recovering the crown of
France, which others were always suggesting to Henry, and which he,
for merely conventional reasons, was in the habit of enunciating
before going to war; and in view of the tenacity which Henry exhibited
in other respects, and the readiness with which he relinquished his
regal pretensions to France, it is difficult to believe that they were
any real expression of settled policy. They were, indeed, impossible
of achievement, and Henry saw the fact clearly enough.[147] Modern
phenomena such as huge armies sweeping over Europe, and capitals from
Berlin to Moscow, Paris to Madrid, falling before them, were quite
beyond military science of the sixteenth century. Armies fought, as a
rule, only in the five summer months; it was difficult enough to
victual them for even that time; and lack of commissariat or transport
crippled all the invasions of Scotland. Hertford sacked Edinburgh, (p. 069)
but he went by sea. No other capital except Rome saw an invading army.
Neither Henry nor Maximilian, Ferdinand nor Charles, ever penetrated
more than a few miles into France, and French armies got no further
into Spain, the Netherlands, or Germany. Machiavelli points out that
the chief safeguard of France against the Spaniards was that the latter
could not victual their army sufficiently to pass the Pyrenees.[148]
If in Italy it was different, it was because Italy herself invited the
invaders, and was mainly under foreign dominion. Henry knew that with
the means at his disposal he could never conquer France; his claims to
the crown were transparent conventions, and he was always ready for
peace in return for the _status quo_ and a money indemnity, with a
town or so for security.

[Footnote 147: In 1520 he described his title "King
of France" as a title given him by others which was
"good for nothing" (_Ven. Cal._, iii., 45). Its
value consisted in the pensions he received as a
sort of commutation.]

[Footnote 148: Machiavelli, _Opera_, iv., 139.]

The fact that he had only achieved a small part of the conquest he
professed to set out to accomplish was, therefore, no bar to
negotiations for peace. There were many reasons for ending the war;
the rapid diminution of his father's treasures; the accession to the
papal throne of the pacific Leo in place of the warlike Julius; the
absolution of Louis as a re