Equally inconsistent in appearance, but natural in the circumstances, was his conduct in reference to Bourbon's outrageous proceedings. When news of the sack reached Madrid, he affected great indignation, and put his court into mourning. On the 25th of July, he addressed to the magistracy of Rome a letter defending his proceedings. After narrating his liberation of Francis, and the various other sacrifices made by him, preliminary to such a general pacification as might enable all Christian powers to unite their arms against the Infidel, he charged the Pope with defeating this scheme by suddenly, and without reason, instigating an attack upon him and the imperial dignity, whereby he was compelled from self-defence to march fresh forces upon Italy, in what he regarded as a worse than civil broil. Moreover, new alliances against him having been arranged by his Holiness, and the truce actually broken, his troops had no alternative but to adopt compulsory measures. That these should, by the blunders of his officers, have led to the siege of the city, without his knowledge, he deeply regretted, and gladly would shed his best blood to repair its disasters. But great as had been the sacrifice, he consoled himself with a hope of its paving the way for a general peace, which he would do his utmost to accelerate. In fine, he wound up with most sonorous professions of devotion to the grandeur of the Roman name.[19] [Footnote 19: Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 1677, f. 36.] The Pontiff's natural dissatisfaction with his ambassador at Madrid was very plainly expressed in a letter of the 20th of August, which taxed him with undue reliance upon the Emperor's vague protestations, imputing generally to him a want of foresight preceding the calamity of Rome, and a neglect of the proper remedies for that mischief. To this brief, Castiglione answered at considerable length, and with unnecessary diffuseness, as soon as it reached him in December.[20] The substance of his defence is that, on every occasion during the four years of his mission, he had laboured to establish a good understanding between his Holiness and Charles, and had been met with assurances, verbal and written, of his Majesty's anxious desire to meet these views; but that the great distance, and the delays of communication with Rome, not only rendered it impossible to provide for the successive exigencies as they arose, but left him entirely in the dark as to the most important movements until too late to avert impending mischief. Thus he had no intelligence of the truce arranged with Lannoy on the 15th of March, till he heard of its being rejected by Bourbon. These excuses ostensibly satisfied Clement; and, however inadequate they might be deemed in ordinary cases of diplomatic blundering, they may be allowed some weight in this instance; for, although the Emperor could scarcely fail to anticipate from the sack of Rome new facilities for domination in Italy, in consequence of