The stirring period of the middle ages, rich in examples of bold emprise and events of romantic interest, includes no more striking and remarkable episode than the invasion and conquest, by the brother of St Louis, of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. As an episode it has hitherto been treated—introduced, and not unfrequently crushed into unmerited insignificance, in works of general history. By both historian and poet fragments have been brought into strong relief; as an independent whole, no writer, until the present time, has ventured and chosen to attempt its delineation. The virtues and misfortunes of the last legitimate descendant of the imperial house of Stauffen, a house once so numerous and powerful, have been wept over by the minstrels to whose fraternity he belonged, vaunted by indignant chroniclers, and sung by the greatest of Italy’s bards. The gallant and successful insurrection by which the brightest gem was wrenched from the French usurper’s fire-new diadem, and set in Arragon’s crown, has been repeatedly recorded and enlarged upon, and not unfrequently mistold. But the integral treatment of the conquest of Naples, in a work devoted to it alone, and worthy of the weight and interest of the subject—the narrative of the ousting of the German dynasty and establishment of a French one, including the circumstances that led to the change, and apart from contemporary and irrelevant history—were left for the elegant and capable pen of an author honourably known for extensive learning and indefatigable research. The puissant rule of Frederick the Hohenstauffe—the heroic virtues and Homeric feats of Charles of Anjou—the precocious talents, fatal errors, and untimely end of the luckless Conradin—have found a fit chronicler in the accomplished Count of St Priest.
Besides acknowledged talents and great industry, this writer has brought to his arduous task a familiar acquaintance—the result of long and assiduous study—with the times and personages of whom he writes, a sound judgment, and an honest desire of impartiality. In his quality of Frenchman the latter was especially essential, to guard him against the natural bias in favour of an illustrious and valiant countryman, that might lead, almost unconsciously, to an undue exaltation of the virtues, and extenuation of the crimes, of the hero of his narrative. Nor was this the only instance in which he was liable to temptation. The circumstances and causes of the massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers, were handed down, in the first instance, by Italian writers, in the adoption of whose views and assertions subsequent historians have perhaps displayed too great servility. If we consider the vindictive and treacherous instincts of the Sicilians, their fierce impatience of foreign domination, and the slight account made of human life by the natives of southern Europe generally, we cannot too hastily reject the assertions and arguments by which M. de St Priest props his opinion, that the vengeance was greater than the offence, the oppressed more cruel than the oppressor. History affixes to an entire nation the stigma of goading a conquered people to madness, by arrogance, injustice, and excess. M. de St Priest takes up the defence, and, without claiming for his client an honourable acquittal, strives, by the production of extenuating circumstances, to induce the world to reconsider its severe and sweeping verdict. He asks whether the evidence has been sufficiently sifted, whether the facts have been properly understood and appreciated, or even known. “I think,” he says, “they have not. The Sicilians themselves acknowledge this. One of their most distinguished writers has suspected falsehood, and sought the truth; but he has done so only in a very exclusive, and consequently a very incomplete point of view. He has aggravated the reproach that rests upon the memory of the French of the thirteenth century. In my turn, I have resumed the debate with a national feeling as strong, but less partial I hope, than that of most of the Italian and German annalists, in whose footsteps our own historians have trodden with undue complaisance. It is time to stand aloof from these, and to reply to them.” It would be inverting the order of our subject, here to dilate upon M. de St Priest’s views concerning the massacre, to which we may hereafter recur. He scarcely makes out so good a case for the French victims to Sicilian vengeance as he does for the most prominent personage of his book, Charles of Anjou, whose character he handles with masterly skill. He admits his crimes—sets off with their acknowledgment; and yet so successfully does he palliate them by the received ideas of the time, by the necessities and perplexities of a most difficult position, that the reader forgets the faults in the virtues of the hero, and receives an impression decidedly favourable to the first French sovereign of Naples. “Had I proposed,”—we quote from the preface—“to write a biography, and not a history, to paint a portrait instead of a picture, I might have recoiled before my hero. The blood of Conradin still cries out against his pitiless conqueror; but the crime of the chief must not be imputed to the army. Aged warriors were seen to weep and pray around the scaffold of a child. The end I propose is not that of a retrospective vindication—an ungrateful, and often a puerile task. Charles of Anjou was guilty. That fact admitted, he still remains the greatest captain, the sole organising genius, and one of the most illustrious princes of a period fertile in great kings. Like his brother Louis IX., from whom, in other respects, he was only too different, he valiantly served France. He carried the French name into the most distant countries. By his political combinations, by the alliances he secured for his family as much as by his victories, Charles I., King of Sicily, seated his lineage upon the thrones of Greece, Hungary, and Poland. Yet more—he saved the western world from another Mahomedan invasion, less perceived, but not less imminent, than the invasions of the eighth and seventeenth centuries. The bust of Charles of Anjou merits a place between the statues of Charles Martel and John Sobieski.”
This high eulogium, at the very commencement of the book, strikes us as scarcely according with the promise of impartiality recorded upon the following page. The meed of praise exceeds that we should be disposed to allot to the conqueror of Naples. Still, upon investigation, it is difficult to controvert his historian’s assertions, although some of them admit of modification. Here M. de St Priest rather veils and overlooks his hero’s faults than denies them to have existed. He says nothing in this place of the misgovernment that lost Sicily, within a few years of its reduction. Yet to such misrule, more even than to the excesses of a licentious soldiery—partly consequent on it—was attributable the temporary separation of that fair island from the Neapolitan dominions. Subsequently he admits the imprudent contempt shown by Charles to this portion of his new kingdom, his injudicious choice of the agents and representatives of his authority, the exclusion of the natives from public offices and employments—filled almost wholly by Frenchmen—with many other arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust measures, sometimes more vexatious in form than efficient for the end proposed; as, for instance, the decree disarming the Sicilians, which must have been wretchedly enforced, since the Palermitans, when the signal for slaughter was given, were at no loss for weapons to exterminate their tyrants. Whilst admitting the skill shown by Charles in his foreign policy, and in the formation of great and advantageous alliances, we must refuse him, upon his advocate’s own showing, the merit of able internal administration. His military virtues are less questionable, although the greatest of his victories, which placed his rival in his power and secured his seat on the Neapolitan throne, was due less to any generalship of his own than to the bold stratagem of a gray-headed crusader.
Apart from its historical importance, M. de St Priest’s work is valuable as exposing and illustrating the peculiar ideas, strange customs, and barbarous prejudices of a remote and highly interesting period, less known than it deserves, and whose annals and archives few have explored more industriously than himself. In this point of view are we disposed, whilst glancing at some of the principal events it records, especially to consider it; and under this aspect it will probably be most prized and esteemed by the majority. A greater familiarity than the general mass of readers possess with the complicated history of the second period of the middle ages is requisite for the due appreciation of the book, and especially of its first volume. This is purely introductory to the conquest. The name of the conqueror is mentioned for the first time upon its last page. The matter it contains is not the less essential. It sketches the establishment of the Norman dynasty in Sicily; the elevation of that country into a monarchy by Duke Roger II.; the fall of the family of Tancred, and the reign of Frederick II., (Emperor of Germany, and grandson of Barbarossa,) who inherited the crown of the Two Sicilies in right of his mother, the posthumous daughter of Roger, and the last of the Norman line. This brings us into the thick of the long-standing feud between the Pope and the Empire, which, after having had the whole of Europe for its battle-field, at last concentrated itself in a single country. “Towards the middle of the thirteenth century it was transported to the southern extremity of Italy, to the rich and beautiful lands now composing the kingdom of Naples. The quarrel of the investitures terminated by the crusade of Sicily; a debate about ecclesiastical jurisdiction ended in a dispute concerning territorial possession. But although reduced to less vast proportions and more simple terms, the antagonism of the pontificate and the throne lost nothing of its depth, activity, and strength. Far from becoming weakened, it assumed the more implacable and rancorous character of a personal encounter. The war became a duel. It was natural that this should happen. So soon as a regular power was founded in the south of Italy, Rome could not permit the same power to establish itself in the north of the peninsula. The interest of the temporal existence of the popedom, the geographical position of the States of the Church, rendered this policy stringent. The Popes could never allow Lombardy and the Two Sicilies to be united under one sceptre. A King of Naples, as King of the Lombards, pressed them on all sides; but as Emperor he crushed them. This formidable hypothesis realised itself. A German dynasty menaced the Holy See, and was broken. A French dynasty was called to replace it, and obtained victory, power, and duration.” When this occurred—when the Pope, beholding from the towers of Civita Vecchia his earthly sway menaced with annihilation, and the Saracen hordes of Sicily’s powerful King ravaging the Campagna, fulminated anathemas upon the impious invaders, and summoned to his aid a prince of France—Manfredi, Prince of Tarento, or Mainfroy, as M. de St Priest prefers to call him, the natural son of Frederick II., was the virtual sovereign of the Two Sicilies. Frederick, who died in his arms, left him regent of the kingdom during the absence in Germany of his legitimate son Conrad—named his heir in preference to his grandson Frederick, the orphan child of his eldest son Henry, who had died a rebel, conquered and captive. This was not all. “The imperial will declared the Prince of Tarento bailiff or viceroy of the Two Sicilies, with unlimited powers and regal rights, whenever Conrad should be resident in Germany or elsewhere. Things were just then in the state thus provided for. Mainfroy became ipso facto regent of the kingdom; and the lucky bastard saw himself not only eventually called to the powerful inheritance of the house of Suabia, but preferred to the natural and direct heir of so many crowns.”
The death of Frederick the Hohenstauffe, who for long after his decease was popularly known—as in our day a greater than he still is—as the Emperor, revived the hopes and courage of Pope Innocent IV., who resolved to strike a decisive blow at the power of the house of Suabia. Mainfroy was then its representative in Italy. He was only nineteen—a feeble enemy, so thought Innocent, whom a word from the pontifical throne would suffice to level with the dust. But where the sanguine Pope expected to find a child, he met a man, in talent, energy, and prudence. These qualities Mainfroy displayed in an eminent degree in the struggle that ensued; and when Conrad landed in his kingdom, which had been represented to him as turbulent and agitated, he was astonished at the tranquillity it enjoyed. He embraced his brother, and insisted on his walking by his side, under the same dais, from the sea to the city. This good understanding did not last long. Conrad was jealous of the man who had so ably supplied his place, and jealousy at last became hatred. He deprived Mainfroy of the possessions secured to him by his father’s will, banished his maternal relatives with ignominy, and did all he could, but in vain, to drive him to revolt. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that when Conrad died, at the age of twenty-six, leaving Berthold, Margrave of Hohemburg, regent of the kingdom during the minority of his son Conrad V., or Conradin—who had been born since his departure from Germany, and whom he had never seen—there were not wanting persons to accuse Mainfroy as an accessary to his death. Mainfroy had already been charged—falsely, there can be little doubt—of having smothered, under mattresses, his father and benefactor, the Emperor Frederick. There was more probability, if not more truth, in the accusation of fratricide; for, if Conrad had lived, doubtless Mainfroy would, sooner or later, have been sacrificed to his jealousy or safety. “The majority of chroniclers assign to Mainfroy, as an accomplice, a physician of Salerno; and add, with the credulity of the times, that he killed the King of the Romans by introducing diamond dust, an infallible poison, into his entrails. Others, bolder or better informed, give the name of the poisoner, and call him John of Procida.” Whether this death resulted from poison or disease, it was hailed as a happy event by the Italians, and with a great burst of laughter by the Pope, who at once renounced his project of calling a foreign prince to the throne of Sicily, and resumed, with fresh ardour, his plans of conquest and annexation. Advancing to the Neapolitan frontier, he was there met by the Prince of Tarento and the Margrave of Hohemburg, who came to place themselves at his disposal, and to supplicate him on behalf of the infant Conradin. The Pope, who saw a proof of weakness in this humility, insisted that the Two Sicilies should be delivered up to the Church; saying that he would then investigate the rights of Conradin, and admit them if valid. The Margrave, alarmed at the aspect of things, made over the regency to Mainfroy, who accepted it with affected repugnance. A powerful party called this prince to the throne: it was the aristocratic and national party, averse alike to papal domination and to the government of a child. They entered into an agreement with Mainfroy, by which they swore to obey him as regent, so long as the little King should live; stipulating that if he died a minor, or without direct heirs, the Prince of Tarento should succeed him as sovereign. The Margrave of Hohemburg, faithless to the trust reposed in him by Conrad, agreed to these conditions, and promised to deliver up to Mainfroy the late King’s treasures. Instead of so doing, the double traitor made his escape with them, leaving the new regent in such poverty that, in order to pay his German mercenaries, he was compelled to sell the hereditary jewels and gold and silver vases of his mother’s family.
If Mainfroy had made good fight in defence of Conrad’s rights, we may be sure he did not less strenuously strive when his own claim was to be vindicated. Unfortunate at first, and about to succumb to papal power and intrigues, he, as a last resource, threw himself into the arms of the Saracens of Lucera. These unbelievers had been greatly encouraged by his father, who was passionately addicted to things oriental. “From his infancy,” M. de St Priest says of Frederick, “he lived surrounded with astrologers, eunuchs, and odaliques. His palace was a seraglio, himself a sultan. This was quite natural. In Sicily all visible objects were Asiatic. The external form of the houses, their internal architecture, the streets, the baths, the gardens, even the churches, bore the stamp of Islamism. The praises of God are still to be seen engraved in Arabic on marble columns; and in the same language were they traced, in gold and diamonds and pearls, upon the mantle and dalmatica of Sicily’s Queens and Kings. Palermo was then called the trilingual city. Latin and Arabic were equally spoken there; and the Italian, the favella volgare, originated at the court of Frederick-Roger, under the Moorish arcades of his palaces at Palermo and Catania. The language of Petrarch was murmured, for the first time, beside the fountains of the Ziza. The outward forms of Islamism were then, in southern Europe, the ensign hoisted by that small number of liberal thinkers, the avowed enemies of ecclesiastical and monkish domination, who willingly assumed the name of Epicureans.” Further on we have the following, explanatory of the peaceable settlement of the infidel in Sicily, and curiously illustrating the contradictions and bigotry of the time. “With an audacity previously unheard-of, Frederick II., after fighting and conquering the Saracens who overran and disturbed Sicily, transported entire colonies of them to Lucera, in the Capitanata, in the immediate vicinity of the patrimony of St Peter, thus planting, in the heart of his kingdom, the Mahomedan standard he was about to combat in Syria. Decrepid though he was, Pope Honorius felt the danger and insult of such proximity. What were the arms of the holy see against an opponent that none of its anathemas could touch? The Pontiff became indignant, vented threats; but was soon appeased. When the wily Frederick saw him angry, he promised a crusade; whereupon the Pope calmed himself, and treated the Emperor as a son.” Subsequent Popes were less easy to pacify, and ban and excommunication were heaped upon the Emperor’s head. Gregory IX., in his bulls, called him “a marine monster, whose jaws are full of blasphemies;” to which complimentary phrase Frederick replied by the epithets of “great dragon, antichrist,” and “new Balaam.” A third extract will complete the sketch of the Saracens, and their position in Sicily. “Surrounded by odaliques and dancing women; giving eunuchs for guards to his wife, the beautiful Isabella Plantagenet, a daughter of the English King; often clothed in oriental robes; in war-time mounted on an elephant; in his palace surrounded by tame lions; always accompanied by a troop of Mussulmans, to whom he showed great indulgence, permitting them the violation of churches and women, debauch and sacrilege,—Frederick II., in the opinion of his subjects, was no longer a Christian prince. During the last ten years of his reign this state of things reached its height. The number of barbarian troops daily increased. Seventeen new companies, summoned from Africa, were dispersed, like an invading army, over the Basilicata and Calabria. Finally, the Emperor went so far as to instal them in the places of masters of ports, and in other offices that gave these Mussulmans jurisdiction over Christian populations.” And when a Saracen captain, named Phocax, in garrison at Trani, ill-treated a citizen of noble birth, Messer Simone Rocca, and grossly outraged his wife, the aggrieved man could obtain no satisfaction. “The Emperor only laughed. ‘Messer Simone,’ he said, to the complainant, ‘dov’è forza non è vergogna. Go, Phocax will not do it again; had he been a native of the country, I would have had his head cut off.’” On the death of this indulgent patron, the Saracen colony in the kingdom of Naples saw its existence menaced. The infidels were lost if Rome became mistress of the country. The triumph of the Pope would be the tocsin of their extermination. They resolved to defend themselves to the last. They held Lucera, Accerenza, and Girafalco, three impregnable fortresses; they also commanded at other points, less strong but still important. They felt themselves numerous, courageous, and determined. Mainfroy could not doubt that they would gladly rally round the banner of their benefactor’s son; and in this hope he set out for Lucera, where John the Moor then commanded. This man, a slave whom the Emperor’s caprice had raised to the highest dignities, promised Mainfroy the best of receptions. But when the Prince of Tarento reached Lucera, the traitor had gone over to the Pope, taking with him a thousand Saracens and three hundred Germans, and leaving the town in the keeping of a man of his tribe, Makrizi by name. On learning this treachery, Mainfroy still did not renounce his project of confiding himself to the Arabs—so cherished by his father, so favoured by himself. Only, instead of approaching the fortress with his little army, as regent of the kingdom, he preferred to go as a knight-errant, attended only by three esquires, like a paladin of the Round Table. This portion of Mainfroy’s life, as well as many other passages in M. de St Priest’s book, reads like an extract from some old romance of chivalry. After wandering about, in the gloom and rain of a November night, and losing his way repeatedly, Adenulfo, one of Mainfroy’s three men-at-arms, and formerly forester to Frederick II., perceived a white object in the darkness, and recognised a hunting-lodge built by the Emperor. He conducted the prince thither, and they lighted a large fire,—a most imprudent act, for the flame was easily perceptible at Foggia, where Otho of Hohemburg was then in garrison with a portion of the papal army. But Mainfroy was young and a poet. At sight of the splendid trees blazing on the hearth, he forgot the present, and thought only of the past; perhaps he recalled the time, not yet very distant, when as a child, on winter nights like that one, and perchance in that very place, he had seen his father, on his return from an imperial hunt, seat himself at that same hearth, and talk familiarly with his attendants of his wars and his amours, singing the praises of the lovely Catalanas,[[17]] and venting curses on the Pope. The illusion was of short duration. At early dawn Mainfroy and his little escort took horse, and after an hour’s march they beheld, through the misty morning air, the tall hill of Lucera, and on its summit the Saracen citadel and its massive walls, crowned with two-and-twenty towers. But the guardians of the gate refused to open without orders from Makrizi, who moreover, it would appear, had the key in his keeping. Sure that he would deny admittance, they urged the prince to enter as he best might, for that, once within the walls, all would go well. Beneath the gate was a sort of trench, or gutter, to carry off the rain, and through this it was not difficult for a young man of twenty, slender and active like Mainfroy, to squeeze himself. He attempted to do so, but the Saracens could not support the sight of their Emperor’s son grovelling on the ground like a reptile. “Let us not,” they exclaimed, “allow our lord to enter our walls in this vile posture. Let his entrance be worthy of a prince! Let us break the gates!” In an instant these were overthrown; Mainfroy passed over their ruins, and was carried upon the shoulders of the Saracens to the public market-place, surrounded by a joyous multitude. He met Makrizi, who, furious at the news of his entrance, was summoning the garrison to arms. “Makrizi! Makrizi!” cried the Saracens and the people, “get off your horse, and kiss the prince’s feet!” The Arab obeyed, and prostrated himself. Mainfroy had valiantly played his last stake, and fortune favoured his audacity. In Lucera he found the treasures of Frederick II., of King Conrad, of the Margrave Berthold, and of John the Moor. Then, as ever, money was the sinew of war. Its possession changed the aspect of affairs. In less than a month, the proscribed and fugitive Mainfroy had dispersed the Pope’s army, taken and executed John the Moor, and marched upon Naples to seize a crown. And now, for many years, his career of success was unchequered by a reverse. His arms were uniformly triumphant in the field; he was the most magnificent prince, and passed as the richest sovereign, in Europe. At last the marriage of his daughter Constance with the Infante Don Pedro, son of King James of Arragon, crowned his prosperity. Concluded in defiance of the court of Rome, this marriage allied the bastard Prince of Tarento with the French royal family; for Isabella of Arragon, sister of his son-in-law Don Pedro, became the wife of Philip, son of Louis IX., and heir apparent to the crown of France. This last piece of good fortune nearly turned Mainfroy’s head. Instead of defending himself against the Holy See, he assumed the offensive, and invaded its territories. Moreover, he now openly professed, and established as a principle, that the right to dispose of the imperial diadem was not vested in the Popes, but in the senate and people of Rome. “It is time,” he added, “to put an end to this usurpation.” Such maxims, thus publicly proclaimed, rendered the Pope irreconcilable. The papal dream of annexing the Two Sicilies to the pontificate had long melted into air before the sun of Mainfroy’s arrogant prosperity; and Urban IV., convinced that the Church had need of a valiant and devoted defender, turned his eyes northwards, whilst his lips pronounced the name of Charles of Anjou.
Charles, the good Count of Anjou, as some of the chroniclers call him, was married to Beatrix of Savoy, Countess of Provence, whose hand he obtained in preference to two formidable rivals,—Conrad, son of the Hohenstauffe, and Pedro of Arragon. The latter we have just referred to as having subsequently married a daughter of Mainfroy. Through life Peter and Charles were destined to be rivals; and if the latter had the advantage at the outset, his competitor afterwards in some degree balanced the account by robbing him of the island of Sicily. In 1248, soon after his marriage, Charles embarked at Aiguesmortes with his brother Louis and their wives, on a crusade,—was sick to death at the island of Cyprus, but recovered, and performed prodigies of valour in fight with the Saracen. It seemed as if the scent of battle sufficed to restore him his full vigour; and he displayed a furious impetuosity and reckless daring that almost surpass belief. On arriving off Damietta, and at sight of the Saracen army waiting on the shore, he and St Louis sprang from their galley, and waded to land, with the water to their waists. Surrounded by the enemy, Charles raised a wall of corpses around him, until his knights came up to the rescue. Heading them, he charged the infidel host, ordering to strike at the horses’ breasts. The noble Arab chargers fell by hundreds; the Saracens fled; Louis and Charles pursued; Damietta was the prize of the Christians. “The adventurous prince feared the elements as little as he did man. One day the Saracens threw Greek fire upon the crusaders’ tents. Struck with surprise at sight of this mysterious enemy, the Christians were so terrified that they dared not attempt to extinguish the flames. ‘I will go,’ cried the Count of Anjou. They tried to retain him by force, but he broke from them like a madman, and succeeded in his design. At another time, St Louis, from the top of a hill, saw him engaged single-handed with a whole troop of Saracens, who hurled at him darts with flaming flags, which stuck into and burnt his horse’s crupper. Thus did Charles display the first symptoms of a will incapable of receding even before impossibilities,—a dangerous application of a great virtue; but then, these feats of the Count of Anjou delighted every body. Other exploits followed. Like a Christian Horatius, Charles one day stopped the whole Mussulman army upon a wooden bridge.” This great bravery was accompanied by pride, egotism, and hardness of heart, and these qualities caused bickerings between him and St Louis. Nevertheless, the brothers were fondly attached to each other; and when Charles returned to Provence he displayed a depth of emotion on parting from his king that surprised the army, which did not give him credit for so much fraternal affection. There was great contrast of character between him and his royal brother. “They had in common,” says M. de St Priest, “military courage, chastity, probity, and respect to their plighted word.... St Louis was a Frenchman, Charles of Anjou a Spaniard. St Louis had that communicative disposition, that taste for social enjoyment, that necessity of expansion and gentle gaiety, generally attributed to our nation. He was evidently the man born beside the waters of Loire or Seine. Charles, on the other hand, seemed to have received life upon the rugged rocks of Toledo, or in the naked and melancholy plains of Valladolid. He was proud and gloomy; no smile ever curved his lips. Uncommunicative, he confided his designs to no one. Although hasty, violent, and passionate, he strove to conceal his emotions. He slept little, spoke less; never forgot a service or an injury. His indulgence for his partisans and servants was unbounded: if he was passionately fond of gold, it was especially that he might shower it upon them. Charles and Louis were a contrast even in form and colour of face. Louis was fair and ruddy; Charles had black hair, an olive skin, nervous limbs, and a prominent nose. Goodness was the characteristic of the king, severity of the count. Both of imposing aspect,—one as a father, the other as a master—Louis inspired respect and love, Charles respect and terror. By the admission of all his contemporaries, nothing could be more majestic than the look, gait, and stature of the Count of Anjou. In an assemblage of princes he eclipsed them all. A poet who knew him well, and who calls him the most seignorial of men, shows him to us at the court of France in the midst of his brothers, and characterises him by this energetic line—
‘Tous furent filz de roy, mais Charles le fut mieux.’”
Such was the man who, on the 15th May 1265, embarked at Marseilles for Rome, with a thousand chosen knights upon thirty galleys, leaving the main body of his army at Lyons to cross the Alps with the Countess Beatrix, under the nominal command of the young Robert de Bethune Dampierre, heir to the county of Flanders, and the real guidance of Gilles de Traisignies, constable of France. At the moment of his departure, timid counsellors magnified the peril of the enterprise, and the superiority of the hostile fleet that watched to intercept him; but nothing could shake the determination of the Count of Anjou. “Good conduct,” he said, as he put foot on his galley’s deck, “overcomes ill fortune. I promised the Pope to be at Rome before Pentecost, and I will keep my word.” If fortune had not favoured him, however, it is doubtful if he would have succeeded in running the gauntlet through the sixty Sicilian galleys, manned with the practised mariners of Pisa, Naples, and Amalfi, that waited to pounce, like hawk on sparrow, upon his feeble armament. Independently of this formidable squadron, the entrance of the port of Ostia was encumbered, by Mainfroy’s order, with beams and huge stones, against which the French ships were expected inevitably to shatter themselves. Altogether, the marine preparations were so formidable, they were proclaimed with such ostentation, and Mainfroy appeared so convinced of their efficacy, that at Rome the partisans of Charles and the Pope lost courage. The decisive moment arrived, and no fleet appeared; when suddenly a rumour spread that Charles was shipwrecked and drowned. The Ghibellines, or imperialists, hailed the report with delight, the Guelfs with terror. Friends and enemies alike believed the fatal intelligence, when at break of day, on the eve of Pentecost, a boat, containing ten men, entered the Tiber. Amongst these ten men was Charles of Anjou. He owed his safety to his peril; deliverance had grown out of impending destruction. A violent storm had had a double result: Mainfroy’s fleet, which for some days past had blockaded the Tiber, was compelled to put to sea, and the thirty Provençal galleys were dispersed in view of Pisa. Charles was wrecked on the coast of Tuscany; to escape capture by one of Mainfroy’s lieutenants, he threw himself into a skiff, and the wind guided him into the Tiber, which he entered unperceived by the Sicilian admiral. Such was the fortunate chance that served him. Men believed him at the bottom of the sea, and at that moment he landed in Italy.
Mainfroy prepared for defence, affecting boundless confidence in the result of the approaching strife, but in reality uneasy at the approach of his formidable foe. His hatred found vent in sarcasm and abusive words. “Although the name of the terrible Charles of Anjou did not encourage childish diminutives, Mainfroy and his flatterers never spoke of him otherwise than as Carlotto” (Charley.) This was not very dignified or in good taste. But Charles was at no loss for a retort. When his wife had joined him, at the head of thirty thousand men, and the royal pair had been crowned in the Church of the Lateran, in sight and amidst the acclamations of an immense multitude, King and Queen of Sicily, he marched upon Naples. At the frontier, Mainfroy, after a vain attempt to intimidate the Pope, endeavoured to delay his progress by negotiation. “Tell the Sultan of Lucera,” replied Charles to the Swabian envoys, “that between us there can be neither peace nor truce; that soon he shall transport me to paradise or I will send him to hell.” And having thus branded his opponent as an infidel, and his opponent’s cause as unjust, he resolutely entered the Neapolitan states. The first barrier to his progress, the fortified bridge of Ceprano, was opened to him by Riccardo d’Aquino, Count of Caserte, out of revenge for the alleged seduction or violation of his wife by Mainfroy. The count was about to defend the post, when news of his dishonour reached him. He vowed a terrible revenge; but, scrupulous even in his anger, he sent to consult the casuists of the French camp, whether a vassal had the right to punish the liege lord who had outraged him in his honour. The casuists made an affirmative reply, and Caserte gave free passage to Charles of Anjou. History is more positive of the count’s treason than of the outrage said to have induced it. The occupation of the bridge was but a small step towards the conquest of the Two Sicilies. Charles’s path was beset with obstacles, augmented by the difficulty of transporting his warlike engines, and by fierce dissensions in his army. These alone were sufficient to ruin the enterprise; but the valour and military science of the French prince supplied all deficiencies. His operations were sometimes, however, a little impeded from pious scruples; as, for instance, when he put off the assault of a town for two days, in order not to fight on Ash Wednesday. Nevertheless his progress was rapid and triumphant, and soon the silver fleur-de-lis of France, and the crimson ones of the Guelfs, floated above the walls or over the ruins of Mainfroy’s strongest forts. All the Saracens who fell into Charles’s hands were immediately put to the sword. At last, in the valley of Santa Maria de Grandella, and at four miles from the town of Benevento, the French army—to which were now united the levies of many disaffected Neapolitan nobles—came in sight of Mainfroy’s host, drawn up in order of battle. The strength of the two armies is variously stated, but it appears certain that the numerical advantage was considerably on the side of Charles. Before engaging, each leader made a speech to his troops. That of Charles reminds us of Cromwell’s well-known exhortation to his men, to trust in God and keep their powder dry. “Have confidence in God,” said the valiant and pious Frenchman, “but neglect not human means; and be attentive, when battle begins, to what I now tell you: strike at the horses rather than at the men, not with edge, but with point; so that, falling with his horse and being unable to rise quickly, on account of the weight of his armour, the cavalier may immediately have his throat cut by the ribauds. Let each of you be always accompanied by one of those varlets, and even by two. Forget not that, and march!” The manœuvre prescribed by Charles of Anjou, and which he had already essayed in Palestine, was forbidden by chivalrous etiquette, which stigmatised as disloyal the act of striking at the horses’ heads. But Charles was not at a tournament. His aim was victory, and his injunction was well received by his knights, whom his words excited, says a chronicler, as the huntsman excites the dogs. There was neither blame nor murmur. Nevertheless his chevaliers were the flower of nobility; but they did not hold themselves engaged in a regular war; they looked upon the expedition as a crusade against infidels. The bishop of Auxerre gave a final benediction; the trumpets sounded, and the signal of battle echoed through both camps.