This post is especially indebted to H. G. Koenigsberger, George L. Mosse and G. Q. Bowler,
Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Longman, 1989) and to Richard Mackenney,
Sixteenth-Century Europe: Expansion and Conflict (Macmillan, 1993).
In 1559 Europe seemed to be entering a period of peace as Henri II of France and Philip II of Spain signed the
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. The peace was sealed by the dynastic marriage of Philip to Elisabeth of Valois. France kept Calais, which she had conquered from England in 1558, and her conquests of Metz, Toul and Verdun. Philip was therefore forced to acknowledge
the diminution of the empire of Charles V, but he retained Sicily, Naples, Milan, Franche-Comté and the Netherlands.