X.] CHARLES AND FRANCIS. 2ÓI the two rival kingdoms, rid at last of the enemy, met and were united in the Catholic couple. In Germany Maximilian had at last concentrated in his own hands the territorial acquisitions of his house, had united Austria and her outlying states, had obtained for his son the accumulation of Burgundian fiefs, and for his grandsons the crown of Spain and Sicily, the reversion of Hungary and Bohemia besides. The Hapsburg power is a_ union of many unions, ill compacted, heterogeneous, uncongenial, but of extremely great might, a power consolidated by legal titles, happy and unhappy marriages, legal wind-falls, traditional pretensions, but yet the most important factor for many years to come in the welfare of Europe. The strength of France is in her compactness and concentration, that of Charles V, for in him the Austrian force is first impersonated, in its extent and universality. T o that extent and universality the discovery and the rapid pouring in of the wealth of America gave still new weapons and greater opportunities. France and Austria were both equipped for their struggle. The minor actors had somehow girt up their loins also : the popes, giving up their place as the overseers of a too wide dominion, had begun to accumulate the territorial aggregate of provinces in which they also could call themselves the state. Gustavus Vasa was reconstructing Sweden ; although the attempt to unite the Scandinavian kingdoms had failed, the same influence that was knotting up the south into bundles was knotting up the north. And so the struggle of powers begins. First comes the rivalry of Francis I and Charles V ; with Henry VIII and the popes hovering round the combatants, aspiring to hold the balance between them, and made alternately their tools and scapegoats. The struggle is a curious one : the older idea of rights to be fought for has not altogether disappeared, but now the interest is not injhe right, but in the battle. So