, and the whole country was ravaged by the sweep of armies. The
populace of Vienna, espousing the cause of Albert, rose in insurrection,
pillaged the houses of the adherents of Frederic, drove Frederic, with
his wife and infant child, into the citadel, and invested the fortress.
Albert placed himself at the head of the insurgents and conducted the
siege. The emperor, though he had but two hundred men in the garrison,
held out valiantly. But famine would soon have compelled him to
capitulate, had not the King of Bohemia, with a force of thirteen
thousand men, marched to his aid. Podiebrad relieved the emperor, and
secured a verbal reconciliation between the two angry brothers, which
lasted until the Bohemian forces had returned to their country, when the
feud burst out anew and with increased violence. The emperor procured
the ban of the empire against his brother, and the pope excommunicated
him. Still Albert fought fiercely, and the strife raged without
intermission until Albert suddenly died on the 4th of December, 1463.

The Turks, who, during all these years, had been making predatory
excursions along the frontiers of Hungary, now, in three strong bands of
ten thousand each, overran Servia and Bosnia, and spread their
devastations even into the heart of Illyria, as far as the metropolitan
city of Laybach. The ravages of fire and sword marked their progress.
They burnt every village, every solitary cottage, and the inhabitants
were indiscriminately slain. Frederic, the emperor, a man of but little
energy, was at his country residence at Lintz, apparently more anxious,
writes a contemporary, "to shield his plants from frost, than to defend
his domains against these barbarians."

The bold barons of Carniola, however, rallied their vassals, raised an
army of twenty thousand men, and drove the Turks back to the Bosphorus.
But the invaders, during their unimpeded march, had slain six thousand
Christians, and they carried back with them eight thousand captives.

Again, a few years after, the Turks, with a still larger army, rushed
through the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, upon the plains of
Carinthia. Their march was like the flow of volcanic fire. They left
behind them utter desolation, smouldering hearth-stones and fields
crimsoned with blood. At length they retired of their own accord,
dragging after them twenty thousand captives. During a period of
twenty-seven years, under the imbecile reign of Frederic, the ver