Chapter 42 - The League of Cambrai

In 1345, the banks in Venice collapsed. They had been creating credit for money that did not exist. They had been influencing nations through their control of money and credit and had reached the stage of controlling the total finances of some nations. It only took one default to bring down the whole charade of virtual money. City populations had swelled with those that had been dispossessed of their land of livelihood. 1345 brought a total disintegration of the money system. The resulting chaos left the cities in no position to combat the plague that unfortunately arrived soon after. The result was a population loss in Europe of about fifty percent.

A graph of the population of Europe. Graph by Andy Chalkley. Creative Commons Attribute.

Through to about 1420, the population continued to fall as economic devastation, famine, collapse of the social fabric, and lack of political systems caused continued misery. The Venetian bankers were much despised and were gradually expelled from country after country. The bad stench of Venetian banking and the associated money systems continued for many years.

Nicholas of Cusa, a German churchman, wrote about concepts for a nation state based on the principle of the ‘Common Good’. Peace amongst nations was included in his thinking. [2] At a conference in Florence in 1439, his ideas for a new civilization based on ‘Common Good’, human reason, and national sovereignty were adopted. The writings of Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa formed the benchmark for many aspects of life with references to civilization, culture, science, religion, and morality. Many believe that he was the first ‘modern thinker’. His writings were supported by his associate Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II. Nicholas of Cusa travelled thousands of miles whilst teaching and preaching. He was ahead of his time even in science. He recognized that the earth was a moving object: “Therefore, the earth which cannot be the centre, cannot be devoid of all motion. Instead, it is even necessary that the earth be moved.” Nicolaus and Aeneas Silvius brought western civilization out of the Dark Age. Without the works of Nicolaus of Cusa there would have been no Europe and the church would have disappeared. The Venetians through agents tried to discredit and undermine the work of Nicolaus and Pope Pius II. The Venetian methods are based on is usury, oligarchy, slavery, and the following of the concepts outlined by Aristotle. [5] Venice treated religion as a method of control for the benefit of the Venetian state. New practices would be encouraged on an as needs basis to obtain control. [5] The Venetians were masters of the division of people against people to ensure control. Religion was there to be manipulated for state control over the people. Usury was another useful agent of control.

In 1461, Louis the Eleventh (XI), the recently installed King of France, establish a modern sovereign nation-state. Louis built ports, roads, schools, printing houses, industry, and infrastructure. He encouraged regular trade fairs, which raised prestige for French product. The new King provided support for the cities, created a national currency, and limited the power of the dukes and barons. He overhauled the tax to improve national finances and made the system more efficient. [1] Men of no rank who had demonstrated talent were appointed to positions in government service. He eliminated inefficiency and wastage in the bureaucracy. He created a system of ‘royal postal roads’ using horsemen carrying written communication. He had a hands-on approach to government and mixed with the common folk whilst wearing simple clothing. Louis the Eleventh managed to bring the One Hundred Year War to an end. Under his good governance, the population increased as food production improved and income rose. [2]

The young Henry Tudor had exiled himself from England to France during the War of the Roses. He learned much whilst overseas. On his return to England, at the 1485 Battle of Battle of Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire, he claimed the monarchy from Richard III. The new king, Henry the Seventh (VII) implemented the methods that he had learned in Europe. Henry wished to bring order to England after eighty-five years of civil war. He embarked on national economic development. He reigned in the power of the feudal nobility and limited their ability to keep private armies. He implemented national policies under the principle of the ‘Common Good’. He restored confidence in the monarchy and got financial issues in hand. He improved the efficiency of his courts. He established a weights and measures system which was the beginnings of the Imperial measurement system. Under Henry the Seventh, England was beginning to enjoy a period of economic and political stability that had been unknown in England for a long time. As under King Louis the Eleventh of France, national income, food production, and population all increased. [2] Henry successfully restored the power and stability of the monarchy in England. He had strengthened the judicial system. He had got the treasury in order. The monarchy that he left to his son was now secure and wealthy.

This same nation building occurred in Spain and elsewhere and was a buffer against the power of Venice and its usury. This was during the time of the trans-Atlantic voyage by Columbus in 1492. [2] However, it was not the end of the interference in finance and sovereignty by the Venetians. The centre of control for the Venetians was eventually moved to Amsterdam with the creation of the Bank of Amsterdam. This later moved to London as the Bank of England.

The Venetians also tried to conquer the whole of Italy with the aim of using this as a powerbase to dominate the world. This failed. The Venetians encouraged Spain and France to invade Italy. Italy was devastated during the war. In 1494, the French armies conquered Milan. The move of these developing powers into Italy gave a surprise to the Venetians. These powers allied themselves with other nations as the ‘League of Cambrai’ to stand against the Venetians. The fighting began in 1509. [8]

The unwanted influence of the usurers of Venice had created this military alliance against Venice. Venice had tried to get these new nation-states to attack each other. In 1508 king of France and the Austrian emperor had created ‘The League of Cambrai’. The aim was to disempower Venice. The alliance soon included most of Europe including: France, Spain, Germany, the Papacy, Milan, Florence, Savoy, Mantua, Ferrara, and others. In April 1509, the Venetian mercenaries were defeated and Venice temporarily lost eight hundred years of land conquests. The Venetians were driven back to their lagoon city of Venice. They were close to annihilation. By 1510, the smart Venetians had created a solution by bribing the Pope to break up this League of Cambrai. [3] Pope Julius II then allied himself with Venice against France. Then Venice abandoned the alliance and sided with France. The French and Venetians regained much territory with a win at Marignano in 1515. [9]

Venice had been up to her trickery. Venice had always used tactics that involved divide and conquer by setting different groups against each other. Europe had united against Venice so a way had to be found to get factions in Europe to fight each other. The solution was a religious division. To counter the League of Cambrai, Venice created the ‘Protestant Reformation’ which had the effect of dividing Europe in a religious war. Similar is happening today with non-European immigration. The same tactic is used to get Muslims to fight Muslims, Christians to fight Muslims and, at times, Christians against Christians. Color may be set against color, women against man, left against right and rich against poor. States weakened by war and division are easier to control. It is often quoted as “divide and conquer”, in a situation where adversaries are encouraged to destroy each other. The sly but neutral instigator takes power during the conflagration. The instigator makes out to be the one that ‘saved the day’.

The leading figure of the Protestant Reformation was Venetian. [3] A prominent Venetian oligarch of the time, Gasparo Contarini, created the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone, with no regard for charity or good works: “We must attempt only to unite ourselves with our head (Christ Jesus) with faith, with hope, and with that small love of which we are capable.” [6] You should see this as nonsense. Religion was invented when we changed from hunter gather to civilized man was to create a set of rules by which to run society in a civilized manner. Religions was designed to encourage to develop a cooperative manner to each other to enable good lives for all. Religion was not invented for than blind faith. Blind faith is encouraged by those wishing to control the citizens. One has to look at the character and actions of Jesus to appreciate the message of Christianity. Christianity has been distorted, manipulated and hijacked at various times through history. It is time to rebuild Christianity with Jesus Christ as the central figure and remove distortions that have crept in over the centuries. We need a new ‘New Testament’. Jesus taught us to be good to each other. He stood up against authority when authority was wrong. Rome distorted the message in the third and fourth century. Rome added allegiance and suggested that Jesus died to save our souls. Jesus died because he stood up against authority, when authority was wrong.

Venice opposed the work of Nicholas of Cusa using the agent Gregory von Heimburg [7] to undermine the work of Cusa and go against the Pope. Martin Luther also wrote on the subject in support of the Protestant Reformation. By 1522, Luther’s writings had created disorder and revolt within the church and across Germany. The result was civil unrest. Luther had started this in 1517 when he nailed his ‘95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences’ to the church door in Wittenberg. Venetian publishing and Venetian networks were utilized to spread Lutheranism to magnify the divisions.

Martin Luther statue in Dresden. Picture was taken by Andy Chalkley. Creative Commons Attribute.

Neither were the Catholics a bunch of angels. The problems should have been sorted from within the church rather than tolerating a split and years of turmoil. What could have been sorted out as ‘a quarrel between monks’ escalated into the Reformation. There were reasons to be concerned about the ways and operations of the church system. The church control system had also drifted from the ways of Jesus Christ.

It is necessary to be careful when the teachings of the church differ from the teachings of the prophet. An important component of Christianity is tied up in a Christian value system and one important component of that is ‘good will to all mankind’. Although there is the provision in there to stand against those that are the enemies of Christianity. The enemies being those that are destructive to the ideals of Christianity or wish to put Christians under a tyrannical yoke of impossible debt or some other evil. Not that control of Christianity from Rome was perfect. Christianity should follow the good example of Jesus and the way he operated and one must be wary of any church attempt to talk on behalf of Christ or a God in a manner to inappropriately influence and control society. When the church claims to have the authority to absolve your sins, you should smell a rat. When the church claims credit for items that were created by nature, you should be doubtful. This is not to doubt that religion is needed as a guiding set of values for humans and the operation of a sustainable civilized society. The laws of the nation state require many volumes and citizens put much effort into a circumventing them or they concentrate on not getting caught. The religious message is much simpler. In the Australian version of Christianity, it is simply worded as ‘do the right thing’. Christ acted for the good of people, not for evil.There is no rule book on what constitutes ‘the right thing’. One judges for oneself the appropriateness of one’s action. Reward or punishment will arrive after death. You will go to heaven or you will go to hell. It is a clever system and works well with the inefficiencies of the human brain. Setting people against each other is the essence of evil.

As with many of these things, it is not the people of the other nation that is the enemy but the persons that scheme and create the propaganda that brings the war. In WW2, it was not the German people that were the enemy, but the people that propagandized the citizenry of the warring nations to attack each other.

In 1527 King Henry VIII was working on his plan to divorce his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon. An agent of Venice travelled to England to support King Henry the Eighth with his plan. Henry the Eighth created the Anglican Church which created hostility with Spain. From then, the Venetian oligarchy used England for attacks on Spain and France. The Masonic party was created in England as a branch of the Venetian Party in England. By the time of James I, The Masonic party came to dominate British politics. [11] [3]

The Venetian networks were split into two networks. One supported the Protestant movement with networks in Scotland, England, France and Holland. The other supported repression and the Inquisition. This network had agents in the Vatican and with the Hapsburgs. The Venetian oligarchs were supporting two opposing sides, much as is done with the support for opposing political parties in modern times. Venetian agents in Prague, Vienna, and Heidelberg provoked and supported the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) which brought misery and destruction to across Germany. The Reformation had divided Germany into opposing Protestant and Catholic factions, each gaining foreign support. This war killed about one-third of the German population and up to one-quarter of the population of Europe. [10] This was a total of somewhere between three million and eleven and a half million persons. [10] This can be seen in the ‘Population of Europe Graph’ at the top of the page.

Venetians were moved into the Bank of Amsterdam. They later started the Bank of England. The Venetians grew in influence and power during the reign of ‘Bloody’ Mary. The Stuart period, the civil war in England, the dictatorship of Cromwell, the Stuart Restoration, and the 1688 installation of William of Orange as King of England were orchestrated by the pro-Venetian English oligarchy. [3]

Similar to the situation where King Edward III had been encouraged into debt for money that he could have created himself, international banks have encouraged nations into debt for virtual Bank Credit that the nations are capable of making themselves. Just as King Edward required further loans to cover past interest, the same is happening today as further loans of Bank Credit, disguised as ‘bailouts’, are being extended to nations that cannot make the impossible payments. One indebted nation could declare the debts invalid and refuse to pay its debts and the whole charade could collapse. As I state: “We can live with debt. We can live with impossible debt. But we can’t live with collapse.” It is collapse that is to be feared, not debt. Countries can just borrow more because the banks cannot let their bread and butter collapse. If, for example, a government receiving Euro-denominated credit from the IMF doubted that the money came from the authorized issuer, the ECB, the game could be over for the banks. Unfortunately, the world relies on Bank Credit for its operations. The conditionalities can, for the most part, be ignored, because the banks cannot allow collapse.

Venice did not give up on its ambition to control through the feudal imposition of usury by force and bloodshed. Venice still controlled the bullion trade. It had maritime control. It controlled the slave trade. It also had a comprehensive political intelligence network. Venice allied itself with the Hapsburg dynasty of Austria, then Spain on an ‘as needs’ basis. Venice banks reappeared under the agency of Jacob Fugger, an Austrian trader living in Venice. Fugger’s bank financed the Austrian Hapsburgs. Strategic marriages enabled the Hapsburgs to take control of Spain. After the Spanish bankruptcy of 1575, the Fuggers were replaced by another Venice puppet, Genoa. The Venetian counteroffensive used barbaric terror. The Spanish Inquisition started in 1478 and Europe was drenched in blood. Waves of mass killings and persecution occurred, all for the purpose of preventing the creation of sovereign nation-states that might not tolerate the Venetian usury, financial control, and economic looting. [2]

The terror strategy of Venice with its religious and political allies eventually did not work, just as, hopefully, the current terror bombing campaigns against recalcitrant, predominantly Muslim nations, will not work. The methods have not changed.

In 1582, a political revolution in Venice gave power the Giovani party. This was the beginning of what some might call Anglo-Dutch System. The centre of control was moved to Amsterdam with the creation of the Bank of Amsterdam. This later moved to London as the Bank of England. New procedures in finance, trade, international law, and government were developed which enabled oligarchical rule to continue. These procedures continue to present times. [4] It has developed to become the system of looting through national finance where there is more debt than can be paid. International finance has created a system where all nations are heavily in debt to private corporations masquerading as world banks and monetary funds. ‘Free trade’ arrangements have been created where looting can occur across international borders. Floating exchange rates exist that are openly manipulated against the interests of nations. Privatization is a procedure where public assets are extorted by usury. Political control is obtained by political funding through an army of advisors and lobbyists with humongous expense accounts. The servitude by force is now replaced with an understanding that ‘mental chains’ are more effective than armies in enforcing human servitude. Both debt and propaganda form a part of this. Debt keeps the people working hard and propaganda modifies public opinion. We are told who the bad guys are. This allows the military to terrorize and kill at will. We are told we are moving to a ‘post-industrial economy’! which covers for countries damaged by usury. A ‘global economy’ is touted whilst our financial system becomes dominated by private corporations masquerading as international funds and world banks. These entities then dictate the rules to the world. News is issued as fact from corporate controlled think tanks. Credit to small business is stifled to the advantage of corporate chains. We are forced to donate to a corporate slush fund in the name of a superannuation system. Corporate lobbyists, with billion dollar budgets, have greater influence than the voters whilst debts are built up that will be impossible for the next generation to pay. We return to a world controlled by a private financial oligarchy that has historically cared little for the welfare, health, and happiness of the people. Although this elitism is alien to most of us, they are brought up by their ilk to believe they are the chosen ones. These people are trained to be successful, rich or famous. We are trapped by our upbringing rather than strict class-belonging. Our mothers say: “My child is doing well, he/she has passed exams.” Which means they will become a good work slave for someone.

Oligarchy

Oligarchy is a power structure where control is exercised by a small number of people. The nature of the group may be religious, military, wealth, family, corporate or through nobility. Aristotle wrote this as: “Oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands... wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.” Oligarchies tend to rule for their own interest, with little regard for the welfare of the poor. The main centre for oligarchy in Europe from about 1000 to about 1600 was Venice. The main control tools of oligarchs are: constant warfare, division, slavery, and racism. Oligarchy tends to follow the writings of Aristotle. Aristotle clearly states that slavery is useful and necessary. He defends slavery by saying that society consists of ruling and ruled elements. Some people are slaves by nature, while others are masters by nature. I sometimes quip that the “Organized organize the disorganized.” However, I never intended it in the Aristotelian sense that some should consider themselves as a master class with rights to rule over others. We have a problem in society when the youth of a group are taught that they are superior and were born to rule over others and that their lives are worth more than the lives of other religions. Civilization cannot exist without a strict sense of order, but that does not entail slavery. Aristotle believed that people with better reasoning would rule over those with lesser reasoning. He believed that slavery helped Greece prevent social disorder and chaos and that slavery was a social necessity. Aristotle: “Authority and subordination are conditions not only inevitable but also expedient.” Aristotle: “Again, as between the sexes, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.” Aristotle: “And also the usefulness of slaves diverges little from that of animals; bodily service for the necessities of life is forthcoming from both, from slaves and from domestic animals alike. The intention of nature, therefore, is to make the bodies also of freemen and of slaves different - the latter strong for necessary service, the former erect and unserviceable for such occupations, but serviceable for a life of citizenship.” He did state that masters should treat their slaves in a proper manner. These methods were passed down from Babylon, Rome, and Byzantium. If we have portions of society that are brought up to believe this. One problem with servitude is that people cease to be inventive and entrepreneurial to the extent that society does not progress. The nation ceases to give everyone access to economic opportunity which then hampers progress of the state. When everyone is given access to economic opportunity there will be greater prosperity for all. When the individual in society lacks the opportunity of betterment, the carrot is removed from the stick. The society becomes impoverished at all levels including the top. Slaves don’t make good soldiers.

Our current system is technically a democracy. Everyone gets a vote, but the realistic choices are somewhat limited. One of two parties will inevitably get elected. The task of the oligarchs is to control both political parties. You will notice that both political parties support the debt banking system. The elected party supports any war advertised by corporate controlled media. The oligarchs tell the people who to vote for. Then they tell the people who the bad guys are and why they need to be vaporized. In this procedure, the citizens get to vote but do not get choice. In the modern version of Oligarchy, political groups are financially supported if they are useful to the oligarch’s retention of power.

Walter Rathenau wrote this in 1909. He was the founder of the mammoth German General Electric Corporation: “Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.”

Roosevelt said this: “equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists.” and “we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.”

Never forget that these things affect people. This is a 1632 picture by James Callcot called “The Hanging”:

The Hanging by Jacques Callot. artgallery.nsw.gov.au Public Domain. 1 January 1632