Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  The Pope’s champion sacked the old papal city of Benevento, and women and children were mown down with the men in the harvest of the sword. The town ran blood and wine, and Charles’s threadbare Frenchmen filled their wallets and saddle-bags with gold, and got fine silk and cloth of gold to their backs. Three days they sought Manfred’s body among the festering slain; and on the third day a peasant found it, and tied it upon an ass, and hawked it through the French camp, offering to sell it for money; but when it had been recognized by some of the nobles whom Charles had taken prisoners, he commanded that it should be buried in the ditch beside the bridge. Even there the brave man’s bones were not allowed to rest in peace, for, though the ground was not consecrated, it was the property of the Church, and the Bishop of Cosenza therefore caused the body to be dug up again and dragged away beyond the river Verde.

  Thus died Manfred; and when he was dead the Saracens of Lucera went over to Charles, and Naples sent her keys, and in the castle of Capua Charles found a great treasure, all in pieces of gold. But when he commanded that scales should be brought with which to divide the wealth exactly, a certain knight of Provence pushed the great heap of gold pieces into three equal divisions upon the marble floor with his foot and spurred heel. ‘One for my lord the king,’ he said, ‘and this for the queen, and this other for your knights.’ And so it was done. Charles entered Naples in triumph, and it is recorded that he first brought thither the love of show and luxury that have distinguished it ever since, and that the common people cried out in an ecstasy of sheer delight at the procession of splendid gilded cars, and at the richly clad maids of honour, and at the great show of triumph that meant death to Conradin.

  Now Charles of Anjou, having disposed of his enemy in one great victory, found himself in peaceful possession of the south, and at once he took the Guelph side, and led armies to Tuscany, and joined in the unending quarrel; wherefore the Ghibellines sent urgent letters to young Conradin, now nearly sixteen years of age, bidding him to come and conquer Sicily, and take possession of his own. He set out with a few thousand men and reached Verona, calling himself King of Sicily, and the Pope lost no time in excommunicating him for this arrogance. Most of his troops deserted him at once, on account of his poverty, but his friends raised his standard in Sicily, and the island rang with his praises; for the French yoke was heavy. But though the patriotic party gained an advantage here and there, the end was not far off. In the beginning of 1268 Conradin ventured to leave Verona, and riding southwards he found more than one of the restless Tuscan cities ready to throw off Charles’s authority. Charles prepared to meet him, but was himself at odds with the Saracens of Lucera, who had discovered the character of the master to whom they had readily submitted, and who was obliged to besiege them in their city. Meanwhile Conradin reached Rome, and was received with splendour by his friends, in spite of the papal excommunication. The Pisans sent him twenty-four galleys, with which, sailing southwards, he beat back the vessels sent against him by the Angevin; and Ghibellines flocked to his standard from all parts of Italy. Conradin now marched up by land with a vast host, and there were few who did not predict his complete success. On the twenty-third of August, 1268, the decisive battle was fought in the plain of Tagliacozzo, not many miles from Lake Fucino. Charles, fearing the superior numbers arrayed against him, fought with all the coolness and skill he could command, and while his main force attacked the enemy, he withdrew to a little eminence, where he watched the battle with the chosen reserve of five hundred knights. A wise old captain more than once prevented him from rushing in at the wrong moment, and Charles sat quietly on his horse, though he saw how the ranks of his army were broken by the Ghibellines’ furious charge; but when Conradin’s army was broken up into small bodies that pursued the French hither and thither, certain of victory, and when, indeed, that victory seemed almost sure, then the crafty old Alardo touched Charles upon the arm, and said that the time was come, and that he should win the field. Then he led his five hundred knights at furious speed, for their horses were fresh, and fell upon the disordered troops of his enemy, hewing them in pieces, and turning the day in a moment. Conradin and the young Duke of Austria and two other friends escaped when they saw that all was lost, and riding desperately reached Astura, on the Maremma shore; there they hired a little boat, hoping to escape into Tuscany; but Frangipane, the lord of that castle, guessed who they were, and seized them, and basely sold them to the Angevin king.

  The end of the house of Hohenstaufen was at hand. Of the Emperor Frederick’s descendants, six were alive at the time of the battle of Benevento, whose claims might be dangerous to his throne, namely, Conradin and Manfred’s five children. Of the latter, Constance, the eldest, was out of danger, being married to Peter of Aragon; of the girl Beatrice we know nothing; the three sons, Henry, Frederick, and Anselm were Charles’s prisoners after the decisive battle, and they died in a miserable captivity in Apulia. Ten of Frederick’s children and grandchildren died in prison, or by a violent death. One of his granddaughters, a daughter of Enzo of Sardinia, married that famous Ugolino della Gherardesca who was starved to death with his sons and grandsons in Pisa. The shade of King Tancred was perhaps appeased by such an atonement for Henry the Sixth’s bloody deeds.

  The last act of the great tragedy was played in Naples, on the twenty-sixth or the twenty-ninth of October, for the authorities do not agree, in the year 1268. Determined to destroy every possible claimant, Charles of Anjou ordered Conradin and his fellow-captives to be tried by Robert of Bari, Grand Protonotary of the kingdom, and the infamous judge of an infamous king condemned the imperial boy and his noble companions to death, as ‘traitors to the sovereign, contemners of the Pope’s commands, and disturbers of the public peace in Italy.’ Conradin’s claim to the succession was just, and he and his friends were prisoners of war; to put them to death was a solemn and atrocious murder.

  On the appointed day the sentence was executed. Charles of Anjou, determined to see the end of his helpless enemy with his own eyes, came in state to the market-place, where the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine now stands, and his throne was placed upon a platform overlooking the scene, and on the stones a great piece of scarlet velvet was spread out, whereon the men were to die. There stood young Conradin, a fair-haired boy of sixteen years, fearless as all his race, and the young Duke of Austria and six others, and the executioner beside them.

  Then Robert of Bari, Grand Protonotary, stood up by order of the king and read the sentence in a loud voice; but when he had finished, Robert of Flanders, the king’s own son-in‑law, gravely drew his sword, and he came and stood before the Grand Protonotary and said, ‘It is not lawful that you should condemn to death so great a gentleman.’ And when he had said this he pierced the protonotary through and through, so that the sword ran out behind him, and he fell dead, with the written sentence in his hand. Then a great silence fell upon all the multitude, and upon the king, and Robert of Flanders sheathed his sword and went back to his place; for neither then nor afterwards did any one dare to lift a hand against him for what he had done.

  So while the judge lay dead before the throne, the execution began; and the young Duke of Austria bent his neck to the stroke, and when his head fell Conradin took it in his hands and kissed it, for they had been as brothers, and he laid it reverently beside the body. Then he drew off his glove and threw it among the people, and cried out that he left his kingdom to Frederick of Aragon, the son of Constance, and his cousin; and when he had asked pardon of God for his sins he knelt down without fear, and his head was struck off, and after him died all his companions. Their bodies lay long upon the scarlet velvet, and Charles commanded that a common ditch should be dug there, in the market-place, to bury them; and afterwards a porphyry column was set up to mark the spot; and now they lie in the Church of the Carmine.

  But some who saw that deed took the boy king’s glove, and by and by they brought it to Peter, king of Aragon, young Frederick’s father, and he swore to aven
ge the blood of Conradin; and though the atonement was begun by other hands, he kept his word, and Charles of Anjou cursed the day whereon he had gone out to see an innocent boy die by the executioner’s hand.

  But he had not yet fulfilled the measure of his cruelties. At the news of Conradin’s death, Sicily rebelled against him, and he put down the rebellion with such wholesale massacres of the people and such cruel executions of their leaders as even Sicily had seldom seen; and he left a French army there with orders to keep the people down by terror; and neither the protestations of Pope Clement the Fourth nor the entreaties of his brother, Saint Lewis of France, could prevail upon him to stay his wrath, for he was afraid. He also destroyed Lucera, and drove out the Saracens who survived the siege.

  Two years after Conradin’s death, Saint Lewis set out upon the seventh and last Crusade, and took Tunis by storm, and waited there for Charles of Anjou to join him. But Charles would not set out, and the good French king perished of the plague, with many of his army; and when the remains of the crusaders’ fleet were driven upon the rocks and wrecked near Trapani, Charles robbed the survivors of all they could save, alleging that a law of King William authorized the kings of Sicily to seize all wrecks with their cargoes. For a time the body of Saint Lewis lay in Palermo, but afterwards it was taken to France by his son, King Philip, and only his heart is buried in the cathedral.

  During fourteen years Charles of Anjou ruled his kingdoms of Sicily and Apulia with every species of violence and exaction; tax followed upon tax, impost upon impost, and tithes both ordinary and extraordinary, the slightest delay in payment being followed by ruthless confiscation. The cities were held by French garrisons under general instructions to inspire fear, to extort money, and to impose instant obedience to the king’s decrees. The wives of respectable citizens were nowhere safe from Charles’s licentious officers, and the women and maidens of the people were at the mercy of a ribald soldiery. More than once the Sicilians appealed to the popes against Charles, and more than one pontiff exhorted him to a milder conduct; but the Angevin was in a fever of conquest, he dreamed of ruling all Italy, he planned the conquest of the East, and he brought about the election of Pope Martin the Fourth, who was his humble servant and creature.

  There lived at that time a certain noble of Salerno, brought up in the school of medicine for which that city remained famous for ages, a man of letters, of singular wisdom, and a very skilled physician. This man was John of Procida; he had been closely attached to the person of the Emperor Frederick the Second, and I find his name among the witnesses to that emperor’s will. After the death of Frederick, he had been faithful to Manfred, and after the fall of the house of Hohenstaufen Charles of Anjou confiscated all his goods. He might have lost his life also, had he not retired in good season to the court of Aragon in Barcelona, where he was well received by King Peter and by Queen Constance, Manfred’s daughter. He found the king well enough inclined to avenge Conradin and to undertake the conquest of Sicily, but the enterprise was a great one, and he was not provided with means to enter upon it. John of Procida promised to find money. Though he must have been at that time more than sixty years of age, he travelled through all Sicily in disguise, seeking out and ascertaining as nearly as possible what pecuniary help was to be obtained for the impoverished land. It needed no long time to assure him that Sicily was ripe for a revolution, but John was too wise to underestimate Charles’s power; from Sicily he went on to Constantinople, and without difficulty persuaded the Emperor Paleologus that, in order to defend himself against the attack which Charles was planning, the best plan was to bring on a civil war in the Angevin’s own dominions. The Emperor of the East promised large sums of money to Peter of Aragon for this purpose, and with unwearying energy John made his way at once from Constantinople to Rome; he was received in a secret audience by Pope Nicholas the Third, who was an Orsini, who was believed to be hostile to Charles, and who promised great things, but unfortunately died before the great scheme was ripe for execution.