This device, as was intended, provoked a proposition from Chancellor Mayr’s superior, the Prince-Archbishop of Mainz; who sent his secretary to Rome on the tenth of September, 1456, with plenary powers to negotiate with the Cardinal of Siena towards an alliance with the Pope against the Electors. This renegade prelate’s terms were, that he was prepared to desert the German party of reform, if he were conceded the right of confirming episcopal elections throughout Germany as the price of his treachery; a right which would enable him to tax candidates for bishoprics at his will. The Cardinal of Siena lashed the Prince-Archbishop with courteous but stinging pen. He rejoiced to hear that his High Mightiness no longer cared to be allied with those malignants who attacked the Holy Father; but regretted that he should ask for that which was a right inherent in the Papacy, and which none of his predecessors had enjoyed. No bribe, no secret understanding, was necessary between God’s Vicegerent and His subjects. All were bound to obey. He was sure that the modesty of the Archbishop had been misrepresented by this improper request, which he, for his part, could not dare to lay before a Pope so blameless and so upright as was the Lord Calixtus. (Pii II. Ep. 338) Now that the venal nature of the cry for reform had been made clear to all the world, the Cardinal of Siena wrote eloquently and reasonably to Caesar Friedrich IV, to the King of Hungary, to the Princes and Prelates of Germany, pointing out the futility of quarrelling with the Pope, from Whom they derived so many benefits. (Pii II. Ep. 320, 344, 349.) He also expanded his letter to the discomfited Chancellor Martin Mayr into a pamphlet called _De ritu, situ, conditione, et moribus Germaniae_, in which he shewed that Germany had received from Rome far more than she ever had given. His wise and irrefragable reasoning, with the diplomatic skill of the papal envoy Lorenzo Rovarella, made Germany pause. To pause was to weaken. Then came the death of King Wladislaw of Hungary on the eve of his marriage with Madame Marguerite de France. His dominions in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, were claimed by several pretenders. The German Powers became intensely interested. Their attention was diverted from their attempts to blackmail Christ’s Vicar. And so the end of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III was attained; the crisis was averted without issue of a Pragmatic Sanction. * * * * *