The scribblers called him The Great, because they lived upon him, and were only idle ornaments of a luxurious court. He entertained the Romans with feasts and games, because he was a devotee of pleasure, and, according to the saying of the people, wished to enjoy the papacy. But the chases of Corneto and Viterbo, the infamies of Malliana, the suppers of the gods, and the fisheries of Bolsena were paid for with money borrowed at forty per cent. The people of the Romagna, bleeding under his insatiable collectors of revenue, prayed for the Turkish yoke, as a relief from that of the Popes. When it was his plain duty to restore his wasted provinces by permanent peace, he excited new wars, for whose conduct he had neither money, energy, nor talents. History has been strangely generous with Leo. His intrigues, his wrongheaded policy, the fictitious conspiracy of Florence,--for which Macchiavello was beheaded, Braccioli and Capponi killed, and many others imprisoned or banished,--still await a pen sharp enough to cut away his borrowed glories. At the death of Maximilian of Austria, the electors conferred the empire on Charles V. of Spain, who was already master of the Two Sicilies. The power of Charles threatened the independence of Rome, and Leo formed a league with France, in the audacious hope of expelling the Spaniard from Italy. But he betrayed his ally for a dukedom in the kingdom, conferred on his bastard son Alexander de’ Medici. A war broke out, and the Papal and Imperial troops, led by Prospero Colonna and Marquis Pescara, had already occupied Milan, when the sudden death of Leo cut short his enterprises. His successor was the Flemish Van Trusen, under the title of Hadrian VI. He had never set foot in Italy, and was therefore called a barbarian. The corrupt prelates despised a Pope, under whom absolution cost only a ducat.