Toledo saw that he was too weak to make head against the enraged populace, who were already investing the forts and citadels held by his troops, and sent for Doria to deliver him from his embarrassment. Andrea was ill prepared for so grave an undertaking. His galleys were damaged and without crews; for besides the Barbary slaves who fled in that fatal night of the Fieschi, the convicts had first sacked the ships and then taken refuge in the Apennines. But the admiral entered on the project of aiding Toledo with unwonted zeal. He obtained money from Prince Centurione, enlisted new crews and officers, and soon had a fleet ready to sail. The galleys were sent off under his lieutenants Marco Centurione, son of Adamo, and Antonio Doria. Thanks to these ships of Doria, Toledo suppressed the revolt in Naples, took capital vengeance on the leaders and punished the people with heavy taxation. Yet it has been said that the emperor _pardoned_ the rebels! History spoke falsehood. Still, this stormy protest of the people saved Naples from the inquisition. The masses well knew the real object of Toledo. He sought less to crush heresy than to exterminate the spirit of liberty. The Neapolitans were a few years later silent witnesses of fierce religious persecution. The inquisition employed such zeal, that to mention Montalto alone, two thousand persons were butchered and nearly an equal number condemned to death in eleven days. Tradition says that the executioner cut them down in the streets, like so many goats. While, through the assistance of Doria, the Spanish power took firm root in Italy and crushed the spirit of popular liberty, (I hope that none will believe my respect for the truth dictated by antipathy towards the great admiral) not a few daring spirits still struggled to emancipate the nation and to destroy the prop on which the emperor leaned. The times were sanguinary; blood was washed out with blood. The partisans of Fieschi raging for vengeance often attempted to assassinate Andrea; and the obstacles in their way only increased their fury. In August, 1547, four men of Valditaro, to whom Galeotto of Mirandola added eight of his bandits, were sent to Genoa for the purpose of assassinating Doria while he should be coming out of his palace. It was intended that a conspiracy organized in the city should seize the moment for proclaiming a popular government and maintaining it by force of arms. Galeotto promised to lead the enterprise in person. He was a terrible man, and his partisans believed that no enterprise could miscarry which had at its head so practiced a conspirator and assassin. The histories relate of him that when the Count Gianfrancesco, a literary man of note, had been restored to the government of Mirandola by the officers of Julius II., Galeotto, in a night of October, 1533, scaled the fortress with forty companions, killed the count who was kneeling before the crucifix, his uncle and