Still Albert fought fiercely, and the strife raged without intermission until Albert suddenly died on the 4th of December, 1463.
The Turks, who, during all these years, had been making predatory excursions along the frontiers of Hungary, now, in three strong bands of ten thousand each, overran Servia and Bosnia, and spread their devastations even into the heart of Illyria, as far as the metropolitan city of Laybach.

The ravages of fire and sword marked their progress.
They burnt every village, every solitary cottage, and the inhabitants were indiscriminately slain.

Frederic, the emperor, a man of but little energy, was at his country residence at Lintz, apparently more anxious, writes a contemporary, "to shield his plants from frost, than to defend his domains against these barbarians." The bold barons of Carniola, however, rallied their vassals, raised an army of twenty thousand men, and drove the Turks back to the Bosphorus.
But the invaders, during their unimpeded march, had slain six thousand Christians, and they carried back with them eight thousand captives.
Again, a few years after, the Turks, with a still larger army, rushed through the defiles of the Illyrian mountains, upon the plains of Carinthia.

Their march was like the flow of volcanic fire.

They left behind them utter desolation, smouldering hearth-stones and fields crimsoned with blood.