Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/519

1542.] same to be restored to their right owners. Tout beau, M. l'Ambassadeur! quotes the King. I may not kill ambassadors as your master doth; and as for hanging them that be in the town, I should reguerdon them well for the service they intended to do me.'

Francis solved the difficulty by sending five hundred men into Marano for a garrison. His hostile intentions were thus revealed beyond a doubt, and to appearance every advantage was on his side. The Emperor, in his present condition, would be little able to send help into Lombardy, if attacked simultaneously in Spain and the Low Countries. The Venetians were on the side of the French. On the 11th of March an Italian renegade, the Capitan Pollino, arrived in Paris from Constantinople, with presents, and with a message from Solyman, that when summer came he would enter Germany with two hundred thousand men, and a fleet of four hundred sail should pass the Dardanelles. The messenger, on his way, passed through Venice, and the Imperial ambassador required the council, in his master's name, to arrest him. But at the moment, the pleasure of Francis was of more importance to the Signory than the fear of the Emperor. Pollino walked insolently into the senate house. He called the ambassador a traitor in the face of the assembly, and passed on upon his way. Charles, so lately the dictator of Europe, would find himself attacked by a coalition which threatened to be irresistible, and unless