[517] Casan, Statistique de Mantes. France Protestante, i. p. 113.
[518] Registres du Parlement.
[519] Crespin, Martyrologue, fol. 106.
[520] Gaillard, Hist. de François I. iv. p. 275.
[521] Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, i. p. 518.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CONFERENCE AND ALLIANCE BETWEEN FRANCIS I. AND PHILIP OF HESSE AT BAR-LE-DUC.
(Winter 1533-34.)
=PROPOSED GERMAN ALLIANCE.=
ALMOST about the same time, Francis bent his steps towards the Rhine. The establishment of the Reform throughout Europe depended, as many thought, on the union of France with protestant Germany. This union would emancipate France from the papal supremacy, and all christendom would then be seen turning to the Gospel. The king was preparing to hold a conference with the most decided of the protestant princes of Germany. Rarely has an interview between two sovereigns been of so much importance.
Francis I. had hardly quitted Marseilles and arrived at Avignon, when he assembled his council (25th of November, 1533), and communicated to it the desire for an alliance which the German protestants had expressed to him. A certain shame had prevented him from moving in the matter, amid the caresses which papacy and royalty were lavishing upon each other at Marseilles. But now that Clement was on board his galleys, nothing prevented the King of France, who had given his right hand to the pontiff, from giving his left to the heretics.[522] There were many reasons why he should do so. The clergy were not allies for whose support he was eager: the best orthodoxy, in his eyes, was the iron arm of the lansquenets. Besides, the opportunity was unprecedented: in fact, he could at one stroke gain the protestants to his cause, and inflict an immense injury on Austria—that is to say, on Charles V.