The French were utterly routed and Francis himself remained a prisoner in the hands of the conquerors.

The ruin as it seemed of France roused into fresh life the hopes of the English king.

Again drawing closely to Charles he offered to join the Emperor in an invasion of France with forty thousand men, to head his own forces, and to furnish heavy subsidies for the cost of the war.
Should the allies prove successful and Henry be crowned king of France, he pledged himself to cede to Bourbon Dauphiny and his duchy, to surrender Burgundy, Provence, and Languedoc to the Emperor, and to give Charles the hand of his daughter, Mary, and with it the heritage of two crowns which would in the end make him master of the world.
[Sidenote: Resistance to Benevolences] Though such a project seemed hardly perhaps as possible to Wolsey as to his master it served to test the sincerity of Charles in his adhesion to the alliance.

But whether they were in earnest or no in proposing it, king and minister had alike to face the difficulty of an empty treasury.

Money was again needed for action, but to obtain a new grant from Parliament was impossible, nor was Wolsey eager to meet fresh rebuffs from the spirit of the Commons or the clergy.