Then the King of France, Francis I, terrified by a victory which
resembled a defeat, made, in the next year, a perpetual peace with the
Confederates, and, by money and promises, persuaded some to furnish
him with troops; the others, that they would allow no enrolling by his
enemies. Thus the Confederates once more helped him against the Emperor
and Pope and against Milan, and the King concluded a friendly alliance
with them in 1521. During many years they shed their blood for him on the
battle-fields of Italy, without good result, without advantage, except
that the Confederacy stood godmother to his new-born son. Each canton
sent to Paris, for the _fete_, a deputy with a baptismal present of fifty
ducats. More agreeable to the King than this present was the promptitude
with which the Swiss sent sixteen thousand of their troops to his
assistance in Italy. However, as they had lost, April 20, 1522, three
thousand men near Bicocca; as of nearly fifteen thousand who entered
Lombardy, 1524, hardly four thousand came back; as, finally, in the
battle near Pajia, February 24, 1525, in which the King himself became
prisoner to the Emperor, the Swiss experienced a fresh loss of seven
thousand men, they by degrees lost all taste for Italian wars.