That the peace could not last was perhaps inevitable. That it should be shattered, in 1494, with such totality, plunging Italy into decades of the most serious fighting Europe had seen, was largely the responsibility of others. Behind the Italian scene were two foreign powers, France and Spain, both with claims to titles in Italy, both geared up for war, both willing to use Italy as the arena for that war. The Italian forces, at best in uneasy alliance, were no match for the power of these foreigners. The French and Spanish armies in Italy represented states with a new scale of resources. If 'survival of the fittest' had reduced the number of states within Italy, that principle was now about to be taken to its logical conclusion.

The union of the Spanish crowns nearly never happened, or rather, nearly happened in a quite different combination. Isabella of Castile had fought for the succession in that kingdom with Joanna, the betrothed of the king of Portugal, and had she not won there might well have been a union of the crowns of Castile and Portugal. Nor was the union by marriage of the two crowns of Castile and Aragon the same thing as a union of Spain. The terms kept them strictly separate and closely defined the spheres of action of the two monarchs. Ferdinand ruled solely in Aragon, jointly with Isabella in Castile, from which he could not absent himself without her consent. And although for a long time it was the fashion, particularly among Spanish nationalist historians, to regard the two as the founders of modern Spain, more recently historians have tended to emphasize the continuity in the development of the Spanish kingdoms and the ways in which the policies of the 'Catholic kings', as the pair was dubbed by the pope, developed from those of their predecessors.

That said, the time was certainly ripe for such collaboration. Castile and Aragon in many ways complemented each other well. Aragon's interests lay, above all, eastward, in the Mediterranean, and although the economy had suffered, there were still opportunities, used to the full, notably in relations with the now Spanish southern half of the Italian peninsula. In terms of foreign policy and trade Castile's interests by contrast lay in the Atlantic, with northern Europe, and eventually with

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