Around 1900, scholars commonly marked modern history from the French invasion of Italy in 1494. The size of the army that crossed the Alps – about 30,000 men – and its use of field artillery to batter down the curtain walls of ancient towns was, supposedly, unprecedented. As France’s claims in Italy were subsequently challenged by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, the duchy of Milan and other Italian states collapsed, or changed hands, with astonishing abruptness. Today, it is no longer clear that the campaigns of the Wars of Italy (1494–1559) were so sharply differentiated from those of the last phase of the Hundred Years’ War (1415–53). But the political cataclysms of our own time seem to confirm Niccolò Machiavelli’s insights into the precariousness of power at the turn of the sixteenth century. No boundary was sacred, and no government lacked a portfolio of ideas for expansion, to be tested if circumstances seemed ripe. Since a power dominant in a given region often worked to keep things as they were, one might distinguish between ambitious governments eager for war and cautious governments concerned to preserve what they had. Any move by a hegemonic power was taken by its rivals as an attempt to reduce them to abject servitude.