There was greater danger threatening Hungary from the south. The nobles of Croatia were dissatisfied with female rule. There were some ambitious men who were incensed to see themselves excluded from the royal court, whilst a man of low descent, like Garay, the palatine, took the lead there. They were intent upon destroying the government in order to remove the queen. In Charles of Durazzo, who owed the throne of Naples to Louis the Great, they found a man who was willing to become a candidate for the throne of Hungary. The traitors, however, on the appearance in their midst of the energetic Garay, accompanied by the queen and the queen-mother Elizabeth, kept quiet for a while. But no sooner had the royal party left Croatia, when these men, who all owed their honors to the favor of the late king, resumed their machinations, and prevailed upon Charles of Durazzo to perjure himself and to break the oath he had pledged to the late king not to disturb his daughter Mary in the possession of her throne. In 1385, undeterred by the warnings of his wife, he arrived in Croatia. Meanwhile the marriage of Mary and Sigismund had taken place. The latter, in order to collect an army with which he should be enabled to oppose the advancing enemy and defend the rights of his royal spouse, hypothecated a portion of the country to raise the necessary funds. This ill-timed transaction increased the chances of his opponent, for the nation saw with indignation that Sigismund, in the capacity of “the guardian of the realm” only, without possessing any royal rights, began his guardianship by thus disposing of Hungarian territory. Such a disgraceful transaction was unknown in the history of the country, and it was not long before Charles could enter Buda, without let or hindrance; disguising, however, even then, his lawless aspirations, by pretending to have only come to make peace between the nation and her queen. But Charles was not long in showing his true designs. On the 31st of December, 1385, the cathedral of Stuhlweissenburg witnessed a most moving scene. The coronation of the usurper Charles was to be solemnized; the church was crowded, to its remotest corner, with sumptuously dressed lords. The widowed queen and her daughter Mary were also in attendance. The customary question was asked of the magnates of the land, by the Primate of Hungary, whether they wished Charles to be their king. The enthusiastic acclamations of assent became, at the Primate’s third appeal, feebler and feebler as the piteous sobs of the two queens, who had sunk upon their father’s and husband’s grave, resounded in the church. The coronation proceeded nevertheless, and whilst the archbishop sent up his prayers of grace to heaven, the widowed queen was silently vowing desperate vengeance at the grave of her husband. Bad omens followed the pageant; during the solemn procession the banner of St. Stephen split into pieces, and as the new