and the central
power made dominant, by the policy of Louis XI. Similar effects were
brought about in Spain by the war against the Moors and the rule of
Ferdinand. In England feudalism was destroyed by the Wars of the Roses,
and was succeeded by the Tudor despotism. In Germany, the House of
Austria began its long ascendancy. Thus in the fifteenth century the new
principles prevailed; the old forms, the old liberties were swept aside
to make way for centralised government under absolute rulers.

At the same time another new fact entered into European history. The
kings began to enter into relations with each other, to form alliances;
diplomacy was created. Since it is in the nature of diplomacy to be
conducted more or less secretly by a few persons, and since the peoples
did not and would not greatly concern themselves in it, this development
was favourable to the strengthening of royalty.

_VII.--The Spiritual Revolt_

Although the Church until the sixteenth century had successfully
suppressed all attempts at spiritual independence, yet the broadening of
men's minds that began with the Crusades, and received a vigorous
impetus from the Renaissance, made its mark even in the fifteenth
century upon ecclesiastical affairs. Three main facts of the moral order
are presented during this period: the ineffectual attempts of the
councils of Constance and Bale to reform the Church from within; the
most notable of which was that of Huss in Bohemia; and the intellectual
revolution that accompanied the Renaissance. The way was thus prepared
for the event that was inaugurated when Luther burnt the Pope's Bull at
Wittenberg in 1520.

The Reformation was not, as its opponents contend, the result of
accident or intrigue; nor was it, as its upholders contend, the outcome
of a simple desire for the reform of abuses. It was, in reality, a
revolt of the human spirit against absolute power in spiritual affairs.
The minds of men were during the sixteenth century in energetic
movement, consumed by desire for progress; the Church had become inert
and stationary, yet it maintained all its pretensions and external
importance. The Church, indeed, was less tyrannical than it had formerly
been, and not more corrupt. But it had not advanced; it had lost touch
with human thought.

The Reformation, in all the lands that it reached, in all the lands
where it played a great part, whether as conqueror, or as conquered,
resulted in general, const