Enough, from the death of Rudolf, A.D. 1291, there intervened a hundred and fifty years, and eight successive Kaisers singly or in line, only one of whom (this same Albert of the unlovely countenance) was a Hapsburger,--before the Family, often trying it all along, could get a third time into the Imperial saddle. Where, after that, it did sit steady. Once in for the third time, the Hapsburgers got themselves "elected" (as they still called it) time after time; always elected,--with but one poor exception, which will much concern my readers by and by,--to the very end of the matter. And saw the Holy Roman Empire itself expire, and as it were both saddle and horse vanish out of Nature, before they would dismount. Nay they still ride there on the shadow of a saddle, so to speak; and are "Kaisers of AUSTRIA" at this hour. Steady enough of seat at last, after many vain trials! For during those hundred and fifty years,--among those six intercalary Kaisers, too, who followed Albert,--they were always trying; always thinking they had a kind of quasi right to it; whereby the Empire often fell into trouble at Election-time. For they were proud stout men, our Hapsburgers, though of taciturn unconciliatory ways; and Rudolf had so fitted them out with fruitful Austrian Dukedoms, which they much increased by marriages and otherwise,--Styria, Carinthia, the Tyrol, by degrees, not to speak of their native HAPSBURG much enlarged, and claims on Switzerland all round it,--they had excellent means of battling for their pretensions and disputable elections. None of them succeeded, however, for a hundred and fifty years, except that same one-eyed, loose-lipped unbeautiful Albert I.; a Kaiser dreadfully fond of earthly goods, too. Who indeed grasped all round him, at property half his, or wholly not his: Rhine-tolls, Crown of Bohemia, Landgraviate of Thuringen, Swiss Forest Cantons, Crown of Hungary, Crown of France even:--getting endless quarrels on his hands, and much defeat mixed with any victory there was. Poor soul, he had six-and-twenty children by one wife; and felt that there was need of apanages! He is understood (guessed, not proved) to have instigated two assassinations in pursuit of these objects; and he very clearly underwent ONE in his own person. Assassination first was of Dietzman the Thuringian Landgraf, an Anti-Albert champion, who refused to be robbed by Albert,--for whom the great Dante is (with almost palpable absurdity) fabled to have written an Epitaph still legible in the Church at Leipzig. [Menckenii _Scriptores,_ i.?? _Fredericus Admorsus_ (by Tentsel).] Assassination second was of Wenzel, the poor young Bohemian King, Ottocar's Grandson and last heir. Sure enough, this important young gentleman "was murdered by some one at Olmutz next year" (1306, a promising event for Albert then), "but none yet knows who it was." [Kohler, p. 270.]