To turn for a moment to the situation on the Continent. The House of Hapsburg, under Charles V., seemed to have attained the acme of its greatness, but its power was not by any means as real as it appeared. The Emperor’s insatiable desire for foreign conquest had caused him to neglect affairs in Spain and in the Empire, and to overtax his powers and drain his resources by continual struggles with his great rival the King of France. The bone of contention was ostensibly Italy; perhaps a truer cause of the struggles of the two sovereigns is to be found in the geographical position of the countries over which they ruled. The newly-consolidated realm of France divided the dominions of the Emperor into two parts: the dream of Charles was to connect them; the object of Francis was to forestall him. Northern Italy belonged to neither, but it was a rich prize and a fighting-ground easily accessible to both the combatants, and so it very naturally became the field of war. Soon after the Imperial election of 1519 the tide began to set slowly but surely against Francis; he was a true soldier, and was not a man to submit to any encroachment without a struggle; still he fought at a terrible disadvantage, betrayed as he was by the Duke of Bourbon, and in 1525 he was forced to acknowledge a thorough defeat, at the fatal battle of Pavia[171]. Although the first idea that occurred to Henry and Wolsey after the news of Charles’ great victory had reached them was a plan for the conquest and subdivision of the kingdom of Francis, they soon came to the conclusion that such a scheme would render the Emperor far too powerful. Charles himself, moreover, had received with little favour the extravagant proposals for an invasion of France which England had sent him as soon as the result of Pavia was known, and had consistently refused to allow Henry any share in his triumph. The Pope also, who had watched with terror the victorious march of the Imperial army, ventured for the last time to present himself as the centre of the opposition to Charles V., and strove in every way to reconcile England and France. The obstinate resistance that the Commissioners for the collection of the Amicable Loan had encountered in the spring of 1525 was certainly no encouragement for undertaking a war of aggression, and Henry and Wolsey soon determined to abandon all plans of invasion, and to pursue the wiser policy of maintaining neutrality between the two great continental powers. With this thought in mind a treaty of peace was made with Francis in August, and after the escape of the French King from captivity in January, 1526, the two continental rivals were once more placed on an even footing. With this restoration of equality Henry was perfectly satisfied, and he took good care to avoid committing himself permanently to Francis, by refusing openly to join the League of Cognac in the following spring. At this juncture the matter of the divorce