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Margaret Maultasch

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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MARGARET MAULTASCH (1318-1369), countess of Tirol, who received the name of Maultasch (pocket-mouth) on account of the shape of her mouth, was the daughter and heiress of Henry, duke of Carinthia and count of Tirol. When Henry died in 1335 Carinthia passed to Albert II., duke of Austria; but Tirol was inherited by Margaret and her young husband, John Henry, son of John, king of Bohemia, whom she had married in 1330. This union was not a happy one, and the Tirolese disliked the government of Charles, afterwards the emperor Charles IV., who ruled the county for his brother. The result was that John Henry was driven from Tirol, and Margaret's cause was espoused by the emperor Louis IV., who was anxious to add the county to his possessions. Declaring her marriage dissolved on the ground that it had not been consummated, Louis married Margaret in 1342 to his own son Louis, margrave of Brandenburg. But as this action on the emperor's part entrenched on the privileges of the Church, Pope Clement VI. placed father and son under the ban, from which they were not released until 1359. In 1361 Margaret's husband died, followed two years later by her only son, Meinhard, when she handed over Tirol to Rudolph IV., duke of Austria, and retired to Vienna, where she died on the 3rd of October 1369. She lived long in the memory of the people of Carinthia, who regarded her as an amazon, and called her the Wicked Gretl. See A. Huber, Geschichte der Vereinigung Tirols mit Oesterreich (Innsbruck, 1864).