succeeded Charles VIII. in 1498 and combined in his own
person the claim of the French crown to Naples and to Genoa and the
Orleans claim to Milan, Venice, instead of being doubly on guard,
thought she saw a chance of extending her Lombard dominions. She
refused the alliance Sforza offered and promised to assist Louis in
return for Cremona and its _contado_. In other words, she committed
treason to Italy and thus justified, if anything could justify, the
League of Cambray.
Sforza's first act was to urge the Turk, who needed no invitation, to
attack the republic, whose fleet in 1499 was utterly defeated at sea
by the Orientals, who presently raided into Friuli. Venice was forced
to accept a humiliating peace. It was in these circumstances that,
with all Italy alienated from her, the papacy began to act against
her.
Its first and most splendid effort to create a reality out of the
fiction of the States of the Church was the attempt of Cesare Borgia,
who actually made himself master of the whole of the Romagna. Venice
watched him with the greatest alarm, but chance saved her, for with
the death of Alexander VI.
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