At last it was absolutely necessary to pass from pleasure to business.  The envoys of Charles V., with Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, at their head, went to Cognac to demand execution of the treaty of Madrid.  Francis waited, ere he gave them an answer, for the arrival of the delegates from the estates of Burgundy, whom he had summoned to have their opinion as to the cession of the duchy.  These delegates, meeting at Cognac in June, 1527, formally repudiated the cession, being opposed, they said, to the laws of the kingdom, to the rights of the king, who could not by his sole authority alienate any portion of his dominions, and to his coronation-oath, which superseded his oaths made at Madrid.  Francis invited the envoys of Charles V. to a solemn meeting of his court and council present at Cognac, at which the delegates from Burgundy repeated their protest.  Whilst availing himself of this declaration as an insurmountable obstacle to the complete execution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis offered to give two million crowns for the redemption of Burgundy, and to observe the other arrangements of the treaty, including the relinquishment of Italy and his marriage with the sister of Charles V. Charles formally rejected this proposal.  “The King of France,” he said, “promised and swore, on the faith of an honest king and prince, that, if he did not carry out the said restitution of Burgundy, he would incontinently come and surrender himself prisoner to H. M. the emperor, wherever he might be, to undergo imprisonment in the place where the said lord the emperor might be pleased to order him, up to and until the time when this present treaty should be completely fulfilled and accomplished.  Let the King of France keep his oath.” [Traite de Madrid, 14th of January, 1526:  art. vi.]

However determined he was, at bottom, to elude the strict execution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis was anxious to rebut the charge of perjury by shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of the people themselves and their representatives.  He did not like to summon the states-general of the kingdom, and recognize their right as well as their power; but, after the meeting at Cognac, he went to Paris, and, on the 12th of December, 1527, the Parliament met in state with the adjunct of the princes of the blood, a great number of cardinals, bishops, noblemen, deputies from the Parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, Dijon, Grenoble, and Aix, and the municipal body of Paris.  In presence of this assembly the king went over the history of his reign, his expeditions in Italy, his alternate successes and reverses, and his captivity.  “If my subjects have suffered,” he said, “I have suffered with them.”  He then caused to be read the letters patent whereby he had abdicated and transferred the crown to his son the dauphin, devoting himself to captivity forever.  He explained the present condition of the finances, and what he could furnish for the ransom of his sons detained as hostages; and he ended by offering to return as a prisoner to Spain if no other way could be found out of a difficult position, for he acknowledged having given his word, adding, however, that he had thought it pledged him to nothing, since it had not been given freely.