While nursing his wrath against Venice, Julius sought to compensate the losses of the Church by acquisitions in other quarters. Upon the fall of Cesare Borgia, Urbino and Perugia had reverted to their former lords. Ferrara had now lost the protection insured to it by the Borgia marriage, and the tyranny of the Bentivogli in Bologna incited attack. The Duke of Urbino was Julius’s kinsman, and Ferrara was too strong; but the Pope thought he might well assert the claims of the Church to Perugia and Bologna, especially as their conquest could be represented as a crusade for the deliverance of the oppressed, and no imputation of nepotism could be made against him as against his predecessors. Yet he could not avoid exposing himself to the reproach incurred by an alliance with foreigners against Italians. Bologna was under the protectorate of the French King, and Julius could do nothing until he had dissolved this alliance and received a promise of French cooperation. This having been obtained through the influence of King Louis’s prime minister, Cardinal d’Amboise, procured by the promise of three cardinalships for his nephews, Julius quitted Rome in August, 1506, at the head of his own army, a sight which Christendom had not seen for ages. Perugia was yielded without a contest, on the stipulation that the Baglioni should not be entirely expelled from the city. Julius continued his march across the Apennines, and on October 7 issued a bull deposing Giovanni Bentivoglio and excommunicating him and his adherents as rebels. Eight thousand French troops simultaneously advanced against Bologna from Milan. Bentivoglio, unable to resist the double attack, took refuge in the French camp, and the city opened its gates to Julius, who might boast of having vindicated his rights and enlarged the papal dominions without spilling a drop of blood. His triumph was commemorated by Michael Angelo’s colossal statue, destined to a brief existence, but famous in the history of art. But Julius was a better judge of artists than of ministers, and the misconduct of the legates successively appointed by him to govern Bologna alienated the citizens, and prepared the way for fresh revolutions.
The easy conquest of Bologna could not but whet the Pope’s appetite for revenge upon Venice, and ought to have shown the Venetians how formidable an enemy he could be. They continued, nevertheless, to cling with tenacity to their ill-gotten acquisitions in the Romagna, unaware of or indifferent to their peril from the jealousy of the chief States of Europe. No other Power, it was true, had any just cause of quarrel with them. Their most recent acquisitions in Lombardy had indeed been basely obtained as the price of cooperation in the overthrow of Ludovico Sforza: the Neapolitan cities, though acquired by the grant of Ferrantino, had been retained by connivance at the destruction of Federigo; they were, notwithstanding, the stipulated price of these iniquities, which the conquerors of Milan and Naples had no right to reclaim. Their late gains from Maximilian had been made in open war, and confirmed by solemn treaty. These considerations weighed nothing with him or with France; and at Julius’s instigation these Powers concluded on December 10, 1508, the famous treaty known as the League of Cambray, by which the continental dominions of Venice were to be divided between them, reservation being made of the claims of the Pope, Mantua, and Ferrara. Spain, if she acceded, was to have the Neapolitan cities occupied by Venice; Dalmatia was to go to Hungary; even the Duke of Savoy was tempted by the bait of Cyprus. It seemed to occur to none that they were destroying “Europe’s bulwark ‘gainst the Ottomite.”
Julius, though the mainspring of the League, avoided joining it openly until he saw that the allies were committed to the war. His assent was given on March 25, 1509; on April 7 the Venetians offered to restore Faenza and Rimini. But the Pope was too deeply engaged, and probably thought that the offer was only made to divide the allies, and would be withdrawn when it had served its purpose. On April 27 he published a violent bull of excommunication. His troops entered the Romagna; but the Emperor and Spain held back, and left the conquest of Lombardy to France. It proved unexpectedly easy. The Venetians were completely defeated at Agnadello on May 14, and the French immediately possessed themselves of Lombardy as far as the Mincio. They halted there, having obtained all they wanted. Maximilian had not yet appeared on the scene, and the extraordinary panic into which the Venetians seemed to fall is to be accounted for not so much by the severity of their defeat as by the mutiny or dispersion of the Venetian militia. They hastened to restore the disputed towns in the Romagna to the Pope,—an act right and wise in itself, but carried out with unthinking precipitation. If the towns had been bravely defended, Julius would probably have met the Venetians half way; as they had no longer any hold upon him, he remained inexorable, and vented his wrath with every token of contumely and harshness. They were equally submissive to Maximilian, who was by this time in partial occupation of the country to the east of the Mincio; nor was it until July 17, that, encouraged by the scantness of his troops and the slenderness of his pecuniary resources, they plucked up courage to recover Padua. Stung by this mortification, Maximilian succeeded in assembling a formidable army; but Venice had in the meantime reorganised her scattered forces, and obtained fresh recruits from Dalmatia and Albania. Padua was besieged during the latter half of September; but the siege was raised early in October. Most of Maximilian’s conquests were recovered by the Venetians, and their spirit rose fast, until it was again humbled by the destruction of their fleet on the Po by the artillery of the Duke of Ferrara.
All this time Julius had been browbeating the Venetians. Not content with the recovery of his territory, he demanded submission on all ecclesiastical questions. Venice was to surrender its claims to nominate to bishoprics and benefices, to entertain appeals in ecclesiastical cases, and to tax or try the clergy. Freedom of trade was also demanded, with other minor concessions. It seems almost surprising that the Venetians, who had no great cause to fear the Pope’s military or naval strength, and knew that he was beginning to quarrel with the King of France, should have yielded. In fact this resolution was only adopted by a bare majority in the Council, and they guarded themselves by a secret protest as respected their ecclesiastical concessions. The Pope’s successors soon found that non ligant foedera jacta metu. Venice never permanently recovered her possessions in the Romagna; but most of her territorial losses in other quarters were regained by the Treaty of Noyon in 1516. A blow unconnected with Italian politics, and against which war and diplomacy were powerless, had nevertheless been struck by the diversion to Lisbon of her gainful Oriental traffic, consequent upon the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope. A brilliant period in letters and the arts lay yet before her; she was still to war with the Turk in Cyprus and the Morea; but she soon ceased to rank as a first-class Power.
Absolution was formally granted to Venice on February 24, 1510, and Julius thus became openly detached from the League of Cambray. The incident marks the definitive consolidation of the Papal States; for although districts were occasionally lost and others occasionally added during the agitations of the following confused years, such variations were but temporary, and it was long ere the papal territory was finally rounded off by the acquisition of Ferrara and Urbino. From his own point of view Julius had done great things. By dexterous diplomacy and martial daring he had preserved or recovered or augmented Alexander’s conquests, and given no suspicion of any intention of alienating them for the benefit of his own family. He was now, what so many Popes had vainly sighed to be, master in his own house, and a considerable temporal sovereign. Yet, if he was at all accessible to the feelings with which he has been usually credited, he must have reflected with remorse that this end had only been accomplished by allying himself with foreigners for the humiliation, almost the ruin, of the only considerable Italian State. He might naturally wish to repair the mischief he had done by humbling the foreigners in their turn. Other causes concurred,—his dread of the preponderance of the French in Northern Italy, his grief at the subjugation of his own city of Genoa by them; above all, it must be feared, his desire to aggrandise the Church by annexing the dominions of the Duke of Ferrara, who was protected by France. Alfonso of Ferrara had been a useful ally in the Pope’s attack upon Venice, but he had declined to follow