A few words are necessary to explain the tiresome and difficult subject of the foreign policy of Henry VII. We have seen that his venture of war with France in 1491 proved unfortunate, and he never repeated it. For the future he preferred to hoard money at home, rather than to lavish it on continental wars. But if he never fought again, he was always threatening to fight, winning what advantage he could by the menace of joining one or other of the parties which then divided Europe. The main troubles of continental politics in his period were caused by the restless ambition of the Kings of France. Freed from the lingering wars with England which had previously been their bane, the French monarchs had turned southward, and were striving to conquer Italy. Charles VIII. and Lewis XII., the two contemporaries of King Henry, spent all their energy in the attempt to annex the kingdom of Naples and the duchy of Milan, to which they had some shadowy claim of succession. Their schemes called into the field the sovereigns whose position would have been imperilled by the French conquest of Italy--the Emperor, Maximilian of Austria, and Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, whose marriage had created the united kingdom of Spain. [Sidenote: =The Netherlands.=] If the struggle had raged in Italy alone, Henry VII. might have viewed it with a philosophic indifference. But it also involved the Netherlands, the near neighbour of England, and the chief market for English trade. The Netherlands were at this moment in the hands of Philip of Austria, the son of the emperor, for Maximilian had married Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of the great dukes who had ruled in the Low Countries, and Philip was their only son.[29] Henry wished to keep on good terms with his neighbours in Flanders, more especially because it was there that the Yorkist refugees found shelter. Not only had the dowager Duchess Margaret aided them from thence, but Maximilian, while acting as regent in the Netherlands for his young son Philip, had given Perkin Warbeck much assistance. [Sidenote: =The "Great Intercourse."=]