should have power, in certain cases, to act in the Emperor's name, was rejected by Maximilian, as an assault upon his personal rights. [Sidenote: 1496.] Although the decree of Perpetual Peace could not be carried into effect immediately, it was not a dead letter, as all former decrees of the kind had been. Maximilian bound himself, in the most solemn manner, to respect the new arrangements, and there were now several honest and intelligent princes to assist him. One difficulty was the collection of a government tax, called "the common penny," to support the expenses of the Imperial Court. Such a tax had been for the first time imposed during the war with the Hussites, but very little of it was then paid. Even now, when the object of it was of such importance to the whole people, several years elapsed before the Court could be permanently established. The annual sessions of the Diet, also, were much less effective than had been anticipated: princes, priests and cities were so accustomed to a selfish independence, that they could not yet work together for the general good. Before the Diet at Worms adjourned, it agreed to furnish the Emperor with 9,000 men, to be employed in Italy against the French, and afterwards against the Turks on the Austrian frontier. Charles VIII. retreated from Italy on hearing of this measure, yet not rapidly enough to avoid being defeated, near Parma, by the combined Germans and Milanese. In 1496 Sigismund of Tyrol died, and all the Hapsburg lands came into Maximilian's possession. The same year, he married his son Philip, then eighteen years old and accepted as Regent by the Netherlands, to Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile. The other heirs to the Spanish throne died soon afterwards, and when Isabella followed them, in 1504, she appointed Philip and Joanna her successors. The pride and influence of the house of Hapsburg were greatly increased by this marriage, but its consequences were most disastrous to Germany, for Philip's son was Charles V. The next years of Maximilian's reign were disturbed, and, on the whole, unfortunate for the Empire. An attempt to apply the decrees of the Diet of Worms to Switzerland brought on a war, which, after occasioning the destruction of 2,000 villages and castles, and the loss of 20,000 lives, resulted in the Emperor formally acknowledging the independence of Switzerland in a treaty concluded at Basel in 1499. Then Louis XII. of France captured Milan, interfered secretly in a war concerning the succession, which broke out in Bavaria, and bribed various German princes to act in his interest, when Maximilian called upon the Diet to assist him in making war upon France. After having with much difficulty obtained 12,000 men, the Emperor marched to Italy, intending to replace the Sforza family in Milan and then be crowned by Pope Julius II. in Rome. But the Venetians stopped him at the outset of the expedition, and he was forced to return ingloriously to Germany.