But Vieilleville, on being summoned to the king's quarters, opposed it strongly.

"Sir," said he, "break this purpose, for in carrying it out you are in danger of incurring some very evil and very shameful fate; and, should that happen, what will become of your army which will be left without head, prince, or captain, and in a strange country, wherein we are already looked upon with ill will because of our insolence and indiscretions?
As for me, I am off again to my quarters to quaff and laugh with my two hundred men-at-arms, in readiness to march when your standard is a-field, but not thither." Nothing has a greater effect upon weak and undecided minds than the firm language of men resolved to do as they say.

The king gave up the idea of entering Strasbourg, and retired well pleased nevertheless, for he was in possession of Metz, Toul, Verdun, and Pont-a-Mousson, the keys for France into Germany, and at the head of an army under young commanders who were enterprising without being blindly rash.
Charles V.also had to know what necessity was, and to submit to it, without renouncing the totality of his designs.

On the 2d of August, 1552, he signed at Passau, with the Protestant princes, the celebrated treaty known under the name of "treaty of public peace," which referred the great questions of German pacification to a general diet to be assembled in six months, and declared that, pending definitive conciliation, the two religions should be on an equal footing in the empire, that is, that the princes and free towns should have the supreme regulation of religious matters amongst themselves.

Charles V.thus recovered full liberty of action in his relations with France, and could no longer think of anything but how to recover the important towns he had lost in Lorraine.