As Ferrante advanced in years his eldest son acquired a baleful influence over him. Alfonso was by no means equal to his father. He was considered a tolerably good soldier, and was certainly not wanting in energy, nor apparently in personal valour; yet he never carried out any campaign of real importance, though the recapture of Otranto was looked upon as a brilliant success. He was not lacking in cultivation and interest in learning, but his bad qualities outweighed his good ones. He was haughty, violent, faithless, and cruel. He hated the barons of the kingdom from a despot’s instinct, he hated the influential servants of his father because their wealth excited his covetousness. As he had not inherited Ferrante’s power of dissimulation, enough was known of his sayings and projects to put others on their guard, and his hatred was paid back in kind. He was not more successful in making those beyond the kingdom favourably disposed to him. The quarrel with Milan, of which, however, the blame did not rest with him, was already beginning, though it did not come to an open rupture till after the death of his wife Ippolita. In Tuscany there was a secret grudge against him on account of the events of 1478—his intrigues at Siena and the loss of Sarzana. He must have known how unpopular he was at Florence, but he did nothing to regain the favour of the government or the people. ‘On October 8,’ observes Alamanno Rinuccini, speaking of the year 1484,[276] ‘the Duke of Calabria arrived in Florence on his way back from Lombardy, where he had been captain of the league against the Venetians. He was accompanied by about eight hundred horsemen in bad condition. On his entry he did not go to the palace to greet the Signoria as he had hitherto done, though the Signoria had made preparations to receive him, and summoned many citizens for the purpose of honouring him. This was considered a great piece of insolence. Nevertheless, in pursuance of a shameful order, he was left unmolested during his passage through our territory—to our shame, considering what he had done five years before.’ Commines has drawn in a few words a fearful picture of Alfonso: ‘Never,’ says he, ‘was seen a more cruel, wicked, vicious, base man, or one more addicted to excess.’ The Frenchman and the courtier of Charles VIII. speaks here, but the portrait drawn by the Venetian, Marino Sanuto, is not at all more flattering.[277]