Note 15 — Chapter I · —How the King of France cajoled the English after the Duke of Burgundy’s Death, for fear they should have interrupted him in the Conquest of the Territories belonging to the said Duke.—1477.

The character of this emperor is thus sketched by Mr. Hallam: “Frederic III. reigned fifty-three years—a longer period than any of his predecessors; and his personal character was more insignificant. With better fortune than could be expected, considering both these circumstances, he escaped any overt attempt to depose him, though such a project was sometimes in agitation. He reigned during an interesting age, full of remarkable events, and big with others of more leading importance. The destruction of the Greek empire, and appearance of the victorious crescent upon the Danube, gave an unhappy distinction to the earlier years of his reign, and displayed his mean and pusillanimous character in circumstances which demanded a hero. At a later season he was drawn into contentions with France and Burgundy, which ultimately produced a new and more general combination of European politics. Frederic, always poor, and scarcely able to protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his subjects, or the inroads of the King of Hungary, was yet another founder of his family, and left their fortunes incomparably more prosperous than at his accession. The marriage of his son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy began that aggrandisement of the house of Austria which Frederic seems to have anticipated. The Austrian provinces were re-united, either under Frederic, or in the first years of Maximilian: so that at the close of that period, which we denominate the middle ages, the German empire, sustained by the patrimonial dominions of its chief, became again considerable in the scale of nations, and capable of preserving a balance between the ambitious monarchies of France and Spain.”—Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. i. pp. 449, 450.