o fight on equal terms. Instead
of laughing at the proposal as any modern leader would, Francis, in face
of the protest of all his generals, accepted and in true chivalrous
fashion fought the wholly unnecessary battle of Pavia. His forces were
completely defeated, he himself made prisoner. "All is lost," he wrote
home to France, "but honor." Even that too was lost, had he but
known. Charles, unchivalrous, determined to make the most of his
good-luck, and, for the release of his royal prisoner, demanded such
terms as would make France little more than a subject state.[5]

King Francis refused, threatened heroic suicide to save his country; but
he wearied of captivity at last and descended to his rival's level. It
was the tragic turning-point of the French monarch's life, the not
wholly untragic turning-point of larger destinies, ancient chivalry
being admitted unsuccessful and wholly out of date. The two monarchs
dickered over the terms of release. Charles abated somewhat of his
demands, and Francis was made free, having sworn to a treaty which he
never meant to keep. He repudiated it on various pleas, and having thus
sacrificed honor to regain something of all it had lost him, recommenced
the strife with Charles on more equal terms.

The Pope, not the Leo of earlier years, but Clement VII, another Medici,
absolved Francis from his treaty oath. This benevolence can scarce be
ascribed to religious grounds, for Charles was assuredly a better
Catholic than Francis. But as a temporal ruler Clement feared to have in
Italy a neighbor so powerful and unchecked as the Emperor was becoming.
Charles had his revenge. A German army of "Lutheran heretics" marched
into Italy swearing to hang the Pope to the dome of St. Peter's. They
stormed Rome, sacked it with such cruelty as rivalled the barbarian
plunderings of over a thousand years before; and if they did not hang
Clement, it was only because his castle of St. Angelo proved too strong
for their assaults. The marvellous art treasures which had been slowly
garnered in Rome since the days of Nicholas V, were almost wholly
destroyed.[6] Charles hastened to disclaim responsibility for this
direct assault upon the head of his Church; but he did not relinquish
any of the advantages it gave. He and the Pope arranged an alliance and
the Imperial army turned from Rome against Florence, where Pope
Clement's family, the Medici, had recently been expelled as rulers. The
siege and capture of F