promises and persuasions were unavailing, he did not hesitate to have recourse to bribery." Indeed, his election on 1 November 1503 took only a few hours, and the only two votes he did not receive were his own and the one of Georges d'Amboise, his most vigorous opponent and the favourite of the French monarchy. In the end, as in all papal elections, the vote is made unanimous after the leading candidate has achieved the required number of votes for election. A Renaissance pope Giuliano Della Rovere took the name Julius, only used by a single fourth-century predecessor, Julius I, and was pope for nine years, from 1503 to 1513. From the beginning, Julius II set out to defeat the various powers that challenged his temporal authority; in a series of complicated stratagems, he first succeeded in rendering it impossible for the Borgias to retain their power over the Papal States. Indeed, on the day of his election, he issued a damnatio memoriae, declaring: Others indicate that his decision was taken on 26 November 1507, not in 1503. The Borgia Apartments were turned to other uses. The Sala de Papi was redecorated by two pupils of Raphael by order of Pope Leo X. The rooms were used to accommodate Emperor Charles V on his visit to the Vatican after the Sack of Rome (1527), and subsequently, they became the residence of the Cardinal-nephew and then the Secretary of State. Julius used his influence to reconcile two powerful Roman families, the Orsini and Colonna. Decrees were made in the interests of the Roman nobility, in whose shoes the new pope now stepped. Being thus secure in Rome and the surrounding country, he set himself the task to expel the Republic of Venice from Faenza, Rimini, and the other towns and fortresses of Italy which it occupied after the death of Pope Alexander. In 1504, finding it impossible to succeed with the Doge of Venice by remonstrance, he brought about a union of the conflicting interests of France and the Holy Roman Empire, and sacrificed temporarily to some extent the independence of Italy to conclude with them an offensive and defensive alliance against Venice. The combination was, however, at first little more than nominal, and was not immediately effective in compelling the Venetians to deliver up more than a few unimportant places in the Romagna. With a campaign in 1506, he personally