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 French.

But our first duty is to secure peace in Germany.