Louis III., a well-grown lad of seventeen, and as manly as he was fit mentally, arrived off the city of Naples on August 15, 1420, to maintain his right to the throne more bravely and more successfully than either his father or his grandfather had done. He had just fallen in with the fleet of the King of Aragon, but in defeating his hereditary enemy his own flotilla was so greatly worsted that he was unable to take the city by storm. He landed, however, and betook himself to Aversa to present his homage to Queen Giovanna. Shocked by her lustful overtures, he departed precipitately to Rome, and there bided his time. The Queen’s failure to seduce the young Sovereign threw her once more into the arms of King Alfonso, whom she formally proclaimed her heir on September 24 the same year. Three years passed whilst the adherents of the House of Anjou suffered forfeiture of goods, liberty of person, and many cruel punishments and tortures.
Alfonso, a natural son of King Ferdinand the Just, King of Aragon and Sicily, was forty years of age, remarkably handsome, talented and capable, ambitious, but generous and devoted to the fair sex. He was, however, entirely unresponsive to the amorous approaches of the Queen. His rejection, his scorn, and his independence of action, roused in Giovanna keen feelings of resentment. She had named him heir to Naples; she could just as easily disinherit and discard him. On June 24, 1423,—good St. John the Baptist’s Day, a festival of major obligation in the Church,—the Queen caused proclamation to be made at Mass and in the markets that, “owing to the incompetence and pretensions of the King of Aragon, he is thereby disinherited, and is no longer to be recognized as successor to the throne of Naples.” A plot, indeed, or more correctly plots, were revealed to Giovanna whereby Alfonso was implicated in a conspiracy to seize the Queen’s person, imprison her, and ultimately to poison her. On May 22 of the same year he had taken the bold step of arresting Gianni Caracciolo, the Queen’s chief favourite. This roused Giovanna to action. She ordered Caracciolo’s immediate release, and bade Alfonso quit Naples at once, or remain at his peril. Greatly to her surprise and relief, he took his departure, and left the field open to his youthful rival.
The Queen’s next step was to send to Rome, and invite her “beloved cousin,” as she called Louis, to return to her assistance in driving the Aragonese out of Naples, and to accept the succession to her throne. She bade him to have no fear of misunderstandings of the past, but to regard herself as nothing more than a well-intentioned relative.
Louis, now grown to manhood, with ripened experience of warlike tactics and political strife, and, be it said, of women and their ways, entered Naples in state on April 10, 1424. His arrival in Southern Italy cheered the desponding spirits of the Angevine party and roused their zeal. Adherents flocked to the banner he set up, and men and arms were ready at his beck and call. A very important personage allied himself with the young King-adventurer—none other than Sforza, the famous condottiere. He gathered around him a considerable number of distinguished malcontents and disappointed favourites of the Queen, who in no way concealed their intention of revenging the insults she had heaped upon them, as soon as they gained a promising opportunity. News of this determination very soon reached Giovanna’s ears, and she shut herself up in her palace with her maidens and her toadies, and declined to receive King Louis or his envoys. At the same time she summoned to her presence Braccio Fortebraccio di Mantova, another of her renowned condottieri, and Constable of Sicily, the avowed rival and enemy of Sforza, and suffering under a decree of excommunication of Pope Martin V.
Leonora, immediately in attendance on the Queen, managed very skilfully to convey intelligence of all that passed in Giovanna’s secret councils to her royal lover. She told him that, in spite of her recent proclamation, the Queen had sent her favourite Court Seneschal, Gianni Caracciolo, to the King of Aragon to implore him to come and rescue her, and put the coalition to flight. She asked Alfonso to accept the title and estates of Duke of Calabria, as appertaining to the heir-presumptive to the Neapolitan throne. This daring courtier pressed his attentions upon the Queen, demanding not only a share of her bed, but a share of her throne. Leonora told Louis all the ins and outs of this intrigue, and warned him to be on the alert; for should Caracciolo’s presumption become known in Naples, there would be a general revolution. Sforza, on his side, was not prepared to allow his rival Hercules an unquestioned victory at Court. He demanded admission to the palace, and an interview with the Queen, before whom he challenged Caracciolo to mortal combat.
Giovanna was delighted that such redoubtable champions should worst each other on her account. Her vanity was flattered—and that is a happy condition for a scheming woman. Undoubtedly she most favoured Caracciolo, but Sforza’s fine physique appealed to her irresistibly, and she fanned his passion. If Caracciolo was for the moment master of her heart, Sforza was master of her future, and she was happy. One day she invited the rivals to join her in the chase, and she rode between them. She cared little for hunting save as an incentive to amorous relations. Tiring soon of the exercise, she expressed a wish to dismount and saunter in the forest glades, but her mood lead to an extraordinary contest. Caracciolo threw himself at once off his mount, and gave the Queen his hand to rid her of her pommel. Sforza, seeing his advantage, pressed his horse against the Queen’s and seized her other hand. Each hero pulled his hardest, until Giovanna was compelled to cry aloud for pain! Then, slipping quietly down, she ordered Sforza to release her. This token of non-preference excited the condottiere’s passion. “If Caracciolo,” he hissed out, “had not been so clumsy, your Majesty would not have been so greatly disarranged!”
“It is not you,” replied the Queen, “that should dare to regulate my conduct, or, for the matter of that, your rival’s. Hold your tongue and leave me; your presence is not grateful just now!”
“As you will, madam,” said Sforza fiercely. “Yes, I will leave you with the favourite of your heart, but you ought to know that you cannot treat thus a man like me!” Then he turned to Caracciolo, and exclaimed in a tone of scornful disdain: “As for you, I advise you to use all your wits and all your resources, for you will stand in need of them!”
Giovanna was on that day absolutely overcome by her physical passions. She cared for nothing, and the last sight the enraged Sforza had of her was locked in her lover’s arms and reclining on a mossy bed, lost to the world around. The erring Queen speedily came to her senses with respect to the position Sforza had taken up; and when she learnt that he had thrown in his lot for better or for worse with Louis III., under a pretext, she despatched Caracciolo to Rome to claim the Papal reversal of his excommunication, and to assure the Pope of her filial devotion to the Holy See. Before he departed, Giovanna required him to deliver up his sword as Seneschal of the kingdom, which she promptly offered as a bribe to Sforza.
Meanwhile Leonora had not been idle. She had spoken to the Queen often and passionately about the comeliness and the gallantry of her hero, contrasting his buoyant physical excellences with the blazé proportions of Alfonso,—not knowing that he had rejected Giovanna’s lustful overtures,—until she expressed herself desirous of confirming his appointment as her heir. Leonora wrote thus to King Louis: “Come not yet to the palace; but arm your fleet, and recruit what troops you can. Sforza is loyal, but Caracciolo is your enemy, and he is powerful. Besides him you have to reckon with Braccio and with King Alfonso. You have need of prudence and daring.”