invalid.[245] The imperial crown was, in plain terms, allotted in the interests of the Church, in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the German nation. Otto hastened to swear that he would defend the Papal possessions (including Sicily), and was proclaimed by a Papal Legate in Cologne cathedral on July 3, 1201. Innocent now sent out a flood of letters on behalf of his candidate, but the result was irritating. Philip of France roughly refused to recognize Otto; and a letter signed by two German archbishops, ten bishops, and other clerics and nobles, sternly rebuked the Pope for his "audacity" in meddling with things which did not concern him.[246] Innocent's Legates vainly scattered threats of excommunication in Germany. Hardly a single prelate recognized Otto, and, after seven years of the most brutal civil warfare, he was driven out of the country. We are not impressed by the Pope's feverish protests that he was not responsible for this desolation. In 1208, however, Philip, who had been reconciled with Rome in the previous year, was assassinated, and Otto, with Innocent's approval, mounted the throne. To the intense indignation of the Pope, the new Emperor at once cast his oaths of fidelity to the wind and told Innocent to confine himself to spiritual matters. He annexed Tuscany and Spoleto, in spite of all the Pope's entreaties and threats, and was about to march against Naples and Apulia when Innocent launched against him a sentence of excommunication and deposition. Otto was, for the time, an excellent ruler: he had been educated in the English ideas of government. But he had refused to be subservient to the clergy, and the German prelates now summoned Frederic from Sicily. Innocent approved the election of Frederic as easily as he had approved that of Philip and of Otto, but he did not live to see how that Emperor in turn defied the Papacy and scorned its political pretensions.[247]