The War was precipitated by an incident which seemed to give the Pope an opportunity of beginning it with advantage. Louis XII had refused to grant the Swiss the terms which they demanded for the renewal of their alliance with him, which insured him the services, on occasion, of a large number of mercenaries. Julius stepped into his place, and the Swiss agreed to aid him with fifteen thousand men (May, 1510). Elated at this, he resolved to begin the War without delay, though his overtures to other allies had been coldly received, and even the grant of the investiture of Naples, a studied affront to the French King, had failed to bring Ferdinand of Aragon to his side. The Venetians, however, still unreconciled to France, and thirsting for revenge on the Duke of Ferrara, espoused the Pope’s cause. The first act of hostility was a bull excommunicating the Duke of Ferrara which, Peter Martyr says, made his hair stand on end, and in which the salt-trade was not forgotten. The Popes failed to perceive how by reckless misuse they were blunting the weapon which they would soon need for more spiritual ends. Louis paid Julius back in his own coin, convoking the French clergy to protest, and threatening a General Council. Modena was reduced by the papal troops; but when, in October, Julius reached Bologna, he received the mortifying intelligence that the Swiss had deserted him, pretending that they had not understood that they were to fight against France. This left the country open to the French commander Chaumont, who, profiting by the division of the Pope’s forces between Modena and Bologna, advanced so near the latter city that with a little more energy he could have captured Julius, who was confined to his bed by a fever. While the French general negotiated, Venetian reinforcements appeared and rescued the Pope, wellnigh delirious between fever and fright. When he recovered, he undertook the reduction of the castles of Concordia and Mirandola, commanding the road to Ferrara. Mirandola held out until the winter, and the Pope, enraged at the slowness of his generals, proceeded thither in person and busied himself with military operations, tramping in the deep snow, lodging in a kitchen, swearing at his officers, joking with the soldiers, and endearing himself to the camp by his fund of anecdote and his rough wit. Mirandola fell at last; but the Pope could make no further progress. Negotiations were set on foot, but came to nothing. In May, 1511 the new French general Trivulzio made a descent on Bologna, which was greatly exasperated by the misgovernment of the Legate Alidosi, expelled the Pope’s troops, and reinstated the Bentivogli. Michael Angelo’s statue of Julius was hurled from its pedestal, and the Duke of Ferrara, though a reputed lover of art, could not refrain from the practical sarcasm of melting it into a cannon. Alidosi, gravely suspected of treachery, was cut down by the Duke of Urbino’s own hand. Mirandola was retaken, and Julius returned to Rome apparently beaten at every point, but as resolute as ever. All Europe was being drawn into his broils. He looked to Spain, Venice, and England to aid him, and this actually came to pass.
Before, however, the “Holy League” could take effect, Julius fell alarmingly ill. On August 21 his life was despaired of, and the Orsini and Colonna, whom he had inconsiderately reinstated, prepared to renew their ancient conflicts. One of the Colonna, Pompeio Bishop of Rieti, a soldier made into a priest against his will, exhorted the Roman people to take the government of the city upon themselves, and was ready to play the part of Rienzi, when Julius suddenly recovered in spite of, or because of, the wine which he insisted on drinking. His death would have altered the politics of Europe; so important a factor had the Temporal Power now become. It would also have saved the Church from a small abortive schism. On September 1, 1511 a handful of dissentient cardinals, reinforced by some French bishops and abbots, met at Pisa in the guise of a General Council. They soon found it advisable to gather more closely under the wing of the French King by retiring to Milan, whose contemporary chronicler says that he does not think their proceedings worth the ink it would take to record them. The principal result was the convocation by Julius of a genuine Council at the Lateran, which was actually opened on May 10, 1512. A step deserving to be called bold, since there was in general nothing that Popes abhorred so much as a General Council; significant, as an admission that the Church needed to be rehabilitated; politic, because Julius’s breach of his election promise to summon a Council was the ostensible ground of the convocation of the Pisan.
Julius would have commenced the campaign of 1512 with the greatest chances of success, if his operations had been more skilfully combined; but the Swiss invasion of Lombardy on which he had relied was over, before his own movements had begun. Scarcely had the Swiss, discouraged by want of support, withdrawn across the Alps, when Julius’s army, consisting chiefly of Spaniards under Ramon de Cardona, but with a papal contingent under a papal legate, Cardinal de’ Medici, afterwards Leo X, presented itself before Bologna. In the ordinary course of things Bologna would have fallen; but the French were commanded by a great military genius, the youthful Gaston de Foix^ whose life and death alike demonstrated that human personality counts for much, and that history is not a matter of mere abstract law. By skilful manoeuvres Gaston compelled the allies to withdraw into the Romagna, and then (April 11) entirely overthrew them in the great fight of Ravenna,—most picturesque of battles, pictorial in every detail, from the stalwart figure of the revolted Cardinal Sanseverino turning out in complete armour to smite the Pope, to the capture of Cardinal de’ Medici by Greeks in French service, and the death of the young hero himself, as he strove to crown his victory by the annihilation of the solid Spanish infantry. Had he lived, he would soon have been in Rome, and the Pope, unless he submitted, must have become a captive in France or a refugee in Spain. Julius resisted the Cardinals who beset him with clamours for peace, but his galleys were being equipped for flight when Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII, arrived as a messenger from his cousin the captive legate, with such a picture of the discord among the victors after Gaston’s death that Pope and Cardinals breathed again. Within a few weeks the French were recalled to Lombardy by another Swiss invasion. The German mercenaries, of whom their forces largely consisted, deserted them at the command of the Emperor, and the army that might have stood at the gates of Rome actually abandoned Milan, and with it all the conquests of recent years. The anti-papal Council fled into France, and Cardinal Medici was rescued by the Lombard peasantry. The Duke of Urbino, who, estranged from the Pope by the summary justice he had exercised upon Cardinal Alidosi, had for a time kept aloof and afterwards been on the point of joining the French, now came forward to provide Julius with another army. The Bentivogli fled from Bologna, and the papal troops further occupied Parma and Piacenza. But Julius thought nothing done so long as the Duke of Ferrara retained his dominions. The Duke came in person to Rome to deprecate his wrath, protected by a safe conduct, and accompanied by his own liberated captive, Fabrizio Colonna. Julius received him kindly, freed him from all spiritual censures, but was inflexible in temporal matters; the surrender of the duchy he must and would have. Alfonso proving equally firm, the Pope so far forgot himself as to threaten him with imprisonment; but Fabrizio Colonna, declaring his own reputation at stake, procured his escape, and escorted him safely back. Such instances of a nice sense of personal honour are not infrequent in the annals of the age, and afford a refreshing contrast to the general political immorality.
An event was now about to happen which, although he was not the chief agent in it, contributed most of all to confer on Julius the proud title of Deliverer of Italy. It was necessary to decide the fate of the Duchy of Milan, which Ferdinand and Maximilian wished to give to their grandson the Archduke Charles, afterwards the Emperor Charles V. Julius had not driven the French out in order to put the Spaniards and Austrians in. He demanded the restoration of the expelled Italian dynasty in the person of Massimiliano Sforza. Fortunately the decision of the question lay with the Swiss, who from motives of money and policy took the side of Sforza; and he was installed accordingly.