Meantime, in all these years of slow poison and decline, few Venetians had recognized their danger, few had foreseen the end. Men of courage and devoted patriotism were not wanting. There was still great individual wealth, and it would have been given to the ever-beloved Venice with cheerful alacrity; but the complications were so many, and followed each other so rapidly, that the government was unable to hold itself clearly above these circumstances, and organize a policy which should reinstate the Republic, even in part. When in 1499 the Grand Vizier said to the agent of the Republic, "You can tell the Doge that he has done wedding the sea; it is our turn now," he but told the brutal truth, as did Malipiero when, speaking of the Italian wars, he said, "We shall have to beg for peace and restore all we have acquired." {280} It would seem, too, that a sort of madness blinded the Venetians to their true condition. They acted as if the mines of Golconda were beneath their Piazza, and they had but to go in by their private entrance and draw upon inexhaustible wealth. After sixteen years of a losing war with the Turks, when the Ducal Palace was destroyed, the proposal to build a much larger and more magnificent palace found much favor; and at this very time Venice was impoverished. The League of Cambray, to put it in a word, simply divided among its members all the possessions of the Republic outside the city of Venice and its lagoon islands. France proceeded to carry out the treaty at once, and was so successful that by the first of June Sanudo wrote in his chronicles that, except the towns of Asola, Crema, and Pizzighettone not a town in Lombardy remained to Venice. "All the rest is lost,--yielded to the French without drawing sword." Venice prepared for a blockade. The French had nearly fulfilled all the provisions of the League, and the Venetians might well fear the next steps. But the remarkable activity of the French did not altogether please the Pope, Julius II. He had by their aid recovered the territory of the Church, and so felt no further need of their presence in Italy; and before long he deserted the League and allied himself with Venice, and afterward they were joined by Spain in an alliance which the Pope called "Holy." This was in 1511; and after various battles, which resulted in no good to the Republic, she in turn deserted the "Holy League," and became the ally of France by the treaty of Blois, in 1513. Again fierce battles were fought; again the French retired, leaving the Venetians alone. Cardona, the leader of the army of the Holy League, pushed down to the shores of the lagoon, burning the Venetian towns in his progress, and even {281} pointing his cannon against Venice, and firing a few shots.