The year of the jubilee was now approaching, and the Romans, ever delighted with the frivolity of magnificent spectacles, sent a deputation to Boniface, who had studiously withdrawn from Rome, requesting him to honour his capital with his presence. With this request, Boniface hesitated to comply, alleging, as the reason of his hesitation, that the choice of magistrates, which the Roman people had lately made, was by no means pleasing to him. Unwilling to forego the amusements and profits of the approaching festival, the compliant citizens of Rome gratified the pontiff with the selection of the principal officers of state, and moreover, supplied him with a considerable sum of money. Boniface, in return for these acts of submission, vouchsafed to make his public entry into Rome; and employed the money which he had received, as the price of his condescension, in fortifying the Mole of Adrian, in modern times better known by the name of the castle of St. Angelo, and other posts, which gave him the command of the city. Thus had the Romans the satisfaction of celebrating the jubilee with extraordinary pomp, at the expense of the remnant of their liberty.[25] A. D. 1400.—In the mean time the Florentines, being hard pressed by the duke of Milan, derived a ray of hope from the assistance of the newly-elected emperor Robert duke of Bavaria, who promised to come to their aid, with a powerful body of troops. The joy which they felt on this occasion was however but of short continuance; for soon after his entrance into Italy, the emperor was totally defeated by the duke of Milan, and the remnant of his army being driven over the mountains, was obliged to take shelter in the city of Trent. By the retreat of the imperial troops, the Florentines were reduced to the utmost extremity. Abandoned by their allies, and exposed to the inroads of their neighbours, they implored the assistance of Boniface. The pontiff, who felt deep resentment against Galeazzo on account of his seizure of several cities in the ecclesiastical state, readily entered into the views of the Florentines, and without hesitation concluded a treaty, by which he engaged to bring into the field an army of five thousand men, which was to co-operate with the Tuscan forces. But soon after the commencement of the campaign, the Florentines were happily relieved from their anxiety, by the death of their inveterate enemy Galeazzo, whose career of conquest was terminated by a fever, of which he died at Marignano,[26] on the third of September, 1402. Soon after the death of this powerful prince, many cities, of which he had at different times forcibly taken possession, were seized by various petty tyrants, who took advantage of the odium excited by the vices of his son and successor Giovanni Maria; and Boniface availed himself of the general confusion to reduce Bologna and Perugia to their ancient allegiance to the papal see.[27]