These disturbances left a lasting and deep impression on men's minds. The nations had been struck with dismay. The masses, who had sought in the Reformation nothing but political reform, withdrew from it of their own accord, when they saw it offered them spiritual liberty only. Luther's opposition to the peasants was his renunciation of the ephemeral favor of the people. A seeming tranquillity was soon established, and the noise of enthusiasm and sedition was followed in all Germany by a silence inspired by terror.
Thus the popular passions, the cause of revolution, the interests of a radical equality, were quelled in the empire; but the Reformation did not yield. These two movements, which many have confounded with each other, were clearly marked out by the difference of their results. The insurrection was from below; the Reformation, from above. A few horsemen and cannon were sufficient to put down the one; but the other never ceased to rise in strength and vigor, in despite of the reiterated assaults of the empire and the Church.
Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in Italy. The Pope and the Emperor agreed to unite their forces for expulsion of the French from their seat in the duchy of Milan.
In 1521 hostilities broke out in Navarre and in the Netherlands, and finally in the Milanese, where the people were tired of French government. The various allies drove the French completely out of Italy, and Charles invaded France, but was there repulsed. King Francis, elated by this last success, determined upon another invasion of the Milanese. He went in person to Italy, leaving his mother as regent in France. With largely superior forces, he drove the imperialists before him.
Instead, however, of pursuing the enemy, whom he might have overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of Italy. Pavia was held by a strong imperialist force under Lannoy.