A History of France; 1453-1624 Volume 2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK II. THE AGE OF THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONS. Introduction. We enter on a period in which France played a chief part in the creation of those international European relations which we are wont to call the Balance of Power. The starting-point of her intervention in general politics was her interference in Italian affairs, which not only brought her into collision with Germany and Spain, but also subjected her to all those influences which Italy with her manifold fascinations of art and skill, of learning, luxury, and subtle political action, could exert on the susceptible nature of the French. Though the share of France in the general relations of European history has often been fully and clearly explained, her subjection to Italian influences has perhaps not received so much notice as it certainly deserves. The power exerted by the genius of France on others, and the position she claims as a leader of opinion in Europe, has appeared so striking that we have failed to realise the great influence which the characteristic qualities of other nations have exerted on her. And yet France has received as much as she has given. Nor is this strange. That vivacity and sympathy, that spright- liness of mind, clearness of idea and expression, bright and logical, witty if rarely humorous, that cleverness which understands, and that dexterity which can reproduce the thought of others; all these qualities make her equally well-fitted to receive and to give. In the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries alike, France owed much of her intellectual life to other nations; to Italy and to England. In the fifteenth century she had fallen far behind: her long wars, the clash of interests within her borders, the ruin of her prosperity, had all hindered her natural growth; the influences of ...