John of Bohemia was an overbearing man, and feeling quite impregnable in his northern realms beyond the mountains, assumed such a dictatorial air as to rouse the ire of the princes of Austria and Bavaria.  These two houses consequently entered into an intimate alliance for mutual security.  The Duke of Carinthia, who was uncle to Albert and Otho, died, leaving only a daughter, Margaret.  This dukedom, about the size of the State of Massachusetts, a wild and mountainous region, was deemed very important as the key to Italy.  John of Bohemia, anxious to obtain it, had engaged the hand of Margaret for his son, then but eight years of age.  It was a question in dispute whether the dukedom could descend to a female, and Albert and Otho claimed it as the heirs of their uncle.  Louis, the emperor, supported the claims of Austria, and thus Carinthia became attached to this growing power.

John, enraged, formed a confederacy with the kings of Hungary and Poland, and some minor princes, and invaded Austria.  For some time they swept all opposition before them.  But the Austrian troops and those of the empire checked them at Landau.  Here they entered into an agreement without a battle, by which Austria was permitted to retain Carinthia, she making important concessions to Bohemia.  In February, 1339, Otho died, and Albert was invested with the sole administration of affairs.  The old King of Bohemia possessed vehemence of character which neither age nor the total blindness with which he had become afflicted could repress.  He traversed the empire, and even went to France, organizing a powerful confederacy against the emperor.  The pope, Clement VI., who had always been inimical to Louis of Bavaria, influenced by John of Bohemia, deposed and excommunicated Louis, and ordered a new meeting of the diet of electors, which chose Charles, eldest son of the Bohemian monarch, and heir to that crown, emperor.

The deposed Louis fought bravely for the crown thus torn from his brow.  Albert of Austria aided him with all his energies.  Their united armies, threading the defiles of the Bohemian mountains, penetrated the very heart of the kingdom, when, in the midst of success, the deposed Emperor Louis fell dead from a stroke of apoplexy, in the year 1347.  This event left Charles of Bohemia in undisputed possession of the imperial crown.  Albert immediately recognized his claim, effected reconciliation, and becoming the friend and the ally of the emperor, pressed on cautiously but securely, year after year, in his policy of annexation.  But storms of war incessantly howled around his domains until he died, a crippled paralytic, on the 16th of August, 1358.

CHAPTER III.

RHODOLPH II., ALBERT IV.  AND ALBERT V.

From 1339 to 1437.

Rhodolph ii.—­Marriage of John to Margaret.—­Intriguing for the Tyrol.—­Death of Rhodolph.—­Accession of Power to Austria.—­Dividing the Empire.—­Delight of the Emperor Charles.—­Leopold.—­His Ambition and Successes.—­Hedwige, Queen of Poland.—­“The Course of true Love never did run smooth.”—­Unhappy Marriage of Hedwige.—­Heroism of Arnold of Winkelreid.—­Death of Leopold.—­Death of Albert IV.—­Accession of Albert V.—­Attempts of Sigismond to bequeath to Albert V. Hungary and Bohemia.