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QINGDAO TODAY
在线翻译:
szdaily -> Speak Shenzhen -> 
The War of the Holy League
    2019-03-28  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

James Baquet

In times of war, a standard expression — what today we would call a “meme” — is that “God is on our side” (a clear impossibility when both sides hold the same view!) It is not surprising, then, that Europe had no fewer than four wars called the “War of the Holy League”; today we’ll look at the first of these.

In the early 16th century, the map of Europe looked different from it does today. France was already France, but both Spain and Italy were still divided into a number of separate kingdoms. Indeed, for over six decades, the peninsula we now call the nation of Italy was in the throes of “the Great Wars of Italy,” a series of conflicts between independent city-states that at various times also pulled in France and England, the Spanish kingdoms, and both the Holy Roman and the Ottoman Empires.

In 1508 of this tumultuous era, Pope Julius II — not only head of the Roman Catholic Church, but also secular ruler of the Papal States — joined with Louis XII of France, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, in an effort to curtail the growing strength of Venice in the northern part of the peninsula. This alliance was called the “League of Cambrai,” and the conflict is sometimes called by that name.

That league was initially successful, and broke Venetian power by 1509. However, friction grew between Pope Julius and King Louis of France, and by 1510, the Pope had switched sides and allied himself with Venice against France. This was the kernel of the so-called “Holy League,” which came to include not only Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire, but England (under Henry VIII) as well.

Once France was overcome, infighting weakened the members of this second league as it had the first. The story as I give it seems fairly straightforward, but it fails to account for the relationships, the petty squabbles, the sensitivity to insult, and all the many complications that occurred throughout this conflict. By 1516, virtually all territories had been returned to their original occupants, and the map of Italy and France looked very much as it had at the start of the war in 1508.

Vocabulary:

Which words above mean:

1. non-religious

2. reduce, bring to an end

3. cultural idea passed on by repetition

4. fighting between members of a group

5. something which, logically, cannot be

6. agitated, turbulent

7. violent struggle

8. group joining together for mutual assistance

9. minor

10. disagreement, conflict

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