History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 3 | Page 6

Apulia and Calabria, with the title of Duke of those provinces, to Spain. The _dogana_, an important duty levied on the flocks of the Capitanate, was to be collected by the officers of the Spanish government, and divided equally with France. Lastly, any inequality between the respective territories was to be so adjusted, that the revenues accruing to each of the parties should be precisely equal. The treaty was to be kept profoundly secret, until preparations were completed for the simultaneous occupation of the devoted territory by the combined powers. [17]
Such were the terms of this celebrated compact, by which two European potentates coolly carved out and divided between them the entire dominions of a third, who had given no cause for umbrage, and with whom they were both at that time in perfect peace and amity. Similar instances of political robbery (to call it by the coarse name it merits) have occurred in later times; but never one founded on more flimsy pretexts, or veiled under a more detestable mask of hypocrisy. The principal odium of the transaction has attached to Ferdinand, as the kinsman of the unfortunate king of Naples. His conduct, however, admits of some palliatory considerations, that cannot be claimed for Louis.
The Aragonese nation always regarded the bequest of Ferdinand's uncle, Alfonso the Fifth, in favor of his natural offspring as an unwarrantable and illegal act. The kingdom of Naples had been won by their own good swords, and, as such, was the rightful inheritance of their own princes. Nothing but the domestic troubles of his dominions had prevented John the Second of Aragon, on the decease of his brother, from asserting his claim by arms. His son, Ferdinand the Catholic, had hitherto acquiesced in the usurpation of the bastard branch of his house only from similar causes. On the accession of the present monarch, he had made some demonstrations of vindicating his pretensions to Naples, which, however, the intelligence he received from that kingdom induced him to defer to a more convenient season. [18] But it was deferring, not relinquishing, his purpose. In the mean time, he carefully avoided entering into such engagements, as should compel him to a different policy by connecting his own interests with those of Frederic; and with this view, no doubt, rejected the alliance, strongly solicited by the latter, of the duke of Calabria, heir apparent to the Neapolitan crown, with his third daughter, the infanta Maria. Indeed, this disposition of Ferdinand, so far from being dissembled, was well understood by the court of Naples, as is acknowledged by its own historians. [19]
It may be thought, that the undisturbed succession of four princes to the throne of Naples, each of whom had received the solemn recognition of the people, might have healed any defects in their original title, however glaring. But it may be remarked, in extenuation of both the French and Spanish claims, that the principles of monarchical succession were but imperfectly settled in that day; that oaths of allegiance were tendered too lightly by the Neapolitans, to carry the same weight as in other nations; and that the prescriptive right derived from possession, necessarily indeterminate, was greatly weakened in this case by the comparatively few years, not more than forty, during which the bastard line of Aragon had occupied the throne,--a period much shorter than that after which the house of York had in England, a few years before, successfully contested the validity of the Lancastrian title. It should be added, that Ferdinand's views appear to have perfectly corresponded with those of the Spanish nation at large; not one writer of the time, whom I have met with, intimating the slightest doubt of his title to Naples, while not a few insist on it with unnecessary emphasis. [20] It is but fair to state, however, that foreigners, who contemplated the transaction with a more impartial eye, condemned it as inflicting a deep stain on the characters of both potentates. Indeed, something like an apprehension of this, in the parties themselves, may be inferred from their solicitude to deprecate public censure by masking their designs under a pretended zeal for religion.
Before the conferences respecting the treaty were brought to a close, the Spanish armada under Gonsalvo, after a long detention in Sicily, where it was reinforced by two thousand recruits, who had been serving as mercenaries in Italy, held its course for the Morea. The Turkish squadron, lying before Napoli di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo's approach, raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople. The Spanish general, then uniting his forces with the Venetians, stationed at Corfu, proceeded at once against the fortified place of St. George, in Cephalonia, which the Turks had lately wrested from the republic. [21]
The town stood high on a rock, in an impregnable position,