1507 Louis made war on Venice; and in the following year the famous
Treaty of Cambrai was signed by Georges d'Amboise and Margaret of
Austria. It was an agreement for a partition of the Venetian
territories,--one of the most shameless public deeds in history. The
Pope, the King of Aragon, Maximilian, Louis XII., were each to have a
share. The war was pushed on with great vigour: the battle of Agnadello
(14th May, 1509) cleared the King's way towards Venice; Louis was
received with open arms by the North Italian towns, and pushed forward to
within eight of Venice. The other Princes came up on every side; the
proud "Queen of the Adriatic" was compelled to shrink within her walls,
and wait till time dissolved the league. This was not long. The Pope,
Julius II., had no wish to hand Northern Italy over to France; he had
joined in the shameless league of Cambrai because he wanted to wrest the
Romagna cities from Venice, and because he hoped to entirely destroy the
ancient friendship between Venice and France. Successful in both aims,
he now withdrew from the league, made peace with the Venetians, and stood
forward as the head of a new Italian combination, with the Swiss for his
fighting men. The strife was close and hot between Pope and King; Louis
XII. lost his chief adviser and friend, Georges d'Amboise, the splendid
churchman of the age, the French Wolsey; he thought no weapon better than
the dangerous one of a council, with claims opposed to those of the
papacy; first a National Council at Tours, then an attempted General
Council at Pisa, were called on to resist the papal claims. In reply
Julius II. created the Holy League of 1511, with Ferdinand of Aragon,
Henry VIII. of England, and the Venetians as its chief members, against
the French. Louis XII. showed vigour; he sent his nephew Gaston de Foix
to subdue the Romagna and threaten the Venetian territories. At the
battle of Ravenna, in 1512, Gaston won a brilliant victory and lost his
life. From that moment disaster dogged the footsteps of the French in
Italy, and before winter they had been driven completely out of the
peninsula; the succession of the Medicean Pope, Leo X., to Julius II.,
seemed to promise the continuance of a policy hostile to France in Italy.
Another attempt on Northern Italy proved but another failure, although
now Louis XII., taught by his mishaps, had secured the alliance of
Venice; the disastrous defeat of La Tremoille, near Novara (151