[2] Meanwhile, the powerful Colonna family organized an attack on Rome to exploit the Papacy's moment of weakness, defeating the Papal forces and briefly seizing control of the city in September 1526.

Francis, having finally drawn Henry VIII into the League, sent an army under Odet de Foix and Pedro Navarro, Count of Oliveto through Genoa—where Andrea Doria had quickly joined the French and seized much of the Genoese fleet—to Naples, where it proceeded to dig itself in for an extended siege.

The negotiations began in July 1529 in the border city of Cambrai; they were conducted primarily between Francis's mother Louise of Savoy for the French and her sister-in-law Margaret of Austria for her nephew the Emperor (leading to its being known as the Paix des Dames, Peace of the Ladies), Charles himself having sailed from Barcelona to Italy shortly before.

The final terms largely mirrored those of the Treaty of Madrid three years earlier; Francis surrendered his rights to Artois, Flanders, and Tournai, and was obliged to pay a ransom of two million golden écus before his sons were to be released.

[7] Removed, however, were both the humiliating surrender of Burgundy itself and the various points dealing with Charles de Bourbon, who, having been killed two years prior, was no longer a candidate for leading an independent Kingdom of Provence.