In his early days he had fought against Poles, Bohemians and others, as
Imperial general. He was much concerned, all along, in those abstruse
armed-litigations of the Austrian House with its dependencies; and
diligently helped the Kaiser,--Friedrich III., rather a weakish, but
an eager and greedy Kaiser,--through most of them. That inextricable
Hungarian-Bohemian-Polish DONNYBROOK (so we may call it) which Austria
had on hand, one of Sigismund's bequests to Austria; distressingly
tumultuous Donnybrook, which goes from 1440 to 1471, fighting in a
fierce confused manner;--the Anti-Turk Hunniades, the Anti-Austrian
Corvinus, the royal Majesties George Podiebrad, Ladislaus POSTHUMUS,
Ludwig OHNE HAUT (Ludwig NO-SKIN), and other Ludwigs, Ladislauses and
Vladislauses, striking and getting struck at such a rate:--Albert was
generally what we may call chief-constable in all that; giving a knock
here and then one there, in the Kaiser's name. [Hormayr, ii. 138, 140
(? HUNYADY CORVIN); Rentsch, pp. 389-422; Michaelis, i. 304-313.] Almost
from boyhood, he had learned soldiering, which he had never afterwards
leisure to forget. Great store of fighting he had,--say half a century
of it, off and on, during the seventy and odd years he lasted in this
world. With the Donnybrook we spoke of; with the Nurnbergers; with the
Dukes of Bavaria (endless bickerings with these Dukes, Ludwig BEARDY,
Ludwig SUPERBUS, Ludwig GIBBOSUS or Hunchback, against them and about
them, on his own and the Kaiser's score); also with the French, already
clutching at Lorraine; also with Charles the Rash of Burgundy;--lastly
with the Bishop of Bamberg, who got him excommunicated and would not
bury the dead.

Kurfurst Albert's Letter on this last emergency, to his Viceregent in
Culmbach, is a famed Piece still extant (date 1481); [Rentsch, p. 409.]
and his plan in such emergency, is a simple and likely one: "Carry the
dead bodies to the Parson's house; let him see whether he will not bury
them by and by!--One must fence off the Devil by the Holy Cross,"
says Albert,--appeal to Heaven with what honest mother-wit Heaven has
vouchsafed one, means Albert. "These fellows" (the Priests), continues
he, "would fain have the temporal sword as well as the spiritual. Had
God wished there should be only one sword, he could have contrived that
as well as the two. He surely did not want for intellect _(Er war gar
ein weiser Mann),"_--want of intellect it clearly was not!--In s