any general enterprise,
and having promised, were still slower to perform. The emperor had no
power to enforce the fulfillment of agreements, and could only
supplicate. During the long reign of Frederic the imperial dignity had
lapsed more and more into an empty title; and Maximilian had an arduous
task before him in securing even respectful attention to his demands. He
was fully aware of the difficulties, and made arrangements accordingly.

The memorable diet was summoned at Worms, on the 26th of May, 1496. The
emperor had succeeded, by great exertion, in assembling a more numerous
concourse of the princes and nobles of the empire than had ever met on a
similar occasion. He presided in person, and in a long and earnest
address endeavored to rouse the empire to a sense of its own dignity and
its own high mission as the regulator of the affairs of Europe. He spoke
earnestly of their duty to combine and chastise the insolence of the
Turks; but waiving that for the present moment, he unfolded to them the
danger to which Europe was immediately and imminently exposed by the
encroachments of France. To add to the force of his words, he introduced
ambassadors from the King of Naples, who informed the assembly of the
conquests of the French, of their haughty bearing, and implored the aid
of the diet to repel the invaders. The Duke of Milan was then presented,
and, as a member of the empire, he implored as a favor and claimed as a
right, the armies of the empire for the salvation of his duchy. And then
the legate of the pope, in the robes of the Church, and speaking in the
name of the Holy Father to his children, pathetically described the
indignities to which the pope had been exposed, driven from his palace,
bombarded in the fortress to which he had retreated, compelled to
capitulate and leave his kingdom in the hands of the enemy; he
expatiated upon the impiety of the French troops, the sacrilegious
horrors of which they had been guilty, and in tones of eloquence hardly
surpassed by Peter the Hermit, strove to rouse them to a crusade for the
rescue of the pope and his sacred possessions.

Maximilian had now exhausted all his powers of persuasion. He had done
apparently enough to rouse every heart to intensest action. But the diet
listened coldly to all these appeals, and then in substance replied,

"We admit the necessity of checking the incursions of the Turks; we
admit that it is important to check the progress of the Fre