increased, by annexation, the territory and the power of the house of
Hapsburg. By purchase, intimidation, war, and diplomacy, Albert had for
some time been making such rapid encroachments, that a general
insurrection was secretly planned to resist his power. All Switzerland
seemed to unite as with one accord. Albert was rejoiced at this
insurrection, for, confident of superior power, he doubted not his
ability speedily to quell it, and it would afford him the most favorable
pretext for still greater aggrandizement. Albert hastened to his domain
at Hapsburg, where he was assassinated by conspirators led by his own
nephew, whom he was defrauding of his estates.

Frederic and Leopold, the two oldest surviving sons of Albert, avenged
their father's death by pursuing the conspirators until they all
suffered the penalty of their crimes. With ferocity characteristic of
the age, they punished mercilessly the families and adherents of the
assassins. Their castles were demolished, their estates confiscated,
their domestics and men at arms massacred, and their wives and children
driven out into the world to beg or to starve. Sixty-three of the
retainers of Lord Balne, one of the conspirators, though entirely
innocent of the crime, and solemnly protesting their unconsciousness of
any plot, were beheaded in one day. Though but four persons took part in
the assassination, and it was not known that any others were implicated
in the deed, it is estimated that more than a thousand persons suffered
death through the fury of the avengers. Agnes, one of the daughters of
Albert, endeavored with her own hands to strangle the infant child of
the Lord of Eschenback, when the soldiers, moved by its piteous cries,
with difficulty rescued it from her hands.

Elizabeth, the widow of Albert, with her implacable fanatic daughter
Agnes, erected a magnificent convent on the spot at Königsburg, where