In Later Times
MY TASK IS almost ended. I have traced the story of the south from the times of the first Greek settlements to the establishment of the house of Aragon on the Sicilian throne, through a period of about two thousand years, endeavouring to spare the reader all unnecessary names and dates, the accumulation of which has made the history of Italy so difficult a study for persons of ordinary memory. In the few remaining pages I shall briefly explain the succession of events that led directly from the coronation of Peter of Aragon to the sovereignty of Charles the Fifth, requesting the reader to remember that this part of the story of the south is a history in itself, which alone would fill a great space, but that it is also an important part of that history of Italy which exists, indeed, in several hundred volumes written in all languages, but which unfortunately does not exist as a single book in one tongue.
The first result of the war of the Sicilian Vespers was that two sovereigns called themselves kings of Sicily, namely, those of the house of Aragon, who remained in possession, and those of the house of Anjou, who never recovered what Charles had lost. The kingdoms were therefore called the ‘Two Sicilies,’ the one being the island and the other the mainland, with Naples for its capital, and they continued to be so called even after they were finally united under Ferdinand the Catholic, who was the Second of Sicily, the Second of Aragon, the First of united Naples and Sicily, and the Third of Naples.
The next matter to be understood is that the kingdom of Sicily under the Aragonese kings was often given or left by them to their sons and brothers as a separate and independent monarchy. King Peter left it to his second son, James, who only became king of Aragon when his elder brother died, and he in turn gave Sicily to his younger brother Frederick, whose direct male descent failed, and whose great-granddaughter Mary married the heir of Aragon, who became Martin the First of Sicily, but died childless, leaving Sicily to his father, Martin the Second of Sicily. But the father had no other children, and at his death both Aragon and Sicily went to the son of Martin’s sister, who had married King John of Castile, the Norman blood descending three her alone, as it had descended through Constance, Manfred’s daughter, to all the house of Aragon and Castile, and to ‘Mad Joan,’ the elder sister of Katherine of Aragon, Henry the Eighth’s unhappy queen; and by ‘Mad Joan’ it descended to Charles the Fifth and all the house of Austria.
This fragment of genealogy will serve to show how the kingdoms of the Two Sicilies became involved in the history of Europe, and how the succession to them became disputable, since the whole imperial house of Austria is descended from the same ‘Mad Joan.’ It is hard to imagine anything more confusing, for after her all the royal claimants were equally Hapsburgs, since they were all descended from her husband, Philip of Hapsburg, Archduke of Austria, the sole progenitor of the Austrian emperors and Spanish kings that came after him, and, by the marriage of Anne of Austria with Lewis the Thirteenth of France, the ancestor of all the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, who are of the house of Austria only by the female side, their male progenitor having been Philip, the younger brother of the ‘Second Dauphin,’ and a grandson of Lewis the Fourteenth of France. After the conquest of Sicily by Peter of Aragon, and the establishment of the Angevin dynasty in Naples, the principal causes of disturbance lay in questions of succession, so far as Sicily was concerned, and, for Naples, in the relations of that kingdom with the Holy See, which were not by any means always friendly. The great Roman houses of Colonna and Orsini, whose history is so closely connected with that of the popes in the middle ages, fought across the borders of the kingdom of Naples, and more than once the Colonna took refuge in the south, while the Orsini lorded it in Rome; but sometimes also the Orsini got possession of great lands in the southern country, and their ancient arms are conceived over the doors of more than one old castle in the wild mountains of the Basilicata. To name one only, Muro was theirs, — the vast stronghold in which Joan the First at last paid for her many crimes with her life, a place which few have visited, but which gives a far better idea of the existence led by the barons of the fourteenth century than any castle I have examined.
Joan the First of Naples came to the throne in the year 1343, being at that time a beautiful girl sixteen years of age. She was the granddaughter of good King Robert, surnamed the Wise, who was himself the grandson of Charles of Anjou, and whose only son, Joan’s father, died before him. She was already married to the young Andrew, brother of the king of Hungary, and it had been understood that when she succeeded to the throne her husband was to take the title of King of Naples; but when the coronation took place, the cardinal legate who performed the ceremony crowned Joan only, to the mortification and disappointment of Andrew and his many Hungarian courtiers. The latter were a cause of dissension between their master and the queen; they brought the manners and bearing of a half barbarous nation to a court that had at first astonished the south by its magnificence, and which had reached a high degree of civilization and outward refinement since the days of its first king. In strong contrast to these rough Hungarians, who were insolent when they were sober, and dangerous when they were drunk, Joan saw around her her numerous cousins of the Durazzo line, who all enjoyed the dignity of princes of the blood, and the chief of whom, Charles of Durazzo, had married Joan’s younger sister Mary. It was natural, perhaps, that the queen’s antipathy should increase daily; and it was equally natural, on the other hand, that Andrew should feel himself slighted and injured because he had not received the promised crown; and in the meanwhile the princes secretly plotted, each hoping to obtain it for himself. In those times it was almost inevitable that such a condition of things should end in a tragedy, and it was not long in coming.
In the year after Joan’s coronation, Andrew’s friends at Avignon succeeded in persuading Pope Clement the Sixth to consent to his coronation, and to give his consent a practical shape by ordering the ceremony to take place at once, and by sending a cardinal legate to Naples to perform it. The princes understood well enough that if Andrew were once crowned their own chances would be gone; Joan detested her husband, and let it be understood by Charles of Durazzo that she would be glad to be rid of him. Whether she actually suggested the murder or not, it is not easy to say; it is generally believed that she did, and she suffered for it in the end. It was clear to those who wished Andrew’s death that it must take place quickly, and it is quite certain that Joan was well aware of the plot.
The chronicle of Este gives a full list of the conspirators, and describes the murder as follows, saying that in order to plan it they met together beforehand in a certain castle by the sea. They then came and told the queen that the deed could not be done in Naples, where Andrew was too well guarded, and the queen, whom the Latin chronicle rarely mentions without an epithet which I shall leave to the imagination of the reader, persuaded the king to go with her and spend the month of September in Aversa, inviting all the conspirators to accompany them. The conspirators there agreed with the two chamberlains that the latter should open the door to the king’s chamber when they desired it; and the queen consented to these things, and on the appointed night they entered. Then Beltram, the son of a natural son of King Robert, and the principal conspirator, seized the king by the hair; but the king dragged himself back and said, ‘This is a base jest.’ Then Beltram tried to throw the king, but the king seized his hand between his teeth, and did not let go until he had bitten the whole piece out. But Beltram’s companion slipped a noose round the king’s throat, and the two together drew it and twisted it so that he died. Having done this, they thought of burying him in a stable; but as they were carrying his body down the stairs, they fancied that they heard some of the knights coming, and being afraid, they brought the body back to the hall above and took counsel how they should hide it. At last they threw it out of the window into the pleasure garden, and then each went to his own room. Now the nurse of the dead king, who had come with him from Hungary, and who always suspected that some harm would
befall him through the princes who lived at the court, went into the king’s room, and there she saw the queen sitting beside the bed, but she did not see the king. She inquired of the queen saying, ‘Where is my master?’ The queen answered, ‘I know not where he is; thy master is far too young!’ Then the nurse, perceiving that she was ill-disposed, left the room, taking a light to search for her master, and looking towards the pleasure garden, it seemed to her that she saw a miraculous light there, which was intended to reveal the crime. She saw the king himself lying upon the grass, and thinking him asleep she went back to the queen. ‘My lady,’ said she, ‘the king sleeps in the garden.’ The queen answered, ‘Let him sleep.’ But she knew that he was dead. The nurse, who loved him not a little, went into the garden and saw him dead on the grass, strangled by the noose, and with his boots on, of which one was white and the other red, and one of his leathern hose was embroidered with gold, but the other was black. In the king’s mouth she found the piece of Beltram’s hand which he had bitten out. Then the nurse began to weep most bitterly, and by the sound of her weeping the crime was known. So the queen and her friends mounted their horses and returned to Naples, and caused the king’s body to be brought thither and buried by night.
The chronicle of Este distinctly states that Charles, Duke of Durazzo, and the princes of Taranto, one of whom Joan afterwards married, were not among the conspirators, and that in the riot which took place on the next day, they led the people to the grave, and exhumed the body in order to be sure of the king’s death, and then painted an image of him on a banner, with the noose round his neck, and besieged the queen and the murders, probably in the Castel Nuovo, which still overlooks the arsenal. Although they burned the doors and almost forced an entrance, they were driven back, and at last sent an embassy requesting the queen to give up the traitors. This she flatly refused to do, and the ambassadors remained shut up in the castle. But she, being young and badly frightened by the storm she had raised, at last consented to give up the conspirators with the exception of Beltram and his father; and the sea-gate of the castle was opened, and the conspirators were taken out and put on board of two galleys to be removed to the Castel dell’ Uovo; but as the governor of the castle had no orders from the queen he refused to admit them, and they were shut up in Duke Charles’s own prisons. Beltram and his father escaped to the castle of Sant’ Agata, near the summit of the pass between Garigliano and Sparanisi, but the duke besieged them, took them alive, and brought them back to Naples, where they had the privilege of dying by poison, as being the son and grandson of King Robert. The other conspirators were tortured and hanged, and one of the ladies who had taken part was burned alive. The queen alone escaped, remaining in her castle all the time. The chronicle of Este speaks of Charles of Durazzo as if he had been quite innocent of Andrew’s death, but Muratori says that he was believed to be the ‘manipulator of this great iniquity.’
It is not to be supposed that any kingdom could hold together under such a sovereign as Joan the First, and her long life was spent in frantic efforts to keep her throne, and in attempting to counteract each crime she committed by one still more enormous. She could not save herself by allowing Charles of Durazzo to execute her husband’s murderers, nor by marrying her cousin Luigi of Taranto, nor by obtaining a formal acquittal for herself in Rome. She was obliged to escape by night in a galley before the advance of the Hungarians, who were led to vengeance by their king, the murdered Andrew’s brother, and she took refuge in her own Provence, where she was, nevertheless, confined like a captive, because the Pope distrusted her. The king took Aversa, and treated with the princes, and they dined at his table but after dinner, says the chronicle, the king made his men take their arms, as if he meant to ride over to Naples, and then he suddenly asked to see the passage whence his brother’s body had been thrown. Standing there, he turned to Charles of Durazzo and accused him of the deed, and the Hungarian soldiers killed the duke where he stood, and threw his body into the garden: and the king sent the other princes to Hungary, where they were imprisoned. During nearly forty years Joan fought, intrigued, murdered, and fought again, adopted Lewis of Anjou for her successor, and perished miserably at last in Muro, by the order of another Charles of Durazzo, who at last got her kingdom and held it, and left it to his children. They died childless, the last being another Joan, called the Second, who adopted first one successor, Alfonso of Aragon, and then another, René of Anjou; and Alfonso took all, whereby the house of Aragon united the Two Sicilies under one crown.
Not long after the first Joan’s death at Muro, the throne of Sicily was shaken by the mad attempt of Bernardo Cabrera, the old Count of Modica, to marry the widowed queen by force, and seize the kingship. Martin the First had died childless, and was succeeded by his father, while his widow, the young and beautiful Blanche of Navarre, became vicar and lieutenant of Sicily. Then the elder Martin died also, and for more than two years the throne remained vacant, until Ferdinand the First, the son of Martin’s sister, was crowned as the only legitimate successor. Meanwhile, six other claimants aspired to the crown, and the confusion was indescribable. Cabrera was not one of them, for he could boast of no royal blood; he was Count of Modica, Grand Justiciary of the Kingdom, and one of the greatest nobles in Sicily; but he had conceived a mad passion for Blanche, and he believed that by marrying her he could grasp the crown.
A parliament was held in Taormina, and certain propositions were formulated by the wisest men there; old Bernardo Cabrera opposed them all, claimed the right to ruled Sicily in virtue of his high office, and at once formed a party among the barons, ever anxious for change. He swore loudly that he did not mean to persecute the queen, who would not resign her lieutenantship of the kingdom, and that he meant to hold the country for the crown of Aragon; but he won over the captain of the queen’s troops, and before long he besieged her in her castle at Catania. He sought an interview with her under a truce, and she, says the old Jesuit historian, Francesco Aprile, agreed to speak with him from the high poop of the galley, he standing below her on a bridge. In this ridiculous situation the count, ‘intoxicated by his insane love and boundless ambition, implored the queen to marry him.’ Then with a scornful smile, at once in surprise and complaint contempt, she answered only, ‘Oh, you rotten old man!’ Thereupon she turned away at once to Torres, to whom the galley belonged, and bade him put to sea; and she sailed away to Syracuse for greater safety. But Cabrera, furious at the insult, and more madly in love than ever, pursued her thither, and besieged her again in the old castle of the Marsetto on Ortygia, between the great and the small harbours. He battered the walls with siege engines, and in vain attempted to get in, and at last, in impotent rage, he pelted the stone walls with mud and garbage. She was at last rescued by John Moncada and Torres, who arrived in the latter’s galley at night, and fell upon Cabrera so suddenly that the old man fought for his life in his white nightcap. Queen Blanche was conveyed on board the vessel during the fighting, and the galley set sail for Palermo.
Even there she was not safe. She lodged in the great Chiaramonte palace, now the palazzo dei Tribunali, and once the seat of the Inquisition. Cabrera landed at Trapani, and advanced stealthily through his own possessions by way of Alcamo, enjoining the utmost secrecy upon his vassals, and guarding all the passes and roads, lest any one should warn the queen of his approach. He rode out of Alcamo at midday, and reached Palermo at dead of night, when the whole city was sleeping. But, cautious though he was, the clanking of his men’s armour in the street waked the queen. In her nightdress, her hair in wild confusion, she was covered rather by darkness than by any garments, says Aprile. Letting themselves out of the palace by a postern, she and her damsels fled at full speed along the shore, till they reached the old harbour, where Torres’s galley was moored. Though it was January, the terrified women waded out as far as they could towards the vessel, and called out with tears, in desperate anxiety, till Torres himself was wakened by their cries, and sent a boat off to bring them on bo
ard. He instantly weighed anchor and sailed to the strong castle of Solunto, a few miles to the eastward of Palermo. He had saved the queen a third time with the same galley.
Cabrera entered the Chiaramonte palace a few minutes after the queen had escaped. Her bed was still warm when he entered her room. ‘I have lost the partridge, but I have her nest!’ he cried, as he threw himself upon the couch and furiously kissed the pillow where the queen’s head had lately lain.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1451