e most determined and
most dangerous foe of Louis XII., already assailed by so many enemies.

The Venetian, Dominic of Treviso, was quite right; Louis XII. was "of
unstable mind, saying yes and no." On such characters discouragement
tells rapidly. In order to put off the struggle which had succeeded so
ill for him in the kingdom of Naples, Louis concluded, on the 31st of
March, 1504, a truce for three years with the King of Spain; and on the
22d of September, in the same year, in order to satisfy his grudge on
account of the Venetians' demeanor towards him, he made an alliance
against them with Emperor Maximilian I. and Pope Julius II., with the
design, all three of them, of wresting certain provinces from them. With
those political miscalculations was connected a more personal and more
disinterested feeling. Louis repented of having in 1501 affianced his
daughter Claude to Prince Charles of Austria, and of the enormous
concessions he had made by two treaties, one of April 5, 1503, and the
other of September 22, 1504, for the sake of this marriage. He had
assigned as dowry to his daughter, first the duchy of Milan, then the
kingdom of Naples, then Brittany, and then the duchy of Burgundy and the
countship of Blois. The latter of these treaties contained even the
following strange clause: "If, by default of the Most Christian king or
of the queen his wife, or of the Princess Claude, the aforesaid marriage
should not take place, the Most Christian king doth will and consent,
from now, that the said duchies of Burgundy and Milan and the countship
of Asti, do remain settled upon the said Prince Charles, Duke of
Luxembourg, with all the rights therein possessed, or possibly to be
possessed, by the Most Christian king." [_Corps Diplomatique du Droit
des Gens,_ by J. Dumont, t. iv. part i. p. 57.] It was dismembering
France, and at the same time settling on all her frontiers, to east,
west, and south-west, as well as to north and south, a power which the
approaching union of two crowns, the imperial and the Spanish, on the
head of Prince Charles of Austria, rendered so preponderating and so
formidable.

It was not only from considerations of external policy, and in order to
conciliate to himself Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand, that Louis
XII. had allowed himself to proceed to concessions so plainly contrary to
the greatest interests of France: he had yielded also to domestic
influences. The queen his wife,