While French fishermen plied their trade along these gloomy coasts, the
French government spent it's energies on a different field. The vitality
of the kingdom was wasted in Italian wars. Milan and Naples offered a
more tempting prize than the wilds of Baccalaos. Eager for glory and for
plunder, a swarm of restless nobles followed their knight-errant King,
the would-be paladin, who, misshapen in body and fantastic in mind, had
yet the power to raise a storm which the lapse of generations could not
quell. Under Charles the Eighth and his successor, war and intrigue
ruled the day; and in the whirl of Italian politics there was no leisure
to think of a new world.
Yet private enterprise was not quite benumbed. In 1506, one Denis of
Honfleur explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence; 2 two years later, Aubert of
Dieppe followed on his track; and in 1518, the Baron de Lery made an
abortive attempt at settlement on Sable Island, where the cattle left by
him remained and multiplied.
The crown passed at length to Francis of Angouleme. There were in his
nature seeds of nobleness,--seeds destined to bear little fruit.
Chivalry and honor were always on his lips; but Francis the First, a
forsworn gentleman, a despotic king, vainglorious, selfish, sunk in
debaucheries, was but the type of an era which retained the forms of the
Middle Age without its soul, and added to a still prevailing barbarism
the pestilential vices which hung fog-like around the dawn of
civilization.
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