The bishop returned from his embassy, the young man heard its issue in silence, breaking it only to observe, “the hand which grasps my birthright menaces my life.” Quitting his reverend adviser, he sought without further delay the companions of his pleasures, who in more serious moments were his counsellors also: these were Ulric of Palm, Rodolph of Wart, and Walter of Eschenbach.
The 1st of May, 1308, there was held an imperial banquet at Stein, at which Albert’s sons and Duke John sate. By the emperor’s command wreaths of flowers were brought, with which the children and disinherited prince were alike crowned. There was some allusion, some remark made, as to these diadems being sufficiently weighty for the brows which sustained them, to which John listened gloomily. The banquet concluded, the emperor mounted on horseback to proceed to Rhinsfeld, whither the empress had gone some days before. His suite was composed of the unpopular favourites, Landenberg and Waldsee, his cousin the count of Hohenberg, and others of his nobles and vassals. Pretexting a fear of overloading the boat, arrived at the river Reuss, John and his party found means to separate Albert from his followers.
He rode slowly and a little in advance across the broad ploughed lands which stretch beneath the hill and castle of Habsburg, the territory of his ancestors, conversing with the knight of Castelen.
Suddenly riding up to his side, Duke John exclaimed, “Receive the wages of fraud,” and plunged his lance into his throat; at the same moment Balm ran him through the body, and Walter of Eschenbach clove his skull in twain with a back stroke of his sword.
Rodolph of Wart stood motionless, and Castelen fled. Duke John and his friends, terrified as by some unexpected crime, gazed at each other for the last time, and rushed in various directions from the scene of their murder; Albert had fallen bathed in his blood, and insensible. His suite, congregated on the opposite shore of the river, witnessed the assassination, and fled in fear from their dying master. A poor young woman passing by saw and ran to raise him from the ground; he breathed the last sigh in her arms: twice he essayed to open his eyes, and at the third effort to do so, died.
Duke John took refuge in the solitudes of the Alps, and wandered some days in the forests which surround the abbey of Einsilden. Disguised as a monk, he travelled thence to Italy, where he threw himself at the pope’s feet, and as a favour obtained from him permission to hide beneath the cowl his remorse and friendlessness. The remainder of his days passed in obscurity as an unknown monk, it was believed in the convent of the Augustines at Pisa; and the blind man who sat begging in the market-place of Vienna, was, it is thought, as he asserted himself to be, son of John the parricide.
Rodolph of Wart, accomplice but not actor in this tragedy, had sought protection with a relative, the Comte de Blamont, who, for a sum of money, betrayed him to Albert’s survivors. He was married to a noble lady of the house of Balm, who was fondly attached to him. Having implored his pardon vainly on her knees, before the Empress Elizabeth and her daughter Queen Agnes, she determined on affording him the consolation of her presence when condemned to be broken on the wheel: his sentence was executed. His torments, ere they ended his existence, lasted three days and three nights, during which his unhappy wife remained kneeling near him in tears and prayer, taking neither food nor drink.
It was said by some that he had been wholly innocent, and even unaware of the meditated murder; he solemnly asserted it while his broken limbs were stretched on the wheel. When he had expired, his widow rose, travelled on foot to Bale, and died. Ere yet Rodolph was taken, Duke Leopold had entered his domains in arms, put all his domestics to the sword, and razed the castle of Wart to the level of the ground. Jaques of Wart, his innocent brother, reduced to beggary, lived the remainder of his days in a poor cabin of Neflenbach, a village founded by his ancestors.
Farwangen, the chief among the castles of the lords of Balm, capitulated; but Duke Leopold and his sister Agnes, queen of Hungary, widow of King Andrew, caused sixty-three nobles and many other warriors to be conducted to the forest, and beheaded there in her presence. It was then that Agnes, as their blood streamed round her, said, “I am bathing in the dews of a May morning.”
When the castle of the house of Eschenbach (whose name has induced me to linger so long on this story) was taken, and all the vassals of Walter had been massacred, the soldiers of Agnes, and herself also, were attracted by the faint cries of an infant in its cradle, whom the shouts and shrieks of the assailants and their victims had fearfully roused. The boy was so beautiful as to interest even Agnes, hard and cruel as she was, till she discovered he was Walter’s son, when she commanded that he should be put to death also; and her officers had much ado to shield this one life from the fury which had exterminated before all those who protected it. Yielding at last, she commanded that he should renounce the name of Eschenbach, and be called Schwartzenberg. It is probable that the child did not grow to manhood, for his father was last of his line.