.[424]

[Footnote 423: _L. and P._, iii, 2026.]

[Footnote 424: For another view see Busch,
_Cardinal Wolsey und die Englisch-Kaiserliche
Allianz_, 1522-25. Bonn, 1886.]

* * * * *

However that may be, it was not for Clement VII. to deride England's
conduct. The keen-sighted Pace had remarked in 1521 that, in the event
of Charles's victory, the Pope would have to look to his affairs in
time.[425] The Emperor's triumph was, indeed, as fatal to the Papacy
as it was to Wolsey. Yet Clement VII., on whom the full force of the
blow was to fall, had, as Cardinal de Medici, been one of the chief
promoters of the war. In August, 1521, the Venetian, Contarini, (p. 153)
reports Charles as saying that Leo rejected both the peace and the truce
speciously urged by Wolsey, and adds, on his own account, that he
believes it the truth.[426] In 1522 Francis asserted that Cardinal de
Medici "was the cause of all this war";[427] and in 1527 Clement VII.
sought to curry favour with Charles by declaring that as Cardinal de
Medici he had in 1521 caused Leo X. to side against France.[428] In
1525 Charles declared that he had been mainly induced to enter on the
war by the persuasions of Leo,[429] over whom his cousin, the
Cardinal, then wielded supreme influence. So complete was his sway
over Leo, that, on Leo's death, a cardinal in the conclave remarked
that they wanted a new Pope, not one who had already been Pope for
years; and the gibe turned the scale against the future Clement VII.
Medici both, Leo and the Cardinal regarded the Papacy mainly as a
means for family aggrandisement. In 1518 Leo had fulminated against
Francis Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, as "the son of iniquity
and child of perdition,"[430] because he desired to bestow the duchy
on his nephew Lorenzo. In the family interest he was withholding
Modena and Reggio from Alfonso d'Este, and casting envious eyes on
Ferrara. In March, 1521, the French marched to seize some Milanese
exiles, who were harboured at Reggio.[431] Leo took the opportunity to
form an alliance with Charles for the expulsion of Francis from Italy.
It was signed at Worms on the 8th of May, the day on which Luther was
outlawed;[432] and a war broke out in Italy, the effects of which (p. 154)
were little foreseen by its principal authors. A veritable Nemesis
attended this policy conceived in pe