Even Francis Sforza obtained the investiture of Milan, and was pardoned for all past offences.

The emperor in person passed into Italy with a magnificent train, and received the imperial crown from the hands of the pope at Bologna.

He was but twenty-nine years of age; and having already, by his vigor and capacity, succeeded in every enterprise, and reduced to captivity the two greatest potentates in Europe, the one spiritual, the other temporal, he attracted the eyes of all men; and many prognostications were formed of his growing empire.
But though Charles seemed to be prosperous on every side, and though the conquest of Mexico and Peru now began to prevent that scarcity of money under which he had hitherto labored, he found himself threatened with difficulties in Germany; and his desire of surmounting them was the chief cause of his granting such moderate conditions to the Italian powers.

Sultan Solyman, the greatest and most accomplished prince that ever sat on the Ottoman throne, had almost entirely subdued Hungary, had besieged Vienna, and, though repulsed, still menaced the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria with conquest and subjection.

The Lutheran princes of the empire, finding that liberty of conscience was denied them, had combined in a league for their own defence at Smalcalde, and because they protested against the votes passed in the imperial diet, they thenceforth received the appellation, of "protestants." Charles had undertaken to reduce them to obedience; and on pretence of securing the purity of religion, he had laid a scheme for aggrandizing his own family, by extending its dominion over all Germany.
The friendship of Henry was one material circumstance yet wanting to Charles, in order to insure success in his ambitious enterprises; and the king was sufficiently apprised that the concurrence of that prince would at once remove all the difficulties which lay in the way of his divorce; that point which had long been the object of his most earnest wishes.