antagonism of parties, alien to the home interests of Italy, had been
exasperated by the rivalry of Angevine and Aragonese princes; had
assumed formidable intensity after the invasion of Charles VIII. in
1494; and had expanded under the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I.
into an open struggle between France and Spain for the supremacy of
Italy. It now was finally terminated by the exclusion of the French and
the acknowledged overlordship of the Spaniard. But though peace seemed
to be secured to a nation tortured by so many desolating wars of foreign
armies, the Italians regarded the cession of Saluzzo with despondency.
The partisans of national independence and political freedom had become,
however illogically, accustomed to consider France as their ally.[6]
They now beheld the gates of Italy closed against the French; they saw
the extinction of their ancient Guelf policy of calling French arms into
Italy. They felt that rest from strife was dearly bought at the price of
prostrate servitude beneath Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, Spanish
Bourbons, and mongrel princelings bred by crossing these stocks with
decaying scions of Italian nobility. As a matter of fact, this was the
destiny which lay before them for nearly two centuries after the
signing of the Peace of Vervins.

[Footnote 6: See, for instance, temp. Henri IV., _Sarpi's Letters_, vol.
i. p. 233.]

Yet the cession of Saluzzo was really the first dawn of hope for Italy.
It determined the House of Savoy as an Italian dynasty, and brought for
the first time into the sphere of purely Italian interests that province
from which the future salvation of the nation was to come. From 1598
until 1870 the destinies of Italy were bound up with the advance of
Savoy from a duchy to a kingdom, with its growth in wealth, military
resources and political self-consciousness, and with its ultimate