had he married his niece, Germaine de Foix, to Ferdinand the Catholic,
whilst giving up to him all pretensions to the kingdom of Naples. In
1512 Ferdinand invaded Navarre, took possession of the Spanish portion of
that little kingdom, and thence threatened Gascony. Henry VIII., King of
England, sent him a fleet, which did not withdraw until after it had
appeared before Bayonne and thrown the south-west of France into a state
of alarm. In the north, Henry VIII. continued his preparations for an
expedition into France, obtained from his Parliament subsidies for that
purpose, and concerted plans with Emperor Maximilian, who renounced his
doubtful neutrality and engaged himself at last in the Holy League.
Louis XII. had in Germany an enemy as zealous almost as Julius II. was in
Italy: Maximilian's daughter, Princess Marguerite of Austria, had never
forgiven France or its king, whether he were called Charles VIII. or
Louis XII., the treatment she had received from that court, when, after
having been kept there and brought up for eight years to become Queen of
France, she had been sent away and handed back to her father, to make way
for Anne of Brittany. She was ruler of the Low Countries, active, able,
full of passion, and in continual correspondence with her father, the
emperor, over whom she exercised a great deal of influence. [This
correspondence was published in 1839, by the _Societe de l'Histoire de
France_ (2 vols. 8vo.), from the originals, which exist in the archives
of Lille.] The Swiss, on their side, continuing to smart under the
contemptuous language which Louis had imprudently applied to them, became
more and more pronounced against him, rudely dismissed Louis de la
Tremoille, who attempted to negotiate with them, re-established
Maximilian Sforza in the duchy of Milan, and haughtily styled themselves
"vanquishers of kings and defenders of the holy Roman Church." And the
Roman Church made a good defender of herself. Julius II. had convoked at
Rome, at St. John Lateran, a council, which met on the 3d of May, 1512,
and in presence of which the council of Pisa and Milan, after an attempt
at removing to Lyons, vanished away like a phantom. Everywhere things
were turning out according to the wishes and for the profit of the pope;
and France and her king were reduced to defending themselves on their own
soil against a coalition of all their great neighbors.

"Man proposes and God disposes." Not a step can be m