The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary that Charles V. should put in order the vast estates to which he now succeeded as sole master.  He was, moreover, Emperor Elect; and he judged this occasion good for assuming the two crowns according to antique custom.  Accordingly in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in a rough passage of fourteen days, landed at Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma and Modena to Bologna, where Clement VII. was already awaiting him.  The meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna was so solemn an event in Italian history, and its results were so important for the several provinces of the peninsula, that I may be excused for enlarging at some length upon this episode.

[Footnote 1:  It is significant for the future of Italy that both the ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy.  Louise, Duchess of Angouleme, was a daughter of the house.  Margaret, daughter of Maximilian, was Duchess Dowager of Savoy.]

With pomp and pageantry it closed an age of unrivaled intellectual splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war.  By diplomacy and debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery.  Illustrious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival.  The compact struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for that firm alliance between Spain and Rome which seriously influenced the destinies of Europe.  Finally, this was the last occasion upon which a modern Caesar received the iron and golden crowns in Italy from the hands of a Roman Pontiff.  The fortunate inheritor of Spain, the Two Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then assumed them both at the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since Charles the Great had been.[2]

[Footnote 2:  In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am greatly indebted to Giordani’s laboriously compiled volume:  Della Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont.  Clemente VII. etc. (Bologna, 1832).]

That Charles should have employed the galleys of Doria for the transhipment of his person, suite, and military escort from Barcelona, deserves a word of comment.  Andrea Doria had been bred in the service of the French crown, upon which Genoa was in his youth dependent.  He formed a navy of decisive preponderance in the western Mediterranean, and in return for services rendered to Francis in the Neapolitan campaign of 1528, he demanded the liberation of his native city.  When this was refused, Doria transferred his allegiance to the Spaniard, surprised Genoa and reinstated the republic, magnanimously refusing to secure its tyranny for himself or even to set the ducal cap upon his head.  Charles invested him with the principality of Melfi and made him a Grandee of Spain.  By this series of events Genoa was prepared to accept the yoke of Spanish influence and customs, which pressed so heavily in the succeeding century on Italy.