The Spanish government, in the mean time, made the most vivid
remonstrances through its resident minister, or agents expressly
accredited for the purpose, against the proposed expedition of Louis the
Twelfth. It even went so far as to guarantee the faithful discharge of the
tribute proffered by the king of Naples. [11] But the reckless ambition of
the French monarch, overleaping the barriers of prudence, and indeed of
common sense, disdained the fruits of conquest without the name.

Ferdinand now found himself apparently reduced to the alternative of
abandoning the prize at once to the French king, or of making battle with
him in defence of his royal kinsman. The first of these measures, which
would bring a restless and powerful rival on the borders of the Sicilian
dominions, was not to be thought of for a moment. The latter, which
pledged him a second time to the support of pretensions hostile to his
own, was scarcely more palatable. A third expedient suggested itself; the
partition of the kingdom, as hinted in the negotiations with Charles the
Eighth, [12] by which means the Spanish government, if it could not rescue
the whole prize from the grasp of Louis, would at least divide it with
him.

Instructions were accordingly given to Gralla, the minister at the court
of Paris, to sound the government on this head, bringing it forward as his
own private suggestion. Care was taken at the same time to secure a party
in the French councils to the interests of Ferdinand. [13] The suggestions
of the Spanish envoy received additional weight from the report of a
considerable armament then equipping in the port of Malaga. Its ostensible
purpose was to co-operate with the Venetians in the defence of their
possessions in the Levant. Its main object, however, was to cover the
coasts of Sicily in any event from the French, and to afford means for