n, and facts are in favour of his denial. When Francis I.
was in his power he made no attempt to dismember France, in spite of his
pledges to his allies Henry VIII. and the duke of Bourbon. He did,
indeed, demand the duchy of Burgundy, because he believed this to have
been unrighteously stolen by Louis XI. from his grandmother when a
helpless girl. The claim was not pressed, and at the height of his
fortunes in 1548 he advised his son never to surrender it, but also
never to make it a cause of war. When Clement VII. was his prisoner, he
was vehemently urged to overthrow the temporal power, to restore
imperial dominion in Italy, at least to make the papacy harmless for the
future. In reply he restored his enemy to the whole of his dominions,
even reimposing him by force on the Florentine republic. To the end of
his life his conscience was sensitive as to Ferdinand's expulsion of the
house of Albret from Spanish Navarre, though this was essential to the
safety of Spain. Though always at war he was essentially a lover of
peace, and all his wars were virtually defensive. "Not greedy of
territory," wrote Marcantonio Contarini in 1536, "but most greedy of
peace and quiet." For peace he made sacrifices which angered his
hot-headed brother Ferdinand. He would not aid in expelling the sultan's
puppet Zapolya from Ferdinand's kingdom of Hungary, and he suffered the
restoration of the ruffianly duke of Wurttemberg, to the grave prejudice
of German Catholicism. In spite of his protests, Henry VIII. with
impunity ill-treated his aunt Catherine, and the feeble government of
Edward VI. bullied his cousin Mary, who had been his fiancee. No serious
efforts were made to restore his brother-in-law, Christian II., to the
throne of Denmark, and he advised his son Philip to make friends with
the usurper. After the defeat of the Lutheran powers in 1547 he did not
gain a palm's breadth of territory for himself. He resisted Ferdinand's
claim for Wurttemberg, which the duke had deserved to forfeit; he
disliked his acceptance of the voluntary surrender of the city of
Constance; he would not have it said that he had gone to war for the
benefit of the house of Habsburg.

On the other hand, Charles V.'s policy was not merely negative. He
enlarged upon the old Habsburg practice of marriage as a means of
alliance of influence. Previously to his election as emperor, his sister
Isabella was married to Christian II. of Denmark, and the marriages of
Mary