XI. 1555. BOOK if he had not, immediately after his election, called to Rome two of his nephews, the sons of his brother the Count of Montorio. The eldest he promoted to be Governor of Rome. The youngest, who had hitherto served as a soldier of fortune in the armies of Spain or France, and whose disposition as well as manners were still more foreign from the clerical character than his profession, he created a Cardinal, and appointed him legate of Bologna, the second office in power and dignity which a Pope can bestow. These marks of favour, no less sudden than extravagant, he accompanied with the most unbounded confidence and attachment, and forgetting all his former severe maxims, he seemed to have no other object than the aggrandizing of his nephews. Their Their am- ambition, unfortunately for Paul, was too aspiring to be bitious pro- satisfied with any moderate acquisition. They had seen the jects. Reasons of their dis gust with ror. family of Medici raised by the interest of the popes of that house to supreme power in Tuscany; Paul III. had, by his abilities and address, secured. the dutchies of Parma and Placentia to the family of Farnese. They aimed at some establishment for themselves, no less considerable and independent; and as they could not expect that the Pope would carry his indulgence towards them so far as to secularize any part of the patrimony of the church, they had no prospect of attaining what they wished, but by dismembering the Imperial dominions in Italy, in hopes of seizing some portion of them. This alone they would have deemed a sufficient reason for sowing the seeds of discord between their uncle and the Emperor. BUT Cardinal Caraffa had, besides, private reasons which filled him with hatred and enmity to the Emperor. While the empe- he served in the Spanish troops he had not received such marks of honour and distinction as he thought due to his birth and merit. Disgusted with this ill-usage, he had abruptly quitted the Imperial service; and entering into that of France, he had not only met with such a reception as soothed his vanity, and attached him to the French interest, but by contracting an intimate friendship with Strozzi, who commanded the French army in Tuscany, he had imbibed a mortal antipathy to the Emperor as the great enemy to XI. 1555. the liberty and independence of the Italian states. Nor BOOK was the pope himself indisposed to receive impressions unfavourable to the Emperor. The opposition given to his election by the Cardinals of the Imperial faction, left in his mind deep resentment, which was heightened by the remembrance of ancient injuries from Charles or his minis ters. deavour to from the emperor. Or this his nephews took advantage, and employed vari- They enous devices, in order to exasperate him beyond a possibility alienate of reconciliation. They aggravated every circumstance the pope which could be deemed any indication of the Emperor's dissatisfaction with his promotion; they read to him an intercepted letter, in which Charles taxed the Cardinals of his party with negligence or incapacity in not having defeated Paul's election: They pretended, at one time, to have discovered a conspiracy formed by the Imperial minister and Cosmo di Medici against the Pope's life; they alarmed him, at another, with accounts of a plot for assassinating themselves. By these artifices, they kept his mind, which was naturally violent, and become suspicious from old age, in such perpetual agitation, as precipitated him into measures which otherwise he would have been the first person to condemn. He seized some of the Cardinals who were most attached to the Emperor, and confined them in the castle of St. Angelo; he persecuted the Colonnas and other Roman barons, the ancient retainers to the Imperial faction, with the utmost severity; and discovering on all occasions his distrust, fear, or hatred of the Emperor, he began at last to court the friendship of the French King, and seemed willing to throw himself absolutely upon him for support and protection. to court the THIS was the very point to which his nephews wished to Induce him bring him as most favourable to their ambitious schemes; king of and as the accomplishment of these depended on their un- France. cle's life, whose advanced age did not admit of losing a r Ripamontii Hist. Patriæ, lib. iii. 1146. ap. Græv. Thes. vol. ii. Meni de Ribier, ii. 615. Adriani Istor. i. 906. XI. 1555. BOOK moment unnecessarily in negociations, instead of treating at second-hand with the French ambassador at Rome, they prevailed on the Pope to dispatch a person of confidence directly to the court of France, with such overtures on his part as they hoped would not be rejected. He proposed an alliance offensive and defensive between Henry and the Pope; that they should attack the dutchy of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples with their united forces; and if their arms should prove successful, that the ancient republican form of government should be re-established in the former, and the investiture of the latter should be granted to one of the French King's sons, after reserving a certain territory which should be annexed to the patrimony of the church, together with an independent and princely establishment for each of the Pope's nephews. Constable Montmo rency op alliance with the pope. THE King, allured by these specious projects, gave a most favourable audience to the envoy. But when the matter was poses the proposed in council, the constable Montmorency, whose natural caution and aversion to daring enterprises increased with age and experience, remonstrated with great vehemence against the alliance. He put Henry in mind how fatal to France every expedition into Italy had been during three successive reigns, and if such an enterprise had proved too great for the nation, even when its strength and finances were entire, there was no reason to hope for success, if it should be attempted now, when both were exhausted by extraordinary efforts during wars, which had lasted, with little interruption, almost half a century. He represented the manifest imprudence of entering into engagements with a Pope of fourscore, as any system which rested on no better foundation than his life, must be extremely precarious, and upon the event of his death, which could not be distant, the face of things, together with the inclination of the Italian States, must instantly change, and the whole weight of the war be left upon the King alone. To these considerations he added the near prospect which they now had of a final accommodation with the Emperor, who, having taken the resolution of retiring from the world, wished to transmit his kingdoms in peace to his son; and he concluded with XI. representing the absolute certainty of drawing the arms of B O O K England upon France, if it should appear that the re-establishment of tranquillity in Europe was prevented by the ambition of its Monarch. 1555. of Guise THESE arguments, weighty in themselves, and urged by The duke a minister of great authority, would probably have determin- favours it. ed the King to decline any connexion with the Pope. But the Duke of Guise, and his brother the Cardinal of Lorrain, who delighted no less in bold and dangerous undertakings than Montmorency shunned them, declared warmly for an alliance with the Pope. The Cardinal expected to be intrusted with the conduct of the negociations in the court of Rome to which this alliance would give rise; the Duke hoped to obtain the command of the army which would be appointed to invade Naples; and considering themselves as already in these stations, vast projects opened to their aspiring and unbounded ambition. Their credit, together with the influence of the King's mistress, the famous Diana of Poitiers, who was, at that time, entirely devoted to the interest of the family of Guise, more than counterbalanced all Montmorency's prudent remonstrances, and prevailed on an inconsiderate Prince to listen to the overtures of the Pope's envoy. Lorrain sent to ne with the pope. THE Cardinal of Lorrain, as he had expected, was im- Cardinal of mediately sent to Rome with full powers to conclude the treaty, and to concert measures for carrying it into execution, gociate Before he could reach that city, the Pope, either from reflecting on the danger and uncertain issue of all military operations, or through the address of the Imperial ambassador, who had been at great pains to sooth him, had not only begun to lose much of the ardour with which he had commenced the negociation with France, but even discovered great unwillingness to continue it. In order to rouse him from this fit of despondency, and to rekindle his former rage, his nephews had recourse to the arts which they had already practised with so much success. They alarmed him with new representations of the Emperor's hostile intentions, with fresh accounts which they had received of threats uttered XI. BOOK against him by the Imperial ministers, and with new discoveries which they pretended to have made of conspiracies formed, and just ready to take effect against his life. 1555. Paul enra ged at the Diet of BUT these artifices, having been formerly tried, would not have operated a second time with the same force, nor have made the impression which they wished, if Paul had not been excited by an offence of that kind which he was least able to bear. He received advice of the recess of the Diet of Augsburg, and of the toleration which was thereby granted to the Protestants; and this threw him at once into such transports of passion against the Emperor and King of the Romans, as carried him headlong into all the violent measures of his nephews. Full of high ideas with respect to the papal prerogative, and animated with the fiercest zeal against heresy, he considered the liberty of deciding concerning religious matters, which had been assumed by an assembly composed chiefly of laymen, as a presumptuous and unpardonable encroachment on that jurisdiction which belonged to him alone; and regarded the indulgence which had been given to the Protestants as an impious act of that power which the Diet had usurped. He complained loudly of both to the Imperial ambassador. He insisted that the recess of the Diet should immediately be declared illegal and void. He threatened the Emperor and King of the Romans, in case they should either refuse or delay to gratify him in this particular, with the severest effects of his vengeance. He talked in a tone of authority and command which might have suited a pontiff of the twelfth century, when a papal decree was sufficient to have shaken, or to have overturned, the throne of the greatest Monarch in Europe; but which was altogether improper in that age, especially when addressed to the minister of a Prince who had so often made pontiffs more formidable than Paul feel the weight of his power. The ambassador, however, heard all his extravagant propositions and menaces with much patience, and endeavoured to sooth him, by putting him in mind of the extreme distress to which the Emperor had been reduced at Inspruck, of the engagements which he had come under to the Protestants, in order to extricate himself, of the necessity of |