Yet Clement VII., on whom the full force of the blow was to fall, had, as Cardinal de Medici, been one of the chief promoters of the war.

In August, 1521, the Venetian, Contarini, (p.

153) reports Charles as saying that Leo rejected both the peace and the truce speciously urged by Wolsey, and adds, on his own account, that he believes it the truth.[426] In 1522 Francis asserted that Cardinal de Medici "was the cause of all this war";[427] and in 1527 Clement VII.
sought to curry favour with Charles by declaring that as Cardinal de Medici he had in 1521 caused Leo X.to side against France.[428] In 1525 Charles declared that he had been mainly induced to enter on the war by the persuasions of Leo,[429] over whom his cousin, the Cardinal, then wielded supreme influence.

So complete was his sway over Leo, that, on Leo's death, a cardinal in the conclave remarked that they wanted a new Pope, not one who had already been Pope for years; and the gibe turned the scale against the future Clement VII.
Medici both, Leo and the Cardinal regarded the Papacy mainly as a means for family aggrandisement.

In 1518 Leo had fulminated against Francis Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, as "the son of iniquity and child of perdition,"[430] because he desired to bestow the duchy on his nephew Lorenzo.