6.  Wars of Francis and Charles.—­All the rest of the king’s life was an attempt to elude or break these conditions, against which he had protested in his prison, but when there was no Spaniard present to hear him do so.  The county of Burgundy refused to be transferred; and the Pope, Clement VII., hating the Spanish power in Italy, contrived a fresh league against Charles, in which Francis joined, but was justly rewarded by the miserable loss of another army.  His mother and Charles’s aunt met at Cambrai, and concluded, in 1529, what was called the Ladies’ Peace, which bore as hardly on France as the peace of Madrid, excepting that Charles gave up his claim to Burgundy.  Still Francis’s plans were not at an end.  He married his second son, Henry, to Catherine, the only legitimate child of the great Florentine house of Medici, and tried to induce Charles to set up an Italian dukedom of Milan for the young pair; but when the dauphin died, and Henry became heir of France, Charles would not give him any footing in Italy.  Francis never let any occasion pass of harassing the Emperor, but was always defeated.  Charles once actually invaded Provence, but was forced to retreat through the devastation of the country before him by Montmorency, afterwards Constable of France.  Francis, by loud complaints, and by talking much of his honour, contrived to make the world fancy him the injured man, while he was really breaking oaths in a shameless manner.  At last, in 1537, the king and Emperor met at Aigues Mortes, and came to terms.  Francis married, as his second wife, Charles’s sister Eleanor, and in 1540, when Charles was in haste to quell a revolt in the Low Countries, he asked a safe conduct through France, and was splendidly entertained at Paris.  Yet so low was the honour of the French, that Francis scarcely withstood the temptation of extorting the duchy of Milan from him when in his power, and gave so many broad hints that Charles was glad to be past the frontier.  The war was soon renewed.  Francis set up a claim to Savoy, as the key of Italy, allied himself with the Turks and Moors, and slaves taken by them on the coasts of Italy and Spain were actually brought into Marseilles.  Nice was burnt; but the citadel held out, and as Henry VIII. had allied himself with the Emperor, and had taken Boulogne, Francis made a final peace at Crespy in 1545.  He died only two years later, in 1547.

7.  Henry II.—­His only surviving son, Henry II., followed the same policy.  The rise of Protestantism was now dividing the Empire in Germany; and Henry took advantage of the strife which broke out between Charles and the Protestant princes to attack the Emperor, and make conquests across the German border.  He called himself Protector of the Liberties of the Germans, and leagued himself with them, seizing Metz, which the Duke of Guise bravely defended when the Emperor tried to retake it.  This seizure of Metz was the first attempt of France to make conquests in Germany, and the beginning of