Albert's stubborn and selfish attempts to increase the power of his house all failed: their only result was a wider and keener spirit of hostility to his rule. He claimed Thuringia and Meissen, alleging that Adolf of Nassau had purchased those lands, not for himself but for the Empire; he endeavored to get possession of Holland, whose line of ruling Counts had become extinct; and after the death of Wenzel II. of Bohemia, in 1307, he married his son, Rudolf, to the latter's widow. But Counts Frederick and Dietzmann of Thuringia defeated his army: the people of Holland elected a descendant of their Counts on the female side, and the Emperor's son, Rudolf, died in Bohemia, apparently poisoned, before two years were out. Then the Swiss cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, which had been governed by civil officers appointed by the Emperors, rose in revolt against him, and drove his governors from their Alpine valleys. In November, 1307, that famous league was formed, by which the three cantons maintained their independence, and laid the first corner-stone of the Republic of Switzerland. [Sidenote: 1308. MURDER OF ALBRECHT OF HABSBURG.] The following May, 1308, Albert was in Baden, raising troops for a new campaign in Thuringia. His nephew, John, a youth of nineteen, who had vainly endeavored to have his right to a part of the Hapsburg territory in Switzerland confirmed by the Emperor, was with him, accompanied by four knights, with whom he had conspired. While crossing a river, they managed to get into the same boat with the Emperor, leaving the rest of his retinue upon the other bank; then, when they had landed, they fell upon him, murdered him, and fled. A peasant woman, who was near, lifted Albert upon her lap and he died in her arms. His widow, the Empress Elizabeth, took a horrible revenge upon the families of the conspirators, whose relatives and even their servants, to the number of one thousand, were executed. One of the knights, who was captured, was broken upon the wheel. John, called in history _John Parricida_, was never heard of afterwards, although one tradition affirms that he fled to Rome, confessed his deed to the Pope, and passed the rest of his life, under another name, in a monastery. Thus, within five years, the despotic plans of both Pope Bonifacius VIII. and Albert of Hapsburg came to a tragic end. The overwhelming power of the Papacy, after a triumph of two hundred years, was broken. The second Pope after Bonifacius, Clement V., made Avignon, in Southern France, his capital instead of Rome, and the former city continued to be the residence of the Popes, from 1308, the year of Albert's murder, until 1377.