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 two other actions of importance. He restored their castles to the Colonna and the Orsini, a retrograde step whose ill consequences he was himself to experience; and he promulgated a bull against simony in papal elections. His own had not been pure, and the measure may have been intended to silence rumours, but it is quite as likely to have been the fruit of genuine compunction. In any case it distinguishes him favourably from his predecessor, who regarded such iniquities as matters of course, while Julius signalised them as abuses to be rooted out. Nor were his efforts vain; though bribery in the coarse form of actual money payment is known to have been attempted at more
