The choice of the cardinals now fell upon the most remarkable Pope of the century, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who adopted the Virgilian epithet of Pius as his papal [Sidenote: Pius II., 1458-64.] name. In his youth Æneas Sylvius had lived a gay and not too decorous life. The author of the novel of _Euryalus and Lucretia_, and the confidant of the amours of princes, he had first achieved political distinction at the Council of Basel. There his literary and oratorical ability had given him a position of recognised eminence; but when the cause of the Council began to decline, he had entered the service of Frederick III., and had played by far the most prominent part in effecting a reconciliation between Germany and the papacy. For these services he had been rewarded by Nicolas V. with the bishopric of Siena, his native city, and by Calixtus III. with the cardinal’s hat. Raised to the papacy, he set himself to destroy the last traces of conciliar opposition to Roman supremacy, and with this object in view he strained every nerve to put himself at the head of a great crusading movement against the Turks. His career is full of strange contradictions, and the contrast has often been drawn between his unscrupulous youth and early manhood and the austere enthusiasm which he displayed as Pope. He himself was fully sensible of the incongruity, and in his famous recantation he urged his hearers to cast away Æneas and take Pius in his place: _Æneam rejicite, Pium accipite_. As peace was absolutely necessary for any action against the Turks, the first act of Pius was to reverse the policy of his predecessor, and to recognise Ferrante as _de facto_ king of Naples, though he was careful to avoid any formal decision on the question of legal right. In 1459 he summoned a congress of Western princes to meet at [Sidenote: Congress of Mantua.] Mantua, in the confident hope that his eloquence would prove as effective as that of Peter the Hermit in the eleventh century. On the appointed date the Pope and his personal followers found themselves alone in Mantua. After a month’s anxious delay, some ambassadors and a few German and Italian princes appeared, and the Congress was declared open. But the Pope soon discovered that his hopes had been far too sanguine; and after much eloquence had been expended in invectives against the Turks, the Congress broke up without achieving anything. There is no need to seek far for the causes of the failure of the Mantuan Congress. The growth of nations, with separate and often conflicting interests of their own, had destroyed all the conditions which had rendered possible the crusades of the Middle Ages. There were also special causes at the time which rendered it difficult for Pius II. to gain any real support for his schemes. The French were angry with the Pope for having prejudiced the Angevin claims to Naples by his recognition of Ferrante. Pius replied to the remonstrances of the French