16 ITALIAN WARS. PART 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 Eng- land, a few years before, successfully contested the validity of the Lancastrian title. It should be added, that Ferdinand's views appear to have per- fectly 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 unne- cessary emphasis.^" It is but fair to state, however, that foreigners, who contemplated the transaction with a more impartial eye, condemned it as inflict- ing a deep stain on the characters of both poten- tates. 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. Gonsaivo Bcforc thc conferences respecting the treaty sails against j o j «he Turks, ^ycrc brought to a close, the Spanish armada under 1500. Gonsaivo, 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 NapcH di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo's approach, raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople. The Spanish gen- eral, then uniting his forces with the Venetians, 20 See, in particular, the Doctor farious grounds of the incontrovert- Salazar de Mendoza, who exhausts ible title of the house of Aragon to the subject, — and the reader's pa- Naples. Monarquia, tom.i. lib. 3, tience, — in discussing the muld- cap. 12-15. Sept. 21
