Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/256

 CHAPTER XVII THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION The long reign of Charles v. witnessed the development of the first stage of the Reformation, which parted Europe into two l. 1519 to camps, and the prolonged rivalry between the 1558. emperor and the King of France. We shall see that period of rivalry finally leaving France without posses- sions in Italy, but with her frontier strengthened on the German side by the acquisition of Metz; and in possession, at last, of Calais, the one foothold on the continent which England had retained for a very little more than two hundred years. It leaves Spain in possession of nearly all Italy as well as of the Low Countries and of the county of Burgundy, while it leaves the Imperial succession with the Austrian Hapsburgs. In England and Scotland at this stage the Reformation has not been completely victorious ; in both countries the existing Progress of government is devoted to the papacy — in England the Refor- under the reactionary Queen Mary, and in Scot- mation. j an( j un( ^ er the reactionary Queen Regent, Mary of Guise ; but in both countries the reaction is on the verge of being crushed. In France the government is orthodox and oppressive towards its Protestant subjects, while its rivalry with Spain, an absolutely Romanist power, makes it ready to counte- nance and to ally itself with Protestantism outside its own borders. The Scandinavian countries have become Protestant ; Switzerland, independent since the beginning of the century, is a centre of Protestantism. Protestantism prevails in the northern states of Germany and of the Low Countries ; Romanism in the 244