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infallible means of subjugating Alexander by calling a Council.1 Charles VIII. claimed the crown of Naples, and threatened, if investiture should be refused, to depose the Pope, not by force, but by canonical proof that he was a heretic and an intruder.2 When Alexander took the side of the house of Aragon, and the French invaded Italy, his prospects seemed hopeless. He expected to be deposed.3 The Cardinal of Siena, whom he sent to mollify the King of France, could not obtain an audience, and wrote to warn his master of the approaching danger.4 The French intended to summon a Council at Ferrara to sit in judgment on thePope,5 and they believed that the consciousness of his guilt would make him pliable.6They occupied Rome without resistance. Alexander shut himself up in St. Angelo, with a small group of faithful prelates; but the majority of the Cardinals were urging the kingto depose him.7 The instrument pronouncing his deposition was drawn [70]up:1 French cannon were pointed against the fort; and part of the walls suddenly gave way. When it seemed that nothing could save Alexander, Charles relented and made terms with him. The reforming cardinals quitted Rome, indignant at the failure of their design. As the Pope instantly broke the treaty that had been forced upon him, Briçonnet himself thought that the king would proceed to extremities against him on his return from Naples.2 Alexander escaped by flight. He afterwards said that Charles had been restrained from acts of violence by the piety of his courtiers;3 but the language of Briçonnet and Comines proves that the opinion of the French camp was in favour of a bolder policy, and the king had not courage to attempt it. When he was gone and the danger was over Alexander excommunicated him. Shortly before he died the Sorbonne exhorted him to convoke a Council, and accomplish the reforms which the Pope persisted in refusing. Under his successor, Lewis XII., the planwas revived.The Cardinal d'Amboise opened negotiations with Ferdinand and Maximilian with a view to a new election.4 In the summer of the year 1501, Piccolomini, [71] Cardinal of Siena, who became Alexander's successor, proposed to him to call together a Council and undertake reforms himself, lest the thing should be done in spite of him, to the detriment of the papacy, by the cardinals who were living abroad. Alexander entertained the idea for a moment, and then gave it up when he was reminded that Piccolomini was a nephew of Pius II., "un concilionista," whoseadvice in these matters was open to suspicion.1 In the following year it was reported in Rome that the French were resolved to depose him. There is a celebrated medal bearing the effigy of Lewis XII., with the lilies, and the words "Perdam Babylonis nomen," which is ascribed to the time of the deadly quarrel between Lewis and Julius II. It belongs to the times of Alexander VI. Constabili speaks of it, and describes the sensation which it made at Rome, in a letter to the Duke of Ferrara, on the 11th of August 1502. The aspiration of the Councils of Constance and Basel, the hope of honest reforms, had remained unsatisfied, and was kept up by the condition of the Roman Court during several pontificates. It was scarcely worse under Alexander than under his predecessors, and the zeal of the French Government was not attributable exclusively to disinterested motives of conscience. The flaw in his election was too tempting an instrument to be neglected. There was more to gain by practising on his fears than by .