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 CHARLES (GERMANY) 295 VIII., whom Francis was endeavoring to per- suade into an alliance in the coming war ; and so far as defeating this plan was concerned, Charles's interviews with Henry were success- ful. Arrived in Spain, he subdued a revolt of the cities of Castile against the crown ; but he had barely succeeded in restoring order when the French war broke out both along the borders of Navarre and of the Netherlands ; and at the same time the Turks under Solyman captured Belgrade and penetrated into Hun- gary, the ill-fated king of which, Louis II., was Charles's brother-in-law. The French war first received Charles's full attention. The conflict rapidly extended, and attained its greatest force in Italy. The French at first met with success on the Spanish border, but they were defeated in .the Netherlands ; and Charles added greatly to his strength by at last gaining Henry VIII. of England to his side, after an unsuccessful attempt made at Calais to conclude a general peace. He now added to his previous good fortune a series of brilliant victories in Italy, won by his generals Prospero Colonna and Frundsberg. Another great gain for him was the desertion of the constable of France, Charles of Bourbon, to the imperial army. On Feb. 24, 1525, the battle of Pavia crowned his triumphs. Francis was taken prisoner, and was treated with courtesy by his conqueror, who, however, imposed such hard conditions of peace that the French king at first declared that he would rather remain a prisoner for life than submit to them. A compromise was at last effected, and though its conditions were but little better than those of the former offer, it was confirmed by the treaty of Madrid, Jan. 14, 1526 ; an agreement which left Charles even much more powerful than at the beginning of his reign. Meanwhile matters in Germany had been left largely under the charge of Charles's brother Ferdinand, to whom he had ceded his properly Austrian possessions, and who had conducted affairs in the empire with great skill and success. Through the conflict between the Swabian confederation and Duke Ulric of Wilrtemberg, he succeeded in acquiring the lat- ter's territory, which was subsequently given to Ferdinand, who, after the death of Louis II. at Mohacs (1526), had become his successor both in Hungary and Bohemia. The confederation itself Charles made use of as a means of help against the Turkish invasion, which, after Mohacs, threatened the empire itself. The result of the rapid increase of Charles's power was to excite the greatest anxiety among the governments of Europe, no one of which was now able to cope successfully with the emperor. Coalitions of several states could alone give any hope of ade- quate resistance to his encroachments. The pope, Clement VII., who perhaps had most of all reason to fear the growth of the imperial power, now formed an alliance with several Italian states and France ; declared Francis ab- solved from his agreements in the treaty of Ma- drid, on the ground that the concessions he had made had been extorted by force ; and laid his plans for freeing all Italy from the rule of the emperor. But the coalition proved un- availing. The imperial troops under the con- stable de Bourbon penetrated to Rome, cap- tured and sacked the city, and compelled the pope to surrender himself to Charles, treating the pontiff with no little indignity (May, 1527). The emperor now attempted to play a double part. He affected great indignation at the dis- respect shown to the papal authority, declared that the capture of the pope's person had been made without his knowledge, and even assumed mourning, with his whole court, on account of his grief at the misfortunes of the holy father ; but he continued to hold the pope a close pris- oner for seven months. But Charles himself was now almost as desirous of peace as the members of the defeated coalition. He was in a position to force his enemies to accept the hardest terms, and on June 29, 1529, he signed with the pope the treaty of Barcelona ; shortly afterward he also ended the war with Francis by the treaty of Cambrai (Aug. 5). By these treaties he gained possession of most of Italy, and compelled the payment of a large indem' nity by his antagonists ; the pope was forced to crown him at Bologna, and his power was more firmly established than ever. Charles now (1530) turned his attention entirely to the af- fairs of Germany. His first aim was to smooth over and pacify rather than to crush the re- ligious dissensions now most violently agitating the country; for he needed the help of the German princes against the Turks, who had in 1529 even penetrated to Vienna. To fur- ther these plans, the emperor called a diet at Augsburg, which assembled in March, 1530. But all efforts at a reconciliation of the con- tending parties were useless. The opportu- tunity given by the diet called forth in June the celebrated Augsburg confession, which only served to show more clearly than ever the im- possibility of half-way measures; and when the emperor refused to recognize their creed as permissible in the empire, the Protestant princes in a body declared that they would give him no aid against the Turkish invasion ; and, meeting at Smalcald in 1531, they formed a con- federation which was secretly aided by Eng- land and France. The Turks continued their assaults; and by 1532 Charles found himself so hard pressed that he was forced at last to give way. By the Nuremberg agreement he engaged to permit the Protestants religious freedom for the time being, relegating the final question of the status of Protestantism to a council to be held in the future. Aided now by the Protes- tant forces, the imperial army advanced against the Turks, over whom Charles's general, Schart- lin, had in the mean time gained an important victory. The Mohammedans did not wait for actual conflict, but retreated through Hungary. The emperor now went to Italy, and debated with the pope concerning a projected council by which it was proposed to settle the affairs