masters of
the Western as well as of the Eastern world.

While this heavy cloud overhung the Adriatic and the Danube, and
the countries within reach of the Turk were in peril of
extinction, the nations farther west were consolidating rapidly
into unity and power. By the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella,
by their conquest of Granada and the rise of a new hemisphere at
their command, Spain for the first time became a great Power;
while France, having expelled the English, having instituted a
permanent army, acquired vast frontier provinces, and crushed the
centrifugal forces of feudalism, was more directly formidable and
more easily aggressive. These newly created Powers portended
danger in one direction. Their increase was not so much in
comparison with England or with Portugal, as in contrast with
Italy. England, through the Tudors, had achieved internal
tranquillity; and Portugal was already at the head of Europe in
making the ocean tributary to trade. But Italy was divided,
unwarlike, poor in the civic virtues that made Switzerland
impregnable, rich in the tempting luxuries of civilisation, an
inexhaustible treasure-house of much that the neighbours greatly
needed and could never find elsewhere. The best writers and
scholars and teachers, the most consummate artists, the ablest
commanders by land and sea, the deepest explorers of the mystery
of State that have been known before or since, all the splendours
of the Renaissance, and the fruits of a whole century of progress
were there, ready to be appropriated and employed for its own
benefit by a paramount Power.

It was obvious that the countries newly strengthened, the
countries growing in unity and concentration and superfluous
forces, would encroach upon those that were demoralised and
weakened. By strict reason of State, this was not the policy of
France; for the French frontiers were assigned by nature
everywhere but in the north-east. There the country was open,
the enemy's territory approached the capital; and the true line
of expansion was towards Antwerp, or Liege, or Strasburg. But
the French were invited into Italy with promise of welcome,
because the Angevin claim to Naples, defeated in 1462, had passed
to the King of France. The Aragonese, who had been successful in
resisting it, was not legitimate, and had been compelled again to
struggle for existence by the Rising of the Barons. The rising was
suppressed; the discontented Neapolitans w