a magnificent basis of operations for the Spanish Crown.  Then Louis made a second mistake by proposing to the visionary Emperor Maximilian that he should aid France in subjugating Venice.  We have few instances on record of short-sighted diplomacy to match the Treaties of Granada and Blois (1501 and 1504), through which this monarch, acting rather as a Duke of Milan than a King of France, complicated his Italian schemes by the introduction of two such dangerous allies as the Austrian Emperor and the Spanish sovereign, while the heir of both was in his cradle—­that fatal child of fortune Charles.

The stage of Italy was now prepared for a conflict which in no wise interested her prosperous cities and industrious population.  Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered.  Patriots like Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by substituting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors.  Whatever parts the Powers of Italy might play, the game was really in the hands of French, Spanish, and German invaders.  Meanwhile the mutual jealousies and hatreds of those Powers, kept in check by no tie stronger than diplomacy, prevented them from forming any scheme of common action.  One great province (Naples) had fallen into Spanish hands; another (Milan) lay open through the passes of the Alps to France.  The Papacy, in the center, manipulated these two hostile foreign forces with some advantage to itself, but with ever-deepening disaster for the race.  As in the days of Guelf and Ghibelline, so now again the nation was bisected.  The contest between French and Spanish factions became cruel.  Personal interests were substituted for principles; cross-combinations perplexed the real issues of dispute; while one sole fact emerged into distinctness—­that, whatever happened, Italy must be the spoil of the victorious duelist.

The practical termination of this state of things arrived in the battle of Pavia, when Francis was removed as a prisoner to Madrid, and in the sack of Rome, when the Pope was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo.  It was then found that the laurels and the profit of the bloody contest remained with the King of Spain.  What the people suffered from the marching and countermarching of armies, from the military occupations of towns, from the desolation of rural districts, from ruinous campaigns and sanguinary battles, from the pillage of cities and the massacres of their inhabitants, can best be read in Burigozzo’s Chronicle of Milan, in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in the Chronicle of Prato, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome.  The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people was broken.  But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what