Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/291

267 EXPEDITION OF CHARLES VIII. 267 If all this did not give validity to their title, when chapter was the nation to expect repose ? Charles's claim, ^' on the other hand, was derived originally from a testamentary bequest of Rene, count of Prov- ence, operating to the exclusion of the son of his own daughter, the rightful heir of the house of Anjou ; Naples being too notoriously a female fief to afford any pretext for the action of the Salic law. The pretensions of Ferdinand, of Spain, as representative of the legitimate branch of Aragon, were far more plausible. ^^ Independently of the defects in Charles's title, his position was such as to make the projected ex- pedition every way impolitic. A misunderstanding had for some time subsisted between him and the Spanish sovereigns, and he was at open war with Germany and England ; so that it was only by large concessions, that he could hope to secure their acquiescence in an enterprise most precarious in its character, and where even complete success could be of no permanent benefit to his kingdom. " He did not understand," says Voltaire, " that a dozen villages adjacent to one's territory, are of more value than a kingdom four hundred leagues dis- tant." ^^ By the treaties of Etaples and Senlis, he 14 The conflicting claims of An- the historian of the Decline and jou and Aragon are stated at length Fall. Miscellaneous Works, (Lon- by Gaillard, with more candor and don, 1814,) vol. iii. pp. 206-222. impartiality than were to be ex- ^^ Essai sur les Mceurs, chap, pected from a French writer. (His- 107. — His politic father, Louis toire de Francois I., (Paris, 1769,) XL, acted on this principle, for he torn. i. pp. 71-92.) They form made no attempt to maintain his the subject of a juvenile essay of pretensions to Naples ; although Gibbon, in which we may discern Mably affects to doubt whether the germs of many of the peculiari- this were not the result of neces- ties which afterwards characterized sity rather than policy. "II est