course; and whilst he might have left in this kingdom a king who would have been his tributary, he drove him out of it, in order to place there another powerful enough to drive away himself.
There is nothing so natural or so common as the thirst for conquest, and when men can satisfy it they are rather praised than blamed for it. But when they have only the wish without the power of conquest, there the blame follows the error. If the King of France with his own strength was able to attack the kingdom of Naples, he ought to have done it; but if he was not able, he ought not to have divided it; and if the partition which he made of Lombardy with the Venetians is entitled to some excuse, because they had furnished him with the means of entering into Italy, the partition of Naples deserves blame alone, because it was totally inexcusable.
Lewis then committed five capital errors in Italy. He increased the strength of a great power, and destroyed that of the small ones; he called into it a very powerful foreigner; he did not go himself to live there; he did not send colonies into it. Notwithstanding these errors time might have enabled him to maintain himself there, if he had not committed a sixth; this was despoiling the Venetians. Unquestionably, if he had not aggrandised the ecclesiastical state, nor called the Spaniards
into Italy, it would have been necessary for him
B 2
