Restlessly active, recognized as one of the most powerful political
minds of the day, and free from the vices of the profligate, he
concentrated all his powers, among which must be reckoned profound
dissimulation and an irreconcilable spirit of vengeance, on the
destruction of his opponents. He had been wounded in every point in
which a ruler is open to offence; for the leaders of the barons, though
related to him by marriage, were yet the allies of his foreign enemies.
Extreme measures became part of his daily policy. The means for this
struggle with his barons, and for his external wars, were exacted in
the same Mohammedan fashion which Frederick II had introduced: the
Government alone dealt in oil and corn; the whole commerce of the
country was put by Ferrante into the hands of a wealthy merchant,
Francesco Coppola, who had entire control of the anchorage on the
coast, and shared the profits with the King. Deficits were made up by
forced loans, by executions and confiscations, by open simony, and by
contributions levied on the ecclesiastical corporations. Besides
hunting, which he practiced regardless of all rights of property, his
pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents near him,
either alive in well-guarded prisons, or dead and embalmed, dressed in
the costume which they wore in their lifetime.
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