ed for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and
England threatened both to fall from him. It was therefore necessary for
him to induce the emperor to consent to delay, while he worked upon the
King of France; and, if France and England could once be separated, he
trusted that Henry would yield in despair. This most subtle and difficult
policy reveals itself in the transactions open and secret of the ensuing
years. It was followed with a dexterity as extraordinary as its
unscrupulousness, and with all but perfect success. That it failed at all,
in the ordinary sense of failure, was due to the accidental delay of a
courier; and Clement, while he succeeded in preserving the allegiance of
France to the Roman see, succeeded also--and this is no small thing to have
accomplished--in weaving the most curious tissue of falsehood which will be
met with even in the fertile pages of Italian subtlety.

With this general understanding of the relation between the great parties
in the drama, let us look to their exact position in the summer of 1532.

Charles was engaged in repelling an invasion of the Turks, with an
anarchical Germany in his rear, seething with fanatical anabaptists, and
clamouring for a general council.

Henry and Francis had been called upon to furnish a contingent against
Solyman, and had declined to act with the emperor. They had undertaken to
concert their own measures between themselves, if it proved necessary for
them to move; and in the meantime Cardinal Grammont and Cardinal Tournon
were sent by Francis to Rome, to inform Clement that unless he gave a
verdict in Henry's favour, the Kings of France and England, being _une
mesme chose_, would pursue some policy with respect to him,[375] to which
he would regret that he had compelled them to have recourse. So far their
instructions were avowed and open. A private message revealed the secret
means by which the pope might escape from his dilemma; the cardinals were
to negotiate a marriage between the Duke of Orleans and the pope's niece
(afterwards so infamously famous), Catherine de Medicis. The marriage, as
Francis represented it to Henry, was beneath the dignity of a prince of
France, he had consented to it, as he professed, only for Henry's
sake;[376] but the pope had made it palatable by a secret article in the
engagement, for the grant of the duchy of Milan as the lady's dowry.

Henry, threatened as we have seen with domestic disturbance,