2. But while it would be in vain to attempt, within the limits of a work like the present, to give a separate history of every nation, the reader should not lose sight of any,-that, as opportunities occur, he may have a place in the general framework of history for the stores which subsequent reading may accumulate. It was in accordance with these views, that, near the close of the preceding chapter, we took a general survey of the nations of Europe; and although a few of the European kingdoms will still continue to claim our chief at tention in the subsequent part of this history, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that they embraced, during this period, but a small portion of the population of the globe; and that a History, strictly universal, would comprise the cotemporary annals of more than a hundred different nations. The extent of the field of modern his tory is indeed vast; in it we can select only a few verdant spots, with which alone we can hope to make the reader familiar; while the riches of many an unexplored region must be left to repay the labor of future researches. 3. At the opening of the sixteenth century, Great Britain, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Prussia, and Turkey, were distinct and independent nations; Hungary and Bohemia were temporarily united under one sovereignty; Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, still feebly united by the union of Calmar, were soon to be divided again; the Netherlands, known as the dominions of the house of Burgundy, had become a dependence of the Austrian division of the Germanic empire; and Italy, comprising the Papal States, and a number of petty republics and dukedoms, was fast becoming the prey of surrounding sovereigns. In the East, Persia, after having been for centuries the theatre of perpetual civil wars, revolutions, and changes of no interest to foreigners, again emerged from obscurity at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and, toward the end of that period, under the Shah Abbas, surnamed the Great, established an empire embracing Persia Proper, Media, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Farther Armenia. About the same time a Tartar or Mogul empire was established in Hindostan by a descendant of the great conqueror Tamerlane. China was at this time, as it had long been, a great empire, although but little known. Egypt, under the successors of the victorious Saracens, still preserved the semblance of sovereignty, until, in 1517, the Turks reduced it to the condition of a province of the Ottoman empire. Such were the principal States, kingdoms, and nations, of the Old World, whose annals find a place on the page of universal history; and, turning to the West, beyond the wide ocean whose mysteries had been so recently unveiled by the Genoese navigator, we find the germs of civil. ized nations already starting into being;-and History must enlarge its volume to take in a mere abstract of the annals that now begin to press forward for admission to its pages. Amidst this perplexing profusion of the materials of history, we turn back to the localities already familiar to the reader, and seek for historic unity where only it can be found,-in those principles, and events, that have exerted a world-wide influence on the progress of civilization, and the destinies of the human race. L. THE STATES EUROPE. II. THE AGE OF HENRY VIII. AND CHARLES V.-1. About the period of the beginning of the sixteenth century a new era opens in European history, in the rise of what has sometimes been called "the States-system of Europe;" for it was now that the reciprocal influences of the European States on each other SYSTEM OF began to be exerted on a large scale, and that the weaker States first conceived the idea of a balance-of-power system that should protect them against their more powerful neighbors. Hence the increasing extent and intricacy of the relations that began to grow up between States, by treaties of alliance, embassies, negotiations, and guarantees; and the more general combination of powers in the wars that arose out of the ambition of some princes, and the attempts of others to preserve the political equilibrium. 2. The inordinate growth of the power of the house of Austria, in the early part of the sixteenth century, first developed the defensive and conservative system to which we have alluded; and for a long time the principal object of all the wars and alliances of Europe was to humble the ambition of some one nation, whose preponderance seemed to threaten the liberty and independence of the rest. 3. It has been stated that the marriage of Maximilian of Austria, with Mary of Bur' gundy, secured to the house of Austria the whole of Bur' gundy, and the "Low Countries," corresponding to the modern Netherlands. In the year 1506, Charles, known in history as Charles V., a grandson of Maximilian and Mary of Austria, and also of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, inherited the Low Countries: on the death of Ferdinand, in 1516, he became heir to the whole Spanish succession, which comprehended Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, together with Spanish America. To these vast possessions were added his patrimonial dominions in Austria; and in 1519 the imperial dignity of the Germanic empire was conferred upon him by the choice of the electors, when he was only in his nineteenth year. 4. Charles soon resigned to his brother Ferdinand his hereditary Austrian States; but the two brothers, acting in concert for the advancement of their reciprocal interests, were regarded but as one power by the alarmed sovereigns of Europe, who began to suspect that the Austrian princes aimed at universal monarchy; and their jealousy was increased when Ferdinand, by marriage, secured the addition of Hungary and Bohemia to his dominions; and, at a later period, Charles, in a similar manner, obtained for his son, afterwards Philip II. of Spain, the future sovereignty of Portugal. IL THE RI- CIS 1. AND CHARLES V. 5. When the imperial throne of Germany became vacant by the death of Maximilian, Francis I. of France and Charles V. were competitors for the crown; and on the success TWEEN FRAN- of the latter, the mutual claims of the two princes on each other's dominions, especially in Italy and the Low Countries, soon made them declared enemies. France then took the lead in attempting to regulate the balance of III. HENRY power against the house of Austria; and the favor of VIII OF Henry VIII. of England was courted by the rival monENGLAND. archs, as the prince most likely to secure the victory to whomsoever he should give the weight of his influence. 6. In year 1509 Henry VIII., then at the age of eighteen, had succeeded his father Henry VII. on the throne of England,-receiving at the same time a rich treasury and a flourishing kingdom, and uniting in his person the opposing claims of the houses of York and Lancaster. The real power of the English monarch was at this time greater than at any previous period; and Henry VIII. might have been the arbiter of Europe, in the rivalries and wars between Francis I. and Charles V., had not his actions been the result of passion, vanity, caprice, or resentment, rather than of enlightened policy. 7. Each of the rival princes sedulously endeavored to enlist the English monarch in his favor: both gave a pension to his prime minister, cardinal Wolsey; and each had an interview with the king-Francis meeting him at Calais, and Charles visiting him in England, but the latter won Henry through the influence of Wolsey, whose egregrious vanity he duped by encouraging his hopes of promotion to the papal crown. Moreover, Henry was, at the beginning, ill-disposed towards the king of France, who virtually governed Scotland through the influence of the regent Albany; and, by an alliance with Charles, he hoped to recover a part of those domains which his ancestors had formerly possessed in France. Charles also gained the aid of the pope, Leo X.; but, on the other hand, Francis was supported by the Swiss, the Genoese, and the Venetians. 8. In the year 1520 Francis seized the opportunity of an insurrection in Spain to attempt the recovery of Navarre, which had been united to the French crown by marriage alliance in 1490, and conquered by Ferdinand of Spain in 1512. Navarre was won and lost in the course of a few months, and the war was then transferred to Italy. In two successive years the French governor of Milan was driven from Lombardy: the Duke of Bourbon,' constable of France, the best general of Francis, who had received repeated affronts from the king, his master, deserted to Charles, and was by him invested with the chief command of his forces; and in the year 1525 Francis himself was defeated by his rebellious subject in the battle of Pavia, and taken prisoner, but not until his horse had been killed under him, and his armor, which is still preserved, had been indented by numerous bullets and lances. In the battle of Pavia the French army was almost totally destroyed. In a single line Francis conveyed the sad intelligence to his mother. "Madam all is lost but honor." 9. Francis was conveyed a prisoner to Madrid; and it was only at the expiration of a year that he obtained his release, when a fever, occasioned by despondency, had already threatened to put an end, at once, to his life, and the advantages which Charles hoped to derive from his captivity. Francis had already prepared to abdicate the throne in favor of his son the dauphin, when Charles decided to 1. The house of Bourbon derives its name from the small village of Bourbon in the former province of Bourbonnais, now in the department of Allier, thirteen miles west from Moulins, and one hundred and sixty-five miles south from Paris. (Map No. XIII.) In early times this town had lords of its own, who bore the title of barons. Aimer, who lived in the early part of the tenth century, is the first of these barons of whom history gives any account. The male princes of this line having become extinct, Beatrix, duchess of Bourbon, married Robert, second son of St. Louis; and their son Louis, duke of Bourbon, who died in 1341, became the founder of the house of Bourbon. Two branches of this house took their origin from the two sons of Louis. The elder line became extinct at the death of the constable of Bourbon, who defeated Francis at Pavia, and was himself killed in 1527, in the assault of the city of Rome, From the other line have sprung several branches,-first, the royal branch, and that of Condé ; since which the former has undergone several subdivisions, giving sovereigns to France, to Spain, the two Sicilies, and Lucca and Parma. release the captive monarch, after exacting from him a stipulation to surrender Bur' gundy, to renounce his pretensions to Milan and Naples, and to ally himself, by marriage, with the family of his enemy. But Francis, before his release, had secretly protested, in the presence of his chancellor, against the validity of a treaty extorted from him while a prisoner; and, once at liberty, it was not difficult for him to elude it. His joy at his release was unbounded. Being escorted to the frontiers of France, and having passed a small stream that divides the two kingdoms, he mounted a Turkish horse, and putting him at full speed, and waving his hand over his head, exclaimed aloud, several times, "I am yet a king !" (March 18, 1526.) 10. The liberation of Francis was the signal for a general league against Charles V. The Italian States, which, since the battle of Pavia, had been in the power of the Spanish and German armies, now regarded the French as liberators; the pope put himself at the head of the league; the Swiss joined it; and Henry VIII., alarmed at the increasing power of Charles, entered into a treaty with Francis, so that the very reverses of the French monarch, by exciting the jealousy of other States against his rival, rendered him much stronger in alliances than before. 11. During these events, the rebel Duke of Bourbon remained in Italy, quartering his mercenary troops on the unfortunate inhabitants of Milan; but when the Italians declared against the emperor, all Italy was delivered up to pillage. To obtain the greater plunder, Bourbon marched upon Rome, followed not only by his own soldiers, but by an additional force of fourteen thousand brigands from Germany. Pope Clement, terrified by the greatness of the danger which menaced the States of the Holy See, discharged his best troops, and shut himself up in the castle of St. Angelo. Rome was attacked, and carried by storm, although Bourbon fell in the assault; the pillage was universal, neither convents nor churches being spared; from seven to eight thousand Romans were massacred the first day; and not all the ravages of the Goths and Huns surpassed those of the army of the first prince in christendom. 12. The pillage of Rome, and the captivity of the pope, excited great indignation throughout Europe; and the hypocritical Charles, instead of sending orders for his liberation, ordered prayers for his deliverance to be offered in all the Spanish, churches. At this favorable moment Francis sent an army into Italy, which penetrated to the very walls of Naples; but here his prosperity ended; and the |