though both by the Pope and by the consistory such a resolution would probably have been welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing Europe. At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty. The Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his relations with Francis—fortunately for the prospects of the Reformation—were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the Pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines should be represented; and the Pope, taught by recent experience, was made to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert themselves into open support.
With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the Emperor, combined with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples. This was his first object, to which every other was subsidiary. He was disinclined to a rupture with the Pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by French statesmen. It was a contingency which the Pope feared:—which the hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was—and Francis, like his rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the chair of St Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his wishes. With respect to
