retire. In Italy Ley va was dead, and the prospects of the imperial cause were not promising. The little place of Mirandola, whose ruler, Galeotto Pico, had put himself under the protection of France, was a valuable outpost for the French, a base where their troops could find harbour and issue forth to attack the confines of Lombardy. On August 10 the Dauphin had died, and the offer of Milan to Charles of Angoulême assumed a different aspect. Charles while negotiating for peace prepared for war.
For this purpose it was necessary that he should visit Spain to raise the necessary funds, leaving many Italian questions unsettled. The Duke of Mantua received the investiture of Montferrat. Del Guasto was appointed to the command in Milan in place of Leyva. But the attitude of the Pope aroused suspicion; and Charles was obliged to depart without having contented him. On November 17 he left Genoa; but his journey was repeatedly interrupted by storms, while a hostile fleet of French and Turkish galleys lay at Marseilles. At length the fleet was able to make the coast of Catalonia. In Spain many months and continuous efforts resulted in the raising of sums quite insufficient to meet the pressing needs. Francis meanwhile had proclaimed the resumption of the suzerainty over Flanders and Artois, which he had renounced at the Peace of Cambray; and on March 16, 1537, a considerable army invaded Artois. Hesdin surrendered^ and Charles of Gelders was once more in arms. But Francis soon grew weary and drew away a large part of his army to the south; the Estates of the Netherlands granted for self-defence the sums which they had refused for general purposes; the attack was driven back; and on July 30 a ten months' armistice was concluded for the Netherlands and north-eastern France.
Meanwhile del Guasto had held his own in Lombardy and even won back some places of Piedmont from the enemy. The Turkish assistance had been worth little to the French. Even in the kingdom of Sicily, owing to the energetic measures of defence, Barbarossa had been able to effect little. The Mediterranean war deviated into a contest between Venice and the Muslim. The remaining islands of the Aegean fell into the hands of the Barbaresques. Nauplia and Monembasia, the sole strongholds of Venice in the Morea, were besieged by the Turks. The murder of Alessandro del Medici in Florence, January 7, 1537, strengthened rather than weakened the position of Charles in Italy. In spite of the efforts of French agents the imperial vicegerents had their way; the attacks of the fuorusciti under Filippo Strozzi, though aided by the French, were driven off; and the cool and competent Cosimo became Duke of Florence in the imperial interests, and was married to a daughter of Toledo. Filippo Strozzi was put to torture and died in prison. Paul was won over by the gift of Alessandro's widow Margaret, the Emperor's natural daughter, to his grandson, Ottavio Farnese, and Pierluigi, the Pope's son, was invested with
