The next great conquests of France were made on Italian soil, but they are conquests which do not greatly concern geography. This distinguishes the relations of France towards Italy from her relations towards Burgundy. France has constantly interfered in Italian affairs; she has at various times held large Italian territories, and brought all Italy under French influence. But France has never permanently kept any large amount of Italian territory. The French possession of Naples and Milan was only temporary. ♦Not strictly extensions of France.♦ And, if it had been lasting, the possession of these isolated territories by the French king could hardly have been looked on as an extension of the actual French frontier. Those lands could never have been incorporated with France in the same way in which other French conquests had been. Their retention would in truth have given the later history of France quite a different character, a character more like that which actually belonged to Spain. The long occupation of Savoyard territory on both sides of the Alps[23] would, if it had lasted, have been a real extension of the French kingdom. But down to our own day, while the lands won by France from the Burgundian kingdom form a large proportion of the whole French territory, French acquisitions from Italy hardly go beyond the island of Corsica and the insignificant district of _Mentone_. * * * * * ♦Annexations at the expense of Germany.♦ The great annexations of France at the expense of the German kingdom and the lands more closely connected with it begin in the middle of the sixteenth century. ♦Annexation of Metz, Toul, and Verdun. 1552.♦ The first great advance was the practical annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics, though their separation from the Empire was not formally acknowledged till the Peace of Westfalia. ♦Effect of isolated conquests.♦ This kind of conquest can hardly fail to lead to other conquests. France now held certain patches of territory which lay detached from one another and from the main body of the kingdom. Yet the rounding off of the frontier was not the next step taken in this direction. The cause was most likely the close connexion which for somewhile existed between the ruling houses of France and Lorraine.