withdrew from Bayonne, and France was relieved from immediate danger on that side. | Break-up of the Holy League. | Death of Julius II. Feb. 20, 1513. At the beginning of the year 1513, it was pretty evident that the Holy League would not last. The Venetians, finding that the Emperor was coveting the share of their territory originally meted out to him by the League of Cambray, were looking again to France. At this moment, Julius II., one of the chief movers in that League, passed away. The objects of this ‘fiery personality’ had been: first to conquer the Romagna, and establish the papal dominion there on a sound footing; secondly, if possible, to free Italy from the foreigner. Of these, the first had been the dominant aim, and he had attained it. ‘For good or for ill, Julius is the founder of the Papal States.’ We may deplore the secularising influence of the temporal dominion on the spiritual character of the Papacy, but at least the scheme of Julius is infinitely preferable to that of Alexander VI. Alexander had tried to establish his family; Julius won territories for the Papal See. But in gaining this, his primary aim, he sacrificed his second. By the League of Cambray, he finally destroyed the political life of Italy, and called the foreigner to his aid; and, when, in the Holy League, he attempted to undo the work, and to drive the French, the chief instruments of his previous policy, across the Alps, he found that he could only do so at the price of changing masters. In his last days, indeed, he hoped to reconcile Maximilian by some small concessions, and then, with the help of the Venetians and the Swiss, to drive the Spaniards from the peninsula. But the dream was an idle one. Julius had riveted the chains of Italian slavery, and done much to advance the power of that formidable Austro-Spanish House which was shortly to become so dangerous a menace to Europe, and to control the destinies of Italy till our own day. None the less, the name of Pope Julius will always live as the founder of the Papal States, as the last representative of that great semi-political, semi-religious Church, whose claims to universal supremacy over western Christendom were on the point of being overthrown; as the patron of Bramante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, the authors of those supreme efforts of Renaissance art, the Cathedral of St. Peter,[26] and the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, and of the Vatican. | Election of Leo X. March 11, 1513.