated by Johann Hunyadi's attack on Serbia in 1444 and his refusal to Ulrich's claim to Bosnia after death Stefan Tvrtkos recognize 1443. In 1446 Hunyadi plundered, now Regent of Hungary, the territories of Cilli in Croatia - Slavonia; his power but was broken in 1448 in Kosovo, and Count Ulrich was in 1450 a successful crusade, nominally in the interests of the Habsburgs, lead to Hungary. In 1452 he forced the emperor Frederick III. , The young king Ladislaus V. to pass into his care, and became the de facto ruler of Hungary. 1454 his power was increased by the legacy of the huge wealth of his father, and in 1456 he was appointed by Ladislaus his viceroy in Hungary. The Hunyadi now conspired against Ulrich and wanted to eliminate him. On 8 November ( to Kos November 9 in the morning) he went despite warnings to the king to Belgrade. The next day he was attacked and killed by Ladislaus Hunyadi and his friends. With him went the male line of the Counts of Cilli. Ulrich's widow Katarina sought and found protection under Jan Vitovec, the captain of the Counts of Cilli. They appointed him governor of all cilli between goods. This is understood shiny, the rivalry between the Emperor Frederick III. and Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, to use for his own purposes; both raised namely right to the possessions of the Cillier.
The ambition of Count Ulrich was boundless, his passions rampant; but the hostile judgments that are handed down from Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and other contemporaries are to be treated with caution.