Naples thus became the battle-field, as well as the prize of the contending parties; and was torn to pieces in the struggle while waiting to see which invader was to be her master. At length the Spaniard proved the stronger, as he was also the more iniquitous of the two; and on the 1st of January, 1504, the French finally quitted the kingdom of Naples, leaving it in the entire and peaceful possession of Ferdinand of Spain. Under him, and his successors on the Spanish throne, the unhappy province was governed by a series of viceroys, of whom, says Colletta,[149] "one here and there was good, many bad enough, and several execrable," for a period of 230 years, with results still visible. Such was the scene on which our heroine had to enter in the year 1490. She was the daughter of Fabrizio, brother of that protonotary Colonna, whose miserable death at the hands of the hereditary enemies of his family, the Orsini, allied with the Riarii, then in power for the nonce during the popedom of Sixtus IV., has been related in the life of Caterina Sforza. Her mother was Agnes of Montefeltre; and all the biographers and historians tell us, that she was the youngest of six children born to her parents. The statement is a curious instance of the extreme and very easily detected inaccuracy, which may often be found handed on unchallenged from one generation to another of Italian writers of biography and history. The Cavaliere Pietro Visconti, the latest Italian, and by far the most complete of Vittoria's biographers, who edited a handsome edition of her works, not published, but printed in 1840 at the expense of the prince-banker, Torlonia, on the occasion of his marriage with the Princess Donna Teresa Colonna, writes thus at page lv of the life prefixed to this votive volume:—"The child (Vittoria) increased and completed the number of children whom Agnes of Montefeltre, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Urbino, had presented to her husband." He adds, in a note, "this Princess had already had five sons, Frederick, Ascanio, Ferdinando, Camillo, Sciarra."