CHAP. which class struggled with class, or with the Crown. Louis had no idea of mixed principles of government, or the right of subjects to control or make compromises with their sovereign. Of political constitutions he knew merely what churchmen and the legists of the Roman law taught. These made the monarch a divinity to the contempt of either natural or feudal freedom. In the quarrel therefore between Henry the Third and his barons, Louis only considered their resistance as rebellion. The first efforts of the French king to negotiate peace between contending parties was to reconcile King Henry and Prince Edward. Henry was probably encouraged by Louis in that assertion of his authority which he made in 1263. Louis and several of the French barons promised their aid to the English king on this occasion, and the Count of Saint Pol brought eighty knights with him to England. Foreign aid, however, could not enable Henry to reduce his noblesse, and both parties consented to take St. Louis as arbiter. He summoned them to Amiens at the commencement of 1264. Henry attended, whilst Leicester sent an excuse; he foresaw that a king who had rendered himself absolute could not give fair judgment in such a cause. Louis annulled the provisions of Oxford, merely on the grounds of the Pope having done so. He ordered all the fortresses to be restored to the king, who was to name what officers he pleased, and to employ as many foreigners as he liked. It was impossible to show a more complete contempt for national rights or a people's desire. Nor could any decision be at once more unjust or more imbecile; it was accordingly at once set aside. And the English of all parties learned that no Frenchman, not even one of the perspicuous intellect and noble nature of Louis, could understand, much less reconcile, those differences inherent in the nature of English progress. It is worthy of remark, that the only personage of the French court who favoured Leicester, was Charles VI. of Anjou, a stickler, one should have thought, for royal CHAP. authority. But perhaps he revered the progeny of the conqueror of the Albigenses, or saw in Leicester, a man of the strong mind whom he might call, as he did, "his brother." Louis paid to the English queen the money due by him in virtue of the late treaty, which enabled Eleanor to raise an army. Soon after De Montfort lost his life at Evesham. Louis was generous to his family, whilst the people of England gave proof of their grateful and independent spirit, in considering Simon de Montfort as a martyr who had perished in their interests, and in canonizing almost the only liberal patriot that ever enjoyed that honour. Whilst France was progressing in aggrandisement, unity, and absolutism, England in those struggles of varying fortune between king, aristocracy, and people, which gave nerve and virility to all, with a wholesome respect for each other, Italy was convulsed by the efforts of the Popes to combine a territorial with a spiritual empire. The Pontiffs of Rome had no means of even attempting this excepting through the principle of feudalism, to which their character, law, and rule were so opposed, that it was impossible for the system to hold together. From the very rise of the Papacy, its chiefs had been obliged to make use of one military potentate or another. It was a most unfortunate thought for them to resuscitate the power of Charlemagne, and to continue, in the person of his German successors, the old Roman Empire, the existence and pretensions of which necessarily jarred with their own. The most magnanimous Emperor and the most equitable Pope could not have agreed. The Pontiffs, in order to resist such a power as Barbarossa, took under their protection at once the democracy of the north Italian republics and the Norman feudalism of the south. The latter it was never able to master; and when Sicily and Naples lapsed, by marriage, to the Imperial family, the Popedom found VI. CHAP. itself more than ever overwhelmed by the great antagonists, which it was their eternal policy to provoke. Still, as its spiritual power was on the increase, it made use of it to resist. When it dominated in England and in France, gave thrones and provinces, destroyed populations, and founded kingdoms beyond the Alps, it could not brook the idea of being reduced to a subject rank in the Peninsula itself. Hence its rancour against the Hohenstauffen; and its determination that Italy, south of Rome, should not belong to them. Pontiffs tried to effect this at the head of armies, but their expeditions ended in their defeat. Still preoccupied with this exclusive thought, the Popes utterly put out of sight the increasing progress of Saracen and Mogul. The Latin empire of Constantinople fell in 1261, and the period of the Popedom's greatest power was that of the greatest reverses to Christendom. Manfred, the natural son of Frederic the Second, maintained gallantly and successfully the sovereignty of his family in Naples. The Pontiff had set up an English prince as his rival, there being no royal family then so submissive to the Holy See as the Plantagenets, and so incapable of making use of whatever power they might obtain, in opposition to Rome. But the Plantagenets were neither warriors nor enthusiasts, nor had they any longer the wealth to fit out expensive expeditions. Henry the Third, indeed, wrung large sums from his parliament, whilst the Pope levied a still more considerable amount from the pliant church of England. But without a hero or a head, they could not shake the power of Manfred. A French ecclesiastic, native of Troyes, ascended the Papal chair in 1261, under the name of Urban the Fourth. Within a short time he promoted no less than seven French bishops to the rank of Cardinals, and his devotion to St. Louis was extreme. Moreover, the French king entertained an aversion, amounting to horror, of Manfred, who, to the laxity and nonchalance of VI. his father, Frederic, added a predilection for the Saracen, CHAP. and who had called even many thousands of these African adventurers to swell his army, and enable him to defy the Church. When St. Louis went southwards to marry his son Philip to the Princess of Aragon, he broke off the marriage on learning that the King of Aragon was about to give another daughter to Manfred. Urban thus naturally made an offer of the crown of Naples and Sicily to St. Louis. That monarch pleaded all kinds of scruples, and refused, whereupon Urban made the same offer to Charles of Anjou and Provence. Such an enterprise fully suited that ambitious prince, who had on a former occasion entered into negotiations on the subject. But Charles also felt the difficulty of the undertaking, and made several demands. In obedience to them the Pope granted him a tenth from the French clergy, and created him senator of Rome, a title under which Brancaleon had recently wielded in that city an authority superior to the Pope. Charles experienced much difficulty and delay in raising an army, but anxious to close with the Pope, he set sail with about 1000 knights, in the spring of 1265. He escaped the fleet of Manfred, reached Rome, assumed the office of senator, and took up his lodging in the Lateran. The Papal legates in the meantime preached through France the crusade in his behalf. All the indulgence of a holy war was extended to the invaders of Naples. And thus 30,000 French crusaders passed the Alps, and joined Charles at Rome towards the close of the year. He was however in terrible straits for money to pay this army, neither St. Louis nor his brother Alphonso showing much alacrity to aid him. Charles, therefore, marched in mid winter to decide the quarrel. Manfred was alarmed at the overwhelming numbers that his enemy brought into the field against him, and sent deputies to Charles to treat. The only CHAP. VI. answer of the prince was, "Tell the Sultan of Lucera that I will either place him in hell, or he must send me to paradise." On the 18th of February, Charles captured the strong city of San Germano, and Manfred having retired upon Beneventum, was pursued thither by the French. A battle ensued, in which the Saracens and foreigners of Manfred's army fought well from noon till eve, the Italians making no resistance: Charles was the victor, his rival perishing on the field of battle, February, 1266. The town and province of Naples immediately submitted. One third of the spoil was given to the victorious French crusaders, who marched back to their country. Whilst Charles thus dismissed his foreign soldiers, he took small care to conciliate his new subjects. Epistles of Pope Clement remain taxing him with cruelty, with indifference to everyone save himself, and with an arrogance that alienated Provençal as well as Neapolitan. Frederic and Manfred had drawn ample resources from the south of Italy, which Charles wasted and even impoverished. Such conduct encouraged fresh rivals to appear. Conradin, the young son of Conrad, the last prince of the House of Hohenstauffen, determined to quit his retirement of Suabia and march to vindicate his legitimate claims to Naples. Accompanied by princes young and rash as himself, Frederic of Austria and Henry of Castille, Conradin entered Lombardy and appealed to the Ghibelines of the region. Aided by these he marched by Pavia to Pisa and Rome, and entered the Abruzzi. The rivals met near Tagliacozzo, on the 27th of August, 1268. The Germans of Conrad's army defeated Charles's Provençals at the first charge, killed their general Cosance, and seemed certain of the victory; but dispersing in pursuit, Charles attacked them with his French knights whom he held in reserve, and turned the fortune of the day. The Spaniards, under Henry of Castille, made the most determined resistance, but were at last overcome. |