History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic, vol 3 | Page 8

Lombardy,
the eyes of all Italy were turned with breathless expectation on
Gonsalvo, and his army in Sicily. The bustling preparations of the
French monarch had diffused the knowledge of his designs throughout
Europe. Those of the king of Spain, on the contrary, remained
enveloped in profound secrecy. Few doubted, that Ferdinand would
step forward to shield his kinsman from the invasion which menaced

him, and, it might be, his own dominions in Sicily; and they looked to
the immediate junction of Gonsalvo with King Frederic, in order that
their combined strength might overpower the enemy before he had
gained a footing in the kingdom. Great was their astonishment, when
the scales dropped from their eyes, and they beheld the movements of
Spain in perfect accordance with those of France, and directed to crush
their common victim between them. They could scarcely credit, says
Guicciardini, that Louis the Twelfth could be so blind as to reject the
proffered vassalage and substantial sovereignty of Naples, in order to
share it with so artful and dangerous a rival as Ferdinand. [27]
The unfortunate Frederic, who had been advised for some time past of
the unfriendly dispositions of the Spanish government, [28] saw no
refuge from the dark tempest mustering against him on the opposite
quarters of his kingdom. He collected such troops as he could, however,
in order to make battle with the nearest enemy, before he should cross
the threshold. On the 28th of June, the French army resumed its march.
Before quitting Rome, a brawl arose between some French soldiers and
Spaniards resident in the capital; each party asserting the paramount
right of its own sovereign to the crown of Naples. From words they
soon came to blows, and many lives were lost before the fray could be
quelled; a melancholy augury for the permanence of the concord so
unrighteously established between the two governments. [29]
On the 8th of July, the French crossed the Neapolitan frontier. Frederic,
who had taken post at St. Germano, found himself so weak, that he was
compelled to give way on its approach, and retreat on his capital. The
invaders went forward, occupying one place after another with little
resistance till they came before Capua, where they received a
temporary check. During a parley for the surrender of that place, they
burst into the town, and, giving free scope to their fiendish passions,
butchered seven thousand citizens in the streets, and perpetrated
outrages worse than death on their defenceless wives and daughters. It
was on this occasion that Alexander the Sixth's son, the infamous
Caesar Borgia, selected forty of the most beautiful from the principal
ladies of the place, and sent them back to Rome to swell the
complement of his seraglio. The dreadful doom of Capua intimidated
further resistance, but inspired such detestation of the French
throughout the country, as proved of infinite prejudice to their cause in

their subsequent struggle with the Spaniards. [30]
King Frederic, shocked at bringing such calamities on his subjects,
resigned his capital without a blow in its defence, and, retreating to the
isle of Ischia, soon after embraced the counsel of the French admiral
Ravenstein, to accept a safe-conduct into France, and throw himself on
the generosity of Louis the Twelfth. The latter received him
courteously, and assigned him the duchy of Anjou with an ample
revenue for his maintenance, which, to the credit of the French king,
was continued after he had lost all hope of recovering the crown of
Naples. [31] With this show of magnanimity, however, he kept a
jealous eye on his royal guest; under pretence of paying him the
greatest respect, he placed a guard over his person, and thus detained
him in a sort of honorable captivity to the day of his death, which
occurred soon after, in 1504.
Frederic was the last of the illegitimate branch of Aragon, who held the
Neapolitan sceptre; a line of princes, who, whatever might be their
characters in other respects, accorded that munificent patronage to
letters which sheds a ray of glory over the roughest and most turbulent
reign. It might have been expected, that an amiable and accomplished
prince, like Frederic, would have done still more towards the moral
development of his people, by healing the animosities which had so
long festered in their bosoms. His gentle character, however, was ill
suited to the evil times on which he had fallen; and it is not improbable,
that he found greater contentment in the calm and cultivated retirement
of his latter years, sweetened by the sympathies of friendship which
adversity had proved, [32] than when placed on the dazzling heights
which attract the admiration and envy of mankind. [33]
Early in March, Gonsalvo of Cordova had received his first official
intelligence of the partition treaty, and