Although academics engage in somewhat dry disputes about the cause and implications of the revolt, it has gained an emotional resonance and is still viewed as an early popular outcry against oppression. A thrilling representation of this is Verdi’s opera The Sicilian Vespers, which has little grounding in fact and focuses on a family drama and romance, although it does make John of Procida a substantial character credited with organizing the plot. However, it is a powerful work that has much to say about opposing tyranny and the anger of an oppressed people.
After the rebellion began in Palermo, it spread quickly through the west and centre of the island, with only Charles’s administrative centre of Messina remaining under Angevin control. Soon, however, it too went over to the rebels and the portion of Charles’s fleet for the Constantinople expedition moored there was destroyed. Messina elected its own officials to replace the Angevins, one of whom was Bartolomeo di Neocastro, who wrote a history of the revolt that is one of our best sources. There was great loss of life among the French, with thousands being killed.
Although at first not wanting to believe that the revolt was serious, the loss of his fleet at Messina brought home to Charles what was happening since it now ended any chance of attacking the Byzantines. Villani, who often claimed to know Charles’s exact words though writing fifty years later, says that Charles cried: ‘Lord God, since it has pleased you to ruin my fortune, let me only go down by small steps.’22 This is exactly what happened.
Whether there was a conspiracy against him or not, Charles still had allies. The pope – yet another one, Martin IV – excommunicated the rebels in Sicily and anyone who supported them, plus Michael Paleologus and the Ghibellines in northern Italy. Philip III of France was quick to support his uncle, and immediately remonstrated with King Peter of Aragon, whom he had suspected of designs against Sicily for some time. A force from France and another from Provence joined Charles, as well as a contingent from Florence. In July, Charles and his army landed near Messina. Several attempts to storm the city failed, but the citizens of Messina knew they were in desperate danger. The Sicilians now contacted Peter of Aragon, who had taken his ‘Crusading’ fleet to Algeria and was waiting for the right moment to intervene.
Now was the time, and Peter formally agreed to aid the Sicilians and restore his wife Constance, Manfred’s daughter, as the rightful queen of Sicily (with himself as king). He landed at Trapani and then brought an army overland towards Messina while his fleet followed around the northern coast of the island. Charles faced the prospect of a pitched battle with the knowledge that the Aragonese fleet would cut him off if he lost, since his own fleet was cobbled together from the remains of his own navy plus hired Genoese, Venetian and even Pisan ships that were unlikely to put up much resistance to the Aragonese. He chose to retreat back across the strait of Messina and wait for reinforcements.23
Intermittent skirmishes between the two forces dragged on for months with no knockout blow, while both sides tried to rally their allies. The pope had excommunicated Charles’s enemies, but more importantly Philip III of France sent troops and money, and threatened an invasion of Aragon itself. Peter’s allies had their own troubles, as Castile had fallen into civil war, Rudolph of Habsburg would never jeopardize his coronation as Emperor by intervening and risking excommunication, and Michael Paleologus died at the end of 1282, secure in his reputation as the reconqueror of Constantinople and having foiled an attack from the West. Edward I of England initially professed neutrality and expressed a wish for peace in Europe, but then surprisingly became involved in the war.
Late in 1282, Charles made an unexpected proposal for breaking the deadlock: he suggested that he and Peter meet in single combat and the winner would take Sicily. Even in the 13th century this method of resolving a conflict seemed quaint and foolishly romantic, but Peter accepted the proposal and serious negotiations began. Quickly it was decided that instead of single combat between Charles, now elderly by medieval standards at the age of fifty-five, and his younger rival (Peter was forty), each king would choose 100 knights to accompany him, and the two sides would fight on 1 June 1283 at Bordeaux. As Gascony belonged to Edward I, this was seen as neutral ground.24
Staking everything on this combat seemed incredibly foolish for Charles. Even if Charles believed right was on his side and God would never allow him to lose this judgement in battle, it was not his place to test God, as the pope pointed out. Edward I was similarly dismissive. There is always the possibility that Charles never intended to go through with the combat, as it was not uncommon for this kind of suggestion to be made. The party who issued the challenge would have the moral high ground if the enemy refused, and even if both sides agreed to the combat, negotiations would usually drag on so long that there would be many opportunities to call it off. This may have been Charles’s goal all along. By issuing the challenge he might take the heat out of the war in Sicily, and by diverting attention and resources to Gascony he could draw the conflict back onto the mainland and into the sphere of influence of his allies in France.
Early in 1283 Charles left his son Charles of Salerno as regent, and traveled to Paris to prepare for the combat. Charles of Salerno held a parliament in southern Italy and issued a series of reforms and proposals for improving government in the kingdom, showing both that the rebels had legitimate concerns and that the Angevin government was willing to respond to them. Despite this, Peter of Aragon consolidated his position in Sicily. Queen Constance arrived with their children, and a parliament in Messina confirmed that while on Peter’s death Aragon would go to Peter’s eldest son Alfonso, his next son James would inherit Sicily. John of Procida became chancellor of the kingdom and Roger of Lauria, of whom we will hear much more, became Grand Admiral of the fleet. Peter then returned to Spain and by May was proceeding to Bordeaux for the combat.
The great trial by battle turned into a farce. Edward I was forbidden by the pope to have anything to do with it, but he allowed his seneschal to prepare a battlefield. Charles was accompanied by Philip III and they arrived in Bordeaux with great splendour and ceremony, whereas Peter chose to arrive quietly. On the day of the combat, for which no particular time had been arranged, Peter and his knights went to the battlefield early in the morning, and on finding themselves alone issued a statement that Charles had failed to appear and that Peter was the winner. They then left. A few hours later Charles and his company also appeared on the battlefield, declared that Peter had failed to appear and claimed victory. They then each left Bordeaux.25
The battle for Sicily might have remained a local problem, but the pope and king of France were already involved. This escalated the conflict into a more general European war and inevitably with the papacy involved, a Crusade. Peter of Aragon was already excommunicated, and the pope declared that an attack on Peter and the Sicilian rebels would carry the full Crusading indulgence. Twenty years after the papacy organized the invasion to replace Manfred, the template was in place. Peter’s vassals were released from their obedience to him, and he was to be replaced with another prince. This would be Philip III’s younger son Charles of Valois, who, like Charles of Anjou, would dispossess the excommunicated king and found a new dynasty. Regardless of the fact that the proposed Crusade was unpopular with many in France, including Philip IV, the heir to the throne, to others it looked like another attempt to extend Capetian domination outside France. Philip III officially announced on 2 February 1284 that his son Charles of Valois had accepted the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia from the pope.
While this distraction played out, Charles of Salerno continued to organize the Angevin response to the Sicilian Vespers. Although he received a large loan from the pope, he also had to borrow money from the Kings of England and France as well as banks in Florence and Lucca. We have already seen that the pope and Charles of Anjou were heavily indebted to Tuscan bankers for the initial attack on Manfred, and this further involvement of the banks in the affairs of the Angevins would have lasting consequence
s for the European economy in the 14th century.
Charles of Salerno used the newly raised funds to fit out a Provençal fleet that went to the relief of Malta, where the Angevin garrison was blockaded by the Aragonese. The Aragonese admiral Roger of Lauria demonstrated his superiority and almost entirely destroyed the Angevin fleet, then mounted a brazen attack to capture the islands of Capri and Ischia within sight of Naples, and then used his control of the islands to blockade Naples itself. Unaware that Charles of Anjou was on the way with reinforcements by land and sea, and in violation of his father’s explicit instructions to avoid any conflict with Roger of Lauria, in May 1284 Charles of Salerno launched an attack on one of the islands to break the blockade, only to stumble into a naval battle with Roger’s fleet and suffer an overwhelming defeat. The entire Angevin force and Charles of Salerno himself were captured, and panicked riots broke out in Naples and across the remaining Angevin dominions.26
Although Charles of Anjou arrived a day later with a new fleet from Provence and restored order to his territories, the scale of the disaster could not be denied. Charles wrote to the pope and reassured him that he had ample forces to carry on the fight, but he could only manage inconclusive operations in southern Italy while Roger of Lauria continued to harry the coast. The entire kingdom seemed to be slipping away. Charles settled into winter quarters to prepare for a renewed attack on Sicily in 1285, in conjunction with the French Crusade against Aragon, but his health had begun to deteriorate.
On 7 January 1285, Charles died. Most of his empire was lost and his only surviving son and heir was a prisoner, yet to the end he remained convinced of the justice of all his actions. Villani gave his dying words, pointedly relating Charles’s speech in French in his Italian chronicle: ‘Lord God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, thus I pray to you, that you have mercy on my soul; as I took the kingdom of Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for my own profit or other gain, forgive me my sins.’27 Villani also provided an epitaph:
This Charles was the most feared and redoubted lord, and the most valiant in arms, and of the most lofty designs, of all the kings of the house of France from Charles the Great to his own day, and the one which most exalted the Church of Rome; and he would have done more if, at the end of his life, fortune had not turned against him.28
Charles truly was a conqueror on a scale unseen since Charlemagne, operating on a wider stage than William the Conqueror, but in the end his accomplishments were ephemeral. Although he founded a lasting dynasty in Naples, the calamities of his last years mean that he is remembered either as a tragic figure or a savage oppressor who got what he deserved, neither evaluation quite hitting the mark.
Charles had calmly made his will and left detailed instructions for the succession. He begged the pope to protect the kingdom, and if Charles of Salerno died in prison or were never released, his grandson Charles Martel would inherit all his possessions. Robert of Artois, son of the Robert of Artois who died in Egypt on St Louis’s Crusade, was to serve as regent. Although Charles seemed to have lost almost everything at the time of his death, in fact many of his achievements would live on.
Charles was buried in the cathedral in Naples in a grand marble tomb, though this sadly is no longer extant. Fittingly for a ruler who was consistently criticized in his Italian kingdom for being too French, he has several monuments in Paris. The rue du Roi-de-Sicile in the Marais is so named because Charles’s townhouse was once in this street, though the house itself passed to Charles of Valois when he married Charles’s granddaughter. Charles’s heart was also sent for burial at the Dominican convent of St Jacques in Paris, and the casket that held it was inscribed ‘the heart of the great King Charles who conquered Sicily’.29 Margaret of Burgundy’s heart was buried with Charles in 1309, and Charles’s great-granddaughter Clementia of Hungary commissioned a proper tomb in 1326. Although this was destroyed in the French Revolution, Charles’s effigy was moved to St Denis where it still lies with the kings of France. It is appropriate that he should be memorialized in this way, with an effigy among the French kings and his statue on the Capitol in Rome, and if his tomb in Naples is gone, the Castel Nuovo and the cathedral itself serve as his memorials in the city.
The Crusade Against Aragon
Although Charles was dead, the war continued, and Philip III invaded Aragon under a Crusading banner. This Crusade was infamous, even more than the Fourth Crusade and the Crusades against Frederick II and Manfred in Italy, and met with particular odium. Consider the facts of the case: a Christian king of Aragon was involved in a war with the Christian king of Sicily after being invited by the citizens of the island to pursue a claim to the throne by his wife, and on this basis the pope declared a Crusade so the Christian king of France could invade his neighbour’s kingdom. This could not but leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouths and the ‘Crusade’ was seen by many as nothing more than a straightforward war of conquest by France on behalf of the Angevins, who themselves were no more than French invaders who had taken Sicily from one rightful ruler and murdered another in the form of Conradin.
For the pious, the outcome of the Crusade fully demonstrated its dubious moral basis. Although Philip managed to take the important city of Girona, this was only after a siege lasting the entire summer, and by the time the city fell in September the army and Philip himself were ravaged by illness. Worse, Philip was relying on a French fleet to resupply the army and secure his lines of communication, and in the war of the Vespers there is literally only ever one outcome to naval engagements: Roger of Lauria appeared with the Aragonese fleet and completely destroyed the French ships. Aragonese troops cut off the French supply lines, and Philip was forced to retreat. On 5 October Philip died at Perpignan, ‘fleeing and disgracing the lilies’, as Dante aptly put it.30
This would seem to be a complete triumph for Aragon and the outlook for the Angevins was grim, but on 10 November Peter of Aragon died as well. The year 1285 saw the clearing of an entire generation of participants in the conflict, with the deaths of Charles of Anjou in January, Pope Martin IV in March, Philip III in October and Peter in November. Although the situation remained highly confused and the conflict would drag on for nearly another 200 years, the first sharp phase of the war did begin to subside as all the participants came to terms with a new generation of leaders and a new division of power in the Mediterranean.
Of course the new Angevin ‘King of Sicily’, Charles II ‘the Lame’, was a prisoner in Aragon. Sicily was lost, parts of southern Italy had revolted or been occupied by the Aragonese, Albania was gone except for outposts such as Durazzo, and Achaea was threatened by the resurgent Byzantine Empire. The scale of the catastrophe was such that we might not have expected anything to survive from Charles of Anjou’s attempt to build an empire. Yet Angevin fortunes recovered everywhere, and Charles of Anjou’s descendants would add another two crowns, and indeed a central European empire, to their possessions. The much less well-known figure of Charles II can take credit for restoring Angevin fortunes, and if he did not create a vast Mediterranean empire, nevertheless he did create a stable southern Italian state that endured for more than a century.
Angevin Naples
The Angevin kingdom centred on Naples, which had become one of the largest and most dynamic cities in Europe under Angevin rule. Considering that the Neapolitan Angevins are probably the most famous of all the Angevin dynasties, and Naples remains one of the most fascinating cities in Europe, it is worth looking at it in more detail as a character in the story.
Naples is an ancient Greek city: the Greeks named it ‘Neapolis’, the ‘New City’, which it was when they founded it in the 7th century BC, and it flourished under the Romans, where the nearby resorts of Baiae and, infamously, Capri, were the playgrounds of Emperors and the wealthy. Although Naples was an important centre under the Hohenstaufen and Frederick II founded its notably secular university, it was Charles of Anjou’s decision to establish it as his capital instead of Palermo that real
ly made its fortune. The Angevin imprint on the city was immediate: Charles of Anjou built the new castle still known as the Castel Nuovo or Maschio Angioino (‘Angevin Keep’), and which still dominates the city.
This supplanted the existing castles of the Hohenstaufen at the Capuan Gate, which Villani says Charles found ‘too German’, and the castle of Salvatore a mare di Napoli, universally known as the Castel dell’Ovo or ‘Castle of the Egg’. The basis for this name is rather marvellous. According to medieval legend, the Roman poet Virgil was also a powerful magician, and he had ended his days in Naples. The castle was built near the cave where he practised his enchantments, and a magical egg was said to be buried beneath the castle that would prevent it from being captured. The 14th-century French chronicler Jean Froissart believed the legend and wrote, it ‘is one of the strongest castles in the world, and situated as it were by enchantment in the sea, so that it is impossible to take it but by necromancy or by the help of the devil’.31
The castle needs no such fantastic story to be one of the most remarkable places in Europe. It sits on the island of Megara, which is the mythical site where the body of the siren Parthenope washed ashore (she, of course, flung herself into the sea and died after failing to seduce Odysseus with her song). Greek settlers from Cumae founded Neapolis on Megara in the 7th century BC, and it was a flourishing, and still very Greek, city throughout the Roman period. The Roman general and legendary epicure Lucullus built his villa on Megara, so as if the island hadn’t witnessed enough (real or fantastic) events, it was also the site of Lucullus’s spectacularly decadent banquets, including the one where in the absence of sufficiently important guests Lucullus entertained himself. The Emperor Nero made his debut as a singer in the theatre at Neapolis and performed there several times, though an earthquake during his first performance rather obviously foreshadowed the outcome of his artistic endeavours.
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 33