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 privileges of the Church of Bohemia. The king and the utraquists naturally retorted that the Compacts which had been sanctioned by the Council of Basel could by no means be described as heresies, and that the coronation oath by which the king had sworn to maintain the liberties and privileges of Bohemia referred to the Compacts also. It is, however, possible that the omission of all mention of the Compacts was not an accidental one, but that it was a concession to the representatives of the Papal See. Only thus could King George hope to secure his coronation, a ceremony to which the people of Bohemia have always attached the greatest importance.

The comparatively conciliatory Pope, Calixtus III, died in the year of the accession of King George, and was succeeded by Cardinal Piccolomini, known in literature as Aenaeas Sylvius. The new Pope, who assumed the name of Pius II, had a thorough knowledge of Bohemia, having resided there while engaged on diplomatic missions, and he has, as is well known, left us a history of the country. The new Pope, however, became a bitter enemy to Bohemia and to its king, as soon as he realized the impossibility of carrying out his favourite plan, involving the suppression of the Bohemian Compacts.

Germany was at that time greatly troubled by the enmity which existed between the houses of Brandenburg and Bavaria, while the power of the Emperor Frederick had sunk so low that he was in constant dread of his immediate subjects, the Estates of Lower Austria. King George availed himself of this favourable political situation for the purpose of extending his influence in Germany, where the contending parties, and at times the Emperor also, sought his alliance. It would extend our inquiries too far to give an account of the means by which he strengthened his position in Germany—more often by mediation than by the force of arms—and of the treaties which he at this time concluded with numerous German princes. We must, however, briefly refer to what was for a time the dominant object of the king's policy, the acquisition of the German crown. This plan is not easy to trace, for after its failure all papers concerning it were destroyed. It was, in fact, soon abandoned by the king, though not before it had given rise to some of the disasters of the latter years of his reign. In devising this scheme he acted largely under the influence