In 1507 Louis made war on Venice; and in the following year the famous Treaty of Cambrai was signed by Georges d’Amboise and Margaret of Austria.  It was an agreement for a partition of the Venetian territories,—­one of the most shameless public deeds in history.  The Pope, the King of Aragon, Maximilian, Louis XII., were each to have a share.  The war was pushed on with great vigour:  the battle of Agnadello (14th May, 1509) cleared the King’s way towards Venice; Louis was received with open arms by the North Italian towns, and pushed forward to within eight of Venice.  The other Princes came up on every side; the proud “Queen of the Adriatic” was compelled to shrink within her walls, and wait till time dissolved the league.  This was not long.  The Pope, Julius II., had no wish to hand Northern Italy over to France; he had joined in the shameless league of Cambrai because he wanted to wrest the Romagna cities from Venice, and because he hoped to entirely destroy the ancient friendship between Venice and France.  Successful in both aims, he now withdrew from the league, made peace with the Venetians, and stood forward as the head of a new Italian combination, with the Swiss for his fighting men.  The strife was close and hot between Pope and King; Louis XII. lost his chief adviser and friend, Georges d’Amboise, the splendid churchman of the age, the French Wolsey; he thought no weapon better than the dangerous one of a council, with claims opposed to those of the papacy; first a National Council at Tours, then an attempted General Council at Pisa, were called on to resist the papal claims.  In reply Julius II. created the Holy League of 1511, with Ferdinand of Aragon, Henry VIII. of England, and the Venetians as its chief members, against the French.  Louis XII. showed vigour; he sent his nephew Gaston de Foix to subdue the Romagna and threaten the Venetian territories.  At the battle of Ravenna, in 1512, Gaston won a brilliant victory and lost his life.  From that moment disaster dogged the footsteps of the French in Italy, and before winter they had been driven completely out of the peninsula; the succession of the Medicean Pope, Leo X., to Julius II., seemed to promise the continuance of a policy hostile to France in Italy.  Another attempt on Northern Italy proved but another failure, although now Louis XII., taught by his mishaps, had secured the alliance of Venice; the disastrous defeat of La Tremoille, near Novara (1513), compelled the French once more to withdraw beyond the Alps.  In this same year an army under the Duc de Longueville, endeavouring to relieve Therouenne, besieged by the English and Maximilian, the Emperor-elect, was caught and crushed at Guinegate.  A diversion in favour of Louis XII., made by James IV. of Scotland, failed completely; the Scottish King was defeated and slain at Flodden Field.  While his northern frontier was thus exposed, Louis found equal danger threatening him on the east; on this aide, however,