Jealousy, ambition, secret resentment, and the prospect of despoiling them caused the formation of the League of Cambrai against the Venetians. Their far-reaching greatness on the seas, their steady progress on land, their riches, their cool assumption of independence towards the papacy, their renown for ability, and their profoundly selfish, but singularly prosperous policy, had excited in Italy, and even beyond the Alps, that feeling of envy and ill-will which is caused amongst men, whether kings or people, by the spectacle of strange, brilliant, and unexpected good fortune, though it be the fruits of rare merit. As the Venetians were as much dreaded as they were little beloved, great care was taken to conceal from them the projects that were being formed against them. According to their historian, Cardinal Bembo, they owed to chance the first notice they had. It happened one day that a Piedmontese at Milan, in presence of the Resident of Venice, allowed to escape from his lips the words, “I should have the pleasure, then, of seeing the crime punished of those who put to death the most illustrious man of my country.” He alluded to Carmagnola, a celebrated Piedmontese condottiere, who had been accused of treason and beheaded at Venice on the 3d of May, 1432. The Venetian ambassador at Louis XII.’s court, suspecting what had taken place at Cambrai, tried to dissuade the king. “Sir,” said he, “it were folly to attack them of Venice; their wisdom renders them invincible.” “I believe they are prudent and wise,” answered Louis, “but all the wrong way of the hair (inopportunely); if it must come to war, I will bring upon them so many fools, that your wiseacres will not have leisure to teach them reason, for my fools hit all round without looking where.” When the league was decisively formed, Louis sent to Venice a herald to officially proclaim war. After having replied to the grievances alleged in support of that proclamation, “We should never have believed,” said the Doge Loredano, “that so great a prince would have given ear to the envenomed words of a pope whom he ought to know better, and to the insinuations of another priest whom we forbear to mention (Cardinal d’Amboise). In order to please them, he declares himself the foe of a republic which has rendered him great services. We will try to defend ourselves, and to prove to him that he has not kept faith with us. God shall judge betwixt us. Father herald, and you, trumpeter, ye have heard what we had to say to you; report it to your master. Away!” Independently of their natural haughtiness, the Venetians were puffed up with the advantages they had obtained in a separate campaign against the Emperor Maximilian, and flattered themselves that they would manage to conquer, one after the other, or to split up, or to tire out, their enemies; and they prepared energetically for war. Louis XII., on his side, got together an army