guarantee of this concession, the dauphin, the king’s eldest son, and his second son, Henry, Duke of Orleans, or other great personages, to the number of twelve, should be sent to him and remain in his keeping as hostages.”  The regent, Louise, was not without a hand in this determination of the king; her maternal affection took alarm at the idea of her son’s being for an indefinite period a prisoner in the hands of his enemy.  Besides, in that case, war seemed to her inevitable; and she dreaded the responsibility which would be thrown upon her.  Charles V., on his side, was essentially a prudent man; he disliked remaining, unless it were absolutely necessary, for a long while in a difficult position.  His chancellor, Gattinera, refused to seal a treaty extorted by force and violated, in advance, by lack of good faith.  “Bring the King of France so low,” he said, “that he can do you no harm, or treat him so well that he can wish you no harm, or keep him a prisoner:  the worst thing you can do is to let him go half satisfied.”  Charles V. persisted in his pacific resolution.  There is no knowing whether he was tempted to believe in the reality of Francis I.’s concession, and to regard the guarantees as seriously meant; but it is evident that Francis I. himself considered them a mere sham; for four months previously, on the 22d of August, 1525, at the negotiations entered into on this subject, he had taken care to deposit in the hands of his negotiators a nullifying protest “against all pacts, conventions, renunciations, quittances, revocations, derogations, and oaths that he might have to make contrary to his honor and the good of his crown, to the profit of the said emperor or any other whosoever.”  And on the 13th of January, 1526, four weeks after having given his ambassadors orders to sign the treaty of Madrid containing the relinquishment of Burgundy and its dependencies, the very evening before the day on which that treaty was signed, Francis I. renewed, at Madrid itself, and again placed in the hands of his ambassadors, his protest of the 22d of August preceding against this act, declaring “that it was through force and constraint, confinement and length of imprisonment, that he had signed it, and that all that was contained in it was and should remain null and of no effect.”  We may not have unlimited belief in the scrupulosity of modern diplomats; but assuredly they would consider such a policy so fundamentally worthless that they would be ashamed to practise it.  We may not hold sheer force in honor; but open force is better than mendacious weakness, and less debasing for a government as well as for a people.