The kings of Naples, about the middle of the fourteenth century, had sunk very low in power and consideration. Robert died on the 19th of January, 1343, at the age of eighty. He had given his granddaughter, Joanna, in marriage to her cousin Andrew, the son of the king of Hungary. Andrew was son of the eldest son of Charles II, and had a better right than Robert himself to the crown of Naples. The latter, whom his nephew regarded as a usurper, had been desirous of compounding the rights of the two branches of his family, by marrying Joanna to Andrew, and crowning them together; but these young people felt towards each other only hatred.[b]
In this baneful sentiment Andrew was encouraged by his Hungarian attendants, especially by his confessor. Other circumstances added to the disagreeableness of his situation: he was rude and unpolished; the Neapolitans, on the contrary, were the most polite people in Europe; nor could he conceal from himself that he was the ridicule of the court. He had other motives of discontent; his queen was suspected of an intrigue with Louis of Tarentum, a prince of the royal family, and to him, personally, she evidently bore an aversion. That he threatened one day to be revenged, is certain; that his threats inspired several, not even excepting Joanna, with fear, is equally undoubted; a plot was formed for his destruction—whether with her privity, has been disputed by one or two modern writers; but from her conduct before and after the tragical event, there is circumstantial evidence enough to implicate her in the guilt. One night (September 18th, 1345), the court having removed to a solitary place in the vicinity of Aversa, Andrew was called by the conspirators from the queen’s bed, under pretence of urgent business of state, and murdered in the corridor. That she was aware of the plot may be inferred—first, from her momentary reluctance to allow him to depart; secondly, from her endeavours to screen the assassins from the pursuit of justice; thirdly, from her marriage with Louis of Tarentum; and fourthly, from the extreme care taken by the functionaries whom the pope ordered to inquire into the murder to prevent the confessions of the tortured from being heard—in other words, the implication of the queen. Some of the conspirators were executed; but, as the queen herself and her paramour escaped, this show of justice did not satisfy Louis, king of Hungary, who invaded Naples, expelled Joanna, punished some of the suspected nobles, and received the submission of the kingdom. Thence, however, he was soon driven by the fearful plague which devasted all Europe in its course, and which appears to have been more severely felt in Italy than anywhere else. The sway of the Hungarians was already disagreeable to the fickle Neapolitans; Joanna was recalled, and a desultory war followed. Louis returned to the scene; but as his troops, after fulfilling their usual feudal service, murmured to return, he was compelled to enter into a truce with Joanna, on the condition that her guilt or innocence should be left to the decision of the pope at Avignon; that if she were declared guilty, she would resign the crown, but that, if she were absolved, she should be allowed to retain it on paying a heavy sum as an indemnification for the expense of the war.
[1345-1386 A.D.]
The decision of one so devoted as Clement VII to the interests of France could not be doubted. Her complicity in the plot was not denied; but it was gravely contended that witchcraft had been employed to seduce her; in the end she was absolved, and the indemnity to King Louis approved. Her subsequent reign continued to be one of guilt and disgrace. The great barons were too proud to obey her husband, whose imbecility she herself despised, and whose bed she dishonoured; the Grand Company of mercenaries ravaged the kingdom to the very gates of the capital; as both he and the people were too cowardly to oppose them, their retreat was purchased by money. After his death, she married a third husband, a prince of the house of Aragon; and, on his death, a fourth, Otto of Brunswick; but, as she had issue by none of the four, the heir to the crown was Charles, duke of Durazzo, the last male of the Neapolitan branch of Anjou, who was also heir to the throne of Hungary. At the court of the latter country, Charles had imbibed a feeling of hatred against the queen, whom he resolved to dethrone—a resolution to which he was impelled by Urban VI, who could never pardon her devotion to the anti-pope Clement. Her attempt to exclude him from the succession, by the adoption of the count of Anjou, and the step of Pope Urban, who, in 1380, declared her deposed from the Neapolitan throne, and preached a crusade against her, sealed her fate. The prince advanced to Rome, received the crown from the pope, and marched on Naples, which, like the rest of that cowardly kingdom, submitted to him, as it had done to every other invader from the downfall of the Western Empire. Otto, indeed, made a show of resistance; but his men abandoned him the moment the engagement commenced, and he fell, like Joanna, into the hands of the victor. Her death was sudden and violent; probably it was caused by suffocation with a feather bolster.
He had little reason to rejoice in this barbarity. He had soon to sustain an invasion of Naples by Louis of Anjou, who, as usual, was joined by a considerable number of adherents; and, though death rid him of a formidable rival, he had to support a quarrel with an arrogant pope, who excommunicated him and his army. During these transactions, Louis of Hungary died, and the nobles, preferring the rights of his daughter Maria to those of a distant relative, proclaimed her their sovereign. But Charles had partisans, who invited him to resume the crown; he hastened to Buda, forced the queen to abdicate, and was proclaimed in her stead; but, in the height of his success, he was assassinated by the creatures of the queen and her mother. This tragical event left Naples under the regency of his widow, Margarita, during the minority of his son Ladislaus [or Lancelot], then only ten years of age; and her government was perpetually exposed to the intrigues of the French faction, which espoused the interests of a son, equally young, of Louis of Anjou, who was named after his father.[h]
[1386-1416 A.D.]
The reign of Ladislaus, the son and successor of Charles III, presents a continued scene of perfidy and rapine. Whilst he successfully defended his Neapolitan crown against the attempts of the duke of Anjou, he seized for a moment that of Hungary; and availed himself of the great schism and the absence of the pope from Rome continually to harass and pillage the Romans. No treaties of amity could restrain his thirst for plunder; he thrice led his troops to attack the devoted city, seized on the castle of St. Angelo, and occupied Ostia, Viterbo, and great part of the patrimony of St. Peter. His ravages were suspended by a premature death; and in him providence is said to have anticipated a pest which in the next age became the scourge of European incontinence. Though three times married, Ladislaus left no legitimate issue. Unbounded in his lust, he forsook his wives for his more libidinous paramours. Constantia, his first queen, irreproachable in her fame, was divorced by her inconstant husband; Maria of Cyprus, the second, died through an effort to stimulate her own barrenness; and the third, the widow of Orsino, prince of Tarentum, was espoused for the acquisition of her territories, and abandoned to neglect and imprisonment immediately after the nuptial ceremonies. He was succeeded by his sister, Joanna II; but the royal bed of Naples acquired little purity by the exchange (1414).
Naples.—Arch of Alfonso on the Extreme Left