War of the League of Cambrai: French forces led by Gaston de Foix win the Battle of Ravenna.
The Battle of Ravenna, fought on 11 April 1512, was a major battle of the War of the League of Cambrai. It pitted forces of the Holy League against France and their Ferrarese allies. Although the French and Ferrarese eliminated the Papal-Spanish forces as a serious threat, their extraordinary triumph was overshadowed by the loss of their brilliant young general Gaston of Foix. The victory therefore did not help them secure northern Italy. The French withdrew entirely from Italy in the summer of 1512, as Swiss mercenaries hired by Pope Julius II and Imperial troops under Emperor Maximilian I arrived in Lombardy. The Sforza were restored to power in Milan.
The War of the League of Cambrai, sometimes known as the War of the Holy League and several other names, was fought from 1508 to 1516 as part of the Italian Wars of 1494–1559. The main participants of the war, who fought for its entire duration, were France, the Papal States, and the Republic of Venice; they were joined at various times by nearly every significant power in Western Europe, including Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Ferrara, and the Swiss.
Pope Julius II, intending to curb Venetian influence in northern Italy, brought together the League of Cambrai—an anti-Venetian alliance consisting of him, Louis XII of France, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor—in December 1508. Although the League was initially successful, friction between Julius and Louis caused it to collapse by 1510; Julius then allied himself with Venice against France.
The Veneto–Papal alliance eventually expanded into the Holy League, which drove the French from Italy in 1512; disagreements about the division of the spoils, however, led Venice to abandon the alliance in favor of one with France. Under the leadership of Francis I, who had succeeded Louis on the throne of France, the French and Venetians would, through victory at Marignano in 1515, regain the territory they had lost; the treaties of Noyon and Brussels, which ended the war the next year, would essentially return the map of Italy to the status quo of 1508.