From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

turned out in the end more damaging to the victor
than to the vanquished. It had provoked the League
of Cognac, in which the kings of Europe, with the
Pontiff at their head, united to resist a power which
they deemed dangerous to their own, and curb an
ambition that they now saw to be boundless. The
League of Cognac, in its turn, had recoiled on the
head of the man who was its chief deviser. The
tempest it had raised, and which those who evoked
it intended should burst on the headquarters of
Lutheranism, rolled away in the direction of Rome,
and discharged its lightning-bolts on the City of the
Seven Hills, inflicting on the wealth and glory of
the Popes, on the art and splendor of their capital, a
blow which no succeeding age has been able to
repair.
For the moment all was again quiet. The Pope
and the King of France had become the friends of
the emperor. The Turks who had appeared in
greater numbers, and penetrated farther into Europe
than they had ever before been able to do, had
suddenly retreated within their own dominions, and
thus all things conspired to remove every obstacle
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