Charles maintained the same imperturbable composure at the news of his good fortune as he had displayed in the days when defeat seemed to stare him in the face. He forbade all public rejoicing. He attributed all to God, and protested that his only desire was for a lasting peace, so that he might turn the arms of Christendom against the Turk. But he had before asserted that the only hope of peace lay in the submission of France, and he had not changed his mind. Yet how was that submission to be effected? War was at the moment out of the question. Charles had no money, and even the payment of the troops was in arrear. The Peasants’ War still continued in Germany, and Ferdinand could not help. Henry VIII. might perhaps have been prevailed upon to invade France, if the Emperor would have recognised his claim to the French throne; but Charles did not wish to see England thus aggrandised, and refused all definite promises. Wolsey therefore had his way, and, in August, concluded a treaty of alliance with the Regent of France, in which Henry, in return for an annual pension, promised to demand the liberty of the King on honourable terms. Italy was forming a league of self-defence, and Clement, though still full of promises, was known to be playing double. France, although she had lost an army and her King, was still France, and was determined to resist invasion to the last penny in her purse, and the last drop of her blood. War then was not to be thought of; nor did Charles’ prospects of gaining his end by treaty seem much better. His demands that Burgundy and Artois should be ceded to him, and that Bourbon should hold Provence independently of France, were indignantly rejected. To the mutilation of their territory, the French would not submit, and the French King declared that he would sooner die in captivity than buy his freedom by such dishonour. Francis, however, had not the strength of character of his rival, and presently began to pine for freedom. Hearing that it was proposed to send him a prisoner to Naples, he prevailed upon Lannoy to send him to Spain instead (June), for he hoped much from a personal interview with Charles. He did not understand the man with whom he had to deal. Nothing is more remarkable than the tenacity, often amounting to obstinacy, with which Charles clung to a decision once made. He looked upon his claims to Artois and Burgundy as just; Burgundy especially was the cradle of his race, and had been wrongly taken from his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy; it should be restored to him. In vain Francis and the French envoys pleaded for some abatement of his demands. Charles remained unmoved: he even refused to see the King of France until a serious attack of fever threatened the prisoner’s life. The news that Clement and the Italians were making a league with France, that Francesco Maria Sforza of Milan, his own creature, was turning against him; the attempt of Morone, the Milanese chancellor, to corrupt the honour