[1] Mach. Ist.  Fior. lib. v. cap. 5.  Corio, pp. 332, 333, may be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at the commencement of his conquest.  Defeated by the Genoese near the Isle of Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he succeeded in proving to Filippo Visconti that it was more to his interest to have him king of Naples than to keep the French there.  Upon, this the Duke of Milan restored him with honor to his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest which before he had successfully opposed.  It is a singular instance of the extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and reason.

[2] Vespasiano’s Life of Alfonso (Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid delineation.  It is written of course from the scholar’s more than the politician’s point of view.  Compare with it Giovio, Elogia, and Pontanus, de Liberalitate.

The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the Neapolitans.  During the half-century in which so many Italian princes succumbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, according to Pontano, ‘nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,’ walked up and down unarmed and unattended.  ’Why should a father fear among his children?’ he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the danger of this want of caution.  The many splendid qualities by which he was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of his private life.  Married to Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in 1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to be his son by Margaret de Hijar.  It was even whispered that this Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso’s brother Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her own.  Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from that day.  Pontano, who was Ferdinand’s secretary, told a different tale.  He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano of Valentia.  This last story is rendered probable by the brusque contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand.

It would be terrible to think that such a father could have been the parent of such a son.  In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty.  His ferocity bordered upon madness.  He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching the antics of monkeys.[1] In his hunting establishment were repeated the worst atrocities of Bernabo Visconti: