before the Council had begun its session, Ladislas died, leaving his crown to his sister, Joanna II., and the scheme of subjecting the papal states to Naples perished with him. The citizens of Rome expelled Sforza and his troops from the city, and welcomed the return of a papal legate. When unity was at last restored to the Church by the election of Martin V., the new Pope had a very cheerless prospect [Sidenote: Martin V., 1417-1431.] before him. His obvious task was to restore to the papacy some measure of the authority and influence which had been forfeited by its experiences during the last hundred years. To do this he must find a residence in which he would be more secure than his recent predecessors from the dictation of secular rulers. Sigismund urged him to reside in some German city, and the French would have welcomed him to Avignon. But Martin, himself a Roman by birth, refused to find a home except in the ancient capital of the world. Rightly or wrongly, he decided that temporal dominion in a state of his own was necessary to secure the independence of the Pope, and that to attain this he must recover and consolidate the papal provinces in Italy. The whole history of the papacy during the fifteenth century was moulded by this decision. The popes became more and more absorbed in the extension of their temporal power, even when their spiritual authority was weakened by it. Nepotism and other evils were the result of this devotion to secular interests, and a revolt of outraged and alienated opinion became inevitable.