to support them in their claims on Roussillon and Cerdagne. The Spanish
monarchs had long entertained many causes of discontent with the French
court, both with regard to the mortgaged territory of Roussillon, and the
kingdom of Navarre; and they watched with jealous eye the daily increasing
authority of their formidable neighbor on their own frontier. They had
been induced, in the preceding summer, to equip an armanent at Biscay and
Guipuscoa, to support the duke of Brittany in his wars with the French
regent, the celebrated Anne de Beaujeu. This expedition, which proved
disastrous, was followed by another in the spring of the succeeding year.
[4] But, notwithstanding these occasional episodes to the great work in
which they were engaged, they had little leisure for extended operations;
and, although they entered into the proposed treaty of alliance with
Maximilian, they do not seem to have contemplated any movement of
importance before the termination of the Moorish war. The Flemish
ambassadors, after being entertained for forty days in a style suited to
impress them with high ideas of the magnificence of the Spanish court, and
of its friendly disposition towards their master, were dismissed with
costly presents, and returned to their own country. [5]

These negotiations show the increasing intimacy growing up between the
European states, who, as they settled their domestic feuds, had leisure to
turn their eyes abroad, and enter into the more extended field of
international politics. The tenor of this treaty indicates also the
direction which affairs were to take, when the great powers should be
brought into collision with each other on a common theatre of action.

All thoughts were now concentrated on the prosecution of the war with
Granada, which, it was determined, should be conducted on a more enlarged
scale than it had yet been; notwithstanding the fearful pest which had
desolated the country during the past year, and the extreme scarcity of