European sericulture was created, but was slow in making progress. However, in Greece the diffusion was so rapid that in a short time what had been called the Peloponnesus changed its name to Morea, the land of the mulberry. From the borders of the Ægean the culture spread to Sicily, to Italy, and to Spain. The Arabs, who had already in the East acquired a knowledge of how to produce silk, spread the industry through all the countries that they conquered. France was slow in acquiring it. The raw silk was indeed imported to Lyons and Tours in the latter part of the fifteenth century, but it was not till after the campaign in Naples of 1495 that the gentlemen who had attended Charles VIII. brought back with them the seed of the white mulberry and the eggs of the silkworm into Languedoc and Provence. The first mulberries planted there were at Alban, near Montélimar, by Guy Pape, Sieur de Saint-Alban. The first steps taken in this new culture were slow and timid during nearly a century. Francis I. accorded special favours. His successor, Henry II., is said to have been the first King of France to wear silk stockings, 1550. The religious troubles and the rivalries between the great seigneurs did much to impede the progress of agriculture and of sericulture. The cultivators of the soil were crushed by taxation and exactions of every sort, as well as by the ravages of rival political and religious factions. But when Henry IV. was well settled on his throne, and the League was at an end, it was possible for agriculture and all the trades save that of the armourer to revive. Henry was keenly desirous to raise them from the deplorable condition into which they had been plunged during the long period of civil and religious discord which had marked the end of the dynasty of the Valois.