' For the other
princes, the King of France was alternately a bugbear to themselves and
their enemies, and they threatened to call him in whenever they saw no
more convenient way out of their difficulties. The Popes, in their
turn, fancied that they could make use of France without any danger to
themselves, and even Innocent VIII imagined that he could withdraw to
sulk in the North, and return as a conqueror to Italy at the head of a
French army.
Thoughtful men, indeed, foresaw the foreign conquest long before the
expedition of Charles VIII. And when Charles was back again on the
other side of the Alps, it was plain to every eye that an era of
intervention had begun. Misfortune now followed on misfortune; it was
understood too late that France and Spain, the two chief invaders, had
become great European powers, that they would be no longer satisfied
with verbal homage, but would fight to the death for influence and
territory in Italy. They had begun to resemble the centralized Italian
States, and indeed to copy them, only on a gigantic scale. Schemes of
annexation or exchange of territory were for a time indefinitely
multiplied. The end, as is well known, was the complete victory of
Spain, which, as sword and shield of the counter-reformation, long held
Papacy among its other subjects. The melancholy reflections of the
philosophers could only show them how those who had called in the
barbarians all came to a bad end.
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