The brothers in arms were thence to cross the Alps to Milan, where the Emperor would invest the English King with the duchy; he would then take him on to Rome, resign the Empire himself, and have Henry crowned.

Not that Maximilian desired to forsake all earthly authority; he sought to combine a spiritual with a temporal glory; he was to lay down the imperial crown and place on his brows the papal tiara.[255] Nothing was too fantastic for the Emperor Maximilian; the man who could not wrest a few towns from Venice was always deluding himself with the hope of leading victorious hosts to the seat of the Turkish Empire and the Holy City of Christendom; the sovereign whose main incentive in life was gold, informed his daughter that he intended to get himself canonised, and that after his death she would have to adore him.

He died at Welz on 12th January, 1519, neither Pope nor saint, with Jerusalem still in the hands of the Turk, and the succession to the Empire still undecided.
[Footnote 251: _Ibid._, ii., 4172.] [Footnote 252: _L.

and P._, ii., 4159.] [Footnote 253: _Ibid._, ii., 1923.] [Footnote 254: _Ibid._, ii., 1398, 1878, 1902, 2218, 2911, 4257.] [Footnote 255: _Cf._ W.Boehm, _Hat Kaiser Maximilian I.im Jahre 1511 Papst werden wollen ?_ 1873.] The contest now broke out in earnest, and the electors prepared (p.

100) to garner their harvest of gold.