The {200} perpetual failures of Francis were at last turned into substantial successes.

This was due in large part to the civil war in Germany and to the weakness of England's rulers, Edward VI and Mary.

It was due in part to the irrepressible energy of the French bourgeois and gentlemen, in part to the genius of Francis of Guise.

The co-operation of France and Turkey, rather an identity of interests than a formal alliance, a policy equally blamed by contemporaries and praised by historians, continued.

But the successes achieved were due most of all to the definite abandonment of the hope of Italian conquests and to the turning of French arms to regions more suitable for incorporation under her government.
War having been declared on Charles, the French seized the Three Bishoprics, at that time imperial fiefs, Metz, Verdun, and Toul.