Louis XII. learned with great indignation in the summer of 1509 that Julius had not only withdrawn from the League of Cambrai, but was now endeavouring to form a league with Venice, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VIII. against himself. Henry and Maximilian refused to join, but Julius engaged fifteen thousand Swiss and added these to the Papal and Venetian troops. As the Duke of Ferrara was leagued with the French against Venice, and refused to follow the Pope's political example, Julius issued against him an anathema which a writer of the time describes as making his hair stand on end, and resolved to add Ferrara to the growing Papal States. In August he set out once more, dressed in simple rochet, with the troops, and made the tiring march to Bologna. There his great plans nearly came to a premature end. The Swiss failed him, and the French appeared in force before Bologna, where he lay seriously ill and greatly disedifying his attendants by the vehemence of his rage. No doubt his threats of suicide, which are recorded, were merely vague and rhetorical expressions of his despair. He saved himself, however, by a deceptive negotiation with the French commander until his reinforcements arrived, and, as his health recovered, his vigorous resolution became almost ferocious. The long white beard in Raphael's portrait of him reminds us how, at this time, he swore that he would not shave again until he had driven the French from Italy. Louis was now taking practical steps toward the summoning of a General Council, and the temper of the Pope was terrible to witness. In the depth of winter, not yet wholly recovered from his long fever, he rejoined the troops, sharing the hardships of camp-life and stormily scolding his generals for their slowness. He never led troops on the field, but he interfered in the placing of artillery and more than once exposed himself to fire. At the capitulation of Mirandola he shocked his cardinals by ordering that any foreign soldiers found in the town should be put to the sword.
He spent some months thus passing from town to town, infusing his fiery energy into the troops, but his successes and his personal conduct of the war inflamed the indignation of the French King. Louis not only sent reinforcements to his army, but he, with his adherent cardinals, arranged for the holding of a General Council on Italian soil. _Perdam Babylonis Nomen_ ("I will erase the very name of Babylon") was the terrible motto he now placed on his medals. In quick succession the Pope learned that the Bentivogli had recovered Bologna and derisively broken into fragments the magnificent statue of Julius which Michael Angelo had erected: that his favourite Cardinal Alidosi had been assassinated by his (the Pope's) nephew and commander the Duke of Urbino; and that Louis and Maximilian, with the seceded cardinals, had announced a General Council of the Church at Pisa and summoned Julius II. to appear before it.