Æneas Sylvius wrote to the sovereign pontiff, and endeavoured to rouse his zeal by telling him, that the loss of Constantinople would weaken his credit and tarnish his name, if he did not use every effort to destroy the power of the Turks. The pious orator repaired to Rome, and preached the crusade in a consistory; and to show the necessity for a holy war, he quoted by turns, before the pope and cardinals, the authority of Greek philosophers, and that of fathers of the Church. He deplored the captivity of Jerusalem, the cradle of Christianity; and the slavery of Greece, the mother of the sciences and the arts. Æneas celebrated the heroic courage of the Germans, the noble devotion of the French, the generous pride of the Spaniards, and the love of glory which animated the nations of Italy. The king of Hungary, whose kingdom was threatened by Mahomet, was present at this assembly. The orator of the crusade, pointing out this monarch to the sovereign pontiff and the prelates, conjured them to have pity on his tears. Frederick III., emperor of Germany, at the same time wrote to Pope Nicholas V., to implore him to save Christendom. “The words that issue from the mouth of man cannot give an idea of the calamity the Catholic Church has just experienced, or make known the ferocity of the people who are now desolating Greece, and who menace the West.” The emperor pressed the pope to unite all the Christian powers against this formidable enemy; announcing that he himself was about to convoke the princes and states of Germany. The pope applauded the intentions of the emperor, and legates were sent to the diets of Ratisbon and Frankfort. Æneas Sylvius again preached the crusade against the Turks in these two assemblies. The duke of Burgundy, who was present at both, renewed, in the presence of the princes and states of the German empire, the vow he had made _to God, to the Blessed Virgin, to the ladies, and to the pheasant_. Hungarian deputies came to announce that the banks of the Danube and the frontiers of Germany were about to be invaded by the Turks, if Christians did not hasten, in all parts, to take up arms to repel them. The diet decreed that ten thousand horse and thirty thousand foot should be sent against the Turks; but as nothing was decided as to the manner of levying this army, or as to how it should be maintained, the enthusiasm for the crusade soon declined, and nobody put himself forward to oppose the progress of the Ottomans. Æneas Sylvius explains to us, in one of his letters, the causes of this indifference and inaction of Christendom. “The Christian republic was nothing but a body without a head; they who ought to have been the leaders had nothing great about them but the name; Europe was divided into a crowd of inimical or rival states; discords that could not be appeased, diversity of interests, languages, and customs, left no hope of raising a common army, or of carrying on an active and regular war against the Turks.”