“I tell you,” wrote De Comines, after his return from Venice in 1495, “that I have found Venetian statesmen so wise and so bent upon increasing their Signory that if it be not soon provided against, all their neighbours will curse the hour.” The provisions made by the most Christian princes were characteristic. “By an unprincipled treaty of spoliation,” says Rawdon Brown, “the Great Powers of the Continent bound themselves together to fall upon Venice by surprise in a time of profound peace, and, in despite of the most solemn obligations, to despoil her of her territories.” After much treatying and protocolling there met on a November day in 1508 in a secret chamber at Cambrai, the Cardinal d’Amboise acting for the King of France, and Margaret of Austria for the Holy Roman Emperor. The papal nuncio and the King of Spain’s envoy were near, but their views were known, and for greater safety they were not allowed to enter. After many difficulties, says Romanin, and such altercations that they wellnigh tore out each other’s hair (_s’acciuffassero pei capegli_) the plenipotentiaries decided “that it was not only useful and honourable but necessary to call upon all the Powers of Europe to take a just vengeance, and quench, as they would a general conflagration, the insatiable greed of the Venetians and their thirst of dominion.” The modest reward which the Powers proposed to themselves for “making an end of the rapine and injury wrought by the Venetians and their tyrannical usurpation of the possessions of others,” was as follows. His Holiness the Pope was to have Ravenna, Cervia, Faenza, Rimini and all the territory held by the Venetians in Romagna; the Emperor, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Roveredo, the Trevisano, the Friuli and Istria; the King of France, Brescia, Bergamo, Crema, Cremona, the Ghiaradadda and all the dependencies of the Duke of Milan; the King of Spain and of Naples, Trani, Brindisi, Otranto, Gallipoli and other cities held in pledge by Venice for an unpaid loan to his cousin whom he had deprived of the kingdom of Naples. The King of Hungary, if he joined, was to have Dalmatia; the Duke of Savoy, Cyprus. Some offal was reserved for the jackals of the minor states, if they ran at the heels of the royal beasts of prey. Florence later on informed the Sultan of Turkey and invited him to seize the oriental possessions of Venice when she was down. The Pope was to reinforce the temporal weapons of the confederates by the use of the spiritual arm.