They differed mostly <span>in their relationships with the American Indians they encountered. The French built positive relations with the locals and traded with them which helped them get fur and help with hunting. The Spaniards were conquerors and were all about finding gold and Spreading Christianity and they killed and enslaved numerous people while doing it and didn't care about the locals.</span>
<span />
The Europeans traveled across the Mediterranean Sea to search the Silk Road to A) obtain clothes, spices, and other goods. They were not necessarily interested in ancient religious sites, they were not escaping natural disasters at home, and to a degree they were searching for new opportunities, but the better answer is A.
The Italian painter and architect Giorgio Vasari is more famous for his biographies of Italian artists than any of his own works. It is largely due to Vasari that we have such a wealth of information about the artists of the Renaissance.
The Commercial Revolution lead many feudal and local entities to be diminished or disappeared entirely, but some reinvented themselves to become absolutist monarchies and national states. This violent process contributed to the Wars of Religion.
This culminated in the Thirty Years War (1618–48), within the Holy Roman Empire between German Protestants and their allies (Sweden, Denmark, France) and the Holy Roman Emperor and his Habsburg allies. It began as a religious war, but ended as a struggle for national superiority.
