in 1527 might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the nation, was the Papacy.  Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been founded.  Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been immeasurably improved.  Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now no resistance to the Pope’s secular supremacy within the limits of his authorized dominion.  The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace.  No foreign force could levy armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence.  Venice had been stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray.  Florence had been enslaved after the battle of Ravenna.  Milan had been relinquished, out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent Sforza.  Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy.  The feudal vassals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the mediaeval history of the Italian communes.  If, therefore, the Pope could come to terms with the King of Spain for the partition of supreme authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled remains of the Italian prey at peace together.  This is precisely what they resolved on doing.  The basis of their agreement was laid in the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529.  It was ratified and secured by the Treaty of Cambray in the same year.  By the former of these compacts Charles and Clement swore friendship.  Clement promised the Imperial crown and the investiture of Naples to the King of Spain.  Charles agreed to reinstate the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his natural daughter Margaret of Austria on Clement’s bastard nephew Alessandro, who was already designated ruler of the city.  By the Treaty of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy and abandoned his Italian supporters without conditions, receiving in exchange the possession of Burgundy.  The French allies who were sacrificed on this occasion by the Most Christian to the Most Catholic Monarch consisted of the Republics of Venice and Florence, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the princely Houses of Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with the Angevine nobles in the realm of Naples.  The Paix des Dames, as this act of capitulation was called (since it had been drawn up in private conclave by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother and the aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that French influence in Italy was at an end.[1]