There were several causes for delay in fitting out the third expedition. Spain was now at war with France in regard to that vexed question which involved the suzerainty of Naples. Besides a powerful army in Italy under Gonzalo de Cordova, Spain was obliged to keep an army on her own frontier, which was threatened with an invasion from France. A strong fleet had to be kept in the Mediterranean, and another was called for to defend the Atlantic coasts of the Spanish peninsula. But even these were not all. Ferdinand and Isabella, if not far-seeing, were far-reaching in their ambition to extend their international importance by judicious matrimonial alliances of their children. This was to be done, not simply by the marriage of Catherine of Aragon with Prince Henry of England, but also by the far more important double alliance with Austria. The arrangements for the Austrian nuptials were now complete, and a magnificent armada of a hundred and twenty ships, with twenty thousand persons on board, had been sent as a convoy of the Princess Juana to Flanders, where she was to marry Philip, the archduke of Austria, and bring back the Austrian Princess Margarita, who was to complete the double Austrian alliance by marrying Prince Juan. These several demands quite exhausted the maritime resources of the Spanish Government. Delay therefore in the equipment of ships for the third expedition of Columbus was inevitable. But there were also other reasons that emphasized and reinforced the same tendencies. The affairs of the Indian Office, after once having been sequestered, had now been restored to the control of Fonseca. For a time they had been transferred to the direction of Antonio de Torres; but in consequence of high and unreasonable demands, he had been removed from office, and Fonseca, the Bishop of Badajoz, had been reinstated. Fonseca had never been actively helpful to Columbus, and as time had passed on, what at first had an air of indifference, gradually changed to ill-concealed enmity. In the position to which he had now been reinstated it was easy for him to impede, if not frustrate, all the navigator’s plans. The delay became intolerable. In the spring of 1498, Columbus, after nearly two years had elapsed since his second return, presented a direct appeal to the queen, making urgent representations of the misery to which the colonists had been reduced. The appeal was successful; two ships with supplies for the colony were despatched early in February, 1498.