Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/35

 Rh with the levity and cupidity essential to his character, he suffered himself, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Spanish court, to be bribed into a truce with King Louis, which gave the latter full scope for his meditated enterprise on Naples.

Thus disembarrassed of the most formidable means of annoyance, the French monarch went briskly forward with his preparations, the object of which he did not affect to conceal. Frederic, the unfortunate king of Naples, saw himself with dismay now menaced with the loss of empire, before he had time to taste the sweets of it. He knew not where to turn for refuge, in his desolate conditioh, from the impending storm. His treasury was drained, and his kingdom wasted, by the late war. His subjects, although attached to his person, were too femiliar with revolutions to stake their lives or fortunes on the cast. His countrymen, the Italians, were in the interest of his enemy ; and his near- est neighbour, the pope, had drawn from personal pique motives for the most deadly hostility. He had as little reliance on the king of Spain, his natural ally and kinsman, who, he well knew, had always regarded the crown of Naples as his own rightful inheritance. He resolved, therefore, to