connection with Sforza, by the conquest of Milan; but, 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. [8]

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 condition, 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 familiar with revolutions to stake their
lives or fortunes on the cast. His countrymen, the Italians, were in the
interest of his enemy; and his nearest neighbor, the pope, had drawn from
personal pique motives for the most deadly hostility. [9] 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 apply at once to the French
monarch; and he endeavored to propitiate him by the most humiliating
concessions,--the offer of an annual tribute, and the surrender into his
hands of some of the principal fortresses in the kingdom. Finding these
advances coldly received, he invoked, in the extremity of his distress,
the aid of the Turkish sultan, Bajazet, the terror of Christendom,
requesting such supplies of troops as should enable him to make head
against their common foe. This desperate step produced no other result
than that of furnishing the enemies of the unhappy prince with a plausible
ground of accusation against him, of which they did not fail to make good
use. [10]