attention to those secondary States which formed a circle more contiguous
to Rome, and whose business it was to serve as armour, so to speak, to
the spiritual queen of the world, should it please any of these political
giants whom we have described to make encroachments with a view to an
attack, on the seas or the mountains, the Adriatic Gulf or the Alps, the
Mediterranean or the Apennines.

These were the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the magnificent
republic of Florence, and the most serene republic of Venice.

The kingdom of Naples was in the hands of the old Ferdinand, whose birth
was not only illegitimate, but probably also well within the prohibited
degrees. His father, Alfonso of Aragon, received his crown from Giovanna
of Naples, who had adopted him as her successor. But since, in the fear
of having no heir, the queen on her deathbed had named two instead of
one, Alfonso had to sustain his rights against Rene. The two aspirants
for some time disputed the crown. At last the house of Aragon carried the
day over the house of Anjou, and in the course of the year 1442, Alfonso
definitely secured his seat on the throne. Of this sort were the claims
of the defeated rival which we shall see Charles VIII maintaining later
on. Ferdinand had neither the courage nor the genius of his father, and
yet he triumphed over his enemies, one after another he had two rivals,
both far superior in merit to him self. The one was his nephew, the
Count of Viana, who, basing his claim on his uncle's shameful birth,
commanded the whole Aragonese party; the other was Duke John of Calabria,
who commanded the whole Angevin party. Still he managed to hold the two
apart, and to keep himself on the throne by dint of his prudence, which
often verged upon duplicity. He had a cultivated mind, and had studied
the sciences--above all, law. He was of middle height, with a large
handsome head, his brow open and admirably framed in beautiful white
hair, which fell nearly down to his shoulders. Moreover, though he had
rarely exercised his physical strength in arms, this strength was so
great that one day, when he happened to be on the square of the Mercato
Nuovo at Naples, he seized by the horns a bull that had escaped and
stopped him short, in spite of all the efforts the animal made to escape
from his hands. Now the election of Alexander had caused him great
uneasiness, and in spite of his usual prudence he had not been able to
restrai