scolding his generals for their slowness. He never led troops on the field, but he interfered in the placing of artillery and more than once exposed himself to fire. At the capitulation of Mirandola he shocked his cardinals by ordering that any foreign soldiers found in the town should be put to the sword. He spent some months thus passing from town to town, infusing his fiery energy into the troops, but his successes and his personal conduct of the war inflamed the indignation of the French King. Louis not only sent reinforcements to his army, but he, with his adherent cardinals, arranged for the holding of a General Council on Italian soil. _Perdam Babylonis Nomen_ ("I will erase the very name of Babylon") was the terrible motto he now placed on his medals. In quick succession the Pope learned that the Bentivogli had recovered Bologna and derisively broken into fragments the magnificent statue of Julius which Michael Angelo had erected: that his favourite Cardinal Alidosi had been assassinated by his (the Pope's) nephew and commander the Duke of Urbino; and that Louis and Maximilian, with the seceded cardinals, had announced a General Council of the Church at Pisa and summoned Julius II. to appear before it. The attendants who marched by the Pope's closed litter, as he returned to Rome on June 26, 1511, concluded from his unrestrained sobs and groans that his power, if not his life, approached its end. His health was ruined and his troops were scattered. But there was an energy mightier than that of Hildebrand in his worn frame, and with some improvement in his condition he raised his head once more. He had in the spring created eight new cardinals, to replace the seceders, and he now announced that a _real_ Ecumenical Council would assemble at the Lateran on April 19, 1512. That was his answer to Pisa, and to the Papal aspirations of the Cardinal of Rouen and the Emperor-elect. He again fell dangerously ill--so ill that his death was confidently expected. Election-intrigue filled the corridors of the Vatican, and a band of democrats held a meeting in the Capitol and decided, at his death, to restore the republican liberty of Rome. In a few weeks the terrible old man rose from his bed, thin and white but with unbroken energy, and scattered the intriguers. He anathematized the schismatical cardinals, and announced (October 4th) that he had formed a Holy League with Ferdinand of Spain and Venice for the defence of the Church; Maximilian was presently induced to join the League, and before the end of 1511 Henry VIII. was persuaded, by a promise of assistance in his designs on France, to give it his adhesion. Only three months before Julius had apparently lain at the point of death, his new possessions utterly ruined. Now he once more commanded the situation. The schismatical Council of Pisa, which opened on November 1st, turned out a puny French _conciliabulum_, with fourteen bishops and five abbots to represent the universal Church.