The period treated in this volume is one of unique interest and significance in the history of Europe. Within these two centuries the political and social conditions of the so-called Middle Ages came to an end, and the states system of Modern Europe took its rise. But the importance of the period is more than equalled by the almost superhuman difficulty of narrating its events in anything like orderly and intelligible sequence. Such unity as had been given to Western Europe by the mediæval Empire and Papacy disappeared with the Great Interregnum in the middle of the thirteenth century; and such unity as was afterwards supplied by the growth of formal international relations cannot be said to begin before the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII. of France at the end of the fifteenth century. In the interval between these two dates there is apparent chaos, and only the closest attention can detect the germs of future order in the midst of the struggle of dying and nascent forces. It is easy to find evidence of astounding intellectual activity and instances of brilliant political and military achievement, but the dominant characteristic of the age is its diversity, and it is hard to find any principle of co-ordination. A cursory glance over some of the most striking episodes of the period will serve to illustrate the multiplicity of its interests. The hundred years’ war between England and France; the rise and fall of the House of Burgundy; the struggle of old and new conceptions of ecclesiastical polity in the Papal schism, in the Councils of Constance and Basel, and in the Hussite movement; the marvellous achievements of the republic of Venice, and of Florence under both republican and Medicean rule; the revival of art and letters, not only in one or two great centres, but in numerous petty states which would otherwise be wholly obscure; the growth and decline of unique corporations, such as the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Order; the extension and gradual union of the Christian states of Spain at the expense of Mohammedanism, and at the same time the gloomy story of the conquest of the Eastern Empire by the Turks;—all these episodes might well be treated in a volume apiece, but it is difficult to arrange them within the compass of a book which should deal with the general development of Europe. No doubt it may be held that some of these events are of more permanent importance than others, and that the essential fact to grasp in the period is the rise of great and coherent states like France, Spain, and England. But it is equally true that the important events are unintelligible without some knowledge of the less important events with which they are connected; that in this period Germany and Italy are more prominent than Spain and England, or even than France; and that Germany and Italy are not coherent states at all. The former is a bundle of states, and the latter can hardly be said to be as much.