The complications which arose from this interpretation of the conditions of peace between the king and the Pope, and the sentiments it awakened in Florence, will be mentioned later on. There can be little difference of opinion as to this melancholy episode and its influence on the destinies of Naples. But the whole blame must not be laid on Ferrante. A nobility so powerful and warlike, so rebellious, and among some of whom disaffection was an inheritance, rendered government impossible. Defection had penetrated the king’s own privy council, nay even his own family. How little unity there was in the latter is shown by the fact that the barons hoped and attempted to gain over to their side Don Federigo, who was as much beloved as his brother Alfonso was hated and feared. At Salerno they offered him the crown, which he refused. Ferrante conquered by prudence and force of arms, but he abused his victory by cunning, avarice, and cruelty. In the use of foul means he outdid his old enemy Louis XI.; but while the latter, who personally was not a bit better, strengthened the royal power, Ferrante overshot the mark and cut the ground from under his own feet. Other men of the time were not more honest, yet they never enacted such horrible tragedies as those witnessed at Naples in 1486 and 1487. Ferrante’s reign lasted seven years longer, externally more quiet than before, more prosperous, more unlimited, less disturbed; but all his sagacity could not save him from the phantoms called up by the consciousness of past crimes and the fear of new dangers. In his strivings after despotic power, and in the interests of the latter, he made havoc of the old nobility. He could not destroy it so completely as to prevent its remaining one of the factors in all great political changes, or the enmity of a large portion of it from becoming fatal to his house, but he diminished the strength of the country, which was founded on the old feudal order of things. He hoped to find support from the people, but could not really raise them because his system of monopolies and finance oppressed them no less than the outgrowths of the feudal state, and he had not time to carry out the change in public matters which he might possibly have projected. The people, who had not forgotten old grievances, were bound by no ties of affection to their sovereign and his heir-apparent, who had come out of the Barons’ war with a greatly diminished reputation for military capacity and a yet more greatly increased reputation for faithlessness and cruelty.[297] Like the peace of 1484, that of 1486 did not take into consideration the Florentine desires and demands in the vexed question of Sarzana.