This
blunder enabled the Imperialists to reform their ranks and to march
towards Pavia in order to join the besieged. Here on 24 February,
1525,--the emperor's twenty-fifth birthday,--the army of Charles won an
overwhelming victory. Eight thousand French soldiers fell on the field
that day, and Francis, who had been in the thick of the fight, was
compelled to surrender. "No thing in the world is left me save my honor
and my life," wrote the king to his mother. Everything seemed
auspicious for the cause of Charles. Francis, after a brief captivity
in Spain, was released on condition that he would surrender all claims
to Burgundy, the Netherlands, and Italy, and would marry the emperor's
sister.
[Sidenote: The Sack of Rome, 1527]
Francis swore upon the Gospels and upon his knightly word that he would
fulfill these conditions, but in his own and contemporary opinion the
compulsion exercised upon him absolved him from his oath. No sooner was
he back in France than he declared the treaty null and void and
proceeded to form alliances with all the Italian powers that had become
alarmed by the sudden strengthening of the emperor's position in the
peninsula,--the pope, Venice, Florence, and even the Sforza who owed
everything to Charles.
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