The emperor’s position, also, though not equally simple, is intelligible, and commands our respect.  Although if he had consented to sacrifice his aunt, he might have spared himself serious embarrassment; although both by the pope and by the consistory such a resolution would probably have been welcomed with passionate thankfulness; yet at all hazards Charles was determined to make her his first object, even with the risk of convulsing Europe.  At the same time his position was encumbered with difficulty.  The Turks were pressing upon him in Hungary and in the Mediterranean; his relations with Francis—­fortunately for the prospects of the Reformation—­were those of inveterate hostility; while in Germany he had been driven to make terms with the Protestant princes; he had offended the pope by promising them a general council, in which the Lutheran divines should be represented; and the pope, taught by recent experience, was made to fear that these symptoms of favour towards heresy, might convert themselves into open support.

With Francis the prevailing feeling was rivalry with the emperor, combined with an eager desire to recover his influence in Italy, and to restore France to the position in Europe which had been lost by the defeat of Pavia, and the failure of Lautrec at Naples.  This was his first object, to which every other was subsidiary.  He was disinclined to a rupture with the pope; but the possibility of such a rupture had been long contemplated by French statesmen.  It was a contingency which the pope feared:—­which the hopes of Henry pictured as more likely than it was—­and Francis, like his rivals in the European system, held the menace of it extended over the chair of St. Peter, to coerce its unhappy occupant into compliance with his wishes.  With respect to Henry’s divorce, his conduct to the University of Paris, and his assurances repeated voluntarily on many occasions, show that he was sincerely desirous to forward it.  He did not care for Henry, or for England, or for the cause itself; he desired only to make the breach between Henry and Charles irreparable; to make it impossible for ever that “his two great rivals” should become friends together; and by inducing the pope to consent to the English demand, to detach the court of Rome conclusively from the imperial interests.

The two princes who disputed the supremacy of Europe, were intriguing one against the other, each desiring to constitute himself the champion of the church; and to compel the church to accept his services, by the threat of passing over to her enemies.  By a dexterous use of the cards which were in his hands, the King of France proposed to secure one of two alternatives.  Either he would form a league between himself, Henry, and the pope, against the emperor, of which the divorce, and the consent to it, which he would extort from Clement, should be the cement; or, if this failed him, he would avail himself of the vantage ground which was given to him by the English alliance to obtain such concessions for himself at the emperor’s expense as the pope could be induced to make, and the emperor to tolerate.