Maximilian alone remained for some time at peace with the King of France.
In October, 1511, a league was formally concluded between the pope, the Venetians, the Swiss, and King Ferdinand against Louis XII.

A place was reserved in it for the King of England, Henry VIII., who, on ascending the throne, had sent word to the King of France that "he desired to abide in the same friendship that the king his father had kept up," but who, at the bottom of his heart, burned to resume on the Continent an active and a prominent part.

The coalition thus formed was called the League of Holy Union.

"I," said Louis XII., "am the Saracen against whom this league is directed." He had just lost, a few months previously, the intimate and faithful adviser and friend of his whole life: Cardinal George d'Amboise, seized at Milan with a fit of the gout, during which Louis tended him with the assiduity and care of an affectionate brother, died at Lyons on the 25th of May, 1510, at fifty years of age.

He was one not of the greatest, but of the most honest ministers who ever enjoyed a powerful monarch's constant favor, and employed it we will not say with complete disinterestedness, but with a predominant anxiety for the public weal.
In the matter of external policy the influence of Cardinal d'Amboise, was neither skilfully nor salutarily exercised: he, like his master, indulged in those views of distant, incoherent, and improvident conquests which caused the reign of Louis XII.