sts 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.

Frederic, the emperor, had been quite sanguine in the hopes of obtaining
the crown of Bohemia. Bitterly disappointed there, he at first made a
show of hostile resistance; but thinking better of the matter, he
concluded to acquiesce in the elevation of Podiebrad, to secure amicable
relations with him, and to seek his aid in promotion of his efforts to
obtain the crown of Hungary. Here again the emperor failed. The nobles
assembled in great strength at Buda, and elected unanimously Matthias,
the only surviving son of the heroic Hunniades, whose memory was
embalmed in the hearts of all the Hungarians. The boy then, for he was
but a boy, and was styled contemptuously by the disappointed Frederic
the boy king, entered into an alliance with Podiebrad for mutual
protection, and engaged the hand of his daughter in marriage. Thus was
the great kingdom of Austria, but recently so powerful in the union of
all the Austrian States with Bohemia and Hungary, again divided and
disintegrated. The emperor, in his vexation, foolishly sent an army of
five thousand men into Hungary, insanely hoping to take the crown by
force of arms, but he was soon compelled to relinquish the hopeless
enterprise.

And now Frederic and Albert began to quarrel at Vienna. The emperor was
arrogant and domineering. Albert was irritable and jealous. First came
angry words; then the enlisting of partisans, and then all the miseries
of fierce and determined civil war. The capital was divided into hostile
factions