The king formed again new marriage ties, and took Barbara, the daughter of Count Arminius Cilley, the powerful lord of the Styrian castle of Cilli, for his wife. The new queen added but little to his happiness. The king established the order of the dragon in commemoration of his wedding. The insignia of the order were a red cross with a gold dragon who twisted his tail in a circular shape around his own neck. The membership was confined to twenty-four, who bound themselves to defend the Christian faith against the Turks. The king and queen were the first members of the order, the remaining members were selected from among the highest dignitaries of the land. A high distinction fell to the lot of the king of Hungary on the 20th of September, 1410. Ruprecht, who had been elevated to the imperial throne of Germany, after the deposition of Wenceslaus the drunkard (the half insane brother of Sigismund), was now dead. Wenceslaus was now striving to regain the lost dignity, but in this he was opposed by his own brother Sigismund. The electoral princes voted for the latter. This was the first time that a similar distinction had been conferred upon the wearer of the crown of St. Stephen. The nation felt proud of the exaltation of their king, but the nation as well as the king found subsequently ample reason to regret their premature rejoicing. Indeed the fears of St. Ladislaus and Louis the Great, who had declined the imperial crown lest they might, accepting it, be caused to neglect the affairs of Hungary, proved but too well founded. The business of the emperor required his presence elsewhere, and while he was absent for years from the country, matters at home visibly went to rack and ruin. The emperor-king could not spare time to attend to the most important duty of his reign, the driving back of the Turks, and, there can be no doubt, that it was owing less to the civil wars of that period than the lukewarmness of Sigismund in the face of the Ottoman advances during the last years of his reign, that it became possible for the Moslem power to obtain possession, a century later, of the stronghold of Christianity. The signs of the coming life-and-death struggle became already apparent—and once the struggle begun there was no way to destroy the Ottoman power, nor could a favorable opportunity, once missed, return again.