[Sidenote: Foreign Relations of the French Kings about 1500]

Consolidated at home in territory and in government, Frenchmen began
about the year 1500 to be attracted to questions of external policy. By
attempting to enforce an inherited claim to the crown of Naples,
Charles VIII in 1494 started that career of foreign war and
aggrandizement which was to mark the history of France throughout
following centuries. His efforts in Italy were far from successful, but
his heir, Louis XII (1498-1515), continued to lay claim to Naples and
to the duchy of Milan as well. In 1504 Louis was obliged to resign
Naples to King Ferdinand of Aragon, in whose family it remained for two
centuries, but about Milan continued a conflict, with varying fortunes,
ultimately merging into the general struggle between Francis I (1515-
1547) and the Emperor Charles V.

France in the year 1500 was a real national monarchy, with the
beginnings of a national literature and with a national patriotism
centering in the king. It was becoming self-conscious. Like England,
France was on the road to one-man power, but unlike England, the way
had been marked by no liberal or constitutional mile-posts.


SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: Development of the Spanish and Portuguese Monarchies]

South of the Pyrenees were the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies,
which, in a long process of unification, not only had to contend
against the same disuniting tendencies as appeared in France and