the Somme, but incorporated the Burgundian duchy, one of the greatest fiefs of the crown. ♦French advance to the east.♦ This was the addition of a territory which the kings of France had never before ruled, and it marks an important stage in the advance of the French power towards the Imperial lands on its eastern border. By the marriage of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Austria, the remains of the Burgundian dominions passed to the House of Austria, and thereby in the end to Spain. The result was that a French king had for a moment an Emperor for his vassal in his character of Count of Flanders and Artois. ♦Flanders and Artois relieved from homage. 1525.♦ But by the treaty of Madrid Flanders and Artois were relieved from all homage to France, exactly as Aquitaine had been by the Peace of Bretigny. They now became lands wholly foreign to France, and, as foreign lands, large parts of them were afterwards conquered by France, just as Aquitaine was. But the history of their acquisition belongs to the story of the advance of France at the expense of the Empire. ♦All the great fiefs annexed except Britanny.♦ Thus, by the end of the reign of Lewis the Eleventh, all the fiefs of the French crown which could make any claim to the character of separate sovereignties had, with a single exception, been added to the dominions of the crown. The one which had escaped was that one which, more than any other, represented a nationality altogether distinct from that of France. _Britanny_ still remained distinct under its own Dukes. ♦1491-1499; incorporated 1532.♦ The marriages of its Duchess Anne with two successive French kings, Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth, added Britanny to France, and so completed the work. The whole of the Western Kingdom, except those parts which had become foreign ground—that is to say, insular Normandy and Calais, Barcelona, Flanders, and Artois—was now united under the kings of Paris. Their duchy of _France_ had spread its power and its name over the whole kingdom. We have now to see how it also spread itself over lands which had never formed part of that kingdom. § 2. _Foreign Annexations of France._ ♦Foreign neighbours of Karolingia. | Imperial and Spanish neighbours.♦