had fallen, he was already King of Bohemia, strong in his right
and in the favor of the natives; though a titular Competitor,
Henry of the Tyrol, beaten off by the late Kaiser, was still
extant: whom, however, and all other perils Johann contrived to
weather; growing up to be a far-sighted stout-hearted man, and
potent Bohemian King, widely renowned in his day. He had a Son,
and then two Grandsons, who were successively Kaisers, after a
sort; making up the "Luxemburg Four" we spoke of. He did Crusades,
one or more, for the Teutsch Ritters, in a shining manner;--
unhappily with loss of an eye; nay ultimately, by the aid of quack
oculists, with loss of both eyes. An ambitious man, not to be
quelled by blindness; man with much negotiation in him; with a
heavy stroke of fight too, and tomper nothing loath at it;
of which we shall see some glimpse by and by.

The pity was, for the Reich if not for him, he could not himself
become Kaiser. Perhaps we had not then seen Henry VII.'s fine
enterprises, like a fleet of half-built ships, go mostly to planks
again, on the waste sea, had his Son followed him. But there was,
on the contrary, a contested election; Austria in again, as usual,
and again unsuccessful. The late Kaiser's Austrian competitor,
"Friedrich the Fair, Duke of Austria," the parricided Albert's
Son, was again one of the parties. Against whom, with real but not
quite indisputable majority, stood Ludwig Duke of Bavaria: "Ludwig
IV.," "Ludwig DER BAIER (the Bavarian)" as they call him among
Kaisers. Contest attended with the usual election expenses;
war-wrestle, namely, between the parties till one threw the other.
There was much confused wrestling and throttling for seven years
or more (1315-1322). Our Nurnberg Burggraf, Friedrich IV., held
with Ludwig, as did the real majority, though in a languid manner,