The Kingdom in the Sun

by John Julius Norwich

  This time the financial inducements offered were more than the King could resist. Tancred could not return to Joanna her county of Monte S. Angelo; its position on his north-east frontier was of too much stategic importance at such a moment. But he was prepared to grant her twenty thousand ounces of gold in compensation, over and above the million taris she had already received, while to her brother he offered another twenty thousand in lieu of the lost legacy. It was further agreed that Richard's nephew and heir, the three-year-old Duke Arthur of Brittany, should forthwith be betrothed to one of Tancred's daughters. In return Richard promised to give the King of Sicily full military assistance for as long as he and his men should remain within the Kingdom, and undertook to restore to its rightful owners all the plunder he had taken during the disturbances of the previous month. On 11 November, with due ceremony, the resulting treaty was signed at Messina.

  The reaction of Philip Augustus to this sudden rapprochement between his two fellow-monarchs can well be imagined. As usual, however, he concealed his resentment. Outwardly his relations with Richard remained cordial. The two of them had plenty to discuss be­fore they set off again. Rules of conduct must be drawn up for soldiers and pilgrims alike; there were endless logistical problems still unsolved; it was vital, too, that they should reach agreement in advance about the distribution of conquests and the division of spoils. On all these matters Richard proved surprisingly amenable; on one point only, unconnected with the Crusade, did he refuse to be moved. It concerned the French King's sister Alice, who had been sent to England more than twenty years before as a bride for one of Henry IPs sons. She had been offered to Richard who, predictably, would have nothing to do with her; but instead of returning her to France Henry had kept her at his court, later making her his own mistress and, almost certainly, the mother of his child. Now Henry was dead and Alice, at thirty, was still in England and as far away from marriage as ever.

  Philip was in no way concerned for her happiness; he had never lifted a finger to help his other, even more pathetic sister Agnes-Anna of Byzantium, twice widowed in hideous circumstances before she was sixteen. But this treatment of a Princess of France was an insult which he could not allow to pass. He found Richard just as adamant as Henry had been. Not only did he refuse once again, point-blank, to consider marrying Alice himself; he had the effrontery to try to justify his attitude on the grounds of her besmirched reputation. Here indeed was a test of Philip's sang-froid; and when Richard went on to inform him that his mother Eleanor was at that very moment on her way to Sicily with another bride, the Prin­cess Berengaria of Navarre, relations between the two monarchs came near breaking point. It was probably more to keep up appear­ances than for any other reason that Philip accepted Richard's invitation to the great banquet at Mategrifon that was held on Christmas Day; but he may have been consoled by the reflection that most of the Sicilian notables also present had had a similar struggle with their consciences.

  On 3 March 1191 the King of England rode down in state to Catania to call on the King of Sicily. The two reaffirmed their friendship and exchanged presents—five galleys and four horse transports for Richard who, according to at least two authorities, gave Tancred in return a still more precious token of his affection— King Arthur's own sword, Excalibur itself, which had been found, only a few weeks before, lying beside the old King's body at Glastonbury.1 The meeting over, the two returned together as far as Taormina, where a disgruntled Philip was waiting. A new crisis was narrowly averted when Tancred, for reasons which can only be guessed, showed Richard the letters he had been sent by the King of France the previous October, warning him of English machinations; but by the end of the month the allies were again reconciled and relations seem to have been comparatively cordial all round when, on 30 March, Philip sailed with his army for Palestine.

  He had timed his departure well; or, perhaps more likely, it was Eleanor and Berengaria who had timed their arrival. Scarcely had the French fleet disappeared over the horizon when their own convoy dropped anchor in the harbour. It was forty-four years since the old Queen had last seen Sicily, calling on Roger II at Palermo on her journey from the Holy Land. On this second visit she had hoped to witness the marriage of her favourite son to the wife she had chosen for him; but Lent had begun, and a Lenten marriage was out of the question. Despite a recent prohibition of women from going on the Crusade, it was therefore decided that Berengaria should accompany her future husband to the East. Young Queen Joanna, who could obviously not be left in the island, would make a perfect

  1 Le ray Richard saunz plus a ly a redonez

  La meyllur espeye ke unkes fu forgez.

  Ca fu Kaliburne, dount Arthur le senez

  Set solait guyer en gueres et en mellex.

  So writes Peter of Langtoft in his curious brand of Yorkshire French, echoing Roger of Hoveden a century earlier. But since the so-called grave of Arthur was discovered only at the beginning of 1191, Excalibur would have needed all its magic properties to reach Sicily by early March.

  chaperon for her. Once everything was settled, Eleanor saw no reason to delay any longer. After only three days in Messina, with that energy for which she was famous all over Europe—she was now sixty-nine and had been travelling uninterruptedly for over three months—she left again for England.

  The day after bidding her mother goodbye for the last time, Joanna herself set off with Berengaria for the Holy Land. Richard had put at their disposal one of his heavy dromons; it was slower than a galley but a good deal more comfortable, and it had plenty of room for the ladies' attendants and their enormous quantities of baggage. He himself remained another week, organising the embarkation of his army and the demolition of Mategrifon. Finally, on 10 April, he too sailed away. The Messinans cannot have been sorry to see the last of him.

  But their King did not share their relief. Certainly Sicily might be a happier and more peaceful place without Richard's turbulent presence—but only for as long as Henry of Hohenstaufen delayed his invasion. Had Richard been able to stay a little longer, his help would have been invaluable, perhaps even decisive. He could not be blamed for leaving when he did; his presence was urgently needed in Palestine—where, four years after Hattin, the situation was now desperate—and his crusading oath took precedence over all other commitments. None the less, his departure shattered Tancred's greatest single hope of saving his country from the imperial clutches. Now, when the crisis came, he would have to face it alone. He could not know that that crisis was less than three weeks away.

  21

  NIGHTFALL

  O Singer of Persephone!

  In the dim meadows desolate

  Dost thou remember Sicily ?

  Wilde, Theocritus

  If Henry of Hohenstaufen had been able to follow his original plan of campaign, he would have left Germany in November 1190 and almost certainly arrived in Sicily before the departure of the English troops. His failure to do so was principally due to a report that reached him just as he was setting out. On 10 June his father, Frederick Barbarossa, after a long and arduous journey across Anato­lia, had led his army out of the last of the Taurus valleys and on to the flat coastal plain. The heat was sweltering and the little river Calycadnus1 that ran past the town of Seleucia to the sea must have been a welcome sight. Frederick spurred his horse towards it, leaving his men to follow. He was never seen alive again. Whether he dismounted to drink and was swept off his feet by the current, whether his horse slipped in the mud and threw him, whether the shock of falling into the icy mountain water was too much for his tired old body—he was nearing seventy—remains unknown. He was rescued, but too late. The bulk of his army reached the river to find their Emperor lying dead on the bank.

  His son Henry, with two crowns to claim instead of one, was still more anxious to leave for the South as soon as possible. Internal problems following his father's death kept him occupied for some weeks; fortunately the winter was mild, the Alpine passes still open.

  1 In
modern Turkish Seleucia has become Silifke, while the Calycadnus is now less euphoniously known as the Goksu.

  By January he and his army were safely across. Then, after a month spent strengthening his position in Lombardy and securing the assistance of a fleet from Pisa, he headed towards Rome where Pope Clement III was expecting him.

  But before Henry could reach the city Pope Clement was dead. Hurriedly—for the imperial troops were fast approaching—the Sacred College met in conclave and selected as his successor the Cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Cosmedin, Hyacinthus Bobo. It seemed, in the circumstances, a curious choice. The new Pope was of illustrious birth—his brother Ursus was founder of the Orsini family—and could boast a long and distinguished ecclesiastical record, having stoutly defended Peter Abelard against St Bernard at Sens more than fifty years before. But he was now eighty-five— hardly, one might have thought, the man to handle the overbearing young Henry during a crisis that threatened the position of the Church almost as much as it did that of the Kingdom of Sicily. There is every indication that he shared this view himself; only the proximity of the German army, together with widespread fears of another schism if there were any delay in the election, at length persuaded him to accept the tiara. A cardinal since 1144, it was only on Holy Saturday, 13 April 1191,that he was ordained priest; on the following day, Easter Sunday, he was enthroned at St Peter's as Pope Celestine 111; and on the 15th, as the first formal action of his pontificate, he crowned Henry and Constance Emperor and Empress of the West.

  With his experience of half a century in the papal service, no one knew better than Celestine the dangers of allowing the Empire to annex the Kingdom of Sicily. In the circumstances, however, he could hardly insist on an undertaking from the new Emperor to advance no further to the south; and such attempts as he did make to dissuade Henry from pursuing his plans were, as might have been expected, poorly received. On 29 April, just a fortnight after his coronation—papa prohibente et contradicente as Richard of S. Germano puts it—Barbarossa's son led his army across the Garigliano and into Sicilian territory.

  Within the limits of his possibilities, Tancred was ready for him. The defection of so many of his mainland vassals had prevented him from raising an army capable of defeating the imperial forces in the field; he therefore wisely concentrated on building up his defences in those areas on whose support he could rely—in Sicily itself, in his own territory around the heel of Apulia and, above all, in the larger towns on both sides of the peninsula where the bourgeoisie, republi­can as they might be, far preferred a King to an Emperor and readily accepted the privileges, charters and indemnities he promised them. Meanwhile he sent Richard of Acerra north, at the head of as large a force as he could muster, to stiffen local resistance.

  At first Richard made little progress. He probably knew that any attempt to secure the loyalties of the lands along the northern frontier would be doomed to failure and, like Tancred, focused his energies where he felt they would be most effective. Thus, in the first weeks of the invasion, Henry carried all before him. One town after another opened its gates; more and more of the local barons joined the imperial ranks. From Monte Cassino to Venafro, thence to Teano—nowhere was there a sign of opposition. Even Capua, once the most jealously independent of the cities of Campania, now welcomed the Germans as they approached, its archbishop giving orders for the Hohenstaufen standard to be hoisted on the ramparts. At Aversa, the first Norman fief in all Italy, it was the same story; Salerno, King Roger's mainland capital, did not even await the arrival of the imperial troops before writing to assure Henry of its loyalty—simultaneously inviting Constance to spend the hot summer months in her father's old palace. Only when the Emperor reached Naples was he brought to a halt.

  In the half-century during which it had formed part of the Norman Kingdom, Naples had grown and prospered. It was now a rich trading port numbering some forty thousand inhabitants, including an important Jewish community and commercial colonies from Pisa, Amalfi and Ravello. Recently, to encourage their loyalist sympathies, Tancred had accorded to the Neapolitans a whole series of grants and privileges. Richard of Acerra had therefore wisely selected the city as his headquarters. Its defences were in good order—Tancred had had them repaired the year before at his own expense—its granaries and storehouses full. When the Emperor appeared with his army beneath its walls, the citizens were ready for him.

  The ensuing siege was not, from their point of view, a particularly arduous one. Thanks to the incessant harrying of the Pisan ships by the Sicilian fleet under Margaritus, Henry never managed properly to control the harbour approaches, and the defenders continued to receive reinforcements and supplies. On the landward side the walls took a heavy battering; the Count of Acerra was wounded and tem­porarily replaced as commander by Matthew of Ajello's second son Nicholas, now Archbishop of Salerno, who had deliberately left his flock a few weeks previously in protest at their disloyalty. But the defences held firm; and it became clear, as the summer dragged on, that it was the besiegers rather than the besieged who were beginning to feel the strain.

  Looking back—as we can now do, for the end is near—over the whole chequered history of the Normans in the South, we might well be forgiven for seeing it as an almost unrelieved saga of treachery and betrayal. Only one of their allies had never let them down: the heat of the southern summer. Again and again it had saved them from successive waves of imperial invaders, from that distant day in 1022 when Henry the Holy had withdrawn in despair from the siege of Troia to now, the best part of two centuries later, when his namesake, seeing his forces decimated by malaria, dysentery and wholesale defections and eventually himself falling seriously ill, recognised that he too must turn his army homeward while there was still time.

  It was on 24 August that Henry gave the order to raise the siege of Naples, and within a day or two the imperial host, still impressive but now noticeably smaller and slower than it had been a few weeks before, had trailed off northward over the hills. The Neapolitans watched them go with satisfaction. They knew, however, that to Henry this withdrawal was nothing more than an irritating reverse; it meant delay, but not defeat. He had posted imperial garrisons in all the most important towns and cities and, in order that there should be no possible doubts about his future intentions, had arranged to leave Constance in Salerno till his return.

  Here, however, he made a serious mistake. He did not under­stand the temper of the South, and it obviously never struck him that news of his retreat, combined with fears of Tancred's vengeance at their disloyalty, would, within days of his own departure, reduce the Salernitans to panic. In their frantic search for a scapegoat, a Salernitan mob attacked the palace in which Constance was staying and would probably have killed her had not Tancred's nephew, a certain Elias of Gesualdo, appeared on the scene just in time and taken her into protective custody, sending her on at the earliest opportunity to the King in Messina.

  To Tancred the capture of the Empress must have seemed like a godsend. He had been much heartened by the news of Henry's departure, but he knew that the battle was still scarcely joined. Henry might have found the going harder than he had expected, but his army had not been routed—it had not even been opposed in the open field—and much of northern Campania, including Monte Cassino, remained under his control. The first round, though less disastrous than Tancred had feared, could at best be said to have ended in a draw; and prospects for the second were not particularly bright.

  Not, at least, until Constance appeared. But now the situation was suddenly altered; the most valuable diplomatic hostage that Tan­cred could ever have hoped for had fallen into his lap. No longer was he obliged to wait in impotent suspense till Henry should choose to invade his territory again: he was in a position to negotiate. Meanwhile, as a further encouragement to him, Pope Celestine was showing unmistakable signs of friendship. Even while the siege of Naples was sdll in progress, the Pope had gone behind the Emperor's back and negotiated with Henry the Lion; and fou
r months later, in December, he excommunicated the whole monastery of Monte Cassino as a punishment for having espoused the imperial cause. Monte Cassino still maintained its opposition to Tancred, but there could no longer be any question where the Pope's own sympathies lay.

  Sympathy, however, did not mean endorsement. To any pope, too powerful a Sicily was every bit as dangerous as too powerful an Empire. Safety, as always, lay in holding the balance between them. What was required was mediation; and if in the course of that media­tion the Pope were to incline towards the Sicilian point of view, he saw no reason why he should not extract concessions in return.

  Tancred's popular support was reduced, in particular, by his still shaky legal position; a papal investiture confirming his right to the crown would be of immense value to his cause—if he were prepared to pay for it.

  Which of the two took the initiative, and when, is no longer known; but discussions through intermediaries must have been going on during the spring and summer of 1192 for when Tancred, fresh from a successful punitive expedition against his rebellious vassals in the Abruzzi, met the papal envoys at Gravina in June, the main terms of a treaty had already been agreed. They were simple enough in their way, and they obtained for the King the investiture he wanted; but they involved the surrender of all those special rights over the ecclesiastical administration in the island of Sicily that had been secured with such difficulty by Roger I and II and re­negotiated by William the Bad at Benevento in 115 6.1 Henceforth the Sicilian clergy would be entitled, in just the same way as their main­land brethren, to appeal to Rome in cases of supposed injustice. The Pope might send his special envoys to Sicily whenever he liked and not only when the King asked for them. Elections to the hier­archy would no longer be subject to royal approval.