The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation, privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors, already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and forming for themselves the first considerable principalities. Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics almost from its beginning. [Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]