, not to speak of their native HAPSBURG much enlarged, and claims
on Switzerland all round it,--they had excellent means of battling for
their pretensions and disputable elections. None of them succeeded,
however, for a hundred and fifty years, except that same one-eyed,
loose-lipped unbeautiful Albert I.; a Kaiser dreadfully fond of earthly
goods, too. Who indeed grasped all round him, at property half his,
or wholly not his: Rhine-tolls, Crown of Bohemia, Landgraviate of
Thuringen, Swiss Forest Cantons, Crown of Hungary, Crown of France
even:--getting endless quarrels on his hands, and much defeat mixed with
any victory there was. Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty children by
one wife; and felt that there was need of apanages! He is understood
(guessed, not proved) to have instigated two assassinations in pursuit
of these objects; and he very clearly underwent ONE in his own person.
Assassination first was of Dietzman the Thuringian Landgraf, an
Anti-Albert champion, who refused to be robbed by Albert,--for whom the
great Dante is (with almost palpable absurdity) fabled to have
written an Epitaph still legible in the Church at Leipzig. [Menckenii
_Scriptores,_ i.?? _Fredericus Admorsus_ (by Tentsel).] Assassination
second was of Wenzel, the poor young Bohemian King, Ottocar's Grandson
and last heir. Sure enough, this important young gentleman "was murdered
by some one at Olmutz next year" (1306, a promising event for Albert
then), "but none yet knows who it was." [Kohler, p. 270.]

Neither of which suspicious transactions came to any result for Albert;
as indeed most of his unjust graspings proved failures. He at one time
had thoughts of the Crown of France; "Yours _I_ solemnly declare!" said
the Pope. But that came to nothing;--only to France's shifting of the
Popes to Avignon, more under the thumb of France. What his ultimate
success with Tell and the Forest Cantons was, we all know! A most
clutching, strong-fisted, dreadfully hungry, tough and unbeautiful man.
Whom his own Nephew, at last, had to assassinate, at the Ford of the
Reus (near Windisch Village, meeting of the Reus and Aar; 1st May,
1308): "Scandalous Jew pawnbroker of an Uncle, wilt thou flatly keep
from me my Father's heritage, then, intrusted to thee in his hour
of death? Regardless of God and man, and of the last look of a dying
Brother? Uncle worse than pawnbroker; for it is a heritage with NO pawn
on it, with much the reverse!" thought the Nephew,--a