of Nationalism was impossible.

Gradually, however, by the exertions of powerful sovereigns the power
of the barons was broken, the smaller states were swallowed up in the
larger ones, and the way was prepared for the rise of the nations of
Modern Europe. In France the policy of centralisation begun in the
thirteenth century, was carried to a successful conclusion in the days
of Louis XI. (1461-83). The English provinces, Aquitane, Burgundy, and
Brittany, were all united to form one state, knowing only one supreme
ruler. In Spain the old divisions disappeared almost completely with
the union of Castile and Aragon under Ferdinand (1479-1516) and
Isabella the Catholic (1474-1504), and with the complete destruction
of the Moorish power by the conquest of Granada (1492). In England the
slaughter of the nobility in the Wars of the Roses left the way ready
for the establishment of the Tudor dominion. As part of the same
movement towards unification Henry VIII. was declared to be King of
Ireland instead of Feudal Lord, and serious attempts were made to
include Scotland within his dominions. Inside the Empire similar
tendencies were at work, but with exactly opposite results. The
interregnum in the Empire and a succession of weak rulers left the
territorial princes free to imitate the rulers of Europe by
strengthening their own power at the expense of the lower nobility,
the cities, and the peasantry; but, having secured themselves, they
used their increased strength to arrest the progress of centralisation
and to prevent the development of a strong imperial power.

As a direct result of this centralisation tendency and of the increase
in royal authority that it involved, the rulers of Europe initiated a
campaign against all constitutional restrictions on the exercise of
their authority. The feudal system with all its faults was in some