Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

VII.

police than soldiers at the time, came to the number of CHAP. 200 to the festa: with their usual insolence they began to hustle the men and insult the women, under the pretence of seeking for concealed arms. A French soldier named Drouet, behaving in this manner to a young Sicilian wife, was struck by her husband's stiletto. The cause and the result of the quarrel soon spread through the crowd. "Death to the French" was the universal exclamation, no sooner uttered than executed. All the French were killed. The rumour, the passion, and the cry were communicated to Palermo, and found a population but too ready to echo and embrace it. The French in Palermo were attacked, soldiers and monks and civilians. Sicilians reminded each other of the massacre of Agosta, where the French had put all the inhabitants to the sword, and the terrible precedent was eagerly followed. Not only in Palermo, but throughout the island, the rising became general, and with the same immediate result, except at Messina, which the French for some time defended. According to Villani, 4000 French perished in the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers.

This catastrophe, and the causes which produced it, have been narrated because in truth they are the first events which interested and involved all Europe in what might be called a political struggle. Previously such hostility prevailed between Italy and Germany, England and France, whilst all united together to drive the Saracen from the Holy Land. But a division of Europe into two camps, with kings and courts marshalled against each other, had not taken place. France and Frenchmen were now embarked in Italian policy, and took the place of imperial ascendancy there, whilst an altogether new kingdom, that of Aragon, took up the Ghibeline or imperial cause against France, and commenced a rivalry, which, however interrupted, was destined to fill centuries of the history of both countries.

Charles was at the Papal Court, when he heard of the

VII.

CHAP. insurrection which had swept his soldiers and commanders from Sicily. He had at once a presentiment that his arbitrary schemes were at an end. Villani describes his prayer to God to have been that, "since his days of misfortune had set in, he might be let down little by little, and not destroyed at once." Charles instantly sent word to France of the reverse which had befallen the French arms, and bade his son, the Prince of Salerno, to repair to Philip the Hardy. The latter instantly suspected the blow to have proceeded from Peter of Aragon, who had had the audacity to borrow 40,000 livres from the French king for this very purpose. "Should it prove true," said Philip, "as sure as I wear a crown I will exact signal vengeance."

Philip was not mistaken. Peter of Aragon had set sail with his fleet and with the army which it bore, first to the coast of Africa. There he learned the catastrophe of the Vespers, and he turned his prows to Sicily. Charles, at the same time, assembled at once the army which he was equipping for the Grecian expedition, and marched it to the extremity of the peninsula. Many Italian cities, Florence among the number, sent their contingents to swell the army of Charles against Sicily, considering him chief of the Guelphs. Charles passed the strait, and laid siege to Messina. So formidable was the host, consisting of 5000 knights, and infantry proportionate, while the strait was covered with 130 galleys, that the citizens proffered submission, if allowed their privileges and an amnesty. Charles, in reply, insisted on at least 800 of the citizens being given up for execution. "We will eat our children first," was the answer of the Messinese. A part of the city was undefended by walls, and completely open. The women undertook to bring stones, and to build the wall, whilst the men withstood the enemy. Against such courage and determination of the Messinese all the efforts of Charles and his soldiers were vain.

In the meantime the parliament of the island assembled in Palermo, and its first efforts were directed to bend and conciliate the Pope. The French Pontiff would hear of nothing less than the insurgents submitting to Charles; to this they replied in so resolute a negative that the Pope complained that the Sicilians treated him as the Jews did Christ,-hailed him king, and gave him a cuff. They therefore turned from the French Pope, and offered the crown to Peter of Aragon, then off the coast of Africa, on condition that he would allow them the liberties they enjoyed under their good King William. The Spanish monarch consented, and as Charles had appealed to the King of France for support, Peter now applied to Edward of England.

Whilst the Angevins held Messina itself besieged, and tried in vain to take it by assault, Peter had arrived in Palermo, was recognised king, and prepared to shut up Charles in his camp before the city, by occupying the mountains with an army, and the straits with his fleet. The Neapolitan commander declared he had no galleys and no sailors fit to encounter those of Peter's admiral, Roger de Loria. Charles was therefore obliged to raise the siege and retreat across the straits, to the jubilee of the Sicilians and to the mortification of the Guelphic party in Italy as well as of the Court of France.

He

The military power and experience of Charles having thus so signally failed before the nerve and determination of an oppressed people, his ally, Pope Martin, had recourse to the traditional tactics of the Church. solemnly excommunicated Peter of Aragon, declared him to have forfeited his kingdom, and proposed to make it over to the Count of Valois, son of King Philip. The Pope having with this aim preached a double crusade against Aragon and Sicily, French knights and nobles crowded to the support of Charles; the Counts of Alençon and of Artois, of Burgundy and Avignon, hastening to pass the Alps. But the strife was fortunately suspended by

[blocks in formation]

CHAP.
VII.

CHAP.
VII.

both princes provoking each other to decide it by single combat. Such a contest could scarcely be considered on equal terms, Charles being so much his rival's elder; but it was agreed that they should fight a hundred of a side at Bordeaux, under the protection and guarantee of Edward of England. That monarch was unwilling to preside at or sanction such a duel. Although solemn conventions had been entered into, the Pope, who protested against the combat, had declared them null. The day before that on which the duel was to take place, the 1st of June, 1283, the King of Aragon appeared in Bordeaux with his followers, and assured himself, by speaking with the seneschal, that there was no guarantee to be relied on that his person would be secure, the French troops being at no great distance. Peter therefore withdrew protesting, and the duel did not take place.

Philip the Third, in the war which he was about to wage across the Pyrenees, had the great advantage of possessing on the other side of the mountains the kingdom of Navarre. The heiress of the Thibauds, Jeanne, bred up at the French court, Philip now gave in marriage to his eldest son Philip. She had been betrothed to this prince when he had yet an elder brother; the marriage nevertheless took place, and as French seneschals were already in Pampeluna, the war was thus carried into the very centre of Spain. The Navarrese undertook an incursion into Aragon, where they were able to make but small impression.

It was no easy matter at that epoch for monarchs to wage effective war. Their efforts in France and elsewhere had been to destroy feudality, to control the power and privileges of the aristocracy; and yet the noblesse were the only chiefs who could raise or conduct soldiers. The Church had put down the existence of mercenary bands and the habit of employing them, yet the feudal knights and barons would not take the

field unless specially indemnified. This was seen when Philip the Hardy, at the commencement of his reign, summoned his feudatories of the north to march to Toulouse. There was now a war with Spain, and of course it was only from the provinces contiguous to the Pyrenees that military service could be expected. Philip the Hardy journeyed southwards to procure and to organise this, and his policy was to grant the nobles and the citizens of this region their privileges and that local authority, of which the Albigensian crusade had deprived them. He established a parlement, he endowed towns with rights and privileges, and no doubt received promises of money, soldiers, and supplies in exchange. What was of still greater assistance to the conduct of a distant war was the Pope's considering it as a crusade. By this means the monarch was enabled to levy taxes on the clergy wherewith to pay his feudal officers, and moreover, to find attraction for them in the religious indulgences and pardons which the Pope dispensed. In order to the solemn undertaking of this crusade, Philip found it necessary to summon his barons and his prelates to meet him at Paris in February 1284. When they had assembled, the king laid before them the bull of the Pope, transferring the kingdom of Aragon to Charles of Valois, on which point the monarch consulted them. When he had done so the peers and prelates retired, each into separate rooms, to consider and discuss the matter apart. This is the first time that took place that separation of estates which afterwards characterised these assemblies in France. Though much divided in opinion, nobles and clergy at last recommended the king to accept the Pope's offer; and the legate immediately placed a hat upon the head of Prince Charles, whom his cotemporaries afterwards called the king of the Hat, to distinguish him from the king with the crown. This was not distant from the time in which the Pope sought to dictate to an English parliament

CHAP.

VII.

« AnteriorContinuar »