Ferdinand II of Naples
Ferdinand II was King of Naples from 1495 to 1496. He was the son of Alfonso II of Naples and the grandson of Ferrante I of Naples.
At the start of the Italian Wars in 1495, Alfonso abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand, when a French army led by Charles VIII threatened Naples. Unable to effectively defend the city, Ferdinand fled with a small retinue to the island of Ischia. Charles quickly occupied the city, then split his army, leaving half of it to garrison Naples, and taking the other half to return home.
By May 1495, with fresh troops and the support of Aragon allies, Ferdinand returned to the peninsula and with the assistance of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, expelled French soldiers from the entire kingdom. He died soon thereafter on 7 September 1496 and was succeeded by his uncle, Frederick.
Biography
Birth
On 26 June 1467, Ferrandino was born in Castel Capuano, a residence that King Ferrante had given to his son Alfonso and his wife Ippolita Maria Sforza as a wedding gift. Her mother, Ippolita, found herself alone to give birth, as her husband was engaged on the war front in Abruzzo to fight against the Florentines, while her father-in-law was in Terra di lavoro. The prince's birth was nevertheless immediately greeted with great joy, as the kingdom had had its rightful heir. He was baptized on 5 July and was given the names Ferdinando, in honor of his grandfather, and Vincenzo, for his mother's devotion to San Vincenzo Ferreri.The letters of his mother dating back to this early period describe him as a healthy, beautiful, and capricious newborn; in fact, it is Ippolita herself who disconsolately informs her mother, Bianca Maria Visconti, that Ferrandino is "beautiful as a pearl" but "pleasant with every person except with me; I have hope in short days we will have to be domestic and friends".
Youth
He had as tutors, but also as advisors and secretaries, Aulus Janus Parrasius, Gabriele Altilio and Chariteo, who followed their pupil with dedication and loyalty even when he, still a teenager, was called to try his hand at the art of war.Already at the age of fourteen, he had the opportunity to demonstrate his readiness in war, when his grandfather Ferrante put him at the head of a military expedition directed to Abruzzo, as a lieutenant of the king, with the task of defending the coasts from the attacks of the Venetian fleet, when, after the reconquest of Otranto, a new war front opened between Venice and Ferrara and Ferrante had to intervene in defense of his son-in-law Ercole I d'Este.
In the following years, Ferrandino continuously defended the kingdom, fighting against the rebellious barons during the second baronial revolt that, between 1485 and 1486, put King Ferrante in great difficulty. This was still nothing, however, compared to what would have awaited the young Ferrandino in the years of the descent of Charles VIII.
Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti tells of a certain incident that took place on an unspecified day, but since the writer places it a few months before the death of Ippolita Maria Sforza, it would be to be traced back to when the young prince was about twenty years old. It so happened that Ferrandino "for greatness and prowess of spirit, I asked for a stout horse, that fell on him, so that he was taken away believing that he was dead". The young prince would then remain in a coma for 13 days until his mother Hippolyta, crying and devoutly invoking the help of the Virgin with endless prayers, obtained that "the lost, or perhaps lost spirits returned to the lifeless body of the son". Although the story is far-fetched, there is news from the ambassadors of his ruinous fall from his horse in the summer of 1486: initially the prince seemed to have done nothing, in fact he did not want to be medicated, but then he was assailed by a great fever and was in danger of life. Since he was now considered dead and with no hope of healing, it was "opinione de tucto lo populo" that it was the "infinite orationi made the Ill.ma madamma duchessa his mother" to free him from evil. As an ex voto, his father Alfonso had a silver image of the prince made and donated it to the church of Santa Maria di Loreto, where he had gone to request grace.
At the death of his younger brother Pietro, which occurred due to illness in 1491, he remained the last hope of Naples and of his old grandfather Ferrante, who by dying already foreshadowed the terrible war that was about to strike the kingdom. The sovereign died on 25 January 1494, Alfonso II ascended to the throne of Naples and did not hesitate a single moment before declaring war on Ludovico il Moro, occupying as the first act of hostility the city of Bari, a fief of the duke. Alfonso thus came to the rescue of his daughter Isabella, wife of Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza, nephew of Ludovico, to whom his uncle had usurped the Duchy of Milan.
Ludovico responded to the threat by giving the green light to the monarch French Charles VIII to descend to Italy to reconquer the kingdom of Naples, which the latter believed usurped by the Aragonese to the Neapolitan Angevins.
As supreme captain of the army of the kingdom of Naples, Ferrandino always behaved honestly and, although very young, he knew how to impose order and discipline on his men. In October 1494, for example, he was fighting in Romagna against the French as an ally of Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì. To cause the break between the two was the so-called sack of Mordano, which took place between 20 and 21 October: around the city of Mordano they had gathered between fourteen thousand and sixteen thousand French to encircles it with siege and at the same time to trap Ferrandino, who, having fewer men, would almost certainly have been defeated.
Therefore, understanding the situation and on his generals' advice, he decided not to respond to the countess's requests for help. Caterina, very angry, passed on the side of the French, who had devastated her lands and torn her subjects, breaking the alliance with the Neapolitans, and therefore Ferrandino, having learned the news, under a diverted rain was forced to leave Faenza with his men and to get on the way to Cesena. Although they were now enemies and despite the Neapolitan army being short of food, not having been well supplied by the countess even when they were allies, notes Leone Cobelli, a chronicler from Forlì, that Ferrandino always behaved honestly and that vice versa Countess Caterina sent his men to rob him, albeit unsuccessfully:
The sources describe him always impatient to clash with the French and to test his war skills. In fact, when he was still near Imola, on 16 September 1494 "with the helmet on his head and throwing it on his thigh" he went down to openly challenge the French, and seeing that the enemy did not leave the camp "he sent some crossbowmen to invite him up to half a mile below; and no one ever showed up". Two days later, not happy, he sent a herald to the enemy captain, Gianfrancesco Sanseverino d'Aragona, Count of Caiazzo, to ask him "if he wanted to come and break some spear", with a negative result. He then repeated the challenge to the captain French, Robert Stuart d'Aubigny, and the French this time accepted, but the Count of Caiazzo prevented the test from being held and Ferrandino, disappointed, had to settle for small skirmishes.
The French invasion
An attempt to stop the French fleet at Rapallo carrying the heavy artillery of the French king resulted in disaster. After leaving Romagna, Ferrandino had gone to Rome to exhort Pope Alexander VI "to be constant and firm, and not to abandon the king his father". But the Pope, reluctantly, finally yielded to the French, and if nothing else, in an extreme conversation, embracing the young Ferrandino weepingly, offered him safe conduct with which he could cross undisturbed the entire Papal States so as to return to Naples. Ferrandino instead, by nature proud and regardless of the danger, refused indignantly the safe conduct and on the last day of the year he went out to the door of San Sebastiano, just as King Charles VIII entered from that of Santa Maria del Popolo with the French army.With the approach of the enemy troops, Alfonso II, mentally unstable and persecuted, it is said, by the shadows of the killed barons, thought of ensuring greater stability to the throne and to the descendants by deciding to abdicate in favor of his eldest son, and he retired to monastic life at the monastery of Mazzara in Sicily.Unlike his father, a man feared for his cruelty and hated by the Neapolitans, he was much loved by the whole population "to be human and benign king" and young man of good customs, qualities that he demonstrated immediately, returning, despite the situation of deep economic crisis, to the legitimate owners the lands unjustly stolen by his father for the construction of the villa of Poggioreale, to the nuns of La Maddalena the convent that Alfonso had expropriated them for the construction of the villa called the Duchesca, and likewise returning freedom to those who for years languished in the unhealthy prisons of the castle. Ferrandino remedied in short all the offenses caused over the years by his father and grandfather, but this did not, however, prevent the end of the reign. He had also challenged King Charles VIII to a duel to decide in the old fashioned way who should own the kingdom, but the French monarch, knowing the skill of the young Neapolitan, did not want to face it.
A real betrayal was consumed against him: the cities began to give themselves spontaneously to the French and the captains and generals to plot behind him with the enemy, favoring his advance. Back in Naples from Capua, the young king was in a very bad mood, so much so that the dowager queen Joan induced him to feed after two days of fasting. He lamented that Fortune was against him and that he was losing the kingdom "without breaking a spear." When he was then told that the people were looting his stables, enraged, with a handful of men rushed to the place with the unhinged stocco and began to vehemently reproach the looters, wounding some and recovering a number of horses.
Realizing by now that the situation was irreparable, Ferrandino therefore decided to move away from Naples in search of reinforcements. Before embarking for Ischia with his family, however, he summoned the entire people and promised them that he would return within 15 days and that, if this were not the case, they could all consider themselves freed from the oath of fidelity and obedience made towards him.
He then left the new Castel to Alfonso II d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara with 4000 Swiss mercenaries; and with 14 galleys led by Berardino Villamarina went to Ischia.
Famous remains the betrayal of the castellan of the fortress of Ischia, Justo della Candida, who made the royal family find the doors of the castle barred. Ferrandino then, under the pretext of securing at least the dowager queen Giovanna and princess Giovannella, persuaded Justo to let him enter the fortress in the company of a single man, not believing that he alone constituted a danger. Ferrandino instead, as soon as he found himself in front of him, pulled out a dagger and "he threw himself on him with such impetus that, with the ferocity and the memory of the royal authority, he frightened the others in such a way that in his power he immediately reduced the castle and the fortress". Then, after killing him, he cut off his head with a sword blow and threw the body into the sea, thus regaining possession of the castle and the garrison.