s ruler, who,
however, unfortunately wanted to be Pope, and urged the King in the
direction of Italian politics, which he would have done much better to
have left alone. Louis XII. was lazy and of small intelligence; Georges
d'Amboise and Caesar Borgia, with their Italian ambitions, easily made
him take up a spirited foreign policy which was disastrous at home.

Utterly as the last Italian expedition had failed, the French people were
not yet weary of the adventure, and preparations for a new war began at
once. In 1499 the King crossed the Alps into the Milanese, and carried
all before him for a while. The duchy at first accepted him with
enthusiasm; but in 1500 it had had enough of the French and recalled
Lodovico, who returned in triumph to Milan. The Swiss mercenaries,
however, betrayed him at Novara into the hands of Louis XII., who carried
him off to France. The triumph of the French in 1500 was also the
highest point of the fortunes of their ally, Caesar Borgia, who seemed
for a while to be completely successful. In this year Louis made a
treaty at Granada, by which he and Ferdinand the Catholic agreed to
despoil Frederick of Naples; and in 1501 Louis made a second expedition
into Italy. Again all seemed easy at the outset, and he seized the
kingdom of Naples without difficulty; falling out, however, with his
partner in the bad bargain, Ferdinand the Catholic, he was speedily swept
completely out of the peninsula, with terrible loss of honour, men, and
wealth.

It now became necessary to arrange for the future of France. Louis XII.
had only a daughter, Claude, and it was proposed that she should be
affianced to Charles of Austria, the future statesman and emperor. This
scheme formed the basis of the three treaties of Blois (1504). In 1500,
by the Treaty of Granada, Louis had in fact handed Naples over to Spain;
now by the three treaties he alienated his best friends, the Venetians
and the papacy, while he in fact also handed Milan over to the Austrian
House, together with territories considered to be integral parts of
France. The marriage with Charles came to nothing; the good sense of
some, the popular feeling in the country, the open expressions of the
States General of Tours, in 1506, worked against the marriage, which had
no strong advocate except Queen Anne. Claude, on intercession of the
Estates, was affianced to Frangois d'Angouleme, her distant cousin, the
heir presumptive to the throne.

In