Still more fatal to the cause of the League was the final reconciliation of Clement with the Emperor. The real desire of Clement, since his escape from Rome, had been to maintain his neutrality until peace was declared. This, however, was difficult, besieged as he was by the importunate agents of the League, and of Charles. Moreover, Clement cared chiefly for the temporal interests of the Papacy and the aggrandisement of his family. To regain the possessions of which he had been robbed, to re-establish the Medici in Florence--these, rather than the freedom of Italy, or the overthrow of heresy, were his aims. As these were not to be gained from the League, the Pope decided after much hesitation to come to terms with the Emperor, the more so, because the ultimate success of Charles seemed certain. Nor can it be denied that, for once, Clement’s private interests coincided with those of the Church, for reconciliation with Charles offered the only hope of making head against the formidable Luther. His only apprehension was that Charles would put into effect his threat of summoning a General Council, a threat which he had enforced by his promises to the Diet of Spires in June 1526. On this point, the Emperor’s agents succeeded in allaying the fears of the Pope, and no mention of a Council was made in the treaty which was concluded at Barcelona on the 29th June, 1529. By that treaty the Pope promised to invest Charles with the kingdom of Naples, and to crown him Emperor. Charles undertook that the places seized from the Papal States by the Duke of Ferrara, and by Venice, should be restored; he also promised to re-establish the Medici in Florence. Finally, they both agreed to turn their united forces against the infidel and the heretic. Yet the treaty was to lead to another schism. On the 16th of July, Clement, yielding to the wishes of Charles, revoked the powers he had given to Wolsey and Campeggio to try the question of Henry’s divorce in England, and cited the cause to Rome. Wolsey’s dream of gaining papal sanction was broken, and soon Henry was to take the matter into his own hands and cast off the papal supremacy. | Peace of Cambray. August 3, 1529. Meanwhile, negotiations for peace between the Emperor and Francis had been going on. The rivals had, however, challenged each other to single combat the year before, and their honour did not suffer them personally to correspond. The negotiations, therefore, had been conducted by two women--Margaret, Governess of the Netherlands, the aunt of Charles, and Louise of Savoy, the mother of the French King, both of whom were anxious for peace. Francis had been most unwilling to grant the terms demanded, yet he was in no condition to continue the war, and the reconciliation of Pope and Emperor forced him to abandon his scruples, and sign the Peace of Cambray, or Women’s Peace, August 3, 1529.