ABSTRACT
Alfonso II of Aragon, the brutal, arrogant soldier who had been widely considered one of the capable Italian commanders, was an incorrigible coward. During Ferrante’s reign the Aragon-Sforza alliance had been marked by Alfonso’s marriage to the Duke of Milan’s daughter, Ippolita. The alliance was supposedly strengthened again when Alfonso’s and Ippolita’s daughter, Isabella of Aragon, was married to her cousin, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, the third Sforza duke of Milan, but a duke in name only. Ferrantino was young, twenty-six, innocent of the crimes of his father and grandfather, courageous and energetic. Ferrantino, with few soldiers and almost no money, desperately needed help to reconquer his kingdom. That is why he begged for help from Spain. King Ferdinand sent Gonzalo and thereby secured a foothold in the Kingdom of Naples which enabled him later to betray his relatives in the House of Aragon and to seize Naples for himself.
