[Sidenote: Anxiety and alarm of the emperor.]
[Sidenote: The mission of the Count of Nassau to Paris with proposals for a league.]
[Sidenote: The emperor's offers are rejected by Francis.]
To Charles V. the danger of some such termination of the great question at issue appeared most near and real. Charles, whose resentment at the conduct of England united with a desire to assert his authority over his subjects in Germany, beheld with the utmost alarm a scheme growing to maturity which menaced alike his honour, his desire of revenge, his supremacy in Europe, and perhaps his religious convictions. A liberal coalition would be fatal to order, to policy, to truth; and on the election of Cardinal Farnese, the Count de Nassau was sent on a secret mission to Paris with overtures, the elaborate condescension of which betrays the anxiety that must have dictated them. The emperor, in his self-constituted capacity of the Princess Mary's guardian, offered her hand with the English succession to the Duke of Angoulesme. From the terms on which he was thought to stand with Anne Boleyn, it was thought possible that Henry might consent;[411] he might not dare, as d'Inteville before suggested, to oppose the united demands of France and the Empire.[412] To Margaret de Valois the Count was to propose the splendid temptation of a marriage with Philip.[413] If Francis would surrender the English alliance, the emperor would make over to him the passionately coveted Duchy of Milan,[414] to be annexed to France on the death of the reigning Duke. In the meantime he would pay to the French king, as "tribute for Milan," a hundred thousand crowns a year, as an acknowledgment of the right of the house of Valois. Offers such as these might well have tempted the light ambition of Francis. If sincere, they were equivalent to a surrender of the prize for which the emperor's life had been spent in contending, and perilous indeed it would have been for England if this intrigue had been permitted to succeed. But whether it was that Francis too deeply distrusted Charles, that he preferred the more hazardous scheme of the German alliance, or that he supposed he could gain his object more surely with the help of England, the Count de Nassau left Paris with a decisive rejection of the emperor's advances; and in the beginning of January, De Bryon, the High Admiral of France, was sent to England, to inform Henry of what had passed, and to propose for Elizabeth the marriage which Charles had desired for the Princess Mary.