On sallying from Milan for this campaign, La Palisse "fell in with the good knight Bayard, to whom he said, 'My comrade, my friend, would you not like us to be comrades together ?' Bayard, who asked nothing better, answered him graciously that he was at his service to be disposed of at his pleasure;" and from the 15th to the 20th of September, Maximilian got together before Padua an army with a strength, it is said, of about fifty thousand men, men-at-arms or infantry, Germans, Spaniards, French, and Italians, sent by the pope and by the Duke of Ferrara, or recruited from all parts of Italy.
At the first rumor of such a force there was great emotion in Venice, but an emotion tempered by bravery and intelligence.

The doge, Leonardo Loredano, the same who had but lately opposed the surprisal of Padua, rose up and delivered in the senate a long speech, of which only the essential and characteristic points can be quoted here:-- "Everybody knows, excellent gentlemen of the senate," said he, "that on the preservation of Padua depends all hope, not only of recovering our empire, but of maintaining our own liberty.

It must be confessed that, great and wonderful as they have been, the preparations made and the supplies provided hitherto are not sufficient either for the security of that town or for the dignity of our republic.

Our ancient renown forbids us to leave the public safety, the lives and honor of our wives and our children, entirely to the tillers of our fields and to mercenary soldiers, without rushing ourselves to shelter them behind our own breasts and defend them with our own arms.

For so great and so glorious a fatherland, which has for so many years been the bulwark of the faith and the glory of the Christian republic, will the personal service of its citizens and its sons be ever to seek?
To save it who would refuse to risk his own life and that of his children?
If the defence of Padua is the pledge for the salvation of Venice, who would hesitate to go and defend it?
And, though the forces already there were sufficient, is not our honor also concerned therein?
The fortune of our city so willed it that in the space of a few days our empire slipped from our hands; the opportunity has come back to us of recovering what we have lost; by spontaneously facing the changes and chances of fate, we shall prove that our disasters have not been our fault or our shame, but one of those fatal storms which no wisdom and no firmness of man can resist.