The engagement which Francesco Maria had accepted, to command the Florentine armies for a year, did not call him from this retirement; it was important only as indicating an apparent reconciliation with the Cardinal de' Medici, to which the latter was induced by apprehension that he might have otherwise proved a formidable opponent to his interest in a future conclave. After a somewhat serious illness, the Duke repaired to Rome, to offer his homage on the arrival of Adrian in Italy, and was honourably received and formally invested with his restored dignities. He rode there escorted by two hundred lances, and was lodged by the Venetian ambassador in the palace of S. Marco. His late eventful history rendered him an object of general interest, and he was universally admitted to have borne his reverses with firmness, his successes with moderation. To commemorate these, he adopted this device, invented for him by Giovio,--a palm-tree, whose crest was weighed downwards by a block of marble, with the motto, "Though depressed, it recoils." This emblem of valour and constancy, which adversity could bend but could not break, he bore upon his banner and trumpets, and frequently introduced it in his coinage. The repose of Italy was, as usual, of brief duration. Wearied of those contests in which the ambition of France had for thirty years involved the Peninsula, the leading powers began to regard Francesco Sforza's maintenance in the duchy of Milan as their best guarantee of peace. This policy was warmly adopted by the Emperor, interested alike in the welfare of the Neapolitan territory, and in humbling his rival Francis I. The result was a new confederation, to which the Pope, the Emperor, Henry VIII., Venice, Milan, and Florence were parties, but which brought on a general war, the very evil it was intended to avert. Francesco Maria's condotta with the Florentines being expired, he was named to succeed Teodoro Trivulzio, whose supposed French tendencies occasioned his removal from command of the Venetian troops. Those of the Church were committed to the Marquis of Mantua, and Prospero Colonna was general-in-chief of the League Lautrec and l'Escu[294] having been recalled, the Admiral Gouffier de Bonnivet was sent into Lombardy to make good the title of his master to the Milanese, whose daring spirit looked not beyond the glory of encountering single-handed the armies of Europe. This struggle, eventually so ruinous to Italy, so fatal to Rome, had scarcely commenced ere Adrian was called from events which he was in no respect fitted to direct. He died on the 24th of September, 1523,[*295] and was succeeded on the 19th of November by the Cardinal de' Medici, as Clement VII., whose first act was an adherence to the League. [Footnote 294: Odet de Foix, Seigneur de Lautrec, and the Seigneur de l'Escu were both brothers of the chivalrous Gaston de Foix.]