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 restrain himself from saying before the bearer of the
news that not only