In the year 1411,
Leopold II. died without issue. The young Albert had now attained is
fifteenth year.

The emperor declared Albert of age, and he assumed the government as
Albert V. His subjects, weary of disorder and of the strife of the
nobles, welcomed him with enthusiasm. With sagacity and self-denial
above his years, the young prince devoted himself to business,
relinquishing all pursuits of pleasure. Fortunately, during his minority
he had honorable and able teachers who stored his mind with useful
knowledge, and fortified him with principles of integrity. The change
from the most desolating anarchy to prosperity and peace was almost
instantaneous. Albert had the judgment to surround himself with able
advisers. Salutary laws were enacted; justice impartially administered;
the country was swept of the banditti which infested it, and while all
the States around were involved in the miseries of war, the song of the
contented husbandman, and the music of the artisan's tools were heard
through the fields and in the towns of happy Austria.

Sigismond, second son of the Emperor Charles IV., King of Bohemia, was
now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest
daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as
the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his
effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of
Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his
own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of
Germany, and King of Hungary and of Bohemia.

Albert married the only daughter of Sigismond, and a very strong
affection sprung up between the imperial father and his son-in-law. They
often visited each other, and cooperated very cordially in measures of
state. The wife of Sigismond was a worthless woman, described by an
Austrian historian as "one who believed in neither God, angel nor devil;
neither in heaven nor hell." Sigismond had set his heart upon
bequeathing to Albert the crowns of both Hungary and Bohemia, which
magnificent accessions to the Austrian domains would elevate that power
to be one of the first in Europe. But Barbara, his queen, wished to
convey these crowns to the son of the pagan Jaghellon, who had received
the crown of Poland as the dowry of his reluctant bride, Hedwige.
Sigismond, provoked by her intrigues for the accomplishment of this
object, and detesting her for her lice