Charles IV. was fully alive to these dangers. He had accompanied his father to Italy in 1330, had acted for a time as his vicegerent, and had then acquired an insight into Italian politics which profoundly influenced his subsequent policy. It is hardly too much to say that his guiding motive was to preserve Germany from the fate which nominal subjection to imperial rule had brought upon Italy. And though he was connected by relationship, education, and past alliances with the Valois House of France, he was by no means blind to the dangers of French aggression in the west. It was in the vain hope of checking the constant falling away of border lands that in 1365 he went through the ceremony of being crowned King of Arles, disused by his predecessors since Frederick Barbarossa. On the subject of imperial elections, the provisions of the Golden Bull are clear and precise, and they remained a [Sidenote: The Golden Bull, 1356.] fundamental law until the Holy Roman Empire ended its shadowy existence in 1806. The number of electors is fixed at seven—viz. three ecclesiastics, the Archbishops of Mainz, Köln, and Trier, and four lay princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The three ecclesiastical electors are to be archchancellors of the three kingdoms: the Archbishop of Mainz in Germany, the Archbishop of Köln in Italy, and the Archbishop of Trier in Arles. The four secular electors are to hold the great household offices: the King of Bohemia is chief cup-bearer, the Count Palatine grand-seneschal, the Duke of Saxony grand-marshal, and the Margrave of Brandenburg grand-chamberlain. The election of the Kings of the Romans and future Emperors is to be held in Frankfort, and decided by a majority of votes. The elected prince is to be crowned at Aachen, and to hold his first diet at Nürnberg. The territories to which the electoral dignity is attached are never to be divided, and the succession is to be regulated by the rules of primogeniture among male agnates. During a minority, the electoral vote and the administration of the electoral provinces are to be intrusted to the nearest male relative on the father’s side. The electors are to take rank before all other princes; they are to have the royal rights of coining money and of final jurisdiction without appeal. All confederations of subjects without the leave of their territorial lord are prohibited, and the towns are forbidden to grant their citizenship to _pfahlbürger_, or burghers outside the walls, or to receive fugitive serfs to the shelter of their walls and franchises.