On September 10, 1348, she left Provence for Naples, accompanied by her husband and her sister and the counsellors, Acciajuoli and Spinelli. But, when they came to the shores of Naples, they could not land in the harbour because all the castles on that side of the city were occupied by the Hungarians, so that they had to go on to where the mouth of the classic river, Sebeto, was crossed by a bridge, the Ponte Guiscardo; thence they were escorted by the nobles and townspeople to the Palazzo Adjutorio by the Porta Capuana, where they proceeded to establish themselves and their Court.
For many months the fortunes of war inclined first to one side and then to the other. It began by Nicholas Acciajuoli’s blockading the Hungarians in their strongholds, whilst Louis of Taranto employed his energies in reducing various of the rebellious barons to allegiance. Little by little, he extended his operations from the city of Naples into the furthest confines of the kingdom; until, by dint of perseverance, he had contrived to make himself, as it appeared, master of it. But suddenly his good-fortune deserted him, owing to his abandonment by one of the King of Hungary’s mercenaries whom Louis had seduced to the side of the Queen by heavy bribes. This was that Werner who styled himself “the enemy of God,” and who now resold himself to the Hungarian, to whose Vicar-General, Conrad Wolf (Conrado Lupo, as the chronicler makes it), he opened the gates of Benevento.
The consequence of Werner’s treachery was to force Louis of Taranto to fall back upon Naples; when the King of Hungary, on learning of it, made all speed to rejoin his troops—he had fled from Italy for a while to escape an epidemic of the plague—before Aversa, bringing with him heavy reinforcements. Landing at Manfredonia, he advanced, practically unopposed, so swiftly as to take his adversary completely by surprise. Having made himself master of the fortresses of Trani, Canosa, and Salerno in rapid succession, thus hemming in Louis of Taranto on the east and on the south, he proceeded to lay siege to Aversa on the north of Naples. This new move threatened disaster to Joan and her husband, who, being forced to remain on the defensive in Naples, were obliged to witness the spectacle of as gallant a resistance as was ever made by any beleaguered garrison; and that without being able to come in any way to the assistance of Pignatelli, the commandant of the place, and his heroic soldiers, who only numbered about five hundred men, as against some seventeen thousand of the enemy’s forces. During three months Pignatelli flung back the King of Hungary’s attacks upon the town; until finally, despairing of taking Aversa by assault, the Hungarian resolved to reduce it by starvation.
Gradually the circumstances of the little garrison became hopeless; so that Pignatelli was confronted with the alternative of surrender or of death either by starvation or in a last grapple with the besiegers. To add to the general distress, a fleet of vessels bringing reinforcements to Queen Joan from Provence under the leadership of Renaud des Baux—some relation this, I fancy, of that terrible Chief Justice, the Count of Monte Scaglioso—and upon the timely arrival of which all depended, was delayed by contrary winds so that none could say where it was or whether it would ever arrive at all.
Under these circumstances, Louis of Taranto, abhorring the thought of allowing the brave Pignatelli and his soldiers to sacrifice themselves to no purpose (seeing that the ultimate surrender of Aversa was inevitable), sent a message to the King of Hungary inviting him to a personal encounter, in the same spirit in which the Emperor Paul Petrovitch sent a similar challenge to King George III of England. Louis of Taranto’s proposal to the Hungarian was simplicity itself: that he of them who should kill the other should be King of Naples and of Jerusalem. To this the King of Hungary consented, with the advice of his counsellors, stipulating only that the combat should take place in the presence of the Emperor of Germany, as Cæsar and sovereign lord of all the princes of the West; or of the King of England, as a friend of both parties; or of the Patriarch of Aquileia, whose pretensions to equality with the Pope the Hungarian appears to have been by way of encouraging in revenge for Clement VI’s decision in favour of Joan.
These proposals, however, came to naught, for in the meanwhile Aversa surrendered to the Hungarians; so that there was no longer any call for him to risk his life for nothing. He had only to close in upon Naples, and the doomed city must at once fall into his hands; it was not more than twelve miles from Aversa to the capital and the Hungarian advance guard under Lupi was soon visible to the Neapolitans at the Porta Capuana; for it was easier for them, being mounted troops, to approach the city from the direction of Poggia than from that of Capodimonte, the more direct but more hilly road to Aversa.
Providentially, it was at this moment that the ships of Renaud des Baux hove in sight of Naples and speedily came to anchor in the port. Now it chanced that Maria of Durazzo with her two children had taken refuge from a possible sack of the city by the Hungarians in the Castel dell’ Uovo, that, as the reader will remember, stands upon a rock surrounded on three sides by the sea and connected with the mainland by a causeway on arches. Both John and Louis, being occupied in the town itself at the time of the fleet’s arrival, and supposing that Maria had already preceded them on board the flagship, remained at their posts until the last, encouraging their people and exhorting them to hold firm against the foe. But the Neapolitans, preferring surrender to possible annihilation, sent out a deputation to the King of Hungary to beg for terms; to the great anger and sorrow of their rightful sovereigns, who only now, when all seemed over, reluctantly sought the shelter of Des Baux’s vessels, off the Castello dell’ Uovo. Here, being now much pressed for time, they embarked on the nearest of the ships and, still in the belief that the Duchess of Durazzo was safe on board that of the Admiral, they gave the signal to depart and sailed out of the harbour followed, as they imagined, by the rest of the fleet; for it was now drawing on to night, and too dark for them to see clearly what was taking place in rear of them.
Not until they reached Gaeta, towards noon of the following day, after fighting their way through a dreadful storm, did they realise that the Admiral’s ship with the Queen’s sister on board was not with the rest of the squadron that now came toiling, ship by ship, at long intervals into the harbour. What had happened to it? Had it sunk or been flung ashore by the waves during the night at some lonely spot upon that inhospitable coast? This was the agonising question that Joan asked of herself and of Louis and of all about them. And none could answer her.
Suddenly, as all hope of her ever again holding her sister in her arms seemed to be on the point of vanishing from before Joan’s eyes, a cry of joy broke from her where she was leaning upon the gunwale of the vessel, her gaze fixed upon the sea and the cloud-scuds to southward. Hastening to her side, Louis saw that a ship in difficulties, a considerable distance from them, was being driven, in spite of persistent “tacking,” towards them in the harbour of Gaeta. Thinking it must be the Admiral, Louis hoisted signals to him, that he should join them; but, to his amazement, no attention was at first paid to his signals; by which I mean to say that Louis had flown the Royal Standard and that the other only continued the more desperately to endeavour to keep out to sea.