whereby the Empire often fell into trouble at Election-time.
For they were proud stout men, our Hapsburgers, though of taciturn
unconciliatory ways; and Rudolf had so fitted them out with
fruitful Austrian Dukedoms, which they much increased by marriages
and otherwise,--Styria, Carinthia, the Tyrol, by degrees, not to
speak of their native HAPSBURG much enlarged, and claims on
Switzerland all round it,--they had excellent means of battling
for their pretensions and disputable elections. None of them
succeeded, however, for a hundred and fifty years, except that
same one-eyed, loose-lipped unbeautiful Albert I.; a Kaiser
dreadfully fond of earthly goods, too. Who indeed grasped all
round him, at property half his, or wholly not his: Rhine-tolls,
Crown of Bohemia, Landgraviate of Thuringen, Swiss Forest Cantons,
Crown of Hungary, Crown of France even:--getting endless quarrels
on his hands, and much defeat mixed with any victory there was.
Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty children by one wife; and felt
that there was need of apanages! He is understood (guessed, not
proved) to have instigated two assassinations in pursuit of these
objects; and he very clearly underwent ONE in his own person.
Assassination first was of Dietzman the Thuringian Landgraf, an
Anti-Albert champion, who refused to be robbed by Albert,--for
whom the great Dante is (with almost palpable absurdity) fabled to
have written an Epitaph still legible in the Church at Leipzig.
[Menckenii Scriptores, i.??
Fredericus Admorsus (by Tentsel).] Assassination
second was of Wenzel, the poor young Bohemian King, Ottocar's
Grandson and last heir. Sure enough, this important young
gentleman "was murdered by some one at Olmutz next year" (1306, a
promising event for Albert then), "but none yet knows who it was."
[Kohler, p. 270.]