The pope and the king of Spain, nowise discouraged by the results of the campaign, resolved to resume operations early in the spring on a still more formidable scale than before. But their intentions were defeated by the startling intelligence, that Venice had entered into a separate treaty with the Porte. The treaty, which was negotiated, it is said, through the intervention of the French ambassador, was executed on the seventh of March, 1573. The terms seemed somewhat extraordinary, considering the relative positions of the parties. By the two principal articles the republic agreed to pay the annual sum of one hundred thousand ducats for three years to the sultan, and to cede the island of Cyprus, the original cause of the war. One might suppose it was the Turks, and not the Christians, who had won the battle of Lepanto.[357] Venice was a commercial state, and doubtless had more to gain from peace than from any war, however well conducted. In this point of view, even such a treaty may have been politic with so formidable an enemy. But a nation's interests, in the long run, cannot, any more than those of an individual, be divorced from its honour. And what could be more dishonourable than for a state secretly to make terms for herself with the enemy, and desert the allies who had come into the war at her solicitation and in her defence? Such conduct, indeed, was too much in harmony with the past history of Venice, and justified the reputation for bad faith which had made the European nations so reluctant to enter into the League.[358] The tidings were received by Philip with his usual composure. "If Venice," he said, "thinks she consults her own interests by such a proceeding, I can truly say that in what I have done I have endeavoured to consult both her interests and those of Christendom." He, however, spoke his mind more plainly afterwards to the Venetian ambassador. The pope gave free vent to his feelings in the consistory, where he denounced the conduct of Venice in the most bitter and contemptuous terms. When the republic sent a special envoy to deprecate his anger, and to excuse herself by the embarrassments of her situation, the pontiff refused to see him. Don John would not believe in the defection of Venice when the tidings were first announced to him. When he was advised of it by a direct communication from her government, he replied by indignantly commanding the great standard of the League to be torn down from his galley, and in its place to be unfurled the banner of Castile.[359]