to France--Italy becomes the
Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany--Importance of the
Expedition of Charles VIII.

One of the chief features of the Renaissance was the appearance for the
first time on the stage of history of full-formed and colossal nations.
France, Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure their strength.
Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, even Rome, are destined in the period
that is opening for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, incapable
of coping with these great powers, will become the mere arena of their
contests, the object of their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves
were far from being conscious of this change. Accustomed through three
centuries to a system of diplomacy and intrigue among their own small
states, they still thought more of the balance of power within the
peninsula than of the means to be adopted for repelling foreign force.
Their petty jealousies kept them disunited at an epoch when the best
chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly linked together
in one league, or subject to a single prince, the Italians might not
only have met their foes on equal ground, but even have taken a foremost
place among the modern nations.[1] Instead of that, their princes were
foolish enough to think that they could set France, Germany, or Spain in
motion for the attainment of selfish objects within the narrow sphere of
Italian politics, forgetting the disproportion between these huge
monarchies and a single city like Florence, a mere province like the
Milanese. It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure the
tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of Sforza and of Aragon
with the Papal See in the chains of the same interested policy with the
Commonwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodovico Sforza to fancy
that he could bring the French into the game of peninsular intrigue
without irrevocably ruining its artificial equilibrium. The first
sign of the alteration about to take place in European history was the
invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a
hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale.
The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of
Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from
north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within
the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which
it traversed