Both sides resorted to every kind of expedient. Frederick, aiming especially at the friars, ordered that any who spread or even received the papal letters of condemnation against him should be burnt! Innocent declared an actual crusade against Frederick, stirred up revolt in Sicily, and at length succeeded in raising a rival King in Germany. Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, owed his election (1246) almost exclusively to the great prelates of the Rhine; but he died the next year and, although another King was put forward in the person of William Count of Holland, a young man of twenty, he made no progress so long as Frederick lived. Moreover, in Italy Frederick's cause was gaining ground, until the revolt of Parma and the failure of his efforts to retake it ended in the complete rout of his forces (1248). In 1250 Frederick himself died directing by his will that all the rights of the Church should be restored in so far as they did not conflict with the claims of the Empire, provided that the Church herself should recognise the imperial rights. Almost to the last Frederick had been quite willing to be reconciled to the Church, and he died unsubdued. But the Papacy was fighting for that supremacy which experience had shown to be the condition of its existence. Not that any Emperor ever cherished the thought of destroying the Papacy any more than the Pope dreamed of annihilating the Empire. Many passages have been cited to prove that Frederick contemplated the establishment of a Church of his own in Sicily. Here perhaps he did not aim at anything more than Henry VIII afterwards accomplished in England or the barons under Louis IX, as we have seen, threatened on one occasion in France. The language used by his followers was extravagant, even blasphemous, and he did not discourage it. How far he ever aimed as setting himself up as Pope is more doubtful. But in any case, and however much we may be inclined to sympathise with him, it must be allowed that there was abundant reason for the hostility of the Pope. [Sidenote: A papal candidate for Sicily.]