331, 355, 367, 384, 389, 416.] Next year (1510) the mistrust of the Florentine envoys was justified.
The Venetians sent a humble address to the pope, ceded to him the places they but lately possessed in the Romagna, and conjured him to relieve them from the excommunication he had pronounced against them.

Julius II., after some little waiting, accorded the favor demanded of him.
Louis XII.

committed the mistake of embroiling himself with the Swiss by refusing to add twenty thousand livres to the pay of sixty thousand he was giving them already, and by styling them "wretched mountain- shepherds, who presumed to impose upon him a tax he was not disposed to submit to." The pope conferred the investiture of the kingdom of Naples upon Ferdinand the Catholic, who at first promised only his neutrality, but could not fail to be drawn in still farther when war was rekindled in Italy.

In all these negotiations with the Venetians, the Swiss, the Kings of Spain and England, and the Emperor Maximilian, Julius II.

took a bold initiative.