The insatiable spider, who, after securing in her gossamer meshes ample store of flies for the day's consumption, again repairs, with unwarrantable greed, to the outer circles of the delicate network, in quest of fresh and superfluous victims, must not wonder if, on return to the heart of the citadel, she finds a rival Arachne busy in the larder, and either is expelled from her own cobweb, or suffers seriously in ejecting the intruder. At risk of offending his admiring biographer by so base a parallel, we compare Charles of Anjou to the greedy spider, and think him justly punished for his rash cupidity by the evils it entailed. This French count, who, although a king's brother, had no chance of a crown save through aggressive conquest, found himself, whilst still in the vigour of life, and as the result of papal favour, great good fortune, and of his own martial energy, sovereign of an extensive and flourishing realm. King of Southern Italy, Protector of the North, Count of Provence, Vicar of Tuscany, Senator of Rome, all-powerful with the Pope—whose word had then such weight that his friendship was worth an army, whilst from his malison men shrunk as from the dreaded and inextinguishable fire of Greece—Charles of Anjou was still unsatisfied. The royal spider had cast his web afar; it embraced wide possessions, with whose enjoyment he might well have been content, whose administration claimed his undivided attention. But on their verge an object glittered from which he could not avert his eyes, whose acquisition engrossed his every thought. "'Twas the clime of the East, 'twas the land of the sun," the gorgeous and romantic region so attractive to European conquerors. Doubtless, crusading zeal had some share in his oriental cravings; but ambition was his chief motor. He was willing enough to wrest Palestine from the infidel, but his plan of campaign led first to Constantinople. His notion was to seek at St Sophia's mosque the key of Christ's sepulchre. Whilst thus looking abroad and meditating distant conquest, Charles treated too lightly the projects of a prince, less celebrated, but younger and more crafty than himself, who silently watched the progress of events, and skilfully devised how best he might derive advantage from them. Pedro of Arragon, who had married Mainfroy's daughter, Constance, cherished pretensions to the crown of the Sicilies; and, ever since the year 1279, he had been intriguing with the chiefs of the Ghibellines, with a view to an invasion of Charles's dominions. He spoke publicly of Sicily as the inheritance of his children, and did not dissimulate his animosity to its actual ruler. Whilst Charles prepared a fleet for his Eastern expedition, Don Pedro assembled another in the harbour of Portofangos, and kept it in constant readiness to sail, but none knew whither. Its destination was suspected, however, by some; and the Pope, who entertained no doubt concerning it, demanded to know Pedro's intentions, whilst Philip III. of France, at the request of his uncle, Charles of Anjou, sent ambassadors to the Arragonese monarch to make a similar inquiry. The answer given is variously stated by the archives and chronicles of the time, as evasive, prevaricatory, and even as a direct falsehood. It left no doubt upon Charles's mind that mischief was meant him by the Spaniard. "I told you," he wrote to Philip, "that the Arragonese was a contemptible wretch." Unfortunately, he carried his contempt of his wily foe rather too far; he would not believe that so small a potentate, "un si petit prince," would dare attack him in Italy, but "The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. But they need not fear oblivion: they have known glory,—and what glory touches, though but transitorily, for ever retains the mark. For individuals as for nations, it suffices that their lot be cast in those rare and splendid epochs whose contact ennobles every thing, which illuminate all things by their brilliancy, and stamp themselves indelibly upon the memory of the remotest generations. Happy who then lives, for he shall never die! Vast kingdoms, boundless regions, peopled by numerous races, powerful by material force, but intellectually vulgar, then yield in dignity and grandeur to the least nook of land, to some petty peninsula or remote island. Such was Greece, such also was Sicily, her rival, her competitor, and the asylum of her illustrious exiles. "In the middle ages there was no vestige of the ancient Trinacria—of that land of art and learning, the home of every branch of human knowledge—of that politic and warlike power which yielded to Rome and Carthage only when she had made them dearly pay a long-disputed victory—of that Sicily, in short, which Plato taught and Timoleon governed—which Archimedes defended and Theocritus sang. Formerly the whole island was covered with cities. In the thirteenth century, most of these had disappeared. Agrigentum could boast but the ruins of its colossus and temples. Syracuse still retained some shadow of past greatness: she was not yet reduced, as now, to the quarries whence she sprung; she had not yet become less than a ruin; but her splendour was extinct. Catania, overthrown by earthquakes, found it difficult again to rise. Nevertheless other Sicilian towns preserved their importance, and Christendom could not boast cities handsomer and more populous—more abounding in wealth and embellished by monuments—than commercial Messina and kingly Palermo." These two cities were at the time referred to the abode of luxury and pleasure. Messina, at once the market and the arsenal of the island, "portus et porta SiciliÆ," as Charles of Anjou called it, was the principal posting-house upon the road from Europe to Asia, and was enriched by the constant passage of pilgrims and crusaders. Sumptuary laws were deemed necessary to repress the extravagance of a population whose women wore raiment of silk, then more precious than silver and gold, with tiaras upon their heads, encrusted with pearls and diamonds Besides the heavy griefs above stated, other grounds of complaint, more or less valid, were alleged against Charles I. Amongst these, he was accused of persecuting highwaymen and banditti with overmuch rigour. The nations of southern Europe have ever had a sneaking tenderness for the knights of the road. He was also reproached with the abolition of certain dues, unjustly exacted in the ports of Patti, Cefalu, and Catania, by the bishops of those towns. M. de St Priest brands the Sicilians as barbarians for thus quarrelling with their own advantage. But it is a fair query how far Charles made the diminution of episcopal exactions a pretext for the increase of royal ones, and whether the draconic system adopted for the repression of evil-doers, may not have been occasionally availed of for the oppression of the innocent. Then the Sicilian nobles, lovers of pomp, show, and external distinctions, grumbled at the absence of a court; and this was in fact so weighty a grievance, that its removal might perhaps have saved Sicily for Charles, or at any rate have retarded the revolt, and given him time to prosecute his designs on the East. Palermo might have been conciliated by sending the Prince of Salerno to live there. A gay court, and the substitution of the heir to the throne for obscure and detested governors, would have made all the difference. Charles did not think of this, and moreover he had no great affection for his eldest son, "a prince of monkish piety, timid and feeble, although brave; a dull and pale copy of his uncle Louis IX., and whose faults and virtues were not altogether of a nature to obtain his father's sympathy. When speaking of the Prince of Salerno, the King of Naples sometimes called him 'That Priest!'" The strongest motive of discontent, however, the most real, and which placed the nobility and higher classes amongst the foremost of the disaffected, was the bestowal of all public offices upon foreigners. At the beginning of his reign Charles had left to Neapolitans and Sicilians all fiscal and judicial posts, lucrative to the holders and productive to him; the strangers who accompanied him, ignorant of the country, would not have known how to squeeze it properly, as did Gezzolino della Marra, Alaimo de Lentini, Francesco Loffredo, and other natives. In these he reposed confidence, and, even after the defeat of Conradin, he still left Sicilians in the places of Maestri razionali, Segreti, Guidizieri, &c. But about 1278, we find Italian names disappearing from the list, and replaced almost entirely by those of ProvenÇals and Frenchmen. At that date there seems to have been a clean sweep made of the aborigines. Such a measure was sure to cause prodigious dissatisfaction and hatred to the government. Those who depended on their places were reduced to beggary, and those who had private fortunes regretted a state of things which swelled these, besides giving them influence and power. To the latter class belonged Alaimo de Lentini, one of the richest and best born of the Sicilian barons, possessed of great political and military talents. He had served Mainfroy, had quarrelled M. de St Priest does not himself narrate the oft-told tale of the Sicilian Vespers, but gives the accounts of Saba Malaspina and Bartolomeo de Neocastro, asserting that of the former writer to be the most correct, as it is certainly the most favourable to the French. He then enters into a long argument on points of no great importance; his logic being principally directed to show that if the French fell an easy prey to the infuriated Sicilians, it was through no lack of courage on their part, but because they were unarmed, surprised, and overmatched. He also takes some useless trouble to upset the story generally accredited of the immediate cause of the massacre, namely, an insult offered to a bride of high birth. The spirit of exaggerated nationality, apparent in this part of his book, stimulates his ingenuity to some curious hypotheses. It is a French failing, from which the best and wisest of that nation are rarely quite exempt, never to admit a defeat with temper and dignity. There must always have been treachery, or vastly superior numbers, or some other circumstance destructive to fair play. Not a Frenchman from Strasburg to Port Vendres, but holds, as an article of faith, that, on equal terms, the "grande nation" is unconquered and invincible. M. de St Priest seems to partake something of this spirit, so prevalent amongst his countrymen, and actually gets bitter and sarcastic about such a very antiquated business as the Sicilian Vespers. "Who does not recognise in this story (that of the insulted lady) an evident desire to exalt the deed of the Sicilians of the thirteenth century by assimilating it to analogous traits, borrowed from Roman history? Who does not here distinguish a Lucretia, or, better still, a Virginia; a Tarquin, or an Appius? The intention is conspicuous in the popular manifestos that succeeded the event. In these, reminiscences of antiquity abound. The heroes of the Vespers sought to make themselves Romans as quickly as possible, lest they should be taken for Africans." And so on in the same strain. "It is clearly seen," says the French historian in another place, "that the first outrage upon that day was perpetrated by the Sicilians, and not by the French; we behold brave and unsuspicious soldiers, inspired by good-humoured gaiety and deceitful security, barbarously stricken, in consequence of demonstrations, very indiscreet certainly, but whose inoffensive character is deposed to by a contemporary, hostile to the French and to their chief." The facts of the case are told in ten words. By a long course of injustice and oppression the French had dug and charged, beneath their own feet, a mine which a spark was sufficient to ignite. It is immaterial what hand applied that spark. Enough that the subsequent explosion Charles of Anjou was with the Pope at Montefiascone, when news reached him of the revolt and massacre at Palermo. His first emotion was a sort of religious terror, which expressed itself in the following singular prayer, recorded by Villani and all the historians:—"Lord!" he said, "you who have raised me so high, if it be your will to cast me down, grant at least that my fall be gradual, and that I may descend step by step." Although he as yet knew nothing but the insurrection of a single town, he seems to have beheld the shadow cast before by the evil day at hand. He left Montefiascone, having obtained from Martin IV., whose indignation equalled his own, a bull of conditional interdiction against the Sicilians, should they not return to their allegiance. The Pope also sent Cardinal Gerard of Parma to Sicily, to bring about the submission of the rebels. But at Naples Charles learned the insurrection of Messina, and his fury knew no bounds. Neocastro and other chroniclers represent him as roaring like a lion; his eyes full of blood, and his mouth of foam, whilst he furiously bit the baton he bore in his hand—a favourite practice of his when angry and excited. After writing to his nephew, Philip of France, for a subsidy and five hundred men, he set sail himself with his queen, Margaret of Burgundy, at the head of the formidable armament fitted out for the conquest of the East. There were two hundred vessels bearing an army composed of French and ProvenÇals, of Lombards and Tuscans, including fifty young knights of the noblest families in Florence, and (a strange spectacle in the host of Mainfroy's conqueror) a thousand Lucera Saracens. The total was fifteen thousand cavalry and sixty thousand infantry, and the rendezvous was at Catona, a Calabrian town opposite Messina, where, by the king's orders, forty galleys already awaited him. Undaunted by the formidable array, the Messinese prepared a vigorous defence, repairing their walls, barricading their port with beams, and even assuming the offensive with their galleys, which chased some of the King's into the port of Scylla. Yet a bold and sudden assault would probably have taken the town, and the reduction of all Sicily must necessarily have followed. This course was urged by Charles's principal officers; but he preferred the advice of the Count of Acerra, who, from cowardly or perfidious motives, urged him to wait the result of the legate's negotiations with the rebels. This was a fatal error. Delay was destruction. At the very moment it would well have availed him, Charles abdicated his usual fiery impetuosity in favour of temporising measures. Encamping four leagues to the south of Messina, he lost precious time in idle skirmishes. Whilst he burned their woods and vines, the Messinese raised fortifications, and named Alaimo de Lentini captain of the people, the chief office in the new republic. Whilst Alaimo took charge of the defence of Messina, his wife Maccalda, with helm on head and cuirass upon breast, armed and valiant like another Pallas, marshalled the garrison of Catania. Hostilities were about to commence when Cardinal Gerard of Parma reached Messina. Alaimo received him with the greatest respect, and offered him the keys of the town in token of liege homage to the holy see. The Cardinal replied by a vague offer of pardon if they submitted to the King. "At the word submission, Alaimo snatched the keys from the legate's hand, and exclaimed in a voice of thunder, 'Sooner death than a return to the odious French yoke!' After this theatrical burst, probably a piece of mere acting on the part of a man who had served under so many banners, serious negotiations began." It was impossible to agree. The exasperation of the Messinese reached a height that terrified the legate, who made his escape, after placing the city under interdict. The proposals he took to Charles The foe's decision published, Messina threw away the scabbard. A life of freedom, or a glorious death, was the unanimous resolve of its heroic inhabitants. Every man became a warrior; the very women gave example of the purest patriotism and sublimest devotedness. "Matrons who, the preceding day, clothed themselves in gold and purple, young girls, brought up in the lap of luxury and ease—all, without distinction of rank or riches, with bare feet and dresses tucked up to the knee, bore upon their shoulders stones and fascines, and heavy baskets of bread and wine. They helped the labourers, supplied them with food, attended to all that could increase their physical and moral strength. From the summit of the ramparts they hurled missiles on the besiegers. They held out their children to their husbands, bidding them fight bravely, and save their sons from slavery and death. Oh! it was a pity, says a song still popular in Sicily, great pity was it to see the ladies of Messina carrying chalk and stones." "Deh com' egli É gran pictate Delle donne di Messina, Veggiendo iscapighate, Portando pietre e calcina." Not long ago a wall was still shown, built by these heroines. The names of two of them, Dina and Clarentia, have been handed down to posterity. Whilst Dina upset whole squadrons by hurling stones from warlike engines, Clarentia, erect upon the ramparts, sounded the charge with a brazen trumpet. Such incidents gave a fine field to the superstitious and imaginative; and persons were not wanting who affirmed they had seen the Virgin Mary hover in white robes above the city, whilst others maintained she had appeared to Charles of Anjou's Saracens. The great assault was on the 14th September 1282. "You have no need to fight with these boors and burgesses," said Charles to his knights; "you have merely to slaughter them." He undervalued his foe. In vain did his chivalry advance against the town like a moving wall of steel; in vain did his fleet assail the port. Beams and chains, hidden under water, checked and destroyed his shipping; men and horses fell beneath the missiles of the besieged. One of these would have killed Charles, had not two devoted knights saved him. They covered the King with their bodies, and fell crushed and lifeless at his feet. On the side of the Sicilians, Alaimo displayed great military talents and personal courage. He was every where to be seen, animating his men by his example. When the French were finally repulsed with terrible loss, and compelled to raise the siege, Charles tried to corrupt Alaimo by immense offers, and went so far as to send him his signature upon a blank paper. The Sicilian resisted the temptation—rejecting treasures and dignities, to yield, at a later period, to the influence of a treacherous woman. Meanwhile the deputation charged to offer Sicily to the Pope, returned with a refusal. Martin IV. would have nothing to say to them. He would have better served Charles by acceptance. Subsequently he might Don Pedro delayed reply till he should have consulted his principal vassals. Most of them urged him not to engage in a hazardous enterprise, that would draw upon him the displeasure of the King of France; "but to be content with what he already possessed, without seeking to acquire what would assuredly be valiantly defended. Don Pedro heard their objections in silence, and broke up the council, merely announcing that the fleet would sail next day, without saying whether for Catalonia or Sicily. According to one account, scarcely credible, and bearing strong resemblance to a popular report, he declared the wind should decide his destination. The wind blew for Sicily, much to the discontent of some of the barons, and to the secret and profound joy of the King. After a prosperous voyage of only three days' duration, Don Pedro landed at the port of Trapani. The inhabitants received him as a liberator, and he proceeded to Palermo, where his stay was one unbroken triumph." He did not remain there long. He was as active and indefatigable as Charles of Anjou; like him sleeping little, and rising before the sun. He resolved to march to the succour of Messina, and to intercept the French army's communications with Calabria. He sent forward two noble Catalan knights to warn the King of Naples off the island, with the alternative of war should he refuse. A judge from Barcelona accompanied them,—it being the custom of the time to compose such embassies partly of military men, and partly of persons learned in the law. The envoys were courteously received in the French camp, but their lodging did not correspond with their reception. Either through contempt or through negligence, they were quartered in a church, without bed or chair, and had to sleep upon straw. At night they received two jugs of black wine, six loaves equally dark coloured, two roasted pigs, and an enormous quantity of bacon-soup. Coarse fare and hard couch did not, however, prevent their sleeping soundly, and repairing next morning to the royal presence, richly attired in fine cloth lined with vair. Charles, who was unwell, received them reclining under curtains of magnificent brocade, and with a little stick between his teeth, according to his habit. He listened patiently whilst the chief of the embassy summoned him to evacuate the island, and replied, after a few minutes' reflection, that Sicily belonged neither to him nor to the King of Arragon, but The conditions of the projected duel being arranged and agreed to by both parties, Charles left Reggio, the Prince of Salerno remaining there at the head of an army brought in great part from France. The war was now transported in great measure into Calabria. There every thing was favourable to the Arragonese. His soldiers found themselves in a climate, and amongst mountains, reminding them of their native country. The Almogavares, hardy and reckless guerillas, lightly equipped, and with sandalled feet, were more than a match for the French knights and men-at-arms, with their heavy horses and armour. "One day, whilst the Prince of Salerno was at Reggio, an Almogavare came alone to his camp to defy the French. At first they despised the challenge of the ill-clad savage, but finally a handsome young knight left the ranks, and Charles of Anjou was now at Rome, whose Pope he found friendly and supple as ever. A crusade was promulgated, the usurper of Sicily was excommunicated, and his Arragonese crown was declared forfeit and given to Charles de Valois, second son of Philip the Bold, whom the Italians called Carlo Senza Terra, because he tried many crowns but could never keep one. To cloak his manifest partiality, Martin IV. strove to make Charles give up the duel, and, failing to do so, declared himself openly against a project which he treated as mad and impious. He declared null and void the agreement and conditions fixed between the champions, and exhorted the King of England to forbid the encounter of the two sovereigns upon his territory. Edward I. was not the man to spoil sport of this kind; he neither made nor meddled in the matter. On the appointed day, (25th May 1283,) Charles, coming from Paris, where his intended duel had excited the enthusiasm of the French youth, entered Bordeaux, armed cap-À-pie, at the head of a hundred knights, established himself with them in the lists, and waited from sunrise till sundown. Then, the King of Arragon not appearing, he sent for Jean de Grailly, seneschal of Guienne, had a certificate of his presence at Bordeaux drawn up in due form, and set out for his county of Provence. Various causes have been assigned for Pedro's non-appearance. It is certain that he left Sicily, after having summoned thither his queen and all his children, excepting the eldest, Alphonso, who remained in Arragon. The only distinct cause assigned by M. de St Priest, for his defalcation in the lists, is the Arragonese version. "Don Pedro had gone from Valentia to Collioure, and already the hundred chevaliers he had chosen to accompany him were assembled at Jaca, on the frontier, ready to enter Guienne, when he was suddenly informed that, at the request of Charles of Anjou, Philip of France had accompanied his uncle to Bordeaux, and lay near that town with twenty thousand men. Warned by the King of England that the King of France was in ambush for him, Pedro decided not to show himself publicly at Bordeaux; but being at the same time fully resolved to acquit his promise by going thither, he disguised himself as a poor traveller, and took with him two gentlemen dressed with less simplicity, all three mounted on good horses, and without other baggage than a large bag full of provisions, that they might not be obliged to stop any where. The King acted as servant to his companions, waiting on them at table, and giving the horses their corn. In this manner they arrived very quickly at Bordeaux, where Don Pedro was received and concealed by an old knight, a friend of one of the two gentlemen. Upon the morrow, which was the day appointed for the duel, Pedro repaired to the lists, with the seneschal, who was devoted to him, before the sun rose, consequently earlier than Charles of Anjou. There he caused his presence to be certified by a notarial act, then fled precipitately, and put an interval of several hours between his departure and the pursuit of the Kings of France and Sicily." This is rather an improbable story, as M. de St Priest justly remarks; and, even if true, it is a sort of evasion that does little credit to the King of Arragon's chivalry. It appears likely that Pedro, standing upon his well-established reputation of personal bravery, thought himself justified for once in consulting prudence, "In the heat of a terrible and prolonged combat, and seeing himself about to be vanquished, Cornut jumped upon Lauria's galley and attacked the admiral, axe in one hand and lance in the other. The lance point pierced Ruggiero's foot, and, nailing him to the deck, broke off from the pole; the ProvenÇal raised his axe, when the Sicilian, active and furious as a tiger, snatched the iron from his bleeding wound, and, using it as a dagger, stabbed his enemy to the heart." The sea was the real field of battle, and, unfortunately for Charles of Anjou, the French lacked the naval skill and experience of the Catalans. Pedro was detained in Arragon by some turbulent proceedings of his nobility, but he was ably replaced by his wife. Queen Constance was no ordinary woman. Adored by the Sicilians, who persisted in regarding her as the rightful descendant of their kings, her influence exceeded that of Pedro himself. Surrounded by her children, and followed by her Almogavares, she traversed the island in all directions, going from Palermo to Messina, from Messina to Catania, encouraging the people by kind and valiant words, giving bread to the necessitous, and followed by the blessings and admiration of her new subjects. By the advice of John of Procida, she resolved to anticipate the Prince of Salerno, who only awaited his father's arrival to make a descent upon Sicily. "She sent for Ruggiero de Lauria, who was the son of Madonna Bella, her nurse, and spoke to him thus: 'Friend Ruggiero, you know that you have been brought up, from your earliest infancy, in my father's house and in mine; my lord the King of Arragon has loaded you with favours, making you first a good knight and then an admiral, such confidence has he in your valour and fidelity. Now, do better still than heretofore; I recommend to you myself, my children, and all my family.' When the Queen had spoken, the admiral put knee on ground, took the hands of his good mistress in his in sign of homage, kissed them devoutly, and replied: 'Madonna, have no fear; the banner of Arragon has never receded, and still shall conquer. God gives me confidence that I shall again work to your satisfaction, and that of my lord the King.' Then the Queen made the sign of the cross over the admiral, who quitted her to put himself at the head of thirty galleys, and of a host of light vessels armed at Messina. With these he entered the gulf of Salerno." The son of Charles of Anjou had no suspicion of the sortie of the Arragonese fleet, and an officer whom he sent to reconnoitre brought back a false account of the enemy's strength, diminishing the number of their vessels. Thereupon the Prince of Salerno resolved to give battle, being urged to do so by the Count of Acerra, the same who had formerly advised Charles to postpone the assault of Messina. The count's advice, whether treacherous or sincere, proved fatal in both instances. The Sicilian fleet, which had advanced to the very Molo of Naples, passed under the windows of the Castello Nuovo, insulting the Prince of Salerno by words injurious to his nation, his father, and himself. Too angry to be prudent, and forgetting Charles's orders on no account to stir before his arrival, the prince, covered with new and brilliant armour, bravely embarked, lame though he was, on board the royal galley, followed by the flower of the French chivalry. Lauria, cunning as skilful, feigned to fly at his approach. Riso, the Messinese, and other Sicilian exiles, showed chains to Lauria, calling out, "Brave admiral, here is what awaits you; turn and look!" Lauria obeyed their order, turned about, and fell furiously upon the Neapolitan fleet, which was defeated by the very first shock. The Prince of Salerno and the French knights defended themselves with the courage of despair. The royal galley alone held At the news of the Prince's capture, the Neapolitans were on the point of revolt. An incident occurred that did not leave him the least doubt of their sentiments. When seated on the deck of Ruggiero's galley, in the midst of a circle of knights who kept respectful silence, he saw approach a number of boats filled with peasants, who asked permission to come on board. They brought baskets of those large figs called palombale, and also a present of gold augustales. Taking the Prince, on account of his magnificent armour, and of the respect of those around him, they knelt before him and said, "Admiral, accept this fruit and this gold; the district of Sorrento sends them you as an offering, and may you take the father as you have taken the son!" Notwithstanding his misfortunes, the young man could not help smiling, as he said, "Truly these are very faithful subjects of my lord the King." He was taken to Sicily and landed at Messina, where Queen Constance and the Infante Don Jaime then resided. 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, 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 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 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 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, The concluding line of M. de St. Priest's work contains a sentiment which will doubtless find ready echo in the hearts of his countrymen, ever jealous of Great Britain's aggrandisement and territorial growth. "May Sicily" he says, "never become a second Malta." The wish, whose heartfelt sincerity cannot be doubted, points to the possibility, not to say the probability, of the event deprecated; an event which, however unwelcome to France, would, in many respects, be highly advantageous to the two parties more immediately concerned. So manifest are the benefits that it is almost impertinent to point them out. Sicily would find efficient protection, commercial advantages, a paternal and liberal government; England would obtain a storehouse and granary, and an excellent position whence to observe and check French progress in Northern Africa, should the ambition of the young republic, or of any other government that may succeed it, render interference necessary. At the present moment, when half Europe is unhinged, political speculation becomes doubly difficult; but whatever turn events take, there is little likelihood of France either abandoning her African colony or resting contented with its present extent. Doubtless, she will some day lay hold of Tunis, or at least make the attempt. It is but a short sail from Tunis to Sicily. The peace-at-all-price men, who would fain dispense with fleets and armies, and trust to the spread of philanthropy for the protection of Britain and its colonies, would have no fresh cause for their insipid and querulous grumblings in the annexation of Sicily to the British empire. It would be unnecessary to recruit an additional drummer, or man a cock-boat the more. The island Sicilians, of more hardy frame and courageous temper than their Continental neighbours, are, as they have lately shown, able to defend their liberties. They would furnish troops and mariners, who, with British discipline and direction, need be second to none in Europe. Increased advantages should of course be afforded to Sicilian produce imported into Great Britain. This would cut two ways. Whilst benefiting the Sicilian, and encouraging him to industry, it would spur the stolid and stubborn lawgivers of Spain to moderate the absurd tariff which excludes foreign manufactures from that country, save through illicit channels. Under British protection and British laws, Sicily, if she cannot hope ever to resume her ancient grandeur and prosperity, would flourish and improve to an extent impossible during her ill-assorted union with Naples. |