Pedro III (1276-1285) showed in his short reign that he was a man of his father’s mould. Able as he was he had to yield not a little to his nobles and the oligarchical towns, as indeed had Jaime I,—as witness the case of the independent position of the Justicia won from Jaime I. From Pedro III these elements, especially those of Aragon proper, obtained the rights embodied in a document called the “General Privilege”; by this the Justicia was proclaimed chief justice for all cases coming before the king, and was made to depend more closely on the nobles and allied towns. They also gained many other privileges, such as the restoration of the goods and lands taken from them by Jaime, exemption from naval service, and a reduction in the number of days of military service required of them. Yet Pedro was able to keep them sufficiently in hand to enable him to embark upon an ambitious foreign policy.
Foreign policy of Pedro III.
Pedro took the first step toward the reincorporation of the realm left by his father to Pedro’s brother Jaime when he procured a recognition from the latter that he held his kingdom of Majorca as a vassal of the king of Aragon. Reaching out still farther he established a protectorate over the Moslem state of Tunis, gaining great commercial advantages at the same time. The next logical move was the conquest of the island of Sicily. Two events combined to bring Pedro III into competition for dominion there. One was his denial of vassalage to the pope, repudiating the arrangement of Pedro II, and the other was his marriage to Constance, the daughter of King Manfred of Sicily. The papacy had only recently won its struggle of several centuries against the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperors, and it claimed that the territory of Naples, or southern Italy and Sicily, was at the pope’s disposal. Manfred of Sicily was a member of the defeated imperial family, and would not recognize the papal claim, whereupon the pope offered the kingdom as a fief to the French prince, Charles of Anjou. Charles accepted and succeeded in conquering the island, putting Manfred to death. He then proceeded to rule in tyrannical fashion, until in 1282 he provoked the celebrated uprising known as the “Sicilian vespers,” when a terrible vengeance was wreaked upon the followers of Charles. Pedro III already had a great army near by in Tunis, and when he was invited by the Sicilians to help them he accepted, alleging the claims of his wife to the Sicilian crown, and landing in Sicily in the same year, 1282. In a short time he was master of the entire island, and through the exploits of his great admiral, Roger de Lauria, in control of not a little of the Italian coast as well, though only temporarily.
The French invasion.
Affronted both by the denial of vassalage and by the conquest of Sicily the pope excommunicated Pedro, and declared his deposition as king of Aragon, granting the throne in his stead to Charles of Valois, second son of the king of France. He even went so far as to proclaim a crusade against Pedro, and a great French army was prepared to carry out his decision and to establish the claim of Charles of Valois. Allies were found in King Jaime of Majorca and many of Pedro’s own nobles and churchmen. The French forces soon overran much of Catalonia, but when matters looked darkest a great naval victory by Roger de Lauria and an epidemic which broke out in the French army turned the tide, and the invaders were driven across the Pyrenees. In the same year Pedro died, but just before his death he offered to return Sicily to the pope,—so strong was the prestige of the papacy in that day.
Alfonso III.
Struggles with the nobility and the Privilege of the Union.
Pedro’s son, Alfonso III (1285-1291), had no idea of abandoning Sicily. He made it into a separate kingdom under his brother Jaime, and the strife with France and the pope went on. Alfonso was not of his father’s calibre, however, and in 1291 agreed to renounce the Sicilian claim and to fight Jaime if the latter should fail to comply with this arrangement; furthermore, he agreed to pay the papal tribute of the treaty of Pedro II, including all back sums still unpaid. Before Alfonso could act on this agreement he died. His reign had not been free from struggles with the nobility, and the latter were in no small degree responsible for the weak result of his foreign policy; only an exceptionally capable monarch, such as Pedro III had been, could handle successfully the grave foreign and domestic problems of the time. The nobles and towns of Aragon proper and Valencia had banded together in a league called the Union, and they used their combined influence to exact new privileges from Alfonso. When he resisted they went so far as to conspire for the succession of the French pretender, and took other extreme measures which soon decided the king to give way. In 1287 he granted the famous “Privilege of the Union.”[31] By this document the king was restrained from proceeding against any member of the Union without the consent of both the Justicia and the Cortes, and a council was to be appointed to accompany him and decide with him the matters of government affecting Aragon and Valencia. If he should fail to observe the Privilege in these and other respects (for there were other articles of lesser note) the members of the Union might elect a new king. Thus, as Alfonso III put it, “There were as many kings in Aragon as there were ricoshombres” (great nobles). Jaime II (1291-1327), brother of the preceding, contrived to reduce some of the privileges granted by this document, although indirectly, for he recognized its legal force. He enacted laws which were in fact inconsistent with it, and in this way managed to deprive the Justicia of some of the vast power to which he had attained.
Jaime II and the Sicilian question.
The reign of Jaime II was especially interesting from the standpoint of foreign affairs. Having been king in Sicily, Jaime was not disposed to surrender the island to the pope, and left his son, Fadrique, there to govern for him. Soon he changed his mind, and made a similar agreement to that of Alfonso III, whereby the island was to be given to the pope, and Jaime was to employ force, if necessary, to achieve this end. Jaime was soon afterward granted Sardinia and Corsica in compensation for Sicily, although they were to be held as a fief from the pope, and he was to make good his claim by conquering them. The Sicilians were not favorable to Jaime’s agreement, and proceeded to elect Fadrique king, resisting Jaime’s attempts to enforce his treaty. After a long war, peace was made in 1302 on terms whereby Fadrique married the daughter of the Angevin claimant, the papal candidate, and promised the succession to his father-in-law. Toward the close of Jaime’s reign Sardinia was conquered, in 1324, by the king’s eldest son. It was at this time, too, that a body of Catalan mercenaries set up their rule in the duchy of Athens, thus extending Catalan influence to the eastern Mediterranean.[32]