There was yet another kingdom whose internal affairs had always a dangerous attraction for the kings of Bohemia. In 1301 the direct line of the old kings of Hungary came to an end; and a Hungarian bishop, backed by some of the nobles, offered the crown to Wenceslaus. The young king, though refusing the offer on his own account, was disposed to accept it on behalf of his son; but this acceptance brought upon him the hostility of the two greatest Powers of Europe. The Pope complained that the election was uncanonical; because the bishop who had taken the leading part in it was not authorised to crown the kings of Hungary. The Emperor Albert, on his side, had already become suspicious of the growing power of Bohemia; and, according to one chronicler, his avarice had been excited by the fame of the silver mines at Kuttenberg (Kutna Hora). Wenceslaus, indeed, though ready enough to hold his own against the Emperor, was as anxious as his father had been to remain on good terms with the Pope. He acknowledged the irregularity in the form of his son’s election; and, at the same time, he entreated the Pope to secure him the crown in a canonical manner. But it soon appeared that Boniface’s complaint about the form of election was a mere pretext, and that the Pope was really intending to grant the crown of Hungary to the King of Naples. To this arrangement Wenceslaus would not consent; and hence it came that in 1304 he was compelled to defend Bohemia against the forces of the Empire, supported by the authority of the Pope. This time, however, there was no division in the national feeling. However unwelcome some of Wenceslaus’s schemes might be to the Bohemian nobles, they had too recently learnt, by bitter experience, the folly of deserting a national king for a foreign invader. The Bohemians offered a unanimous resistance to the Imperial army, and Albert was forced to retreat. But the doom of the male line of the House of Pr̆emysl was, none the less, hopelessly fixed. Wenceslaus died in the following year; and his son, after resigning his claim to the kingdom of Hungary, gave himself up to dissipation and profligacy. The Poles began to revolt; and during an expedition to Cracow the last of the male line of the Pr̆emyslovci was murdered by a traitor. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF OLMÜTZ On SITE OF CASTLE WHERE WENCESLAUS III. WAS MURDERED.]