But Milan, which had cost France so much to win, was soon lost by the conquest of Charles V., Emperor of Germany and King of Spain. This prince having formed a league with Pope Leo X. against Francis I.,--which league was afterwards joined by Henry VIII., of England--active hostilities were soon commenced. After a war of four disastrous years, the emperor captured Francis, obliged him to relinquish his claims to Naples, Milan, Genoa, Asti, Flanders and Artois; to dismember his kingdom by surrendering Burgundy; and to ransom himself by the payment of 2,000,000 crowns. The popularity and victorious march of the German emperor now alarmed the jealous fears of the holy father, Pope Clement VII., who, apprehending in them his own subjugation, united in an alliance with. Francis I:, the former antagonist of the Roman See, and with all the Italian powers, to arrest the dangerous triumphs of his new rival. The allies succeeded in humbling the pride of Charles; but in the midst of their victories a plague, more fearful than their foes, broke out in the French army, and thinned its ranks with fearful mortality. This circumstance led to the peace of Cambray. But the ambition of Francis, and his indomitable thirst for the reconquest of Milan, soon led him to violate the terms of this covenant. Confederating with Solyman II., Sultan of the Ottoman empire, he drove Charles before his forces. The interest of the Holy See being threatened by the successes of the allied army, and perhaps in the event of the triumph of Charles not perfectly secure, Pope Paul III. interposed his friendly mediation, and induced the belligerents to conclude a truce of ten years.
In 1559 Francis II., son of Francis I., succeeded to the crown of France. Amid the flattering successes of the papal intrigues, the rapid progress of Protestantism in Europe, and the fearless boldness of its advocates, occasioned great uneasiness to the Holy See. Scorning the mild but able services of reason and conciliation, it counselled the most sanguinary measures. The records of the times are consequently filled with accounts of disorders, assassinations, massacres, and the most deplorable conflicts. The French nation was divided into two great factions; the one in favor of Catholicism, the other in favor of Protestantism. By means of the papal machinery of bishops, abbots, priests, monks and spies, the Catholics were made to believe that the religious disorders which had convulsed the empire were but a prelude to an intended extermination of all Romanists. To narrow-minded bigots, who absurdly believed that their church afforded the only possible method of escaping the pangs of purgatory, and of obtaining eternal happiness, all the zeal which their hopes and fears of eternity could inspire was awakened in the defence of their religion. While the Protestants who, on the other hand, believed that Catholicism was idolatry, subversive of Christianity, demoralizing in its tendency, and destructive of the rights of conscience, reason and religious liberty, became equally heated in the defence of their faith. Both factions had been educated in intolerent principles; in the belief that error of opinion was perilous to the soul; that it rendered a person a proper object of aversion and denunciation; and, that a difference of opinion was a sufficient justification of hatred and persecution. Both factions being educated in the principles of bigotry and intolerance, nursed amid convulsions and barbarity, embittered against each other by mutual provocations and injury, were incapable of pacification by just and reasonable concession. The Catholics, having the power, were enabled to inflict on the Protestants the deeper injuries; and, to the credit of the Protestants it will ever be remembered, that they sought not to exterminate their foes, but to obtain equal rights with them.