In the face of the Duke’s ill-will, now no longer doubtful, aggravated by a suspicion of encroachments on the part of the king, the most powerful of the Neapolitan barons had entered upon a league for mutual protection, when the outbreak of hostilities was precipitated by two distinct causes. Ferrante and his son, however pleased they professed to be at the election of Innocent VIII. as Pope, were in reality anything but satisfied, as they feared to find him an adherent of Anjou. The Duke had even made an effort to get him excluded from the list of candidates for the pontificate. The embassy sent to Rome to present the congratulations of Naples was to try to procure the remission of that everlasting apple of discord, the feudal tribute. The Pope refused to remit it, the king held to his resolve not to pay, and the coming strife might be the more clearly foreshadowed as Cardinal della Rovere was opposed to the Aragonese claims. In the summer of 1485 the rupture took place. The Duke of Calabria persuaded the king not to allow the schemes of the discontented nobility to come to maturity, but to nip them in the bud by a sudden attack. The way in which he set to work furnished a new ground for heaping upon him accusations of fraud and violence. On June 23, by treacherously imprisoning the Count of Montorio, of the house of Cantelmo, the chief person in Aquila, and his people, he obtained possession of that city, which was an independent commonwealth under the suzerainty of the crown; shortly after, the same was done at Nola by arresting several of the Orsini, to whom the countship belonged. Many of the heads of the nobility were just then assembled at Melfi, in the Basilicata, on the occasion of a wedding in the Caracciolo family. In this manner a declaration of hostilities was hastened, which, from the intensity of opposition, could indeed hardly have been prevented under other circumstances, but which was now encouraged by the disagreement between the Pope and the king.