Other hands than those of Switzerland were to deal the last blows destined to secure the Reformation and independence of Geneva. Villebon had hardly got back to Lyons, when the army of Francis I. moved forward, overran Bresse and Savoy, then invaded Piedmont, and afterwards the Milanese. The duke, always irresolute, had taken no steps to check the French. It was in vain that at the last moment he called Medici to his aid; that captain, who had been unable to destroy Geneva, could not save Piedmont. Charles III., abandoned by the emperor, his brother-in-law, found himself, after spending thirty years of his life in hunting down Geneva, robbed in four months of his states, which he never entered again, and driven to bay on the shores of the Mediterranean. All kinds of disasters fell upon him at once. His country was devastated by the plague; his friends turned against him; the emperor showed him no pity; his son, the heir to his crown, was taken away by death; his beautiful and haughty wife, Beatrice of Portugal, pierced to the heart by so many misfortunes, died of a wasting sickness. Of all his states there was nothing left but the valley of Aosta, Nice, and two or three other cities. Alone and affrighted, this unhappy prince dragged out a wearisome life. He regretted his son, regretted his wife, regretted his states. His heated imagination surrounded him with phantoms; Geneva, which, unopposed, was developing her glorious and new existence, was to him an avenging ghost. He fell ill: he broke out in sweats; he shivered with cold; his eyes grew dim and his face pale; he wasted away of a slow fever. After a punishment of twenty-three years, death, the consequence of his reverses and his sorrows, put an end to the painful existence of the great enemy of Genevese independence and of the Reformation.[731] His son, Emanuel Philibert, a man of great capacity, recovered his states; but having many evils to repair, he adopted a pacific policy with regard to Geneva. Forty-four years of peace permitted the Reformation and the new republic to strengthen and organize themselves. God gives to the people and the churches, whom he designs to make use of, the time necessary for their development.