Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/69

 had found it. When we consider the ineluctable burden of his several and discrete realms, the perplexing and multifarious dangers to which he was exposed, the mere mechanical friction occasioned by distance and boundaries and intervening hostile lands, the inefficient organisation, political, financial, and military, of his countries at that time, the obstacles opposed by institutions guarding extinct and impossible local privilege, the world-shaking problems which broke up all previous settled order, then the conscientious sincerity with which he addressed his mediocre talents to the allotted work must earn for him at least a place in our esteem.

On neither side was the struggle for world-empire. Charles would have been content to recover Milan in self-defence, and the duchy of Burgundy as his hereditary and indefeasible right. France had good grounds for claiming Milan and Naples. But it is doubtful whether Francis would have been as moderate after victory as Charles.

The struggle can be considered apart from developments in Germany. But it has its reaction on German fortunes. Had Charles not been hampered throughout his career by the contest with France he would not have been forced to temporise with the Reforming movement until it was too late for effective action. The Most Christian King was an unconscious ally of Luther, as he was a deliberate ally of the Turk. Immediately the conflict concerned the fate of Italy. Indirectly it weakened the resistance of Europe to the Reformed opinions, and to the Muslim in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean.

After Marignano (1515) and the Peace of Noyon (1516), which professed to shelve all outstanding questions and secure perpetual friendship between Spain and France, Europe had peace for a while. It was arranged at Noyon that Charles should take Louise, the daughter of the King of France, to wife, and that the rights over the kingdom of Naples should go with her. Until this babe-in-arms should become his wife, Charles was to pay 100, 000 crowns a year as rent for Naples, and 50, 000 until she bore him a son. If Louise died, some daughter of a later birth was to be substituted as his affianced bride, and this clause actually took effect. Charles promised satisfaction with regard to Spanish Navarre, conquered by Ferdinand in 1512; perhaps he even secretly engaged himself to restore it to Catharine, its lawful Queen, within six months. The treaty was concluded under the influence of Flemish counsellors, who had surrounded Charles, since he had taken up the government of the Netherlands in the previous year. It was inspired by a desire for peace with France in interests exclusively Burgundian. But it had also its value for Spain, for it gave Charles a breathing space in which to settle the affairs of his new kingdoms. Maximilian, now in isolation, was forced to come to terms with France and Venice, and surrender Verona; and peace was secured in Italy for a while. At a subsequent conference at Cambray in 1517 the partition of Italy between Habsburg and Valois