of September 1345. She then married Prince Louis of Taranto, and strong in the double support of the papal court at Avignon and of the Venetian republic (both of whom were opposed to Magyar aggrandisement in Italy) questioned the right of Louis to the two Sicilies, which he claimed as the next heir of his murdered brother. In 1347, and again in 1350, Louis occupied Naples and craved permission to be crowned king, but the papal see was inexorable and he was compelled to withdraw. The matter was not decided till 1378 when Joanna, having made the mistake of recognizing the antipope Clement VII., was promptly deposed and excommunicated in favour of Prince Charles of Durazzo, who had been brought up at the Hungarian court. Louis, always inexhaustible in expedients, determined to indemnify himself in the north for his disappointments in the south. With the Habsburgs, Hungary's natural rivals in the west, Louis generally maintained friendly relations. From 1358 to 1368, however, the restless ambition of Rudolph, duke of Austria, who acquired Tirol and raised Vienna to the first rank among the cities of Europe, caused Louis great uneasiness. But Louis always preferred arbitration to war, and the peace congresses of Nagyszombat (1360) and of Pressburg (1360) summoned by him adjusted all the outstanding differences between the central European powers. Louis's diplomacy, moreover, was materially assisted by his lifelong alliance with his uncle, the childless Casimir the Great of Poland, who had appointed him his successor; and on Casimir's death Louis was solemnly crowned king of Poland at Cracow (Nov. 17, 1370). This personal union of the two countries was more glorious than profitable. Louis could give little attention to his unruly Polish subjects and was never very happy among them. Immovably entrenched behind their privileges, they rendered him only the minimum of service; but he compelled their representatives, assembled at Kassa, to recognize his daughter Maria and her affianced husband, Count Sigismund of Brandenburg, as their future king and queen by locking the gates of the city and allowing none to leave it till they had consented to his wishes (1374). Louis is the first European monarch who came into collision with the Turks. He seems to have arrested their triumphant career (c. 1372), and the fine church erected by him at Maria-Zell is a lasting memorial of his victories. From the first he took a just view of the Turkish peril, but the peculiar local and religious difficulties of the whole situation in the Balkans prevented him from dealing with it effectually (see HUNGARY, _History_). Louis died suddenly at Nagyszombat on the 10th of September 1382. He left two daughters Maria and Jadwiga (the latter he destined for the throne of Hungary) under the guardianship of his widow, the daughter of the valiant ban of Bosnia, Stephen Kotromaníc, whom he married in 1353, and who was in every way worthy of him.