This initiation of a schism in the interests of the Franciscan party marks the limit of the Emperor’s success in Italy. He had committed himself to an enterprise which he had neither the moral nor the material force to carry through. His immediate enemy, Robert of Naples, had not yet been even attacked. When the imperial troops advanced southwards in June, they were speedily compelled to retreat, and Lewis thought it advisable to evacuate Rome and retire to the Ghibelline strongholds in the north. The Emperor was accompanied by his Antipope, and the Roman populace, with characteristic inconstancy, expelled the imperial partisans and opened their gates to the Orsini and the Neapolitan troops. To make matters worse, death carried off two of Lewis’s chief advisers, Castruccio Castracani and Marsiglio of Padua. From this time his career in Italy was one long catalogue of blunders, and he eagerly seized the excuse for returning to Germany on the news of the death of his former rival, Frederick the Handsome (January, 1330). The unfortunate Nicolas V., deserted by his patron, was compelled to resign his dignity and to make the most humiliating submission to John XXII. He ended his life a prisoner in the palace of Avignon. After such a complete and disastrous failure it might have been thought that the cause of Lewis was ruined, and that he too would have to submit to the triumphant Pope. But the open alliance of the Papacy with France, and the consequent alienation of Germany, enabled him to recover much of the lost ground, and by 1338 his position appeared [Sidenote: Position of Lewis in 1338.] to be firmer than ever. At the head of a national movement, which had expressed its sentiments unmistakably in the decrees of Rense and Frankfort, and closely allied with Edward III. of England, who was now committed to his great war with France, Lewis seemed able to dictate his own terms both to Benedict XII. and Philip VI.