Cesare Borgia afterwards told Machiavelli that he deemed himself to have provided against everything that could possibly happen at the death of his father, but had never thought that he himself might at the same time be disabled by sickness. He succeeded in seizing the Pope’s treasure in the Vatican, but failed in securing the Castle of St Angelo, and was obliged to adopt a deferential tone towards the Cardinals. Alexander had gone far towards filling the Sacred College with his own countrymen, and although the Conclave is said by a contemporary to have been more decried for venal practices than any before it, the influence of Ferdinand of Aragon, conjoined with that of Cardinal della Rovere, who found the pear not yet ripe for himself, decided the election in favour of one who assuredly had no share in these practices, the upright Cardinal of Siena. Something may be ascribed to the law already noticed, which frequently fills the place of a deceased Pope with his entire opposite. This may be deemed to have been exemplified anew when, after a sickly pontificate of twenty-seven days, the mild Pius III was replaced (November 1) by the most pugnacious and imperious personality in the Sacred College, Cardinal della Rovere, who evinced his ambition of rivalling if not excelling Alexander by assuming the name of Julius II. His election had not been untainted by simoniacal practices, but cannot like Alexander’s be said to have been mainly procured by them. It was rather due to an arrangement with Cesare Borgia, who had the simplicity to expect others to keep faith with him who had kept faith with none, and permitted the Cardinals of his party to vote for della Rovere, on condition that he should be confirmed as Gonfaloniere of the Church. History has never made it a reproach to Julius that he soon incarcerated Borgia in St Angelo, and applied himself to stripping him of his possessions in the Romagna. In some cases the exiled lords had reinstated themselves; in others difficulties arose from the fidelity of Cesare’s castellans, who refused to obey even the orders extorted from him to surrender their castles. When at last everything had been got from him that could be got, Julius, instead of secretly putting him to death as Alexander would have done, permitted him to depart to Naples, where he was arrested and sent prisoner into Spain. His career was yet to be illustrated by a romantic escape and a soldier’s death in an obscure skirmish in Navarre. The Homagna could not forget that he had been to her one just ruler in the place of many tyrants, and he retained partisans there to the last. Had he survived until the new Pope’s war with his brother-in-law the Duke of Ferrara, he would probably have commanded the latter’s troops, and a new page of conquest might have opened for him.
Julius had hated Alexander above all men; but it was now incumbent upon him to resume Alexander’s work, repair the damage it had sustained, and prosecute it to a successful conclusion. His record as Cardinal had not been a bright one. When in favour with Pope Innocent, he had failed to inspire him with energy except for an unjust war, or to reform any abuse in the papal administration. As the enemy of Alexander, he had put himself in the wrong by turbulence and unpatriotic intrigue. If he had not done Italy infinite harm by his invitations to France to invade her, the reason was merely that the French would have come without him. When ostensibly reconciled to Alexander, he had shown much servility. His private life had been licentious; though not illiterate, he was no proficient in literature; and one looks in vain for any service rendered by him as Cardinal to religion, letters, or art. Yet there was always something in him which conveyed the impression of a superior character; he overawed others, and was never treated with disrespect. There was indeed a natural magnanimity in him which adverse circumstances had checked, but which came out so soon as he obtained liberty of action. Unlike his predecessor, he had an ideal of what a Pope should be,—defective indeed, but embodying all the qualities particularly demanded by the age. He thought far more of the Church in her temporal than in her spiritual aspect; but Luther was not yet, and for the moment the temporal need seemed the more pressing. He possessed a great advantage over his predecessor in his freedom from nepotism: he had no son, and was content with a modest provision for his daughter, and not only seemed but was personally disinterested in the wars which he undertook for the aggrandisement of the Church. The vehemence which engaged him in such undertakings made him terrible and indefatigable in the prosecution of them; but, as he was deficient in the prudence and discernment of his predecessor, it frequently hurried him into inconsiderate actions and speeches, detrimental to his interests and dignity. Transplanted, however, to another sphere, it secured him a purer and more desirable glory than any that he could obtain by conquest. Having once determined it to be a Pope’s duty to encourage the arts, he entered upon the task as he would have entered upon a campaign, and achieved results far beyond the ambition of his most refined and accomplished predecessors. His treatment of individual artists was often harsh and niggardly, but of his dealings with art as a whole Bishop Creighton rightly declares: “he did not merely employ great artists, he impressed them with a sense of his own greatness, and called out all that was strongest and noblest in their own nature. They knew that they served a master who was in sympathy with themselves.’“
While Julius was ridding himself of Cesare Borgia, a new enemy appeared, too formidable for him to contend with at the time. In the autumn of 1503 the Venetians suddenly seized upon Rimini and Faenza. The aggression was most audacious, and Venice was to find that it was also most unwise. It was no less disastrous to Italy, giving the policy of Julius an unhappy bent from which it could never afterwards free itself. Notwithstanding the errors of his younger days, there is no reason to doubt that he was really a sound patriot, to whom the expulsion of the foreigner always appeared a desirable if remote ideal, and who had no wish to ally himself more closely than he could help with Spain or France. He now had before him only the alternatives of calling in the foreigner or of submitting to an outrageous aggression, and it is not surprising that he preferred the former. He was aware of the mischief that he and Venice were perpetrating between them. “Venice,” he said, “makes both herself and me the slaves of everyone- herself that she may keep, me that I may win back. But for this we might have been united to find some way to free Italy from foreigners.” It would have been wiser and more patriotic to have waited until some conjunction of circumstances should arise to compel Venice to seek his alliance; but when the fire of his temper and the magnitude of the injury are considered, it can but appear natural that he should have striven to create such a conjuncture himself. This was no difficult matter: every European State envied Venice’s wealth and prosperity, and her uniformly selfish policy had left her without a friend. By September, 1504, Julius had succeeded in bringing about an anti-Venetian League between Maximilian and Louis XII of France, which indeed came to nothing, but sufficiently alarmed the Venetians to induce them to restore Ravenna and Cervia, which had long been in their possession, retaining their recent acquisitions, Faenza and Rimini. The Duke of Urbino, the Pope’s kinsman, undertook that he would not reclaim these places: Julius dexterously evaded making any such pledge, and the seed of war went on slowly ripening.
During this period Julius performed