inued to act as governor or regent of
Hungary for five years more, by which time the young Ladislaus, son of
King Albert, attained his majority. In 1453 Hunyady finally laid down his
dignity as governor, and gave over the power into the hands of the young
King, Ladislaus V, whom Hunyady had first to liberate by force of arms
from his uncle, Frederick of Austria, before he could set him on the
throne of Hungary. The young King, of German origin, had hardly become
emancipated from his guardian when he fell under the influence of his
other uncle, Ulric Czillei. This Czillei was a great nobleman of Styria,
but was withal possessed of large estates in Hungary. As a foreigner and
as a relative of King Sigismund, he had long viewed with an evil eye
Hunyady's elevation. On one occasion Hunyady had to inflict punishment
on him. He consequently now did everything he could to induce the young
King, his nephew, to hate the great captain as he himself did. He sought
to infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Hunyady
aimed at the crown. His slanders found the readier credence in the
mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an
uninterrupted course of debauchery. At last the King was brought to agree
to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and
his substance in the defence of his country and religion. They summoned
him in the King's name to Vienna, where Ladislaus, as an Austrian prince,
was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and murdering him. But
Hunyady got wind of the whole plot, and when he arrived at the place of
ambush it was at the head of two thousand picked Hungarian warriors. Thus
it was Czillei who fell into the snare. "Wretched creature!" exclaimed
Hunyady; "thou hast fallen into the pit thou diggedst for me; were it not
that I regard the dignity of the King and my own humanity, thou shouldst
suffer a punishment proportioned to thy crime. As it is, I let thee off
this time, but come no more into my sight, or thou shalt pay for it with
thy life."

Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who
surrounded the King. On the pretence of treason against the King, Hunyady
was deprived of all his offices and all his estates. The document is
still to be seen in the Hungarian state archives, in which the King, led
astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his councillors, represents
every virtue of the hero as a crime, and