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Spanish power had been extended farther and farther northward from Southern Italy. Being himself a friend of the Emperor, he had favoured Spain when he was Leo's Secretary of State. But the pres- sure of alien rule on a country which sought a political expression of unity and freedom to conform with the spiritual world power it already possessed proved constantly more and more unendurable. National hatred was stored up against the arrogant, booty-loving "semi-bar- barians." The Pope's dynastic interest in Florence likewise induced him to covet the friendship of France, It was not long, however, before Francis I was compelled, after the Battle of Pavia in 1525, to surrender his sword to the Imperial ruler of Milan and let himself be led off a prisoner to Madrid. The frightened Pope humbled himself before the Emperor in order to retain Florence. But the Peace of Madrid, which was signed at the beginning of 1526, subordinated France so completely to the Habsburg power that all Charles' op- ponents, including Italy and the Pope, banded together at Cognac to form a Holy League. During the same year the German Protestants obtained the status of a legal party at the Reichstag of Speyer; and now the Emperor had to reckon with them as a political factor quite in the same way as he had to deal with the Pope as a political antagonist. In the League England, Venice, Milan and Florence were joined with Clement. France was included, too, for its king no longer considered himself bound by the oath he had sworn in Madrid to renounce all claims on Italy. Charles* army, in which many Lutherans also fought, opened the campaign without money. It was to pay its own way by looting. The objective was Rome and its Pope. Frunds- bcrg showed his troops the rope with which the Pope was to be hanged, and by forced marches the army drew nearer and nearer to the Eternal City. It sacked Rome in 1527 like another mob of Vandals. It is unnecessary to relate again the well remembered story: churches were devastated, tabernacles were broken open. In front of the altar in St. Peter's there lay in a heap the corpses of those attached to the Papal court. Soldiers dressed in red led donkeys on which cardinals were seated, through the city. A German arrayed in the Papal robes directed the shafts of his wit at the Pope who was a prisoner in St. Angelo, and a mock conclave declared Luther elected Pope. A Swabian Lutheran thus described his role in the afiair: "In San AngeJo
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