Paul had all his life declaimed against nepotism as an opprobrious sin in the head of the Church. Yet no sooner did he put on the tiara than he gave a glaring example of the sin he had denounced, in the favors which he lavished on three of his own nephews. This was the more remarkable, as they were men whose way of life had given scandal even to the Italians, not used to be too scrupulous in their judgments.
The eldest, who represented the family, he raised to the rank of duke, providing him with an ample fortune from the confiscated property of the Colonnas,--which illustrious house was bitterly persecuted by Paul, for its attachment to the Spanish interests.
Another of his nephews he made a cardinal,--a dignity for which he was indifferently qualified by his former profession, which was that of a soldier, and still less fitted by his life, which was that of a libertine. He was a person of a busy, intriguing disposition, and stimulated his uncle's vindictive feelings against the Spaniards, whom he himself hated, for some affront which he conceived had been put upon him while in the emperor's service.[137]
But Paul needed no prompter in this matter. He very soon showed that, instead of ecclesiastical reform, he was bent on a project much nearer to his heart,--the subversion of the Spanish power in Naples. Like Julius the Second, of warlike memory, he swore to drive out the _barbarians_ from Italy. He seemed to think that the thunders of the Vatican were more than a match for all the strength of the empire and of Spain. But he was not weak enough to rely wholly on his spiritual artillery in such a contest. Through the French ambassador at his court, he opened negotiations with France, and entered into a secret treaty with that power, by which each of the parties agreed to furnish a certain contingent of men and money to carry on the war for the recovery of Naples. The treaty was executed on the sixteenth of December, 1555.[138]
In less than two months after this event, on the fifth of February, 1556, the fickle monarch of France, seduced by the advantageous offers of Charles, backed, moreover, by the ruinous state of his own finances, deserted his new ally, and signed the treaty of Vaucelles, which secured a truce for five years between his dominions and those of Philip.