ve was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at
his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the
richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps
consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose,
Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which tradition ascribed to the
Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train; the
gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was held
a captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the
sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the
golden crown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the
Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, [151] whose fancy
revived the visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could
observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative
sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election
of his son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that
his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of
his expenses.

[Footnote 150: Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be considered as
a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he recovered the use of the
Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the emperor conversed and wrote with
equal facility in French, Latin, Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615,
616.) Petrarch always represents him as a polite and learned prince.]

[Footnote 151: Besides the German and Italian historians, the expedition
of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original colors in the curious
Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 376-430, by the Abbe de
Sade, whose prolixity has never been blamed by any reader of taste and
curiosity.]

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the
same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes
the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign
and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted
their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their
chief or minister. At the ro