The reunion of the royal couple was a happy thing indeed, so often parted had they been and so sadly. Isabelle had acted the part of a good woman and a faithful spouse despite splenetic insinuations to the contrary. Her position had been most trying in anxious times, and among ill-disposed aspirants for her favour. She knew intuitively who to trust of those that expressed themselves most devoted to her service, and no one ever was more zealously preoccupied with the interest of her friends than she. Now came the time to award honours to the faithful and the true, and King René deputed his Queen to bestow the royal favours. The first to profit by the new dispensation was, naturally, the widowed Queen Margaret, who after the burial of her consort, King Louis III., had sought refuge in Naples, under the sheltering wing of her royal sister-in-law. Still resplendent in her beauty and possessed of every youthful grace, the young Queen was the object of deep solicitude and affection.
The condition of the Two Sicilies was parlous; almost every commune was divided against itself on the subject of the succession to the throne, and almost daily were recorded deeds of cruelty and aggression, pointing to the outbreak of serious hostilities all over the dual kingdom. The blue and white ensign of Anjou and the red and yellow banner of Aragon were reared, not in friendly contest, but in deadly feud. Under these circumstances René judged it expedient for the Queen and their little son Louis to go back to France, and Queen Margaret refused to be separated from her sympathetic sister-in-law. It was a pang to both again so soon to part, but rulers of States are not like ordinary mortals; for public duties must take precedence of private interests. Isabelle’s brief rule at Naples had done wonders in the way of conciliation, and Étienne Pasquier did not exaggerate her virtues when he wrote: “Cette vraye Amazone, que dans un corps de femme portoit un cœur d’homme, fist tant d’actes généraux pendant la prisonment de son mari, que ceste pièce este enchassée en lettres d’or dedans les annales de Lorraine.” All Naples shed tears at their beloved Queen’s departure. Margaret they hardly knew, but the last Queen they had known, Giovanna, was hated quite as thoroughly as Isabelle was adored.
The galley bearing back to Marseilles those whom he most loved had hardly passed beyond the horizon of the Bay of Naples when René took action. On September 22 an Anjou herald appeared in the camp of King Alfonso, and threw down King René’s bloodstained glove as a challenge, first to a personal encounter between the two Kings, and then to a combat à l’outrance between the two armies. On the part of Alfonso, who was on his way from his Milan prison, the challenge was accepted by his chief of the staff, who indicated the locality for the trials of chivalry and force,—the level country between Nola and Arienzo, at the foot of Vesuvius. Single combat was denied by Alfonso, and then René attacked his rival with all the forces at his command. Numerically again, as at the stricken field of Bulgneville, the Angevine army was much the stronger, for under René’s banner marched the Milan-Genoese contingent, with Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, at its head. René’s fleet, too, was at anchor in the bay, commanded by the intrepid Admiral Jehan de Beaufort, to act in conjunction with the land forces of his King. The Spanish army was better disciplined and better furnished with artillery, and King René once more had to bow to circumstances, and to look in vain for Fortune’s smile. His forces were cut in two and slaughtered right and left, and he himself wounded and all but captured, for he was not a leader to skulk behind his men: he led the van, and was ever in the thick of the fight. His appeal, “Anjou-Cecile! Amor Chevaliers!” was of no avail. He was beaten, and fled with only two knights, and shut himself in Castel Nuovo. A truce was signed, and the King of Naples went off to report his defeat at Rome, Florence, and Genoa.
1. “EMBARKMENT OF ‘CUER’ FOR THE ‘ISLAND OF LOVE’”
2. “‘CUER’ READING THE INSCRIPTION ON THE ENCHANTED FOUNTAIN”
From “La Conqueste de Doulce Mercy.” Written and illuminated by King René. National Library, Paris
To face page 130
Pope Eugenius IV. and the Emperor Joannes Paleologos, who were both at Florence, received the royal fugitive ardently, blessed him, and awarded him and his heirs, disregarding the victory of King Alfonso, the right to govern the Two Sicilies in perpetuity. The Medici and other Florentines of mark and wealth offered subsidies for the recovery of the Neapolitan throne, and at Genoa and Milan men and supplies were to be had for the asking; but René had had his fill of war, and bloodshed was now to him abhorrent. “Too much blood,” he remarked, “has been shed already. We will rest awhile, and ask God to pardon our sins.” René returned to Marseilles in 1442 a sadder and a wiser man. There he met once more his Queen, to rejoice his stricken heart; but that heart, and hers too, tenderly bled again and again, for not only did the melancholy news of his good mother’s death in Anjou shatter him, but Isabelle and he had the terrible grief of parting with their dearly-loved second son, the Marquis of Pont-à-Mousson. Prince Louis, so promising, so handsome, and so loyal, they buried sadly: he was his mother’s favourite child, the companion of her triumphs and her trials.