While Francis, as we have seen, was from year to year aggravating the severity of his enactments against the adherents of the Reformation in his own kingdom, he did not forget his old rôle of ally of the Protestant princes of the empire. It would be too wide a digression from the true scope of this work, should we turn aside to chronicle the successive attempts of the French monarch to secure these powerful auxiliaries in his struggle with his great rival of the house of Hapsburg. One incident must suffice. The hypocrisy of Francis could, perhaps, go no farther than it carried him when, in 1543, his son Charles, Duke of Orleans, at the head of a royal army took possession of the Duchy of Luxemburg. The duke, who can hardly be imagined to have allowed himself to take any important step, certainly no step fraught with such momentous consequences as might be expected to follow this, without explicit instructions from his father, at once despatched an envoy to the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse. The subordinate agent in this game of duplicity was instructed to assure the great Protestant leaders that it was the earnest desire of the Duke of Orleans to see the Gospel preached throughout the whole of France. It was true that filial reverence had hitherto restrained him from gratifying his desires in this direction in his Duchy of Orleans; but in the government of Luxemburg and of all other territories acquired by right of arms, he hoped to be permitted by his royal father to follow his own preferences, and there he solemnly promised to introduce the proclamation of God's holy word. In return for these liberal engagements, the duke desired the German princes, then on the point of meeting for conference at Frankfort, to admit him to an alliance offensive and defensive, especially in matters concerning religion. He assured them of the support not only of his own forces, but of his father's troops, committed to him to use at his discretion, adding, as a further motive, the prospect that the Gospel would find more ready welcome in the rest of France, when the king saw its German advocates close allies of his youngest son.[448] [Sidenote: Commendable scepticism of the Germans.] But the princes were much too familiar with the wiles of Francis to repose any confidence in the lavish professions of his son. And the historian who discovers that the more intimately the king strove to associate himself with the German Protestants, the more fiercely did he commit the Protestants of France to the flames, in order to demonstrate to the Pope the immaculate orthodoxy of his religious belief, will not fail to applaud their discernment. Not until toward the very close of Francis's reign, when the Lutherans descried portents of a storm that threatened them with utter extermination, raised by the bigotry or craft of Charles the Fifth, did they manifest any anxiety to enter into near connection with the French monarch.