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 unnecessary emphasis. [20] It is but
fair to state, however, that foreigners, who contemplated the transaction
with a more impartial eye, condemned it as inflicting a deep stain on the
characters of both potentates. 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.

Before the conferences respecting the treaty were brought to a close, the
Spanish armada under Gonsalvo, 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 Napoli di Romania, without waiting Gonsalvo's approach,
raised the siege, and retreated precipitately to Constantinople. The
Spanish general, then uniting his forces with the Venetians, stationed at
Corfu, proceeded at once against the fortified place of St. George, in
Cephalonia, which the Turks had lately wrested from the republic. [21]

The town stood high on a rock, in an impregnable position, and was
garrisoned by four hundred Turks, all veteran soldiers, prepared to die in
its defence. We have not room for the details of this siege, in which both
parties displayed unbounded courage and resources, and which was
protracted nearly two months under all the privations of famine, and the
inclemencies of a cold and stormy winter. [22]

At length, weary with this fatal procrastination, Gonsalvo and the
Venetian admiral, Pesaro, resolved on a simultaneous attack on separate
quarters of the town. The ramparts had been already shaken by the mining