That was the everlasting pretence, but eighteen months before,
Maximilian had suffered a stroke of apoplexy; men, said Giustinian,
commenting on the fact, did not usually survive such strokes a year,
and rivals were preparing to enter the lists for the Empire.
Maximilian himself, faithful to the end to his guiding principle,
found a last inspiration in the idea of disposing of his succession
for ready money. He was writing to Charles that it was useless to
expect the Empire unless he would spend at least as much as the
French.[251] "It would be lamentable," he said, "if we should now lose
all through some pitiful omission or penurious neglect;" and Francis
was "going about covertly and laying many baits,"[252] to attain (p. 099)
the imperial crown. To Henry himself Maximilian had more than once
offered the prize, and Pace had declared that the offer was only
another design for extracting Henry's gold "for the electors would
never allow the crown to go out of their nation".[253] The Emperor had
first proposed it while serving under Henry's banners in France.[254]
He renewed the suggestion in 1516, inviting Henry to meet him at
Coire. 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.