The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 — John Shaqi
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07
World history
Albert's daughter Agnes, Queen of Hungary, "a woman unacquainted with
the milder feelings of piety, but addicted to a certain sort of
devotional habits and practices by no means inconsistent with implacable
vindictiveness," fearfully avenged his murder. This woman appears to
have been seized with a perfectly demoniacal mania for blood and
revenge. Aided by those in authority, who feared lest a widespread
conspiracy had been formed, she seized, on the slightest suspicion,
hundreds of innocent victims and put them to death with all the ferocity
of a famished beast. Members of nearly a hundred noble families, and at
least a thousand persons of lower rank, of every age and of both sexes,
fell beneath her savage vengeance. She is said to have further whetted
her appetite for horrors by wading, at Fahrwangen, in the blood of
sixty-three innocent knights, exclaiming the while, "This day we bathe
in May-dew." But at last, after several months, even the implacable
bloodthirstiness of the Hungarian Queen was satisfied, and the massacre
ceased. Over the spot where Albert met his death Agnes built a
monastery; she named it Koenigsfelden and enriched it with the spoils of
her victims. Here she took up her abode for the remainder of her life,
and for nearly fifty years practised the most rigid asceticism, and
here, by the side of her parents, she was eventually buried.
Koenigsfelden stood on the road from Basel to Baden and Zurich, and
within sight of the castle of Hapsburg, the cradle of the house of
Austria.
Strenuous efforts were made by Albert's widow to obtain the succession
to the imperial throne for her son, Frederick, Duke of Austria, but the
choice of the prince-electors, headed by the Archbishop of Mainz, fell
on Count Henry of Luxemburg, a liberal-minded and generous noble, who
was accordingly crowned, under the title of Henry VII. During the short
reign of this monarch he proved himself a wise and generous friend to
the Swiss, whose privileges he confirmed. He made no effort to reimpose
local governors on the people of the Waldstaette, but, on the contrary,
confirmed the charters of Schwyz and Uri, granted one to Unterwalden,
and acknowledged jurisdiction. After Henry's death, in 1313, civil war
once more divided the empire through the rival contentions of Ludwig
(Louis) of Bavaria and Albert's son, Frederick of Austria. In this
contest the powerful monastery of Einsiedeln sided with the Austrian
candidate, and through its influence induced the Bishop of Constance to
place the large portion of Switzerland supporting the Bavarian cause
under a sentence of excommunication.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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