former with more brilliancy
than his rival, the latter, at need, with quite as much firmness. But in
sending challenges one to the other, as they did on this occasion, they
were obeying a dying-out code, and rather attempting to keep up
chivalrous appearances than to put seriously in practice the precedents
of their ancestors. It was no longer a time when the fate of a people
could be placed in the hands of a few valiant warriors, such as the three
Horatii and the three Curiatii, or the thirty Bretons and thirty English.
The era of great nations and great contests was beginning, and one is
inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles V. were themselves aware
that their mutual challenges would not come to any personal encounter.
The war which continued between them in Italy was not much more serious
or decisive; both sides were weary of it, and neither one nor the other
of the two sovereigns espied any great chances of success. The French
army was wasting itself, in the kingdom of Naples, upon petty,
inconclusive engagements; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on
the 15th of August, 1528; a desire for peace became day by day stronger;
it was made, first of all, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529,
between Charles V. and Pope Clement VII.; and then a conference was
opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between Charles V.
and Francis I. likewise. Two women, Francis I.'s mother and Charles V.'s
aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation
of it; they had both of them acquired the good sense and the moderation
which come from experience of affairs and from difficulties in life; they
did not seek to give one another mutual surprises and to play-off one
another reciprocally; they resided in two contiguous houses, between
which they had caused a communication to be made on the inside, and they
conducted the negotiation with so much discretion, that the petty Italian
princes who were interested in it did not know the results of it until
peace was concluded on the 5th of August, 1529. Francis I. yielded on
all the Italian and Flemish questions; and Charles V. gave up Burgundy,
and restored to liberty the King of France's two sons, prisoners at
Madrid, in consideration of a ransom put at two millions of crowns and of
having the marriage completed between his sister Eleanor and Francis I.
King Henry VIII. complained that not much account had been made of him,
either dur