France under Louis XI.
was first in the field.

She had surmounted her civil troubles half a century earlier than England.

She then expelled her foreign foes, crushed the remnants of feudal independence, and began to expand at the cost of weaker States.

Parts of Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany became merged in France; the exuberant strength of the new-formed nation burst the barriers of the Alps and overflowed into the plains of Italy.

The time of universal monarchy was past, but the dread of it remained; and from Charles VIII.'s invasion of Italy in 1494 to Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia in 1525, French dreams of world-wide sovereignty were the nightmare of other kings.