Historian Thomas Brady Jr. remarks that Sigismund "possessed a breadth of vision and a sense of grandeur unseen in a German monarch since the thirteenth century".

The setbacks which have been seen as his major failures (like dealing with the Hussite movement) are now generally considered by most scholars to be the results of the lack of financial resources and other heavy constraints, rather than personal failings.

[4][5] Born in Nuremberg[6][7] or Prague,[8] Sigismund was the son of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and his fourth and final wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania,[9] who was the granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland and the great-granddaughter of Gediminas, a Grand Duke of Lithuania.

[14] Having raised money by pledging Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, Margrave of Moravia (1388), he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne.

[15] It was not for entirely selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties.

The nobles flocked in their thousands to the royal standard and were reinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe, the most important contingent being that of the French led by John the Fearless, son of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy.

Sultan Bayezid I raised the siege of Constantinople and, at the head of 140,000 men, completely defeated the Christian forces in the Battle of Nicopolis fought between the 25 and 28 September 1396.

Deprived of his authority in Hungary, Sigismund then turned his attention to securing the succession in Germany and Bohemia, and was recognized by his childless half-brother Wenceslaus IV as Vicar-General of the whole empire.

In the meantime, a group of Hungarian noblemen swore loyalty to the last Anjou monarch, Ladislaus of Naples, putting their hands on the relic of Saint Ladislas of Hungary in Nagyvárad (today Oradea).

This struggle in turn led to a war with the Republic of Venice, as Ladislaus had sold the Dalmatian cities to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats[11] before leaving for his own land.

In the following years, Sigismund acted indirectly to thwart Ladislaus' attempts to conquer central Italy, by allying with the Italian cities resisting him and by applying diplomatic pressure on him.

[citation needed] Due to his frequent absences attending to business in the other countries over which he ruled, he was obliged to consult Diets in Hungary with more frequency than his predecessors and institute the office of Palatine as chief administrator while he was away.

[16] Threatened by Ottoman expansion, King Sigismund managed to strengthen the security of southern Hungarian borders by entering into a defensive alliance with Despot Stefan Lazarević of Serbia.

In the diplomatic struggle to prevent war between Poland-Lithuania, which was supported by the Muscovites, and the Teutonic Knights, Sigismund used Stibor's fine diplomacy to gain financially.

Three kings and three other monarchs, a Serbian despot, 13 herzogs and/or dukes, 21 counts, 2000 knights, 1 cardinal, 1 legate, 3 archbishops, 11 other bishops, 86 players and trumpeters, 17 messengers, and 40,000 horses.

Besides the king, Hrvoje Vukčić Hrvatinić, Sandalj Hranić Kosača and Pavle Radinović also came from Bosnia, and from Serbia, the Despot Stefan Lazarević, bringing two thousand horses.

Długosz reports the arrival in Buda of the envoys of the Jalal al-Din, khan of the Golden Horde and son of Tokhtamysh, who wanted to meet Władysław II of Poland.

Jalal al-Din was an ally of the Polish and Lithuanian rulers in their fight against the Teutonic Order, and according to some reconstructions of the events, Sigismund also wanted to rely on the Tatars against the Ottoman threat.

A Polish priest and chronicler Jan Długosz says in his Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae that in the tournament there were also knights from Bulgaria, probably from the court of prince Fruzhin, Sigismund's vasal who also was at the conference.

The king took advantage of the difficulties of Antipope John XXIII to obtain a promise that a council should be called in Constance in 1414 to settle the Western Schism.

He took a leading part in the deliberations of this assembly, and during the sittings travelled to France, England, and Burgundy in a vain attempt to secure the abdication of the three rival popes.

The council ended in 1418, having resolved the Schism and—of great consequence to Sigismund's future career—having the Czech religious reformer, Jan Hus, burned at the stake for heresy in July 1415.

[23][24] His main acts during these years were an alliance with England against France, and a failed attempt, owing to the hostility of the princes, to secure peace in Germany by a league of the towns.

Sigismund began to shift his alliance from France to England after the French defeat at the Battle of Agincourt, which he was also controversially absent from due to hosting a pseudo-council in Perpignan with Antipope Benedict XIII and King Ferdinand I of Aragon.

The signing of the Treaty of Canterbury on 15 August 1416 culminated diplomatic efforts between Henry V of England and Sigismund and resulted in a defensive and offensive alliance against France.

Not all of Sigismund's projects came to fruition, and he could not always control the longer-term outcomes of his policies, but the notion that there were phases of an 'empire without a king' during his reign clearly does not stand up to the abundant evidence of his interactions with regional clients and associations.

At the same time, the somewhat adulatory view that has developed in recent years of Sigismund as a masterly politician can be tempered by the evidence that it was often felicitous alliances as much as personal skill which made his successes possible."

In 1431, he went to Milan where on 25 November he received the Iron Crown as King of Italy; after which he remained for some time at Siena, negotiating for his coronation as emperor and for the recognition of the Council of Basel by Pope Eugenius IV.

His firstborn child, probably a son, was born prematurely as a result of a horse riding accident suffered by Queen Mary of Hungary when she was well advanced in pregnancy.

Barbara's only child, born in the purple on 7 October 1409, probably in the castle of Visegrád, was Elisabeth of Luxembourg,[36] the future queen consort of Hungary, Germany, and Bohemia.