* * * * * ♦Advance at the expense of the Imperial kingdoms.♦ Of far greater importance is the steady acquisition of territory by France at the expense of the Imperial kingdoms, and of the modern states by which those kingdoms are represented. ♦Burgundy. | 1310-1860.♦ In the case of Burgundy, French annexation has taken the form of a gradual swallowing up of nearly the whole kingdom, a process which has been spread over more than five hundred years, from the annexation of Lyons by Philip the Fair to the last annexation of Savoy in our own day. ♦Annexations from Germany. 1552-1811.♦ The advance at the expense of the German kingdom did not begin till the greater part of the Burgundian kingdom was already swallowed up. ♦Late beginning of annexations from Germany.♦ The north-eastern frontier of the Western Kingdom changed but little from the accession of the Parisian house in the tenth century till the growth of the Dukes of Burgundy in the fifteenth. After Lotharingia finally became a part of the Eastern Kingdom, there was no doubt that the homage of Flanders was due to France, no doubt that the homage of the states which had formed the Lower Lotharingia was due to the Empire. The frontier towards the Upper Lotharingia and the Burgundian county also remained untouched. The Saône remained a boundary stream long after the Rhone had ceased to be one. ♦Effect of the Burgundian acquisitions of France;♦ It was on this latter river that the great Burgundian annexations of France began, annexations which gave France a wholly new European position.[22] ♦of the Dauphiny; | of Provence.♦ The acquisition of the Dauphiny of Viennois made France the immediate neighbour of Italy; the acquisition of Provence at once strengthened this last position and more than doubled her Mediterranean coast. ♦Relations with the Swiss.♦ Add to this that, though France and the Confederate territory did not yet actually touch, yet the Burgundian wars and many other events in the latter half of the fifteenth century enabled France to establish a close connexion with the power which had grown up north of Lake Leman. France had thus become a great Mediterranean and Alpine power, ready to threaten Italy in the next generation. Later acquisitions within the old border of the Burgundian kingdom had a somewhat different character. ♦Annexations at the expense of Savoy;♦ Annexations at the expense of Savoy, even when geographically Burgundian, were annexations at the cost of a power which was beginning to be Italian rather than Burgundian. ♦of the County of Burgundy.♦ The annexation of the County of Burgundy goes rather with the Alsatian annexations. It was territory won at the cost of the Empire and of the House of Austria. ♦Middle character of the Burgundian lands.♦ But the lands between the Rhone, the Alps, and the sea, still kept, negatively at least, their middle character. They were lands which at least were neither German, French, nor Italian.