The shock of the loss of Constantinople was felt all through Christendom, and Nicholas attempted to get up a crusade, but died before much came of it. When, however, the Turks, in the pride of victory, advanced further into Europe, and laid siege to Belgrade on the Danube, they were driven back with great loss by the skill of John Huniades, a general, and by the courage which John of Capistrano, a Franciscan friar, was able by his exhortations and his prayers to rouse in the hearts of the besieged.
Nicolas died in 1455, and his successor, Calixtus III., in 1458. The next pope, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who took the name of Pius II., was a very remarkable man. He had taken a strong part against Pope Eugenius at Basel, and had even been secretary to the old duke-antipope Felix. But he afterwards made his peace by doing great services to Eugenius, and then he rose step by step, until at the death of Calixtus he was elected pope. Pius was a man of very great ability in many ways; but his health was so much shaken before he became pope, that he was not able to do all that he might have done if he had been in the fulness of his strength. He took up the crusade with great zeal, but found no hearty support from others. A meeting which he held at Mantua for the purpose had little effect. At last, although suffering from gout and fever, the pope made his way from Rome to Ancona, on the Adriatic, where he expected to find both land and sea forces ready for the crusade. But on the way he fell in with some of the troops which had been collected for the purpose, and they turned out to be such wretched creatures, and so utterly unfit for the hardships of war, that he could only give them his blessing and tell them to go back to their homes. And, although, after reaching Ancona, he had the pleasure of seeing twenty-four Venetian ships enter the harbour for his service, he was so worn out by sickness that he died on the next day but one (Aug. 14, 1464). And after his death the crusade, on which he had so much set his heart, came to nothing.
NOTES
CHAPTER XXVIII.
JEROME SAVONAROLA.
A.D. 1452-1498.
PART I.
There is not much to tell about the popes after Pius II. until we come to Alexander VI., who was a Spaniard named Roderick Borgia, and was pope from 1492 to 1503. And the story of Alexander is too shocking to be told here; for there is hardly anything in all history so bad as the accounts which we have of him and of his family. He is supposed to have died of drinking, by mistake, some poison which he had prepared for a rich cardinal whose wealth he wished to get into his hands.