He descended into Lombardy, overran the Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the capture of Francis I.at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over Italy to Charles V.by the Treaty of Cambray.
Of all the republics which had conferred luster upon Italy in its mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent.

She never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal.
During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among Italian States.

It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant.

In the fifteenth century, however, this policy was abandoned.

Venice first possessed herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty.