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and to his coronation-oath, which superseded his oaths made at Madrid.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, h