tories, he promised to annul the acts of
Louis against Clement, to take no part in Italian affairs, and to defend
and protect the church. Meanwhile he had accompanied his father into
France and had taken part in the battle of Crecy in August 1346, when
John was killed and Charles escaped wounded from the field. As king of
Bohemia he returned to Germany, and after being crowned German king at
Bonn on the 26th of November 1346, prepared to attack Louis. Hostilities
were interrupted by the death of the emperor in October 1347, and
Gunther, count of Schwarzburg, who was chosen king by the partisans of
Louis, soon abandoned the struggle. Charles, having made good use of the
difficulties of his opponents, was recrowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the
25th of July 1349, and was soon the undisputed ruler of Germany. Gifts
or promises had won the support of the Rhenish and Swabian towns; a
marriage alliance secured the friendship of the Habsburgs; and that of
Rudolph II., count palatine of the Rhine, was obtained when Charles, who
had become a widower in 1348, married his daughter Anna.

In 1350 the king was visited at Prague by Cola di Rienzi, who urged him
to go to Italy, where the poet Petrarch and the citizens of Florence
also implored his presence. Turning a deaf ear to these entreaties,
Charles kept Rienzi in prison for a year, and then handed him as a
prisoner to Clement at Avignon. Four years later, however, he crossed
the Alps without an army, received the Lombard crown at Milan on the 6th
of January 1355, and was crowned emperor at Rome by a cardinal on the
5th of April in the same year. His sole object appears to have been to
obtain the imperial crown in peace, and in accordance with a promise
previously made to Pope Clement he only remained in the city for a few
hours, in spite of the expressed wishes of the Romans. Having virtually
abandoned all the imperial rights in Italy, the emperor recrossed the
Alps, pursued by the scornful words of Petrarch but laden with
considerable wealth. On his return Charles was occupied with the
administration of Germany, then just recovering from the Black Death,
and in 1356 he promulgated the Golden Bull (q.v.) to regulate the
election of the king. Having given Moravia to one brother, John Henry,
and erected the county of Luxemburg into a duchy for another, Wenceslas,
he was unremitting in his efforts to secure other territories as
compensation and to strengthen the Bohemian monarchy. To th