His negotiations for the next four years embraced the politics of Europe, to which those of Italy were but an episode. We cannot interrupt the thread of our narrative to notice them: a sketch of their progress, in No. IV. of the Appendix, may afford some idea of the difficulties of Castiglione's position, as the medium of communication between a master who, leaving him habitually without information, recalled his most momentous instructions after they had been acted upon, and a monarch whose public measures were in uniform contradiction to his private assurances. That diplomacy so conducted should have issued in disgrace to Clement, ruin to Rome, and a broken heart to Count Baldassare, can excite no astonishment; but the ambassador merits our pity rather than our blame. Indeed its complicated intrigues may well drive the historian and the critic to despair. Incidents, which, although attended by important consequences, seem sudden and unlooked for, might, upon more accurate scrutiny, be detected as results long aimed at, and patiently wrought out. Thus, some documents lately published by Lanz[18] prove that Charles, although disposed to yield much for a satisfactory accommodation with Clement, had authorised Moncada, early in the summer of 1526, to concert with Cardinal Pompeo Colonna a series of domestic insurrections, in order to embarrass his Holiness into a disposition for peace, the issue of which machinations we have seen in the first sack of Rome. [Footnote 18: Lanz, Correspondenz des Kaisers Carl V. See also the delightful and well-edited _Lettere di Castiglione_ by SERASSI. *Cf. also CASANOVA, _Lettere di Carlo V. a Clement VII._ (per nozze, Firenze, 1894).]