Abstract

This chapter considers where the Holy Roman Emperor's allegiances might sway. In a triangular relationship involving the Emperor, France, and the Italians, everybody was sitting simultaneously at two tables, trying both to prevent the other two from joining their forces and to extract as many concessions as possible from each of them. It was Charles who had the upper hand in the game. With his usual lucidity, Guicciardini captures the essence of the situation in a few lines: ‘and nothing [was] more easy to [Charles] than by feeding the French with hopes to divert them from the thoughts of taking up arms, and by this artfulness to keep the Italians in suspense, so that they should not venture to take new resolutions’.

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