Pius II Calls Failed Crusade

1463

The pope arrived in Ancona to embark on a crusade against the Turks he had been preaching for years. Only a handful of Venetian galleys and some Bosnian refugees appeared. He died waiting for armies that never came. European Christendom had lost the capacity to muster coordinated holy war. His death with the harbor empty became a symbol of Christendom's collective failure to mount coordinated resistance against Ottoman expansion.