But for France the fruit was of a more deadly kind.  The princely and noble blood of Italy began to be mingled with hers, bringing a vicious and corrupt strain at a critical period.

Old as she was in centuries, France was but a child in civilization.  An uncouth, untutored child, just emerging from barbarism, was suddenly brought under the influence of a fascinating, highly developed civilization, old in wickedness.  A nation in which the ruling class had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment; who after having run the whole gamut of human experience, drunk at every known fountain, had arrived at the code summed up by Machiavelli as the best by which to live!  It was an easy task for the Medici to control the policy, as they did for generations, of such simple barbarians.

Italy presents a strange spectacle in this closing fifteenth century:  All the concentrated splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging over her like a luminous cloud before dispersing as the Renaissance; Lorenzo de’ Medici, at Florence, directing the intellectual currents of Europe; Angelo and Raphael creating the world’s sublimest masterpieces in art; her great Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere; Savonarola, like an inspired prophet of old, calling upon men to “repent, repent, while there is yet time”; Machiavelli instructing the nations of the earth in villainy as a fine art; and Alexander VI., the basest man in Europe, poisoner, father of every crime, claiming to be Vicegerent of Christ upon earth!

But the currents were moving swiftly toward a crisis which was to change all this.  One more pope, that magnificent patron of art, Julius II., creator of the Vatican Museum, with the recently found Apollo Belvedere, and the Laocooen as a splendid nucleus, and projector and builder of St. Peter’s.  And then Leo X. (Medicean Pope) and Luther!

The year 1492 contained three important events:  the discovery of a new world, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici.  Spain’s crusade of seven hundred years was over.  We must search in vain for any struggle to match this in singleness and persistence of purpose.  Commencing one hundred years before Charlemagne created a Holy Roman Empire, it ended triumphantly under a king and queen who were to play a leading part in the Reformation.

The stage was making ready, and the characters were assembling for the great modern drama, in a century even more significant than the one then closing.

The reign of Charles VIII. ended in 1498.  And as he left no son, the succession once more passed to a collateral branch:  Louis XII., of the House of Orleans, wore the crown of France.  It is interesting to recall that these two kings, Charles and Louis, were respectively grandsons of those two ambitious dukes whose personal feud brought France to the verge of ruin a few decades earlier:  Louis XII. being the descendant of that Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI., the reigning king, who was murdered in the streets of Paris; while Charles VIII. was the descendant of his slayer, the terrible Duke of Burgundy, evil genius of France at that time.