He soon after repaired to Prague, in Bohemia, to solemnize his marriage with Magdalen, daughter of Charles VII., King of France.  He had just reached the city, and was making preparations for his marriage in unusual splendor, when he was attacked by a malignant disease, supposed to be the plague, and died after a sickness of but thirty-six hours.  The unhappy king, who, through the stormy scenes of his short life, had developed no grandeur of soul, was oppressed with the awfulness of passing to the final judgment.  In the ordinances of the Church he sought to find solace for a sinful and a troubled spirit.  Having received the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, with dying lips he commenced repeating the Lord’s prayer.  He had just uttered the words “deliver us from evil,” when his spirit took its flight to the judgment seat of Christ.

Frederic, the emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria.  The imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title.  The Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom the jealous States were willing to confer but little real power.  A writer at that time, AEneas Sylvius, addressing the Germans, says: 

“Although you acknowledge the emperor for your king and master, he possesses but a precarious sovereignty; he has no power; you only obey him when you choose; and you are seldom inclined to obey.  You are all desirous to be free; neither the princes nor the States render to him what is due.  He has no revenue, no treasure.  Hence you are involved in endless contests and daily wars.  Hence also rapine, murder, conflagrations, and a thousand evils which arise from divided authority.”

Upon the death of Ladislaus there was a great rush and grasping for the vacant thrones of Bohemia and Hungary, and for possession of the rich dukedoms of Austria.  After a long conflict the Austrian estates were divided into three portions.  Frederic, the emperor, took Upper Austria; his brother Albert, who had succeeded to the Swiss estates, took Lower Austria; Sigismond, Albert’s nephew, a man of great energy of character, took Carinthia.  The three occupied the palace in Vienna in joint residence.

The energetic regent, George Podiebrad, by adroit diplomacy succeeded, after an arduous contest, in obtaining the election by the Bohemian nobles to the throne of Bohemia.  The very day he was chosen he was inaugurated at Prague, and though rival candidates united with the pope to depose him, he maintained his position against them all.