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This article discusses Henry VII's reaction to Charles VIII's 1494 invasion of Italy and conquest of Naples, and it examines the complex negotiations leading up to Henry's July 1496 entry into the Holy League of Venice, which had been formed seventeen months earlier to force the French from Italy. The article challenges the standard view that Henry was not concerned about the French conquest of Naples because he thought Italy too distant from England, and it refutes the idea of some historians that Henry encouraged Charles to invade. It also questions the view that Henry joined the Holy League only as a means to strengthen his political ties with leading European powers better to secure his dynasty, and only after he was exempted from the League's military and financial obligations. This article shows that Henry had a perceptive understanding of Italian affairs, and that he wanted a unified League that could counterbalance French power and deter another French invasion of Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay compares the use of "foreign" state servants in the early-modern kingdom of France and the Ottoman Empire. In both realms, identity was understood as a matter of loyalty not to a defined territory but rather to a dynasty; hence service to the dynasty offered a ready path for assimilation. For a contemporary Ottoman historian, "the inhabitants of Rum" were a people of diverse origins, often descended from converts to Islam. For French jurists, the basic component of citizenship in the kingdom was personal choice; thus French "identity" was gained or lost as outsiders chose to serve the king, or natives of France chose to serve one of his rivals. This fluidity in matters of identity may be illustrated by three careers. George Paleologus Dysphatos (d. 1496), having converted to Roman Catholicism, rose to prominence under Kings Louis XI and Charles VIII, while a man known only as Hüseyn, the subaşt of Lemnos, was important as a diplomat and intelligence-gatherer in the service of Sultan Bayezid II; only from a chance reference in a letter of Charles VIII concerning Hüseyn do we know that he was George's cousin, obviously a convert to Islam. Christophe de Roggendorf (1510-post 1585) who was an Austrian nobleman and who had fought in Austrian armies against Ottoman forces. When Emperor Charles V ruled against him in an inheritance dispute he switched sides, moving to Istanbul where he served Sultan Süleyman for a time. But since he would not convert to Islam, preventing his being eligible for an important office, Roggendorf changed his allegiance again, ending his active career as an honored commander and diplomat under Kings Henri II and Charles IX. As these examples suggest, this was an era in which rulers competed for the loyalty of talented men, regardless of their origins, and potential state servants chose identities that served their own ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]