Boniface, however, had become his own master at home to an extent attained by none of his predecessors since Innocent III. His reign reached what may be termed its high-water mark in the Papal Jubilee of 1300. The cessation of the Crusades had largely increased the crowds of pilgrims to Rome, until in 1299 there awoke an expectation of special spiritual privileges in connection with the end of the century. Indulgences had been so freely scattered in attempts to promote the Crusades that a craving for them had been created. Boniface recognised the importance of exploiting the popular feeling, and after a mock enquiry he issued a bull promising generous indulgences to all who should visit the Churches of SS. Peter and Paul during the year for so many successive days, and directing that a similar pilgrimage should be proclaimed every hundredth year. Pilgrims flocked to Rome; 30,000 are reckoned to have entered and left daily, while 200,000 were in Rome at any given moment. The amount of the offerings must have been enormous, and the Ghibellines naturally declared that the Jubilee had its origin in the papal need for money. But most of the pilgrims were poor; and even if the size of the crowds were a just measure of the continued hold of the Roman Church upon the people of Western Europe, the absence of all the monarchs except Charles Martel, the claimant of Hungary, was significant. Indeed, Boniface had already experienced a foretaste of the independent attitude of the secular princes, which eventually proved fatal to him. Rudolf of Hapsburg died in 1291, and the German princes, rejecting the claims of his son Albert, elected Adolf of Nassau as their King. But Adolf proved less submissive than his electors had hoped to find him. He was deposed and fell in battle, and Albert was chosen and crowned without any reference to the Pope--the first occasion on which the German princes had acted without papal authority. Boniface had already barred Albert's claims. He now refused to recognise him, declaring that the Empire owed all its honour and dignity to the papal favour. Nevertheless, in 1303 circumstances forced him to accept Albert, especially since Albert was willing in return to confirm all that his father Rudolf had granted to the Papacy. [Sidenote: First quarrel with France and England.]