“At last, then, I am the only pope!” cried Julius II., when he heard that Cardinal d’Amboise was dead. But his joy was misplaced: the cardinal’s death was a great loss to him; between the king and the pope the cardinal had been an intelligent mediator, who understood the two positions and the two characters, and who, though most faithful and devoted to the king, had nevertheless a place in his heart for the papacy also, and labored earnestly on every occasion to bring about between the two rivals a policy of moderation and peace. “One thing you may be certain of,” said Louis’s finance-minister Robertet to the ambassador from Florence, “that the king’s character is not an easy one to deal with; he is not readily brought round to what is not his own opinion, which is not always a correct one; he is irritated against the pope; and the cardinal, to whom that causes great displeasure, does not always succeed, in spite of all influence, in getting him to do as he would like. If our Lord God were to remove the cardinal, either by death or in any other manner, from public life, there would arise in this court and in the fashion of conducting affairs such confusion that nothing equal to it would ever have been seen in our day.” [_Negociations Diplomatiques de la France avec la Toscane,_ t. ii. pp. 428 and 460.] And the confusion did, in fact, arise; and war was rekindled, or, to speak more correctly, resumed its course after the cardinal’s death. Julius II. plunged into it in person, moving to every point where it was going on, living in the midst of camps, himself in military costume, besieging towns, having his guns pointed and assaults delivered under his own eyes. Men expressed astonishment, not unmixed with admiration, at the indomitable energy of this soldier-pope at seventy years of age. It was said that he had cast into the Tiber the keys of St. Peter to gird on the sword of St. Paul. His answer to everything was, “The barbarians must be driven from Italy.” Louis XII. became more and more irritated and undecided. “To reassure his people,” says Bossuet (to which we may add, ‘and to reassure himself’), “he assembled at Tours (in September, 1510), the prelates of his kingdom, to consult them as to what he could do at so disagreeable a crisis without wounding his conscience. Thereupon it was said that the pope, being unjustly the aggressor, and having even violated an agreement made with the king, ought to be treated as an enemy, and that the king might not only defend himself, but might even attack him without fear of excommunication. Not considering this quite strong enough yet, Louis resolved to assemble a council against the pope. The general council was the desire of the whole church since the election of Martin V. at the council of Constance (November 11, 1417); for, though that council had done great good by putting an end to the schism which had lasted for