1522.  As general of the Imperial forces, Pescara spent the next years in perpetual military operations.  Under his leadership the battle of Pavia was won in 1525, and King Francis became his master’s prisoner.  So far, nothing but honour, success, and glory waited on the youthful hero.  But now the tide turned.  Pescara, when he again settled down at Milan, began to plot with Girolamo Morone, Grand Chancellor of Francesco Sforza’s duchy.  Morone had conceived a plan for reinstating his former lord in Milan by the help of an Italian coalition.  He offered Pescara the crown of Naples if he would turn against the Emperor.  The Marquis seems at first to have lent a not unwilling ear to these proposals, but seeing reason to doubt the success of the scheme, he finally resolved to betray Morone to Charles V., and did this with cold-blooded ingenuity.  A few months afterwards, on November 25, 1525, he died, branded as a traitor, accused of double treachery, both to his sovereign and his friend.

If suspicions of her husband’s guilt crossed Vittoria’s mind, as we have some reason to believe they did, these were not able to destroy her loyalty and love.  Though left so young a widow and childless, she determined to consecrate her whole life to his memory and to religion.  His nephew and heir, the Marchese del Vasto, became her adopted son.  The Marchioness survived Pescara two-and-twenty years, which were spent partly in retirement at Ischia, partly in journeys, partly in convents at Orvieto and Viterbo, and finally in a semi-monastic seclusion at Rome.  The time spared from pious exercises she devoted to study, the composition of poetry, correspondence with illustrious men of letters, and the society of learned persons.  Her chief friends belonged to that group of earnest thinkers who felt the influences of the Reformation without ceasing to be loyal children of the Church.  With Vittoria’s name are inseparably connected those of Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, Giovanni Morone, Jacopo Sadoleto, Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, and Fra Bernardino Ochino.  The last of these avowed his Lutheran principles, and was severely criticised by Vittoria Colonna for doing so.  Carnesecchi was burned for heresy.  Vittoria never adopted Protestantism, and died an orthodox Catholic.  Yet her intimacy with men of liberal opinions exposed her to mistrust and censure in old age.  The movement of the Counter-Reformation had begun, and any kind of speculative freedom aroused suspicion.  This saintly princess was accordingly placed under the supervision of the Holy Office, and to be her friend was slightly dangerous.  It is obvious that Vittoria’s religion was of an evangelical type, inconsistent with the dogmas developed by the Tridentine Council; and it is probable that, like her friend Contarini, she advocated a widening rather than a narrowing of Western Christendom.  To bring the Church back to purer morals and sincerity of faith was their aim.  They yearned for a reformation and regeneration from within.