Alliances were at the same time formed with the Turks too, with as
little scruple or disguise; they were reckoned no worse than any other
political expedients. The belief in the unity of Western Christendom
had at various times in the course of the Crusades been seriously
shaken, and Frederick II had probably outgrown it. But the fresh
advance of the Oriental nations, the need and the ruin of the Greek
Empire, had revived the old feeling, though not in its former strength,
throughout Western Europe. Italy, however, was a striking exception to
this rule. Great as was the terror felt for the Turks, and the actual
danger from them, there was yet scarcely a government of any
consequence which did not conspire against other Italian States with
Mohammed II and his successors. And when they did not do so, they still
had the credit of it; nor was it worse than the sending of emissaries
to poison the cisterns of Venice, which was the charge brought against
the heirs of Alfonso, King of Naples. From a scoundrel like Sigismondo
Malatesta nothing better could be expected than that he should call the
Turks into Italy. But the Aragonese monarchs of Naples, from whom
Mohammed--at the instigation, we read, of other Italian governments,
especially of Venice--had once wrested Otranto (1480), afterwards
hounded on the Sultan Bajazet II against the Venetians.
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