In the Diaries of Priuli we read that on the receipt of the news of Di Gama's voyage the whole city was astounded; and the wisest Venetians agreed that never before had any information been so deplorable, nor could any other ever excel it in importance. Priuli continues: "For it is well known that Venice reached her height of reputation and riches through her commerce alone, which brought foreigners to the city in great numbers; and now by this new route the spice cargoes will be taken straight to Lisbon, where the Hungarians, Germans, Flemish, and French will flock to buy them; they will find the goods cheaper in Lisbon than they can be in Venice, for before the freights can reach Venice by the old route, they have to pay exorbitant dues for transit through Syria and the lands of the Soldan of Egypt." Lisbon was soon the mart to which all the northern merchants resorted; and the Florentines profited by this change to the exclusion of the Venetians, who suffered from three causes. They did not dare at once to break their commercial relations with the Sultan, who was, in a way, interested to defend Venice from the Turk; and, moreover, he had in his power the warehouses of the Venetians at Cairo and Alexandria, filled with a wealth of Eastern products. Again, they could not pass the Straits of Gibraltar without paying levies on their ships to Spain; and even if they did this, the northern men would soon forsake the dangers and toils of crossing the {279} Alps for the less perilous and more comfortable voyage to Lisbon. This overwhelming commercial misfortune was soon followed by the culmination of events which had been threatening political perils to Venice ever since she had indulged her desire for possessions on Terra Firma, as it was expressed. The many leagues and combinations, made apparently but to be broken, the sending and receiving of ambassadors, the vague replies and diplomatic avoidance of yea and nay, all resulted in the League concluded at Cambray in 1508. Here France, Spain, the Emperor Maximilian, the Pope, the Dukes of Ferrara and Savoy, and the King of Hungary were all combined against the Republic, or against what the preamble to the treaty called "the insatiable cupidity of the Venetians and their thirst for dominion." This is not the place to trace the steps, through a quarter of a century and more, by which all these powers and others had gradually crushed the prestige of Venice, in Italy, outside her own lagoons, as essentially as the Turks had destroyed her Levantine precedence.