Unable to defeat the Venetians in open battle, or to take their cities, Maximilian ordered their territories to be ravaged, and a cruel war of pillage and of massacre went on in Friuli throughout the winter of 1509-10. On one occasion, six thousand men, women, and children were suffocated in a cave near Vicenza. Such cruelties could only serve to convince the people of the superiority of the Venetian rule. Venice was now to be saved by the dissensions of her enemies. Julius II. had hitherto been the most bitter of her foes, and had supported the League not only by arms, but by excommunication. Yet he had always declared that Venice had driven him to this step by her refusal to recognise the just claims of the Papacy, spiritual and temporal. ‘But for this,’ he had said, ‘we might have been united and found some way to free Italy from the tyranny of the foreigner.’ Why should this not now be done? The lands he claimed were in his possession, and Venice was prepared to acknowledge his spiritual pretensions. Moreover, the overwhelming predominance, which France had gained, might be more dangerous to papal interests than the Venetian republic. Thus by joining Venice there was an opportunity, not only of furthering the papal cause, but also of realising that dream of every patriotic Italian, the expulsion of the foreigner. Julius, however, did not show his hand at once. It would be rash to do so until he could be sure that Venice was strong enough to resist her foes; hence his long refusal to listen to her prayers. When, at last, in February 1510, he admitted the city to his peace, it was only on the severest terms. Venice acknowledged the justice of the excommunication; renounced her claims to tax her clergy, and to nominate to her bishoprics; promised that clerics should be tried by ecclesiastical courts, and declared the navigation of the Adriatic free to citizens of the Papal States. The Council of Ten indeed entered a secret protest against these concessions as having been extorted by force, and subsequently repudiated them, but for the moment the Papacy had triumphed. It was now the aim of Julius to drive the French and Germans from Italy by the assistance of Venice, and of the Swiss, who had broken with Louis. The Swiss alliance for the time failed him. Nevertheless he met at first with transient success. The neutrality of Ferdinand was secured by the investiture of Naples and Sicily, hitherto refused by the Papacy (July 1510). Modena, belonging to the Duke of Ferrara, and Mirandola, were conquered; the first by the nephew of the Pope, the Duke of Urbino; the second by the warlike Julius himself, who, rising from a bed of sickness, crossed the trenches on the ice, and took the city by storm (January 1511). But here his success ended. | The Holy League. Oct. 5, 1511.