humiliate and depress them.
The king lured them both to Buda, where he perfidiously beheaded the
eldest, Ladislaus, for wounding Cilli, in defending himself from an
attack which the implacable count had made upon him, and he also threw
the younger son, Matthias, into a prison.

The widow of Hunniades, the heroic mother of these children, with a
spirit worthy of the wife of her renowned husband, called the nobles to
her aid. They rallied in great numbers, roused to indignation. The
inglorious king, terrified by the storm he had raised, released
Matthias, and fled from Buda to Vienna, pursued by the execrations and
menaces of the Hungarians.

He soon after repaired to Prague, in Bohemia, to solemnize his marriage
with Magdalen, daughter of Charles VII., King of France. He had just
reached the city, and was making preparations for his marriage in
unusual splendor, when he was attacked by a malignant disease, supposed
to be the plague, and died after a sickness of but thirty-six hours. The
unhappy king, who, through the stormy scenes of his short life, had
developed no grandeur of soul, was oppressed with the awfulness of
passing to the final judgment. In the ordinances of the Church he sought
to find solace for a sinful and a troubled spirit. Having received the
sacrament of the Lord's Supper, with dying lips he commenced repeating
the Lord's prayer. He had just uttered the words "deliver us from evil,"
when his spirit took its flight to the judgment seat of Christ.

Frederic, the emperor, Duke of Styria, was now the oldest lineal
descendant of Rhodolph of Hapsburg, founder of the house of Austria. The
imperial dignity had now degenerated into almost an empty title. The
Germanic empire consisted of a few large sovereignties and a
conglomeration of petty dukedoms, principalities, and States of various
names, very loosely held together, in their heterogeneous and
independent rulers and governments, by one nominal sovereign upon whom
the jealous States were willing to confer but little real power. A
writer at that time, AEneas Sylvius, addressing the Germans, says:

"Although you acknowledge the emperor for your king and master, he
possesses but a precarious sovereignty; he has no power; you only obey
him when you choose; and you are seldom inclined to obey. You are all
desirous to be free; neither the princes nor the States render to him
what is due. He has no revenue, no treasure. Hence you are involved in
endless conte