The treaties of Cateau-Cambrésis signed at the bishop's château on the outskirts of Cambrai on 2 and 3 April 1559 marked the abrupt end of one era of European diplomacy and the beginning of another. The signatories were the delegates of the three major Atlantic powers, Spain, France and England. The main issue that was settled was the one that had dominated European power politics since 1494: who was to be paramount in Italy? And it was symptomatic of the new times that the fate of Italy was finally decided around a conference table at which sat not one Italian negotiator, not even a representative of the pope, while the ambassadors and agents of vitally interested parties, Florence and Mantua and the Republic of St Mark's, scrounged for crumbs of information on the fringes of the court at Brussels seventy miles away. Along with the pope and the Italian powers the potentate until recently most concerned about the fate of Italy had been the Holy Roman Emperor, but there was no representative of the empire at the conference either, not even though the next most important question on the agenda was the disposition of the three cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun. With the transfer of the imperial title to the cadet branch of the house of Habsburg, the emperor assumed the role of warden of the eastern marches, vigilant on the Danube, but for the next seventy years intervening only occasionally and feebly in western affairs.