The passion for war and for a military life which had kept Europe in a state of constant disturbance during the Middle Ages, which had brought about the Hundred Years' struggle between England and France, and which had found its worst issue in the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century, had, in the sixteenth century largely spent its force. The pomp and luxury of chivalry had lessened the activity of military feelings. The expense entailed by chivalric pageantry had diminished the power of the nobles over their dependents. Many feudal barons were obliged to sell liberty and privileges to part of their bondsmen to obtain the wherewithal to maintain the remainder. The gradual growth of the towns and of trade produced a class which, having all to lose and nothing to gain by war, threw its influence against disorder. The advance in the study and practice of law diminished habits of violence by furnishing legal redress. But the most powerful agent in destroying the old warlike taste was the invention of gunpowder. In the Middle Ages the whole male population had been soldiers in spirit and in fact. But the application of gunpowder to the art of war made it necessary that men should be especially trained for the military profession. A limited number were therefore separated from the main body of the people, who occupied themselves exclusively with military affairs, while the remainder were left to pursue the hitherto neglected arts of peace. The love of war and the indifference to human suffering so long nourished by feudalism could only be thoroughly extinguished by centuries of gradual progress. The heads of queens and ministers of state falling from the block attest the strength of these feelings in Henry the Eighth's time. They were, however, fast losing ground before the new growth of learning. Their decline is illustrated by the fiction of the sixteenth century, as their full power was depicted in the early romances of chivalry.