Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/247

 TRANSITION 235 Between 1480 and 1490 the coming greatness of the Haps- burgs had not revealed itself. Maximilian's son was a baby, and the Low Countries declined to admit that Maximilian had any authority over them. Bohemia had elected a Polish king ; and Matthias Corvinus, the son of John Hunyadi, was not only King of Hungary, but was in effective possession of most of Frederick m.'s Austria in Austrian territories. It was still extremely doubt- 14 80. ful whether the Hapsburgs would succeed in recovering their own dominion ; there was no present prospect of their securing either Hungary or Bohemia, especially when, on the death of Matthias, Hungary elected to its own monarchy the Polish King of Bohemia ; there was little enough security that the Low Countries would be brought under their control; and, finally, the matrimonial alliance had not yet been formed with the houses of Castile and Aragon. England, the fourth of the great powers named, was at this stage in a very humble position. The struggle between Lancaster and York had exhausted her; and iii- 1 1 111 England, though this was brought to an end by the accession of Henry VII. in 1485, when Richard 111. was slain at Bosworth field, and by the king's marriage to the heiress of York, the new king's seat on his throne was ex- tremely insecure. He was ruling, however, with immense astuteness, patience and foresight, gradually filling the royal treasury, and concentrating power in his own hands, while making a great show of acting in partnership with the parlia- ments which he made a point of summoning frequently. The two states which had made a really marked advance were France and Spain, though even now Spain could hardly be spoken of as one state. Louis xt. had brought under the royal control practically the whole of what we now call France, with the exception of Brittany, which retained a certain degree of independence. Brittany, too, was almost immediately brought in by the marriage of the young French king, Charles vin., to the still younger Duchess Anne. No sooner was this accomplished than Charles invaded Italy to assert in his own name the Angevin claim to the throne of