ARAGON IN ITALY AND SPAIN, 1458-94seized the chance of Alfonso's death to relaunch an inva-
sion of Naples, by way of Genoa, but Angevin interference
there pushed Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, even more
decisively into cooperation with Ferrante.^6
As well as facing an external enemy, Ferrante faced internal
foes who were only too glad to seize the opportunity offered
by the renewed Angevin challenge to the house of Aragon.
Since the reign of Joanna I the south Italian baronage had
been able to claim for itself ever increasing autonomy, a
trend which was recognised by Alfonso the Magnanimous
when he reformed the tax system and the military organ-
isation of the kingdom of Naples. In south-eastern Italy,
Giovanni del Balzo Orsini, prince ofTaranto, exercised quasi-
regal authority over a vast swathe of lands, and Alfonso sought
to tie him to the crown by a marriage alliance between his
daughter Isabella and the young Ferrante; despite noticeable
differences of character, the couple remained devoted to
one another. And yet several key barons, most importantly
the prince of Taranto, were reluctant from the start to recog-
nise Ferrante as king. An Angevin revival was seen as an even
surer guarantee of baronial autonomy than an Aragonese
succession. Rene's son Jean arrived in Italy and fostered
revolt among the south Italian barons; Rene tried to exercise
influence at the Congress of Mantua of 1459, summoned by
the pope to discuss plans for a new crusade; he presented
his cause as one that would also serve the crusade. Ferrante
worked hard to contain this first baronial revolt, building
close ties to the most important Italian princes, such as
Sforza, to whose daughter Ippolita his own son Alfonso was
betrothed; Ferrante's persistent message was that he had no
ambitions within Italy beyond the maintenance of the peace
of the peninsula. Ferrante keenly realised that his major
task was simply that of imposing order in southern Italy;
unlike his father, Alfonso, he possessed no great empire in
Spain and the Mediterranean which could offer him the
with Ferrante; see my contribution to Montjoie, ed. .J. Riley-Smith and
B.Z. Kedar (Aldershot, 1997); and J.G. Russell, Diplomats at work. Three
Renaissance Studies (Stroud, Glos., 1992), pp. 60-7.- David Abulafia, 'The inception of the reign of King Ferrante I of
Naples: the events of summer^1458 in the light of documentation
from Milan', in Abulafia, The French descent into Renaissance Italy. Ante-
cedents and effects (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 71-89.