he
was resolute not to suffer a marriage which would bring a break with
France and give Ferdinand an opportunity of dragging England into the
strife between the two great powers of the west.

[Sidenote: France]

But with the young king's accession this policy of cautious isolation was
at once put aside. There were grave political reasons indeed for the quick
resolve which bore down the opposition of counsellors like Warham. As cool
a head as that of Henry the Seventh was needed to watch without panic the
rapid march of French greatness. In mere extent France had grown with a
startling rapidity since the close of her long strife with England.
Guienne had fallen to Charles the Seventh. Provence, Roussillon, and the
Duchy of Burgundy had successively swelled the realm of Lewis the
Eleventh. Britanny had been added to that of Charles the Eighth. From
Calais to Bayonne, from the Jura to the Channel, stretched a wide and
highly organized realm, whose disciplined army and unrivalled artillery
lifted it high above its neighbours in force of war. The efficiency of its
army was seen in the sudden invasion and conquest of Italy while England
was busy with the pretended Duke of York. The passage of the Alps by
Charles the Eighth shook the whole political structure of Europe. In
wealth, in political repute, in arms, in letters, in arts, Italy at this
moment stood foremost among the peoples of Western Christendom, and the
mastery which Charles won over it at a single blow lifted France at once
above the states around her. Twice repulsed from Naples, she remained
under the successor of Charles, Lewis the Twelfth, mistress of the Duchy
of Milan and of the bulk of Northern Italy; the princes and republics of
Central Italy grouped themselves about her; and at the close of Henry the
Seventh's reign the ruin of Venice in the League of Cambray crushed the
last Italian state which could oppose her designs on the whole peninsula.
It was this new and mighty power, a France that stretched from the
Atlantic to the Mincio, that fronted the young king at his accession and
startled him from his father's attitude of isolation. He sought
Ferdinand's alliance none the less that it meant war, for his temper was
haughty and adventurous, his pride dwelt on the older claims of England to
Normandy and Guienne, and his devotion to the Papacy drew him to listen to
the cry of Julius the Second, and to long like a crusader to free Rome
from the French pres