It had been the desire of Charles to smooth the commencement of Philip's
path. He had for this purpose made a vigorous effort to undo, as it
were, the whole work of his reign, to suspend the operation of his whole
political system. The Emperor and conqueror, who had been warring all
his lifetime, had attempted, as the last act of his reign, to improvise
a peace. But it was not so easy to arrange a pacification of Europe as
dramatically as he desired, in order that he might gather his robes about
him, and allow the curtain to fall upon his eventful history in a grand
hush of decorum and quiet. During the autumn and winter of 1555,
hostilities had been virtually suspended, and languid negotiations
ensued. For several months armies confronted each other without
engaging, and diplomatists fenced among themselves without any palpable
result. At last the peace commissioners, who had been assembled at
Vaucelles since the beginning of the year 1556, signed a treaty of truce
rather than of peace, upon the 5th of February. It was to be an
armistice of five years, both by land and sea, for France, Spain,
Flanders, and Italy, throughout all the dominions of the French and
Spanish monarchs. The Pope was expressly included in the truce, which
was signed on the part of France by Admiral Coligny and Sebastian
l'Aubespine; on that of Spain, by Count de Lalain, Philibert de
Bruxelles, Simon Renard, and Jean Baptiste Sciceio, a jurisconsult of
Cremona. During the precious month of December, however, the Pope had
concluded with the French monarch a treaty, by which this solemn
armistice was rendered an egregious farce. While Henry's
plenipotentiaries had been plighting their faith to those of Philip,
it had been arranged that France should sustain, by subsidies and armies,
the scheme upon which Paul was bent, to drive the Spaniards entirely out
of the Italian peninsula. The king was to aid the pontiff, and, in
return, was to carve thrones for his own younger children out of the
confiscated realms of Philip. When was France ever slow to sweep upon