Never was an Emperor stronger since the days of Charlemagne. All Italy was directly under his rule. The Pisan and Genoese fleets conquered Corsica and Sardinia in his name. His troops occupied the patrimony of St. Peter, and his officer Markwald of Anweiler was lord of Ancona and Romagna. His alliance with the Roman Senate kept Celestine III. from doing any mischief. Germany was obedient. The King of England was his vassal, and the heir of the Guelfs his follower and supporter. To add to his triumph, Constance, the day after his coronation at Palermo, bore him the long-prayed-for heir, the future Frederick II., called Frederick and Roger after his two famous grandfathers. Before long the kings of the East sought his friendship and support. The Lusignan King of Cyprus boasted that he was the vassal of the Latin Empire. The King of Armenia received his ambassadors. Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia, now made Marquis of Tuscany and lord of the inheritance of the Countess Matilda, married young Roger’s widow Irene, an alliance that made Isaac Angelus the close connection of his Western rival. Three great ambitions henceforth possessed Henry’s soul. He would make the Empire hereditary in his own house, and unite for ever the German and the Sicilian thrones. He would rule Europe from Italy as a centre. He would make himself lord of the East, setting on foot a Crusade that would conquer the schismatic Greeks, and establish the Latin power in the whole East under his control. Wild as his schemes seemed, his extraordinary successes made them not altogether visionary. [Sidenote: The hereditary Empire.] On returning to Germany, Henry sought to persuade the princes to agree that the Empire, like the French monarchy, should henceforth descend from father to son. At the Diet of Würzburg, in April 1196, more than fifty of the princes agreed to his proposals. But the strenuous opposition of Adolf, Archbishop of Cologne, and the conservative magnates of Saxony taught Henry that it was no time to persevere in an unpopular request. He contented himself for the moment with procuring the election of the two-year-old Frederick Roger as German king at Frankfurt, and in winning over many of the German nobles to his Eastern projects.