s, can best be read in Burigozzo's _Chronicle of Milan_,
in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in
the _Chronicle of Prato_, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome.
The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people
was broken. But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what in 1527
might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the
Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the
nation, was the Papacy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S.
Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear
the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the
five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been
founded. Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been
immeasurably improved. Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now
no resistance to the Pope's secular supremacy within the limits of his
authorized dominion. The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish
monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace. No foreign force could levy
armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence. Venice had been
stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. Florence had been
enslaved after the battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished,
out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent
Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy. The feudal
vassals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and
churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the
mediaeval history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope could
come to terms with the King of Spain for the partition of supreme
authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled
remains of the Italian prey at peace together. This is precisely what
they resolved on doing. The basis of their agreement was laid in the
Treaty of Barcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the Treaty
of Cambray in the same year. By the former of these compacts Charles and
Clement swore friendship. Clement promised the Imperial crown and the
investiture of Naples to the King of Spain. Charles agreed to reinstate
the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to
procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to
subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his
natural daughter Margaret of