French kingship for the promotion mutually of absolute power.

Whilst this question formed the subject of disputes in France between the
great public authorities, there was springing up, outside of France,
between the great European powers another not more grave in regard to a
distant future, but more threatening in regard to the present peace of
nations. King Ferdinand the Catholic had died on the 23d of January,
1516; and his grandson and successor, Archduke Charles, anxious to go and
take possession of the throne of Spain, had hastily concluded with
Francis I., on the 13th of August, 1516, at Noyon, a treaty intended to
settle differences between the two crowns as to the kingdoms of Naples
and Navarre. The French and Spanish plenipotentiaries, Sires de Boisy
and de Chievres, were still holding meetings at Montpellier, trying to
come to an understanding about the execution of this treaty, when the
death of Emperor Maximilian at Wels, in Austria, on the 12th of January,
1519, occurred to add the vacant throne of a great power to the two
second-rate thrones already in dispute between two powerful princes.
Three claimants, Charles of Austria, who was the new King of Spain,
Francis I., and Henry VIII., King of England, aspired to this splendid
heritage. In 1517, Maximilian himself, in one of his fits of temper and
impecuniosity, had offered to abdicate and give up the imperial dignity
to Henry VIII. for a good round sum; but the King of England's envoy, Dr.
Cuthbert Tunstall, a stanch and clearsighted servant, who had been sent
to Germany to deal with this singular proposal, opened his master's eyes
to its hollowness and falsehood, and Henry VIII. held himself aloof.
Francis I. remained the only rival of Charles of Austria; Maximilian
labored eagerly to pave the way for his grandson's success; and at his
death the struggle between the two claimants had already become so keen
that Francis I., on hearing the news, exclaimed, "I will spend three
millions to be elected emperor, and I swear that, three years after the