|1400 +--------------------------+-----------------------------+1400 | | | Empires of Mexico and | End of Great Schism. | | | | Peru. | Hussite wars. | | | | | English conquest of France, | | | | | and subsequent expulsion. | | | | | Increasing powers of | | | | | Parliament. | | | | | Invention of printing press.| | |1450 +--------------------------+-----------------------------+1450 | | | | Turks capture | | | | | Constantinople. | | | | | ENGLAND: Wars of the Roses, | | | | | 1455-1485. | | | | | Maritime greatness of | | | | | PORTUGAL. | | | | | SPAIN consolidated under | | | | | Ferdinand and Isabella. | | | | Discovery of America by | FRANCE consolidated under | | | | Christopher Columbus; | Louis XI. | | | | and of Cape route to | ENGLAND consolidated under | | | | India by Vasco da Gama.| Henry VII. Establishment | | | | | of absolutism under | | | | | constitutional forms. | | |1500 | | Revival of learning. | 1500| |A.D. | | Humanists. Savonarola. |A.D. | +-----+--------------------------+-----------------------------+-----+ [Sidenote: Growth of Modern Nations] The next two centuries, then, saw France, already a consolidated state, develop into the first military Power under the most absolute monarch in Europe--through a stage of prolonged religious strife which ended by establishing the tolerationist Bourbon, Henry IV., on the throne, through the rule of the two great cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin, to the intolerant autocracy of Louis XIV., with a close aristocracy no longer in opposition to the crown but allied to it. In England the development was on different lines. There we find an absolutist movement, the outcome of the Wars of the Roses. But however autocratic the Tudors were, they held by constitutional forms, and preserved the intense loyalty of their people. On Elizabeth’s death, a century-old matrimonial alliance placed the sceptres of England and Scotland in a single hand.