When Charles of Anjou learned the double disaster that had befallen him in the capture of his fleet and son, his first expression was one of bitter irony. "The better," he exclaimed, "that we are quit of that priest, who spoiled our affairs and took away our courage!" Bitter grief succeeded this factitious gaiety. He shut himself up in a private chamber of the Castel Capuano, sent away the attendants and torches, repulsing even the tender caresses of his queen, and groaned and lamented in solitude and darkness. When day appeared he forgot his sorrow to think of vengeance. In his absence, Naples had nearly escaped him. From Pausilippo to the Molo, shouts for Pedro of Arragon had been heard. Naples must expiate the crime. Charles prepared to shed an ocean of blood, but the Pope's legate interceded; and the enraged sovereign contented himself with hanging a hundred and fifty of the most guilty from the battlements of the Castel Nuovo. Then, with his usual impetuous activity, he armed a fleet, and sailed for Messina, but was met by a message from Constance, that if he touched the shore of Sicily his son's head should roll upon the scaffold. What could the murderer of Conradin reply to this threat? Trembling with fury, he returned to Calabria. The position of his son justified great anxiety. A large majority of the Sicilians were clamorous for his death, as an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Conradin. Queen Constance, who had nobly resolved to save him, was compelled so far to yield to public clamour that a parliment was assembled to deliberate on his fate. With the exception of Alaimo de Lentini, all the members voted for the Prince's death. But Constance would not ratify the sentence till she heard from Don Pedro, to whom she had already despatched intelligence of the important capture. As she had foreseen, Pedro ordered the Prince, and the chief amongst his companions, to be sent immediately to Arragon. This was done, and Sicily seemed guaranteed for a long time from the aggressions of the house of Anjou.
To foreign warfare internal strife succeeded. The Sicilian nobles, the same men who had entreated Pedro of Arragon to reign over them, now repented of their choice. They had found a master where they had intended a crowned companion. Already the failure of a rebellion had cost several of them their heads, when a second plot was got up, in which Alaimo de Lentini took a prominent part. The rank, influence, and services of this man, the first in Sicily, rendered Pedro uneasy, and excited the jealousy of his two ministers, John of Procida and Ruggiero de Lauria. Alaimo's indulgent vote upon the trial of the Prince of Salerno, although conformable to the wishes of the King, yet had increased suspicions he for some time had entertained. These, however, would not have broken out but for the imprudent audacity of Maccalda, Alaimo's wife, who had flattered herself she should be able to govern Pedro of Arragon. During the siege of Messina, she presented herself before him in her Amazonian garb, a silver mace in her hand; but this warlike equipment could not restore her youth, and, notwithstanding the King's passionate admiration of the fair sex, he passed the night in talking to her of his ancestors, and finally fell asleep. Irritated by this contempt of her charms, Maccalda vowed hatred to Queen Constance. Although of very low origin, the insolent matron pretended herself at least the equal of the daughter of Mainfroy the bastard. She refused her the title of queen, and never spoke of her but as the mother of the Infante Don Jaime. Every advance made by Don Pedro's wife was insolently rejected by her. The Queen wished to become godmother to one of her children; Maccalda disdainfully declined the honour. The Queen had a litter made to take air in Palermo, a piece of luxury unprecedented in Sicily. Maccalda immediately rambled about the island in a litter twice the size, eclipsing her sovereign by her presumptuous splendour. In short, the court of Arragon could not endure this incessant struggle, and soon serious grounds for vengeance were found. All powerful with her husband, Maccalda excited him to revolt. He corresponded with Charles of Anjou, then in Calabria; one of his letters, in which he promised to deliver Sicily to the King of Naples, fell into the hands of John of Procida. Don Pedro, informed of Alaimo's treason, dissimulated and wrote him an affectionate invitation to Spain, under pretence of conferring with him on the affairs of Sicily. Resistance and obedience were equally dangerous; but the latter left most time to turn in, so Alaimo obeyed. He no sooner reached Arragon than he was thrown into a dungeon. At the same time Maccalda, stripped of her husband's possessions, was put in prison in Sicily. There she preserved her courage and gaiety, and passed her time in laughing at Queen Constance, and in playing at chess with a Moorish king, prisoner like herself.
Sixty French knights were massacred in the prison of Matagrifone, at the instigation of the ferocious Ruggiero de Lauria, so soon as he learned the treason of Alaimo and Maccalda. For these a tragical end was reserved. At the commencement of the following reign, the defender of Messina was thrown into the sea, a halter round his neck; and it was conjectured that Maccalda Scaletta, also met a violent death in the obscurity of her dungeon.
Charles was not more fortunate in military operations than in secret plottings. In vain did he besiege Reggio; for want of provisions he was compelled to return to Naples. But although fortune proved so fickle, his bold spirit remained unbroken, and he conceived a gigantic plan, which was to avenge all his disasters. He resolved to fall upon Sicily at the head of considerable forces, whilst a powerful French army entered Arragon. But death nullified his schemes. Whilst upon the road from Naples to Brindes, to prepare the new armament, he was compelled by the violent attacks of ague, from which he suffered continually since his misfortunes, to stop at Foggia. His hour had come. By his will, made upon the day of his death, he left the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the county of Provence to his son Charles prince of Salerno; and, failing him, to his grandson Charles Martel, then twelve years old. His testamentary dispositions completed, he turned his thoughts to things spiritual. Margaret of Burgundy, summoned in all haste to her husband's side, arrived but just in time to receive his last adieu. He expired in her arms, the victim of grief as much as of disease, overtaken by premature old age, but full of faith in his good right and in divine justice. Upon his deathbed he was untormented by remorse; he beheld neither the threatening shade of Conradin nor the rivers of blood with which he had inundated Sicily; his eyes and lips were fixed with love upon the cross, whose most faithful defender he esteemed himself. At the supreme hour, and with his last breath, he made a final and impious manifestation of the overweening pride and self-confidence that were amongst his most prominent qualities during his life. "He confessed himself, and demanded the last sacrament, sat up in his bed to receive it worthily, fixed his eyes upon the redoubtable mystery, and, speaking directly to the body and blood of Christ, addressed to them these words of audacious conviction: 'Sire Dieu, as I truly believe you to be my Saviour, I pray you show mercy to my soul. Since it is certain that I undertook the affair of Sicily more to serve the holy church than for my own advantage, you ought to absolve me of my sins.'"[8]
The body of Charles was transported to Naples, and buried in the cathedral, under a pompous mausoleum. His heart was taken to Paris, and deposited in the church of the Grands Jacobins, with this inscription:—
"LI COER DI GRAND ROY CHARLES QUI
CONQUIT SICILE."
Upon her husband's death Margaret retired to her county of Tonnerre, where she had founded an hospital, and passed the rest of her life in pious and charitable exercises. "The first chevalier in the world has ceased to live," exclaimed Pedro of Arragon, on learning the death of Charles of Anjou. He himself survived his great rival but a few months. After conquering Philip III. of France in the defiles of Arragon, a victory which procured the fortunate Arragonese the soubriquet of Pedro de los Franceses, he died very penitent, restoring his possessions to the church, whose liegeman he acknowledged himself, and putting under the protection of the holy see his two kingdoms of Arragon and Sicily, which he bequeathed to his sons, Alphonso III. and Jaime II. About the same time Martin IV. ended his days, full of grief for the loss of Charles of Anjou, to whom he was devotedly and blindly attached,—"An attachment," says M. de St Priest, "which excites interest, so rare is friendship upon thrones, and especially in old age. Thus was Charles of France, brother of St Louis, followed to the tomb by the most remarkable of his contemporaries. A new epoch began; the age of Philip le Bel, of Boniface VIII., and of Dante. The great poet, so severe to the living Capétiens, has treated them better in the invisible world. Whilst he has precipitated Frederick II. and the most illustrious Ghibellines into the depths of the eternal chasms, he shows us—not in torture, but awaiting a better destiny—not in the flames of purgatory, but in the bosom of monotonous repose, in the shade of a peaceful forest, in a valley strewed with unknown flowers—Charles of Anjou and Pedro of Arragon, seated side by side, reconciled by death, and uniting their grave and manly voices in hymns to the praise of the Most High."
The political separation of the island and continent of Sicily was now complete, but none foresaw its long duration. The period immediately succeeding the death of Charles of Anjou was one continuous struggle between Naples and Palermo, the former striving to regain lost supremacy, the latter to retain conquered independence. For a moment the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, torn in twain by a great popular movement, was on the point of reuniting; the great result obtained by the Sicilian Vespers seemed about to be lost, and the Vespers themselves to lose their rank of revolution, and subside into the vulgar category of revolts and insurrections. Strange to say, the foreign dynasty that had profited by the successful rebellion, was itself on the eve of destroying the work of its partisans. After the ephemeral reign of Alphonso III. King of Arragon, eldest son and successor of Don Pedro, Don Jaime, second son of this Prince, united upon his head the crowns of Sicily and Arragon. The will of the two deceased kings had been to keep these crowns separate. Don Pedro verbally, Don Alphonso by a written will, had called the Infante Frederick, son of one and brother of the other, to reign in Sicily so soon as Don Jaime should take possession of the hereditary sceptre of Arragon and Catalonia. Jaime disregarded their wishes. He kept Sicily, not for himself, but to restore it to the enemies of his family, to his prisoner, now chief of the house of Anjou, agreeably to a secret treaty they had entered into during the captivity of Charles II. If M. de St Priest is correct in placing the first negotiation of this treaty so far back as the summer of 1284, soon after the action in which Charles lost his liberty, it is difficult to understand what could then have been Don Jaime's motives. His father and elder brother dead, it is more easy to explain them. We must remember that before falling into the hands of the terrible Ruggiero de Lauria, Charles, then Prince of Salerno, commissioned by the King of Naples to make concessions to his subjects, had proclaimed a political reform, under the auspices of Martin IV. After the death of this Pope, his successor Honorius, also a declared partisan of the house of Anjou, extended still further these political privileges, and the convention known in the history of Naples as the Statutes of Honorius (Capitoli d'Onorio) there long had the force of law. In view of these privileges, imposed by papacy, and conceded by the dynasty whose despotism had driven Sicily to revolt, the dynasty established by that revolt was compelled to bid higher for popular approbation. The rival royalties began a dangerous race in the path of reform. The Arragonese could not allow the Angevine to surpass him in generosity. Don Jaime saw himself compelled to make such concessions to the clergy and aristocracy, that Sicily retained but the mere shadow of a monarchy. The authority awaiting him in Arragon was certainly not more absolute; but there, at least, he found himself in his native country and hereditary dominions; habit, tradition, old affinities, compensated what the supreme power lacked in strength and extent. In Sicily things were very different. The island was altogether in an unsatisfactory state. The chiefs of the aristocracy, the authors of the revolution, had all rebelled in turn. It had been found necessary to put to death Caltagirone, Alaimo de Lentini, and other leaders of the Arragonese intrigue. The air of Sicily seemed loaded with rebellious infection. Even Ruggiero de Lauria, and John of Procida,[9] were suspected of disaffection. Nor did the profits of the island compensate the anxiety it caused. Exhausted by war, Sicily yielded no revenue, but required support in men and money. More than this, the papal anathema still remained upon the family of Pedro of Arragon. It weighed upon Don Jaime and upon his mother Queen Constance. Courageous though she was, the daughter of the excommunicated Mainfroy, the widow of the excommunicated Pedro, had difficulty to support the interdict. Successive popes sustained the interests of the French dynasty, and bestowed the crown of Arragon, a fief of the holy see, upon Charles of Valois, brother of Philip le Bel. True, possession did not accompany the gift, to which the Arragonese did not subscribe, but drove back Philip the Bold when he tried to introduce his son into his new kingdom, an attempt which cost him his reputation and his life. Still Don Jaime was anxious, for various reasons, to have the donation annulled. To this end he addressed himself to the King of Naples, still prisoner at Barcelona, offering to give him up Sicily, and even to aid him to reconquer it, on condition that the Pope removed the interdict from his house, and that Charles of Valois was compelled to renounce the title of King of Arragon. Moreover, a matrimonial alliance, always an important tie, but especially so in the middle ages, was to seal the friendship of the two monarchs. Don Jaime was to marry the princess Blanche, eldest daughter of the King of Naples, and granddaughter of the great Charles of Anjou. Boniface VIII., greatly attached, at the commencement of his popedom, to the interests of France, joyfully acquiesced in these arrangements.
Every thing seemed arranged, when unexpected obstacles arose. On the one hand, Charles of Valois, having neither dominions nor crown, obstinately resisted the transfer of his imaginary kingdom; on the other, the Sicilians declared they would die to a man rather than acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Anjou. They summoned Don Jaime to renounce his project, and when he persisted in it, they raised to the throne the Infante Frederick, at first with the title of Lord of Sicily, afterwards with that of King. This prince proved worthy of the national choice. In vain did Boniface VIII. assail him in turn with flattery and menace; the new king of Sicily remained faithful to his people. By a strange concurrence of circumstances, he found himself opposed in arms to his brother Jaime of Arragon, now the ally of his father-in-law, Charles II., who had recovered his liberty and returned to his dominions. In spite of his own and his subjects' valour, Frederick III. was at first nearly overcome. The house of Anjou would have reconquered Sicily, but for the defection of the fickle King of Arragon, who abandoned his allies and returned home, carrying with him the contempt of all parties. After various changes of fortune, a definitive treaty of peace was concluded between the belligerents, under the auspices of Rome. By its conditions, Frederick III. was to retain the crown of Sicily for his life, with the title of King of Trinacria, invented to avoid infringement on the rights of Charles II., who kept the title of King of Sicily, with the reversion of the dominions for himself and his direct heirs, after the death of Frederick, who married Eleanor, youngest daughter of Charles. The basis of this treaty was manifestly unstable, its very letter was soon effaced: and Frederick, disdaining the singular title of King of Trinacria, soon resumed his rightful one. There were thus two kings of Sicily, on this and that side the straits, and from that period dates the term, the Two Sicilies.
During a reign of thirty-four years, Frederick III. did much for the nation that had placed him at its head. A scholar and a legislator, he encouraged letters, navigation, and trade, established a national representation, and bequeathed his subjects the famous Sicilian constitution, which was entirely destroyed only in the present century. But the tendency of power in Sicily was to the hands of the nobles. Frederick struggled hard to keep down the aristocracy, but his efforts had no permanent success: at his death the barons became omnipotent, the feudal system prevailed, and for more than a century the annals of the island are but a confused history of the rivalries of the Chiaromonte and the Vintimiglia, the Palizzi and the Alagona, the Luna and the Perolla, and many others besides. The Chiaromonte, notwithstanding their French origin,[10] were the chiefs of the Italian or Latin party; they became absolute masters of Palermo, and reigned over it from the summit of their castle of Steri, whose massive masonry still exists in the heart of that city. The kings of Sicily, to obtain their support, sought the hands of their daughters; but at last the haughty patricians fell from their pinnacle of greatness, and by treason or stratagem were led to the scaffold. Distracted and weakened by discord, Sicily offered, at this time, an easy prey to Naples, had the descendants of the first Charles been the men to profit by the opportunity. But they were far from inheriting the martial energy of their great ancestor, and, in spite of circumstances frequently favourable, Sicily was never reconquered by the race of Charles of Anjou.