It is worth while to stop for a moment to consider the conditions of the period. The Hundred Years’ War between France and England, which had paralyzed the energies of a divided France and had exhausted the powers of England in useless attempts at an impossible conquest, had at last come to an end. The English had withdrawn to their own island. They had given up the dreams of a continental empire which had danced before their eyes ever since William of Normandy, in 1066, had added England to his possessions. In reading English history we are liable to forget that during a great part, if not the whole, of the four hundred years succeeding the Conquest, the English kings had considered their continental possessions the more important, regarding the little island which they shared with the Scotch, then an independent nation, as a sort of colonial possession. It is true that they maintained their capitals there and took their titles thence, because in England they were kings, whereas they governed their broad possessions on the continent as dukes or counts only. From the time of Henry V they had claimed to be kings of France. Now these continental ambitions were definitely given up and England was free to develop her own nationality, and a much more vigorous national life immediately began. The same events mark an era in the development of France. Free from the horrors of war and the dread of another conquest, a new opportunity was given for the development of the arts of peace. Italy was still divided into a great number of independent states whose quarrels and changing alliances make the Italian history of the period extremely difficult to study on its political side. There had, however, developed in Italy a group of strong rulers who governed states of respectable size and kept them for considerable periods in comparative stability. The Italian states had rallied more quickly from the barbarian invasions which overthrew the Roman Empire than the rest of Europe and their progress in civilization had been very remarkable when one considers the civil wars and wars between small states which had been almost continuous. For the most part Germany had lagged far behind the rest of Europe in the development of civilization. The greater part of it, however, was now in a fairly stable political condition and many of the German states had become important centers of learning. This was especially true of western and southern Germany, where the influence of Rome had been strongest and where the influence of France and Italy had been most felt. Much of Spain was still in the hands of the Moors, who were in many respects more civilized than their Christian neighbors. Portugal was enlightened and advanced. The great schism known as the Babylonish Captivity which had rent the Catholic Church in twain, with rival popes ruling at Rome and Avignon, had come to an end, and for the time being the unity of Christendom was undisturbed.