THE CONQUEST OF NAPLES.[16]

The stirring period of the middle ages, rich in examples of bold emprise and events of romantic interest, includes no more striking and remarkable episode than the invasion and conquest, by the brother of St Louis, of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. As an episode it has hitherto been treated—introduced, and not unfrequently crushed into unmerited insignificance, in works of general history. By both historian and poet fragments have been brought into strong relief; as an independent whole, no writer, until the present time, has ventured and chosen to attempt its delineation. The virtues and misfortunes of the last legitimate descendant of the imperial house of Stauffen, a house once so numerous and powerful, have been wept over by the minstrels to whose fraternity he belonged, vaunted by indignant chroniclers, and sung by the greatest of Italy’s bards. The gallant and successful insurrection by which the brightest gem was wrenched from the French usurper’s fire-new diadem, and set in Arragon’s crown, has been repeatedly recorded and enlarged upon, and not unfrequently mistold. But the integral treatment of the conquest of Naples, in a work devoted to it alone, and worthy of the weight and interest of the subject—the narrative of the ousting of the German dynasty and establishment of a French one, including the circumstances that led to the change, and apart from contemporary and irrelevant history—were left for the elegant and capable pen of an author honourably known for extensive learning and indefatigable research. The puissant rule of Frederick the Hohenstauffe—the heroic virtues and Homeric feats of Charles of Anjou—the precocious talents, fatal errors, and untimely end of the luckless Conradin—have found a fit chronicler in the accomplished Count of St Priest.

Besides acknowledged talents and great industry, this writer has brought to his arduous task a familiar acquaintance—the result of long and assiduous study—with the times and personages of whom he writes, a sound judgment, and an honest desire of impartiality. In his quality of Frenchman the latter was especially essential, to guard him against the natural bias in favour of an illustrious and valiant countryman, that might lead, almost unconsciously, to an undue exaltation of the virtues, and extenuation of the crimes, of the hero of his narrative. Nor was this the only instance in which he was liable to temptation. The circumstances and causes of the massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers, were handed down, in the first instance, by Italian writers, in the adoption of whose views and assertions subsequent historians have perhaps displayed too great servility. If we consider the vindictive and treacherous instincts of the Sicilians, their fierce impatience of foreign domination, and the slight account made of human life by the natives of southern Europe generally, we cannot too hastily reject the assertions and arguments by which M. de St Priest props his opinion, that the vengeance was greater than the offence, the oppressed more cruel than the oppressor. History affixes to an entire nation the stigma of goading a conquered people to madness, by arrogance, injustice, and excess. M. de St Priest takes up the defence, and, without claiming for his client an honourable acquittal, strives, by the production of extenuating circumstances, to induce the world to reconsider its severe and sweeping verdict. He asks whether the evidence has been sufficiently sifted, whether the facts have been properly understood and appreciated, or even known. “I think,” he says, “they have not. The Sicilians themselves acknowledge this. One of their most distinguished writers has suspected falsehood, and sought the truth; but he has done so only in a very exclusive, and consequently a very incomplete point of view. He has aggravated the reproach that rests upon the memory of the French of the thirteenth century. In my turn, I have resumed the debate with a national feeling as strong, but less partial I hope, than that of most of the Italian and German annalists, in whose footsteps our own historians have trodden with undue complaisance. It is time to stand aloof from these, and to reply to them.” It would be inverting the order of our subject, here to dilate upon M. de St Priest’s views concerning the massacre, to which we may hereafter recur. He scarcely makes out so good a case for the French victims to Sicilian vengeance as he does for the most prominent personage of his book, Charles of Anjou, whose character he handles with masterly skill. He admits his crimes—sets off with their acknowledgment; and yet so successfully does he palliate them by the received ideas of the time, by the necessities and perplexities of a most difficult position, that the reader forgets the faults in the virtues of the hero, and receives an impression decidedly favourable to the first French sovereign of Naples. “Had I proposed,”—we quote from the preface—“to write a biography, and not a history, to paint a portrait instead of a picture, I might have recoiled before my hero. The blood of Conradin still cries out against his pitiless conqueror; but the crime of the chief must not be imputed to the army. Aged warriors were seen to weep and pray around the scaffold of a child. The end I propose is not that of a retrospective vindication—an ungrateful, and often a puerile task. Charles of Anjou was guilty. That fact admitted, he still remains the greatest captain, the sole organising genius, and one of the most illustrious princes of a period fertile in great kings. Like his brother Louis IX., from whom, in other respects, he was only too different, he valiantly served France. He carried the French name into the most distant countries. By his political combinations, by the alliances he secured for his family as much as by his victories, Charles I., King of Sicily, seated his lineage upon the thrones of Greece, Hungary, and Poland. Yet more—he saved the western world from another Mahomedan invasion, less perceived, but not less imminent, than the invasions of the eighth and seventeenth centuries. The bust of Charles of Anjou merits a place between the statues of Charles Martel and John Sobieski.”

This high eulogium, at the very commencement of the book, strikes us as scarcely according with the promise of impartiality recorded upon the following page. The meed of praise exceeds that we should be disposed to allot to the conqueror of Naples. Still, upon investigation, it is difficult to controvert his historian’s assertions, although some of them admit of modification. Here M. de St Priest rather veils and overlooks his hero’s faults than denies them to have existed. He says nothing in this place of the misgovernment that lost Sicily, within a few years of its reduction. Yet to such misrule, more even than to the excesses of a licentious soldiery—partly consequent on it—was attributable the temporary separation of that fair island from the Neapolitan dominions. Subsequently he admits the imprudent contempt shown by Charles to this portion of his new kingdom, his injudicious choice of the agents and representatives of his authority, the exclusion of the natives from public offices and employments—filled almost wholly by Frenchmen—with many other arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust measures, sometimes more vexatious in form than efficient for the end proposed; as, for instance, the decree disarming the Sicilians, which must have been wretchedly enforced, since the Palermitans, when the signal for slaughter was given, were at no loss for weapons to exterminate their tyrants. Whilst admitting the skill shown by Charles in his foreign policy, and in the formation of great and advantageous alliances, we must refuse him, upon his advocate’s own showing, the merit of able internal administration. His military virtues are less questionable, although the greatest of his victories, which placed his rival in his power and secured his seat on the Neapolitan throne, was due less to any generalship of his own than to the bold stratagem of a gray-headed crusader.

Apart from its historical importance, M. de St Priest’s work is valuable as exposing and illustrating the peculiar ideas, strange customs, and barbarous prejudices of a remote and highly interesting period, less known than it deserves, and whose annals and archives few have explored more industriously than himself. In this point of view are we disposed, whilst glancing at some of the principal events it records, especially to consider it; and under this aspect it will probably be most prized and esteemed by the majority. A greater familiarity than the general mass of readers possess with the complicated history of the second period of the middle ages is requisite for the due appreciation of the book, and especially of its first volume. This is purely introductory to the conquest. The name of the conqueror is mentioned for the first time upon its last page. The matter it contains is not the less essential. It sketches the establishment of the Norman dynasty in Sicily; the elevation of that country into a monarchy by Duke Roger II.; the fall of the family of Tancred, and the reign of Frederick II., (Emperor of Germany, and grandson of Barbarossa,) who inherited the crown of the Two Sicilies in right of his mother, the posthumous daughter of Roger, and the last of the Norman line. This brings us into the thick of the long-standing feud between the Pope and the Empire, which, after having had the whole of Europe for its battle-field, at last concentrated itself in a single country. “Towards the middle of the thirteenth century it was transported to the southern extremity of Italy, to the rich and beautiful lands now composing the kingdom of Naples. The quarrel of the investitures terminated by the crusade of Sicily; a debate about ecclesiastical jurisdiction ended in a dispute concerning territorial possession. But although reduced to less vast proportions and more simple terms, the antagonism of the pontificate and the throne lost nothing of its depth, activity, and strength. Far from becoming weakened, it assumed the more implacable and rancorous character of a personal encounter. The war became a duel. It was natural that this should happen. So soon as a regular power was founded in the south of Italy, Rome could not permit the same power to establish itself in the north of the peninsula. The interest of the temporal existence of the popedom, the geographical position of the States of the Church, rendered this policy stringent. The Popes could never allow Lombardy and the Two Sicilies to be united under one sceptre. A King of Naples, as King of the Lombards, pressed them on all sides; but as Emperor he crushed them. This formidable hypothesis realised itself. A German dynasty menaced the Holy See, and was broken. A French dynasty was called to replace it, and obtained victory, power, and duration.” When this occurred—when the Pope, beholding from the towers of Civita Vecchia his earthly sway menaced with annihilation, and the Saracen hordes of Sicily’s powerful King ravaging the Campagna, fulminated anathemas upon the impious invaders, and summoned to his aid a prince of France—Manfredi, Prince of Tarento, or Mainfroy, as M. de St Priest prefers to call him, the natural son of Frederick II., was the virtual sovereign of the Two Sicilies. Frederick, who died in his arms, left him regent of the kingdom during the absence in Germany of his legitimate son Conrad—named his heir in preference to his grandson Frederick, the orphan child of his eldest son Henry, who had died a rebel, conquered and captive. This was not all. “The imperial will declared the Prince of Tarento bailiff or viceroy of the Two Sicilies, with unlimited powers and regal rights, whenever Conrad should be resident in Germany or elsewhere. Things were just then in the state thus provided for. Mainfroy becameipso factoregent of the kingdom; and the lucky bastard saw himself not only eventually called to the powerful inheritance of the house of Suabia, but preferred to the natural and direct heir of so many crowns.”

The death of Frederick the Hohenstauffe, who for long after his decease was popularly known—as in our day a greater than he still is—astheEmperor, revived the hopes and courage of Pope Innocent IV., who resolved to strike a decisive blow at the power of the house of Suabia. Mainfroy was then its representative in Italy. He was only nineteen—a feeble enemy, so thought Innocent, whom a word from the pontifical throne would suffice to level with the dust. But where the sanguine Pope expected to find a child, he met a man, in talent, energy, and prudence. These qualities Mainfroy displayed in an eminent degree in the struggle that ensued; and when Conrad landed in his kingdom, which had been represented to him as turbulent and agitated, he was astonished at the tranquillity it enjoyed. He embraced his brother, and insisted on his walking by his side, under the same dais, from the sea to the city. This good understanding did not last long. Conrad was jealous of the man who had so ably supplied his place, and jealousy at last became hatred. He deprived Mainfroy of the possessions secured to him by his father’s will, banished his maternal relatives with ignominy, and did all he could, but in vain, to drive him to revolt. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that when Conrad died, at the ageof twenty-six, leaving Berthold, Margrave of Hohemburg, regent of the kingdom during the minority of his son Conrad V., or Conradin—who had been born since his departure from Germany, and whom he had never seen—there were not wanting persons to accuse Mainfroy as an accessary to his death. Mainfroy had already been charged—falsely, there can be little doubt—of having smothered, under mattresses, his father and benefactor, the Emperor Frederick. There was more probability, if not more truth, in the accusation of fratricide; for, if Conrad had lived, doubtless Mainfroy would, sooner or later, have been sacrificed to his jealousy or safety. “The majority of chroniclers assign to Mainfroy, as an accomplice, a physician of Salerno; and add, with the credulity of the times, that he killed the King of the Romans by introducing diamond dust, an infallible poison, into his entrails. Others, bolder or better informed, give the name of the poisoner, and call him John of Procida.” Whether this death resulted from poison or disease, it was hailed as a happy event by the Italians, and with a great burst of laughter by the Pope, who at once renounced his project of calling a foreign prince to the throne of Sicily, and resumed, with fresh ardour, his plans of conquest and annexation. Advancing to the Neapolitan frontier, he was there met by the Prince of Tarento and the Margrave of Hohemburg, who came to place themselves at his disposal, and to supplicate him on behalf of the infant Conradin. The Pope, who saw a proof of weakness in this humility, insisted that the Two Sicilies should be delivered up to the Church; saying that he would then investigate the rights of Conradin, and admit them if valid. The Margrave, alarmed at the aspect of things, made over the regency to Mainfroy, who accepted it with affected repugnance. A powerful party called this prince to the throne: it was the aristocratic and national party, averse alike to papal domination and to the government of a child. They entered into an agreement with Mainfroy, by which they swore to obey him as regent, so long as the little King should live; stipulating that if he died a minor, or without direct heirs, the Prince of Tarento should succeed him as sovereign. The Margrave of Hohemburg, faithless to the trust reposed in him by Conrad, agreed to these conditions, and promised to deliver up to Mainfroy the late King’s treasures. Instead of so doing, the double traitor made his escape with them, leaving the new regent in such poverty that, in order to pay his German mercenaries, he was compelled to sell the hereditary jewels and gold and silver vases of his mother’s family.

If Mainfroy had made good fight in defence of Conrad’s rights, we may be sure he did not less strenuously strive when his own claim was to be vindicated. Unfortunate at first, and about to succumb to papal power and intrigues, he, as a last resource, threw himself into the arms of the Saracens of Lucera. These unbelievers had been greatly encouraged by his father, who was passionately addicted to things oriental. “From his infancy,” M. de St Priest says of Frederick, “he lived surrounded with astrologers, eunuchs, and odaliques. His palace was a seraglio, himself a sultan. This was quite natural. In Sicily all visible objects were Asiatic. The external form of the houses, their internal architecture, the streets, the baths, the gardens, even the churches, bore the stamp of Islamism. The praises of God are still to be seen engraved in Arabic on marble columns; and in the same language were they traced, in gold and diamonds and pearls, upon the mantle and dalmatica of Sicily’s Queens and Kings. Palermo was then called the trilingual city. Latin and Arabic were equally spoken there; and the Italian, thefavella volgare, originated at the court of Frederick-Roger, under the Moorish arcades of his palaces at Palermo and Catania. The language of Petrarch was murmured, for the first time, beside the fountains of the Ziza. The outward forms of Islamism were then, in southern Europe, the ensign hoisted by that small number of liberal thinkers, the avowed enemies of ecclesiastical and monkish domination, who willingly assumed the name of Epicureans.” Further on we have the following, explanatory of the peaceable settlement of the infidel in Sicily, and curiously illustrating the contradictions and bigotry of the time. “With an audacity previously unheard-of, Frederick II., after fighting and conquering the Saracens who overran and disturbed Sicily, transported entire colonies of them to Lucera, in the Capitanata, in the immediate vicinity of the patrimony of St Peter, thus planting, in the heart of his kingdom, the Mahomedan standard he was about to combat in Syria. Decrepid though he was, Pope Honorius felt the danger and insult of such proximity. What were the arms of the holy see against an opponent that none of its anathemas could touch? The Pontiff became indignant, vented threats; but was soon appeased. When the wily Frederick saw him angry, he promised a crusade; whereupon the Pope calmed himself, and treated the Emperor as a son.” Subsequent Popes were less easy to pacify, and ban and excommunication were heaped upon the Emperor’s head. Gregory IX., in his bulls, called him “a marine monster, whose jaws are full of blasphemies;” to which complimentary phrase Frederick replied by the epithets of “great dragon, antichrist,” and “new Balaam.” A third extract will complete the sketch of the Saracens, and their position in Sicily. “Surrounded by odaliques and dancing women; giving eunuchs for guards to his wife, the beautiful Isabella Plantagenet, a daughter of the English King; often clothed in oriental robes; in war-time mounted on an elephant; in his palace surrounded by tame lions; always accompanied by a troop of Mussulmans, to whom he showed great indulgence, permitting them the violation of churches and women, debauch and sacrilege,—Frederick II., in the opinion of his subjects, was no longer a Christian prince. During the last ten years of his reign this state of things reached its height. The number of barbarian troops daily increased. Seventeen new companies, summoned from Africa, were dispersed, like an invading army, over the Basilicata and Calabria. Finally, the Emperor went so far as to instal them in the places of masters of ports, and in other offices that gave these Mussulmans jurisdiction over Christian populations.” And when a Saracen captain, named Phocax, in garrison at Trani, ill-treated a citizen of noble birth, Messer Simone Rocca, and grossly outraged his wife, the aggrieved man could obtain no satisfaction. “The Emperor only laughed. ‘Messer Simone,’ he said, to the complainant, ‘dov’è forza non è vergogna. Go, Phocax will not do it again; had he been a native of the country, I would have had his head cut off.’” On the death of this indulgent patron, the Saracen colony in the kingdom of Naples saw its existence menaced. The infidels were lost if Rome became mistress of the country. The triumph of the Pope would be the tocsin of their extermination. They resolved to defend themselves to the last. They held Lucera, Accerenza, and Girafalco, three impregnable fortresses; they also commanded at other points, less strong but still important. They felt themselves numerous, courageous, and determined. Mainfroy could not doubt that they would gladly rally round the banner of their benefactor’s son; and in this hope he set out for Lucera, where John the Moor then commanded. This man, a slave whom the Emperor’s caprice had raised to the highest dignities, promised Mainfroy the best of receptions. But when the Prince of Tarento reached Lucera, the traitor had gone over to the Pope, taking with him a thousand Saracens and three hundred Germans, and leaving the town in the keeping of a man of his tribe, Makrizi by name. On learning this treachery, Mainfroy still did not renounce his project of confiding himself to the Arabs—so cherished by his father, so favoured by himself. Only, instead of approaching the fortress with his little army, as regent of the kingdom, he preferred to go as a knight-errant, attended only by three esquires, like a paladin of the Round Table. This portion of Mainfroy’s life, as well as many other passages in M. de St Priest’s book, reads like an extract from some old romance of chivalry. After wandering about, in the gloom and rain of a November night, and losing his way repeatedly, Adenulfo, one of Mainfroy’s three men-at-arms, and formerly forester to Frederick II., perceived a white object in the darkness, and recognised a hunting-lodge built by the Emperor. He conducted the prince thither, and they lighted a large fire,—a most imprudent act, for the flame was easily perceptible at Foggia, where Otho of Hohemburg was then in garrison with a portion of the papal army. But Mainfroy was young and a poet. At sight of the splendid trees blazing on the hearth, he forgot the present, and thought only of the past; perhaps he recalled the time, not yet very distant, when as a child, on winter nights like that one, and perchance in that very place, he had seen his father, on his return from an imperial hunt, seat himself at that same hearth, and talk familiarly with his attendants of his wars and his amours, singing the praises of the lovely Catalanas,[17]and venting curses on the Pope. The illusion was of short duration. At early dawn Mainfroy and his little escort took horse, and after an hour’s march they beheld, through the misty morning air, the tall hill of Lucera, and on its summit the Saracen citadel and its massive walls, crowned with two-and-twenty towers. But the guardians of the gate refused to open without orders from Makrizi, who moreover, it would appear, had the key in his keeping. Sure that he would deny admittance, they urged the prince to enter as he best might, for that, once within the walls, all would go well. Beneath the gate was a sort of trench, or gutter, to carry off the rain, and through this it was not difficult for a young man of twenty, slender and active like Mainfroy, to squeeze himself. He attempted to do so, but the Saracens could not support the sight of their Emperor’s son grovelling on the ground like a reptile. “Let us not,” they exclaimed, “allowour lord to enter our walls in this vile posture. Let his entrance be worthy of a prince! Let us break the gates!” In an instant these were overthrown; Mainfroy passed over their ruins, and was carried upon the shoulders of the Saracens to the public market-place, surrounded by a joyous multitude. He met Makrizi, who, furious at the news of his entrance, was summoning the garrison to arms. “Makrizi! Makrizi!” cried the Saracens and the people, “get off your horse, and kiss the prince’s feet!” The Arab obeyed, and prostrated himself. Mainfroy had valiantly played his last stake, and fortune favoured his audacity. In Lucera he found the treasures of Frederick II., of King Conrad, of the Margrave Berthold, and of John the Moor. Then, as ever, money was the sinew of war. Its possession changed the aspect of affairs. In less than a month, the proscribed and fugitive Mainfroy had dispersed the Pope’s army, taken and executed John the Moor, and marched upon Naples to seize a crown. And now, for many years, his career of success was unchequered by a reverse. His arms were uniformly triumphant in the field; he was the most magnificent prince, and passed as the richest sovereign, in Europe. At last the marriage of his daughter Constance with the Infante Don Pedro, sonof King James of Arragon, crowned his prosperity. Concluded in defiance of the court of Rome, this marriage allied the bastard Prince of Tarento with the French royal family; for Isabella of Arragon, sister of his son-in-law Don Pedro, became the wife of Philip, son of Louis IX., and heir apparent to the crown of France. This last piece of good fortune nearly turned Mainfroy’s head. Instead of defending himself against the Holy See, he assumed the offensive, and invaded its territories. Moreover, he now openly professed, and established as a principle, that the right to dispose of the imperial diadem was not vested in the Popes, but in the senate and people of Rome. “It is time,” he added, “to put an end to this usurpation.” Such maxims, thus publicly proclaimed, rendered the Pope irreconcilable. The papal dream of annexing the Two Sicilies to the pontificate had long melted into air before the sun of Mainfroy’s arrogant prosperity; and Urban IV., convinced that the Church had need of a valiant and devoted defender, turned his eyes northwards, whilst his lips pronounced the name of Charles of Anjou.

Charles, thegoodCount of Anjou, as some of the chroniclers call him, was married to Beatrix of Savoy, Countess of Provence, whose hand he obtained in preference to two formidable rivals,—Conrad, son of the Hohenstauffe, and Pedro of Arragon. The latter we have just referred to as having subsequently married a daughter of Mainfroy. Through life Peter and Charles were destined to be rivals; and if the latter had the advantage at the outset, his competitor afterwards in some degree balanced the account by robbing him of the island of Sicily. In 1248, soon after his marriage, Charles embarked at Aiguesmortes with his brother Louis and their wives, on a crusade,—was sick to death at the island of Cyprus, but recovered, and performed prodigies of valour in fight with the Saracen. It seemed as if the scent of battle sufficed to restore him his full vigour; and he displayed a furious impetuosity and reckless daring that almost surpass belief. On arriving off Damietta, and at sight of the Saracen army waiting on the shore, he and St Louis sprang from their galley, and waded to land, with the water to their waists. Surrounded by the enemy, Charles raised a wall of corpses around him, until his knights came up to the rescue. Heading them, he charged the infidel host, ordering to strike at the horses’ breasts. The noble Arab chargers fell by hundreds; the Saracens fled; Louis and Charles pursued; Damietta was the prize of the Christians. “The adventurous prince feared the elements as little as he did man. One day the Saracens threw Greek fire upon the crusaders’ tents. Struck with surprise at sight of this mysterious enemy, the Christians were so terrified that they dared not attempt to extinguish the flames. ‘I will go,’ cried the Count of Anjou. They tried to retain him by force, but he broke from them like a madman, and succeeded in his design. At another time, St Louis, from the top of a hill, saw him engaged single-handed with a whole troop of Saracens, who hurled at him darts with flaming flags, which stuck into and burnt his horse’s crupper. Thus did Charles display the first symptoms of a will incapable of receding even before impossibilities,—a dangerous application of a great virtue; but then, these feats of the Count of Anjou delighted every body. Other exploits followed. Like a Christian Horatius, Charles one day stopped the whole Mussulman army upon a wooden bridge.” This great bravery was accompanied by pride, egotism, and hardness of heart, and these qualities caused bickerings between him and St Louis. Nevertheless, the brothers were fondly attached to each other; and when Charles returned to Provence he displayed a depth of emotion on parting from his king that surprised the army, which did not give him credit for so much fraternal affection. There was great contrast of character between him and his royal brother. “They had in common,” says M. de St Priest, “military courage, chastity, probity, and respect to their plighted word.... St Louis was a Frenchman, Charles of Anjou a Spaniard. St Louis had that communicative disposition, that taste for social enjoyment, that necessity of expansion and gentle gaiety, generally attributed to our nation. He was evidently the man born beside the waters of Loire or Seine. Charles, on the other hand, seemed to have received life upon the rugged rocks of Toledo, or in the naked and melancholy plains of Valladolid. He was proud and gloomy; no smile ever curved his lips. Uncommunicative, he confided his designs to no one. Although hasty, violent, and passionate, he strove to conceal his emotions. He slept little, spoke less; never forgot a service or an injury. His indulgence for his partisans and servants was unbounded: if he was passionately fond of gold, it was especially that he might shower it upon them. Charles and Louis were a contrast even in form and colour of face. Louis was fair and ruddy; Charles had black hair, an olive skin, nervous limbs, and a prominent nose. Goodness was the characteristic of the king, severity of the count. Both of imposing aspect,—one as a father, the other as a master—Louis inspired respect and love, Charles respect and terror. By the admission of all his contemporaries, nothing could be more majestic than the look, gait, and stature of the Count of Anjou. In an assemblage of princes he eclipsed them all. A poet who knew him well, and who calls him the mostseignorialof men, shows him to us at the court of France in the midst of his brothers, and characterises him by this energetic line—

‘Tous furent filz de roy, mais Charles le fut mieux.’”

Such was the man who, on the 15th May 1265, embarked at Marseilles for Rome, with a thousand chosen knights upon thirty galleys, leaving the main body of his army at Lyons to cross the Alps with the Countess Beatrix, under the nominal command of the young Robert de Bethune Dampierre, heir to the county of Flanders, and the real guidance of Gilles de Traisignies, constable of France. At the moment of his departure, timid counsellors magnified the peril of the enterprise, and the superiority of the hostile fleet that watched to intercept him; but nothing could shake the determination of the Count of Anjou. “Good conduct,” he said, as he put foot on his galley’s deck, “overcomes ill fortune. I promised the Pope to be at Rome before Pentecost, and I will keep my word.” If fortune had not favoured him, however, it is doubtful if he would have succeeded in running the gauntlet through the sixty Sicilian galleys, manned with the practised mariners of Pisa, Naples, and Amalfi, that waited to pounce, like hawk on sparrow, upon his feeble armament. Independently of this formidable squadron, the entrance of the port of Ostia was encumbered, by Mainfroy’s order, with beams and huge stones, against which the French ships were expected inevitably to shatter themselves. Altogether, the marine preparations were so formidable, they were proclaimed with such ostentation, and Mainfroy appeared so convinced of their efficacy, that at Rome the partisans of Charles and the Pope lost courage. The decisive moment arrived, and no fleet appeared; when suddenly a rumour spread that Charles was shipwrecked and drowned. The Ghibellines, or imperialists, hailed the report with delight, the Guelfs with terror. Friends and enemies alike believed the fatal intelligence, when at break of day, on the eve of Pentecost, a boat, containing ten men, entered the Tiber. Amongst these ten men was Charles of Anjou. He owed his safety to his peril; deliverance had grown out of impending destruction. A violent storm had had a double result: Mainfroy’s fleet, which for some days past had blockaded the Tiber, was compelled to put to sea, and the thirty Provençal galleys were dispersed in view of Pisa. Charles was wrecked on the coast of Tuscany; to escape capture by one of Mainfroy’s lieutenants, he threw himself into a skiff, and the wind guided him into the Tiber, which he entered unperceived by the Sicilian admiral. Such was the fortunate chance that served him. Men believed him at the bottom of the sea, and at that moment he landed in Italy.

Mainfroy prepared for defence, affecting boundless confidence in the result of the approaching strife, but in reality uneasy at the approach of his formidable foe. His hatred found vent in sarcasm and abusive words. “Although the name of the terrible Charles of Anjou did not encourage childish diminutives, Mainfroy and his flatterers never spoke of him otherwise than as Carlotto” (Charley.) This was not very dignified or in good taste. But Charles was at no loss for a retort. When his wife had joined him, at the head of thirty thousand men, and the royal pair had been crowned in the Church of the Lateran, in sight and amidst the acclamations of an immense multitude, King and Queen of Sicily, he marched upon Naples. At the frontier, Mainfroy, after a vain attempt to intimidate the Pope, endeavoured to delay his progress by negotiation. “Tell the Sultan of Lucera,” replied Charles to the Swabian envoys, “that between us there can be neither peace nor truce; that soon he shall transport me to paradise or I will send him to hell.” And having thus branded his opponent as an infidel, and his opponent’s cause as unjust, he resolutely entered the Neapolitan states. The first barrier to his progress, the fortified bridge of Ceprano, was opened to him by Riccardo d’Aquino, Count of Caserte, out of revenge for the alleged seduction or violation of his wife by Mainfroy. The count was about to defend the post, when news of his dishonour reached him. He vowed a terrible revenge; but, scrupulous even in his anger, he sent to consult the casuists of the French camp, whether a vassal had the right to punish the liege lord who had outraged him in his honour. The casuists made an affirmative reply, and Caserte gave free passage to Charles of Anjou. History is more positive of the count’s treason than of the outrage said to have induced it. The occupation of the bridge was but a small step towards the conquest of the Two Sicilies. Charles’s path was beset with obstacles, augmented by the difficulty of transporting his warlike engines, and by fierce dissensions in his army. These alone were sufficient to ruin the enterprise; but the valour and military science of the French prince supplied all deficiencies. His operations were sometimes, however, a little impeded from pious scruples; as, for instance, when he put off the assault of a town for two days, in order not to fight on Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless his progress was rapid and triumphant, and soon the silver fleur-de-lis of France, and the crimson ones of the Guelfs, floated above the walls or over the ruins of Mainfroy’s strongest forts. All the Saracens who fell into Charles’s hands were immediately put to the sword. At last, in the valley of Santa Maria de Grandella, and at four miles from the town of Benevento, the French army—to which were now united the levies of many disaffected Neapolitan nobles—came in sight of Mainfroy’s host, drawn up in order of battle. The strength of the two armies is variously stated, but it appears certain that the numerical advantage was considerably on the side of Charles. Before engaging, each leader made a speech to his troops. That of Charles reminds us of Cromwell’s well-known exhortation to his men, to trust in God and keep their powder dry. “Have confidence in God,” said the valiant and pious Frenchman, “but neglect not human means; and be attentive, when battle begins, to what I now tell you: strike at the horses rather than at the men, not with edge, but with point; so that, falling with his horse and being unable to rise quickly, on account of the weight of his armour, the cavalier may immediately have his throat cut by theribauds. Let each of you be always accompanied by one of those varlets, and even by two. Forget not that, and march!” The manœuvre prescribed by Charles of Anjou, and which he had already essayed in Palestine, was forbidden by chivalrous etiquette, which stigmatised as disloyal the act of striking at the horses’ heads. But Charles was not at a tournament. His aim was victory, and his injunction was well received by his knights, whom his words excited, says a chronicler,as the huntsman excites the dogs. There was neither blame nor murmur. Nevertheless his chevaliers were the flower of nobility; but they did not hold themselves engaged in a regular war; they looked upon the expedition as a crusade against infidels. The bishop of Auxerre gave a final benediction; the trumpets sounded, and the signal of battle echoed through both camps.

Neither army had left its ground when the clamour of many thousand voices was heard; and, like a whirlwind, the Saracen archers from Lucera poured upon the field. Crossing the little river Calora, they fell upon the French infantry with a discharge of arrows. The French, with loud cries of “Down with the Saracens! Down with the swine!” rushed furiously to meet them. The medley was terrible, and at first victory favoured the turban. Charles’s troops broke and fled, when Ruggiero San Severino rallied them, waving, by way of banner, a bloody shirt, stripped from a soldier’s corpse. Philip de Montfort brought up the reserve, and threw himself upon the Saracens, whom he cut to pieces with cries of “Montfort, chevaliers!” “Swabia, chevaliers!” replied Gualvano Lancia, who, without waiting orders from Mainfroy, hurried forward a thousand men of the best German troops. He fell upon the French, who were weary with striking, and made a great slaughter of them. Charles of Anjou, who in his part of the field performed, as usual, prodigies of valour, now left the wing he commanded and attacked Gualvano Lancia. The Germans and Saracens were cut to pieces and dispersed; but the Italian battalions, commanded by nobles of the country, had not yet shared the combat. Mainfroy had kept them as a reserve, and now called upon them to follow him. Instead of so doing, they turned their backs and fled. At the same moment a silver eagle, surmounting Mainfroy’s helm, fell and broke in pieces. At this evil omen, the son of the Hohenstauffe felt himself lost. He turned towards the faithful few who still stood by him, and said in the words of the Catholic Church:Hoc est signum Dei. Then, followed by Tibaldo Annibaldi, he plunged into the thickest of the hostile squadrons, and was seen no more alive. For three days nothing was heard of him, and Charles of Anjou thought he had escaped, when a soldier led his war-horse past the window of Gualvano Lancia and two other Ghibelline prisoners. On recognising the steed, the captives burst into tears, and implored the soldier, a Picard, to tell them the fate of its rider, whether prisoner, slain, or fugitive. “The Picard, having learned who the prisoners were, replied thus: ‘I will tell you the truth; during the fight, the man who mounted this horse came up, uttering terrible cries. He rushed into the mêlée, followed by another cavalier much less than himself, and fell upon us with such courage that, had he been supported by others as brave, he would have beaten us or given us much to do. I showed front to this knight and wounded his charger in the head with a lance-thrust; the horse, feeling itself wounded, threw its rider; then theribaudsdespoiled him of his arms and made an end of him. As his scarf was very beautiful, I took it, as well as his horse; and here they both are.’ Such was the noble end of Manfred, or Machtfried, of Stauffen, whom the French were wont to call Mainfroy of Sicily.” With great difficulty, the royal corpse was found, amidst heaps of slain, and the French chevaliers entreated Charles to allow it honourable burial. “Willingly,” replied Charles, “were he not excommunicated.” The new King of Sicily could not reasonably be expected to grant ecclesiastical interment to the man, whom he had fought and supplanted on the sole ground of his being out of the pale of the church. So a trench was dug at the foot of the bridge over the Calora, the body was laid in it, the army filed by, and each soldier, as he passed, threw a stone upon the unconsecrated grave. As great warriors have had worse monuments. But papal hatred followed Mainfroy even beyond the tomb. Under pretence that the remains of the excommunicated hero infected the pontifical soil, Clement IV.’s nuncio had them unearthed and dragged at night, without torches, to the banks of the Garigliano. There they were abandoned to the pelting storm and prowling beast of prey. “Whilst a savage fanaticism thus insulted the ashes of Sicily’s King, poetry prepared him a glorious revenge. Eight months before the battle of Benevento, a child was born at Florence, in May 1265, whose name was Dante Alighieri. Dante protected the memory of Mainfroy.”

For eight days the unfortunate town of Benevento was abandoned to the horrors of the sack. At the end of that time Charles called his greedy soldiers from pillage and excess, rallied them round his standard and marched to Naples. The magnificence of his entrance dazzled and delighted the people, surpassing even the vaunted splendour of the proud Hohenstauffen. In every respect Charles’s victory was complete. The Anjevine banner floated throughout the kingdom of Naples; and after very slight resistance on the part of Gualvano Lancia and of Conrad of Antioch, an illegitimate grandson of the Emperor Frederick, Sicily and Calabria were also reduced and tranquillised. But the triumphant king was still surrounded with difficulties. His pecuniary obligations were numerous and heavy, and his new kingdom offered no resources for their acquittal. The population was greatly reduced, agriculture had disappeared, commerce was at the very lowest ebb, the nobility were ruined, and revenue there was none. On the other hand, Charles’s troops were clamorous for arrears; and the Pope, who had pledged the treasures of the Roman churches to Tuscan bankers for funds to carry on the war, was urgent in his demands of repayment, and went so far as to threaten his debtor with excommunication. Charles the First was in great perplexity. The clergy, who alone had some means, he was forbidden to tax, by the terms of his treaty with the Pope. In this dilemma, the King was compelled to resort to imposts and extortions, which rendered him odious to his subjects. In this respect he was no worse, perhaps, than his immediate predecessors, who seldom scrupled to raise a forced contribution, even by the armed hand; but his manner of procuring his supplies was particularly obnoxious to the Neapolitans. He reduced it to a regular system, based upon the French fiscal forms. The people preferred the occasional swoop of a party of Saracens to the tax-gatherer’s systematic spoliation. The irritation became general. Murmurs and complaints were heard on all sides, mingled with regrets for Mainfroy. The Pope, unwilling to share Charles’s unpopularity, dissatisfied at the nonpayment of his advances, and but slightly appeased by the present of a golden throne and candelabra sent him from the sack of Benevento, wrote harsh letters to his ally, and sent him long lectures and instructions as to how he should govern, bidding him, above all things, to beamiable. This was not much in Charles’s way; neither did his political views at all agree with those of his Holiness Clement IV. He was certainly by no means amiable, and, moreover, he committed a grievous blunder, common enough with his countrymen, and which alienated the affections of his subjects. He tried to Frenchify his new dominions. Obstinately bent on moving the mountain, he would not even meet it half-way. He scorned to take a lesson from the Norman founders of the kingdom, who “governed Sicily not as conquerors but as old hereditary sovereigns,” and were cautious of the too sudden introduction of foreign innovations. His object, according to M. de St Priest’s own showing, was at least as much the increase of the power and importance of France, as the happiness of the people he had come to reign over. His historian admires him for this, and for his wish “to make half Europe, not a vassal, but a dependency of France.” He introduced the forms of French administration, abolished the offices and etiquette that had existed since the days of King Roger, and replaced them by those of the court of Vincennes, changes which excited great hatred and dislike to their author. He abandoned the Castel Capuano, the residence of Frederick II., and built the Castel Nuovo, on the model of the Paris Bastile. The copy has survived the original. But we must pass over, for the present, the merits and errors of Charles, and his ambitious designs upon Italy and the East, to bring upon the scene the last heir of the house of Stauffen.

Conrad, known in history by the diminutive of Conradin,[18]was born at Landshut, in Bavaria, on the 25th of March 1252, and was hailed in his cradle by the high-sounding titles of king of Jerusalem and Sicily, king of the Romans, future emperor, &c. Not one of these imaginary crowns did he ever enjoy; even his paternal heritage was wrested from him whilst yet an infant; the grandson of Frederick II. knew want and poverty, and was more than once indebted to faithful friends and adherents for a roof to cover his head. The events of his life were as remarkable as the years composing it were few. “Born in 1252, he died in 1268. The interval embraces but sixteen years, and yet that short period is animated by all the passions, emotions, and tumult of a virile mind. We find in it, in a high degree, ambition, courage, friendship, and, in a more doubtful perspective—love. In reality, Conradin had no childhood. His life had nothing to do with the laws regulating human growth. From the cradle his existence was one of agitation.”

An anecdote, whose truth modern writers have contested, but to which M. de St Priest gives credit, confirms, in conjunction with many other circumstances, the child’s extraordinary precocity of intelligence and feeling. Considering his mother as widow of an emperor, although his father had never legally borne the imperial title, since he had not been crowned at Rome, Conradin treated her with the utmost ceremony and observance of etiquette. Suddenly, weary of living in dependence at the court of her brother, Louis the Severe, Duke of Bavaria, Queen Elizabeth-Margaret married Meinhard de Gorice, brother of the Count de Tirol, and from queen became a mere countess.[19]This alliance, unequal but not low, greatly shocked Conradin: in the words of a chronicler, he was moved by it beyond power of expression, and from that moment he abstained from paying his mother the usual honours. She asked him the reason. “Mother,” replied Conradin, “I rendered you the homage due to an emperor’s widow; now you are married to one less than him, and I, a king and an emperor’s son, can no longer render you the honours due to an empress.” He who spoke this was but seven years old, and hence many writers have treated the words as fiction. But it must be borne in mind that from his very cradle he had been nourished with the hopes of his party, whose pretensions and dreams of triumph had been unceasingly instilled into him. The talk of all around him had been of sceptres to reconquer, victories to win, rebels to chastise; and the pathetic but deceitful picture of an oppressed people, sighing for his return, had been kept continually before his eyes. Every act of his life was premature. Brought up in a political hot-bed, he showed early symptoms of imperfect mental growth, and was crushed and annihilated by the first storm. Whilst yet a very young child, he was surrounded by the empty forms of sovereignty, and made to think himself both a man and a king. His uncle and stepfather dragged him from town to town, dressed in regal robes, and compelled him to hold provincial diets. Whilst thus parading, they unscrupulously despoiled him. Before he was ten years old, the Duke of Bavaria made him sign a will bequeathing to him the whole of his possessions, in case of his death without heirs. Even this did not satisfy the greedy Bavarian, who soon afterwards extracted from him, by manner of donation, some of his richest domains in Rhineland and the Palatinate. The example found imitators. Princes, bishops, cities, and abbeys fell tooth and nail upon the heritage of the unfortunate child. The bishops of Augsburg and Constance, the counts of Wurtemburg, the burgraves of Nuremberg, the king of Bohemia, and several others, shared the spoils. The houses of Austria and Prussia date their rise from that time—the nucleus of the two monarchies was formed by fragments of Conradin’s dominions; and the whole of Germany as it now appears, in its kingdoms and divisions, may be traced back to the fragments of this total wreck and infamous spoliation. Thus plundered, nothing remained but to start the victim on his travels; a royal Quixote in search of a crown. At first he showed small disposition to such an adventure, and more than one deputation of Ghibellines, and even of Guelfs, departed unsuccessful from before the young king’s footstool; until at last Gualvano Lancia, Mainfroy’s relative and faithful adherent, and Corrado and Marino Capece, presented themselves at the gate of the ancient castle of Hohenschwangau. Lancia had been amnestied after the battle of Benevento, at the request of the Pope, but much against the will of Charles of Anjou. He took the oaths to the new king, but soon afterwards left the kingdom, and now appeared before Conradin as deputy from the whole body of Ghibellines, which had reconstituted itself throughout the entire kingdom of the Sicilies, and sent to the grandson of the Emperor Frederick assurances of its devotion, the promise of an army, and considerable sums of money. Lancia was the bearer of one hundred thousand gold florins. Thus was it, says the chronicler, Saba Malaspina, that the little sleeping dog was roused up: “ad suscitandum catulum dormientem.” In spite of the tears and entreaties of his mother, who had a foreboding of his fate, and urged him to remain with her, Conradin published a lengthy manifesto, asserting his rights to the crown of Sicily, put himself at the head of ten thousand men, hired by Ghibelline gold, and entered Italy, full of confidence, hope, and enthusiasm, accompanied by his bosom friend, Frederick, Duke of Austria, son of the Margrave of Baden, and followed by the Duke of Bavaria, and by other nobles, who promised him support, but shamefully abandoned him at Verona, upon the most absurd and frivolous pretexts. The poor boy was born to be every body’s dupe. He believed implicitly the hypocritical professions of his treacherous kinsman, made over to him one of the last shreds of his German possessions, and parted from him with tears in his eyes, remaining alone at Verona, with Frederick of Austria, who was only three years his senior, for sole ally—his troops reduced by the defection of his uncle and the others to about three thousand men. Instead of marching at once to Pisa, and taking ship for Sicily, whose inhabitants were ripe for insurrection, he sent Corrado Capece thither, and himself lingered two months in total inaction. Pisa was devoted to the house of Swabia; Capece had no difficulty in obtaining a galley (Conradin would have found a fleet as easily), and after calling at Tunis for the Spanish Infante Don Fadrique, with four hundred Spaniards and Saracens, he landed at Sciacca, gained an advantage over the French, and saw the greater part of Sicily declare for Conradin. After a while, Conradin, having raised money from the Ghibelline towns, and recruited his forces, moved forward to Pavia; whilst Charles of Anjou, advancing northward to meet his rival, entered Pisa sword in hand, upset its towers and ruined its port. It would lead us too far, and be of no great interest, to trace the singular complications of Italian affairs at this moment, and the perplexities of the Pope, who was at least as jealous of the abode of Charles in Tuscany, as of the feeble attempt of the old German dynasty to regain its seat upon the Neapolitan throne. We must confine ourselves to the career of Conradin, and follow his fortunes, now drawing to a lamentable close. There was a bright flash, however, before the final setting of his star. He occupied Pisa—still the first port in Italy—in spite of the devastations of Charles of Anjou; on all sides the Ghibelline party raised its head, and his enterprise assumed a serious aspect. Clement IV. became alarmed, and sent, for the third time, an order to Conradin to lay down his arms, and appear in person before the pontifical chair to justify his conduct, under pain of all manner of excommunication. Conradin, who seems to have inherited a wholesome contempt for the Pope, replied by despatching a fleet of four-and-twenty Pisan galleys to Sicily. This was another blunder. He should have gone himself, with all his forces, and certain success awaited him. Charles of Anjou absent, his troops dispersed and surprised, Sicily was lost to the French dynasty. But Conradin, like a child as he was, thought only of a triumphant march on Rome and Naples. For a paltry pageant, he threw away a kingdom. Whilst his adherents gained ground in Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and other provinces, he nullified their advantages by folly and delay. His only forced marches were upon the road to ruin. A successful but unimportant ambuscade, in which fifty of the enemy were cut off, completely turned his head. The prisoners were conducted in triumph to Sienna; and Conradin and his army, brimful of confidence, scoffing at pontifical anathemas, and followed by a crowd of Ghibellines which every hour augmented, marched upon Rome, taking the longest route by way of Viterbo, in order to show themselves to Clement IV., then resident in that city. They passed under its walls, crowned with verdure and flowers, more like bacchanals and vintagers than men-at-arms. From the window of his palace Clement witnessed the loose array. “Behold!” said he, “the sheep led to the slaughter!” The prelates surrounding him remained silent, in respectful doubt. The pontiff, penetrating their thoughts, persisted in his assertion. “Truly,” he said, “in eight days nothing will remain of that army.” His firm voice, his imposing countenance, his fervent piety, impressed the hearers with a conviction that he spoke prophetically. The event justified the prediction, the result of political clear-sightedness rather than of divine inspiration.

Conradin’s reception at Rome completed his intoxication. He was accompanied into the city by a chorus of young girls, singing and tambourine-playing in the midst of the soldiers. Magnificently dressed ladies showed themselves at the windows of the palaces; the people thronged the streets. Every where he passed under triumphal arches, hastily raised in his honour. They consisted of cords tied across the street, and supporting, instead of the usual garlands of laurels and flowers, the most precious objects the Romans possessed; rich furs and garments, bucklers, rings, bracelets, arms and jewellery of all kinds. Amidst public acclamations in honour of his courage and beauty, Conradin ascended to the Capitol, escorted by the most illustrious Romans of the Imperial party. What head of sixteen would not have been turned by such incense! At last he quitted Rome at the head of five thousand German and Italian men-at-arms, and of nine hundred Spanish cavaliers; surrounded and pressed on all sides by a clamorous and jubilant multitude. He had formed a plan which showed resolution and some military skill. Instead of marching to Ceprano, the usual route of the conquerors of Naples, and in which direction he was persuaded Charles (then besieging Lucera) would advance to meet him, he conceived the bold project of turning his enemy’s flank by penetrating into the Abruzzi, effecting a junction with the Saracens of Lucera, and thence proceeding to Naples. But Charles was too old a soldier to be easily outwitted. Advised from Rome of Conradin’s departure and route, he abruptly raised the siege he was engaged in, and marched day and night to Aquila, the key of the Abruzzi. Thence he pushed on to the heights of Androssano, near the ruins of the old Roman town of Alba, and appeared before the astounded Conradin, who thus suddenly beheld in his immediate front an enemy he deemed far in his rear. A day passed without blows: Charles made a reconnaissance; Conradin, to frighten his opponent, to whom the fidelity of the inhabitants of Aquila was most important, caused false deputies to be introduced into his camp, dressed in municipal robes, and bearing apparently the keys of their town. Informed of this event, Charles felt very uneasy, but concealed his anxiety from all but three knights, with whom he set out at nightfall and galloped to Aquila. He arrived at midnight; the inhabitants were asleep. He struck upon the gates of the citadel, and cried with a loud voice, “For whom do you hold this fort?” “For King Charles,” replied the sentinel. “Then open, for I am the king!” Reassured by the joyful reception he met, Charles returned to his camp, weary with a ride that had lasted all night. But he had little time for repose. Both armies were early afoot: on the one side the flower of French and Provençal chivalry; on the other a medley of Germans, Spaniards, and Italians. The forces were very unequal. Conradin brought 6,000 horsemen into the field; Charles only half the number. On both sides were equal fury, hatred, and eagerness to commence the fray. Charles of Anjou’s audacity and impetuosity might possibly have had disastrous results, but for the opportune arrival of Erard de Valéry, constable of Champagne, his earliest friend and companion in arms. “Erard was then very old, but still full of vigour. His colossal stature, herculean vigour, and white hair gave him resemblance to the centenary giant of an Arabian tale. Formerly he had refused to become a priest, that he might remain in the society of princes and noble ladies. Now, a true Christian soldier, he lived only in God. The old chevalier was on his way from the Holy Land, returning to France with a hundred good knights in his train. Whilst traversing the kingdom of Naples, he heard of the king’s presence, and would not proceed without visiting him.” Charles urged him to take part in the approaching fight. Erard refused, alleging his age, his wish to die in peace far from human turmoil, and, finally, a vow to fight only against infidels. Charles overruled all objections, replying to the last one that his opponents were excommunicated, and consequently worse than infidels. Then the wary old chief arranged an ambush, which would have been utterly unsuccessful with an ordinarily prudent foe, but which answered well enough with the unlucky Conradin, who had not even made the necessary reconnaissances. Charles, who had great deference for the Sire de Valéry, willingly put himself under his orders, leaving him the direction of all things. The army was divided into three bodies, of which the strongest, commanded by Charles himself, was placed in ambush behind a hill in rear of the Neapolitan position. The other two, sent forward against Conradin, were beaten and cut to pieces, after a combat that lasted from sunrise till six in the evening. Henry de Cousance, a French marshal, who resembled Charles in stature and appearance, and who, with a purple mantle over his armour and a crown upon his helm, took post in the centre of the army, to personate the king, was killed early in the action. “Meanwhile Charles of Anjou, in ambuscade with Erard de Valéry and his eight hundred knights, trembled with rage. Burning with eagerness to strike in, he rode up and down in rear of the hill, like a lion in his cage; he was dying with impatience and grief, (moriva di dolore, says Villani,vedendo la sua gente cosi barattare.) With inflamed eyes, he from time to time looked Valéry in the face, thus silently demanding permission to show himself and fight. He might have foreseen the massacre of his two squadrons. The plan of battle adopted was likely to entail this disaster. But what he had not foreseen was that it would be impossible for him to support such a sight.” When the gallant Cousance fell, pierced with a thousand blows, and Conradin’s army made the welkin ring with exulting shouts of “Victory! the tyrant is dead!” Charles wept with rage. But his promise to Valéry chained him to his rock of agony. What follows is highly romantic and chivalrous. The knights who surrounded him said, ‘So noble a fate is it to die for the justice of a royal cause, that we would infinitely rejoice thus to lose our lives. Be well assured, sire, that we will follow you every where, even to death.’ With feverish impatience they waited the signal of Erard de Valéry, who remained imperturbable. Suddenly Guillaume de l’Estendard (one of the commanders of the troops already engaged) crossed the battle-field at speed, feigning to fly, in order to draw the Spaniards on. They followed. Then the old knight raised his enormous head and gigantic person above the brow of the little hill, and said to the King, ‘Marchons!’ Charles was off like a dart, followed by Valéry and the eight hundred chevaliers; they swept across the plain, and found Conradin, Gualvano Lancia, and Frederick of Austria seated unhelmed and unarmed on the bank of the little river Salto, like conquerors reposing; whilst the German mercenaries were dispersed in search of booty, stripping the dead and loading the spoils on carts. Charles and his reserve of fresh and picked men had a cheap bargain of them, as also of the Spaniards, who were taken prisoners, on their return from the pursuit of Estendard, almost to a man. A complete victory, alloyed only by a heavy loss of brave and devoted followers, remained to Charles of Anjou. “Such,” says M. de St Priest, “was the celebrated battle of Alba, improperly named the battle of Tagliacozzo, after a village more than six miles from the scene of action. It is one of those deeds of arms of which history will ever preserve the memory, less on account of the greatness of the result, than for the dramatic interest attaching to the quarrel and the men. On the one hand we see a young prince in the flush of youth and brilliant valour, full of conviction of his good right, the noblest and most unfortunate of pretenders; on the other, a warrior terrible even to ferocity, but not less convinced of the legitimacy of his cause, one of the greatest princes, and, beyond contradiction, the greatest captain of his time.” M. de St Priest proceeds to attribute the chief merit of the victory to his hero. “In this bloody game at bars, full of snares, traps, surprises, where we see these terrible condottieri, covered with blood, running after each other like schoolboys at play, success was due less to the odd stratagem of Valéry than to the rapid march, the four days’ race in the mountains, from Lucera to Aquila. If Charles showed himself a great general, it was less when in ambuscade behind the hill of Capello, than when, like a bird of prey hovering above the wild Abruzzi, he fell with a swoop upon the imprudent band, who deemed him astray in the defiles, lost in the ravines, or fallen amongst precipices.”

Meanwhile Conradin, his army destroyed, his hopes shattered, was a fugitive, with scarcely a follower. One or two days he abode in Rome, protected by the Ghibellines; then, driven forth by the return of the Guelfs, consequent on the ruin of his cause, he fled with Frederick of Austria and a few Italian nobles, to the sea-coast, near the castle of Astura, a fortress of the Frangipani family. Hiring a boat, they set sail for Pisa, but were pursued and overtaken by a fast galley, whose commander summoned them to bring to, and ordered the passengers to repair to his quarter-deck. Conradin asked in astonishment who this man was, and heard in reply that it was Giovanni Frangipani, master of the neighbouring castle. At this name Conradin was overjoyed. “Giovanni is a Roman,” he said; “his family have always been devoted to the house of Swabia; they have been loaded with benefits by the Emperor Frederick; a Frangipani will assuredly defend and befriend me.” Full of confidence, he went on board the galley. “I am King Conrad V.,” was his hasty speech to the lord of Astura, “and I have sought to reconquer the kingdom of my ancestors.” Frangipani made no reply: the prince was astonished at his silence, asked him to assist his flight, descended at last to entreaties, offered, it is said, to marry his daughter; but the stern pirate remained mute, and on reaching land, threw the prince and his companions into a dungeon. Delivered up to Charles, they were led to Rome on foot and in chains. “Oh, my mother!” cried Conradin, with bitter tears, “you foretold this, and I was deaf to your words. Oh, my mother! what grief for your old age!” He did nothing but sob the whole of the road, Saba Malaspina tells us, and seemed half dead, and as if out of his senses. But this weakness, which, in such misfortune and in a mere child, was not unnatural, soon gave way to tranquil fortitude and Christian resignation.

The ashes of the fires lighted in Rome to celebrate Conradin’s triumphant passage had scarcely cooled, when he re-entered the walls of the Eternal City, a fettered captive marching to his doom. Thence he was taken to Naples, where an imposing and numerous tribunal assembled to judge him. Many of its members were for a mild punishment, some for none at all; others remained silent; one only opined for the death of the accused. But Charles had determined on his young rival’s destruction; he threw his word and influence into the scale, and sentence of decapitation was pronounced on Conradin of Swabia, Frederick of Baden, known as Duke of Austria, and the barons taken in their company. The two princes had not expected such severity, and were playing at chess in their prison when it was announced to them. They piously confessed, were absolved by the Pope, who relented at this extreme moment, and were led to the scaffold, which was covered with a red cloth in honour of the victims’ royal blood. The executioner was there, with naked arms and feet, and axe in hand. Conradin embraced him, having previously done the same by his friend Frederick and the other sufferers—then laid his head upon the block. When the axe rose, the French chevaliers who stood around the scaffold fell upon their knees and prayed; and as they did so, the head of Conradin rolled upon the crimson cloth. At this sight the Duke of Austria started up as if crazed with despair; he was seized and executed, uttering horrible cries. This butchery at last roused the indignation of the French knights. Robert de Béthune threw himself upon the prothonotary, who had read Conradin’s sentence, and with a blow of his sword cast him down half dead from his platform. This strange and unreasonable act, proceeding from a generous but savage impulse, was greatly applauded by the spectators. Even Charles himself was compelled to feign approval of his son-in-law’s violence.

No funeral honours were paid to Conradin and his companions. They were buried secretly in the sand, on the shore of the sea, at the mouth of the river Sebeto. Of their captivity, judgment, and death, M. de St Priest declares himself to have given, with the fidelity of a conscientious historian, an exact and truthful account. At the same time, he subjoins various details that have obtained more or less credence, but which he treats as fables. It has been said, that when Conradin embarked at Astura, he gave a ring in payment of his passage; that the boatmen who received the jewel took it to Frangipani, and that the fugitive was recognised and arrested upon this romantic indication. According to traditions, the Duke of Austria was executed the first, and Conradin kissed his head, which, all severed and bleeding as it was, still invoked the Holy Virgin. Robert de Béthune killed, it has been affirmed, the prothonotary Robert de Bari, whose signature is found, however, in many subsequent acts. And to crown all these marvels, it has been confidently asserted that, after the execution of the two princes, a masked stranger stabbed the headsman. Very recent and trustworthy writers have recorded as fact, that Conradin, just before receiving the fatal blow, threw a glove amongst the crowd, to be taken to Peter of Arragon, to whom he bequeathed his vengeance and crown. A German chevalier, Truchsess de Waldburg, (M. de St Priest calls him Waldburg de Truchsess,) gathered up the gage, and with much risk and difficulty bore it to its destination. The present historian discredits the whole of this glove-story—a fiction, he says, of the invention of Sylvius Piccolomini. He is more unwilling to doubt the following touching tradition:—“One day the inhabitants of Naples beheld in their bay a vessel of strange form and colour; hull, sails, and rigging were all black. A woman in deep sables left the ship,—it was Queen Elizabeth-Margaret, Conradin’s mother. At the rumour of her son’s captivity she embarked all her treasures, and, gaining intrepidity from her maternal love, this Elizabeth, previously so feeble and fearful that she dared not leave her castles in Swabia and the Tyrol, exposed herself to the perils of the sea, as bearer of her child’s ransom. But it was too late. When she reached Naples, Conradin was dead. Then the unhappy mother implored a single favour: she desired to erect a monument to him she wept, on the spot where he had perished. Charles would not consent, although he authorised the erection of a church upon the place of execution, and contributed a considerable sum towards the work,—an expiatory offering which, in conjunction with the useless ransom, attested at once the grief of an inconsolable mother, and the tardy remorse of a pitiless victor.” The church is to be seen at Naples, upon the square of Santa Maria del Carmine; beneath its altar is the tomb, with its inscription; the statue of Elizabeth stands there with a purse in its hand. Surely this is confirmation strong of the truth of the tradition! Unfortunately, church, inscription, and statue are all of a recent date.

The events just detailed left Charles of Anjou at the pinnacle of power and greatness. The magnitude of the danger he had run added to the lustre of his triumph. Nothing now resisted him; he might almost be styled the master of Italy. Every where the Guelfs drove the Ghibellines before them; every where the Swabian eagle fled before the red and silver lilies. The cause of the Ghibellines was lost. The fortunate conqueror was on every point successful. His domestic prosperity kept pace with his political and military success. Charles, then forty-two years old, beheld himself surrounded by a numerous posterity. He had two sons and three daughters. His queen, Beatrix of Provence, was dead; but soon he contracted a second marriage with the young and beautiful Margaret of Burgundy. Nature herself seemed to favour him; for in the short space of three years, all his enemies, in any way formidable, disappeared from the scene. Amongst others, the valiant and adventurous Corrado Capece, taken prisoner by the implacable Guillaume de l’Estendard, had his eyes put out, and was hung upon a gibbet of extraordinary altitude, erected for the purpose upon the coast of Catania. The Saracens of Lucera still held out. Besieged by a powerful army, with Charles at its head, they resisted for six months, till reduced to eat hay and roots. The bodies of stragglers from the town being opened by the besiegers, only grass was found in their bellies. At last they gave in. Charles, with a wise policy, showed them mercy, contenting himself with banishing them from Lucera, and distributing them amongst the towns of the interior. Although the piety of the first French king of Sicily was carried almost to an exaggerated extent, it did not degenerate into fanaticism; at least not into that fanaticism which engenders persecution. He never adopted the prejudices of the time against the Jews; on the contrary, he delivered them from the hands of state inquisitors, and suppressed the distinctive mark they were compelled to wear upon their garments. Financial considerations may not improbably have stimulated, at least as much as the dictates of reason and humanity, this enlightened spirit of tolerance; but still it is to the credit of Charles that he did not, like many very Christian kings and nobles of his and subsequent centuries, smite the Israelite with one hand whilst stripping him with the other. The King of Jerusalem was merciful to his subjects. Charles it was who first added this title to that of King of Sicily, by purchase from the old Princess Mary of Antioch, who called herself Mademoiselle de Jerusalem, and claimed that crown, then little more than a name. When Charles, for a pension of four thousandlivres tournois, acquired her rights, he hastened to vindicate them. They were disputed by Henry, King of Cyprus, who had the advantage of possession; for he held Ptolemais, the last fragment of the christian kingdom of Palestine. The Knights of St John supported him; Venice and the Templars backed King Charles. The latter carried the day.

Master of southern Italy, armed protector of the north, Charles I. had no longer aught to check him; the East was open before him. Already he occupied a part of Greece. All that mountainous coast of Albania, celebrated in our days for the devotedness of the Suliots, belonged to him by the death of Helena Comnenus, Mainfroy’s widow, daughter of the despot of Thessaly and Epirus. He also held the island of Corfu, that natural bridge thrown between Italy and the East. The town of Durazzo revolted in his favour, and called him within its walls. He swayed Achaia and the Morea, and had constituted himself candidate for the throne of Constantinople by marrying his daughter to Philip de Courtenay, nominal heir to the Latin Empire, but living in reality on the alms of his father-in-law. It seemed, then, that he had nothing to do but to bid his fleet sail for Byzantium. But in the midst of his ambitious projects he was interrupted by the new crusade, the last undertaken, got up by Saint Louis, and in which Charles could not refuse to join. The death of St Louis terminated the expedition; and after dictating terms of peace to the sultan of Tunis, in whose dominions the adventurers had landed, their return to Europe, by way of Sicily, was decided upon. It was not consistent with Charles’s character to forget or abandon an enterprise he had once decided upon; and on landing at Trapani, he assembled the council of crusading kings and princes, and proposed to them to re-embark for Constantinople. It was a bold and sagacious idea to take advantage of this unusual assemblage of naval forces to establish French power in the East; but Charles, indefatigable himself, spoke to disheartened and disgusted men. All refused, and Edward Plantagenet (afterwards Edward I. of England) rejected with insulting energy his uncle’s proposition, declaring that he would winter in Sicily, and afterwards return to Syria, which he did, without other result than the wound cured by the well-known trait of conjugal affection and courage of the virtuous and intrepid Eleanor of Castile. Subsequently, the realisation of Charles’s ambitious designs upon the East, long entertained, was continually prevented by one circumstance or another, until at last the affairs of Sicily gave him occupation at home, effectually precluding aggrandisement abroad. Essentially a man of war, he nevertheless, in time of peace, showed skill, intelligence, and activity in the administration of the kingdom of Naples. Had the distant provinces of his dominions been as well governed, M. de St Priest affirms that the Two Sicilies would not, during more than two centuries, have been sundered and at enmity. But Charles abandoned the island Sicily to his lieutenants. He positively disliked and ill-treated it, and determined to dispossess Palermo of its title of capital, in favour of the city of Naples, of which he was enthusiastically fond. Palermo was too devoted to the house of Swabia; and, moreover, to maintain correspondence with the north of Italy, with Rome, and especially with France, it suited Charles far better to fix his headquarters and seat of government at Naples. From the very first moment, he had been greatly struck by the aspect of the latter city. The bright sky and sunny sea and mountain amphitheatre that still charm and fascinate the tourist, had a far stronger effect upon the prince whom conquest rendered their master. He at once mentally fixed upon Naples as his capital, and gradually accomplished his project—without, however, announcing it by public declaration, and even continuing to give to Palermo the titles establishing its supremacy. But, whilst retaining the empty name of superiority, the Sicilian city felt itself substantially fallen; and this may have been a cause, and no slight one, that its inhabitants were the first to rise in arms against the galling yoke and insolent neglect of their French rulers.

M. de St Priest’s third volume brings Charles to the zenith of his fortunes. Invested for life with the high dignity of sole Roman senator, he had the full support and hearty alliance of Martin IV.—a French pope, whose election had been compelled from the conclave by the intimidation of the sword. It was the first time since Charles had entered Italy that the pontifical chair had been occupied by a man on whose docility he could entirely reckon. Papal mistrust and jealousy had been the bane of many of his projects. All apprehensions from that quarter were now removed, and, strong in this holy alliance, he again prepared for his eastern expedition. All was ready; at the head of five thousand men, without counting infantry, and of a hundred and thirty ships, he had only to give the order to steer for the Bosphorus. But in Sicily, the storm, long brewing, was on the eve of bursting forth; and the powerful armament intended for distant conquest, was found insufficient to retain present possessions. The decline of Charles’s life was also that of his power: his last days were days of heaviness, disaster, and grief.

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