The Age of Chivalry

by Hywel Williams

  BELOW The Castel Nuevo in Naples was built by Charles of Anjou following the decision to make Naples, rather than Palermo, the administrative center of the Kingdom of Sicily.

  There may have been a plan to use the crusading fleet in order to launch an attack on Byzantium, but its destruction by storms while returning to Sicily put paid to any such proposal. However, there were other pickings within easy reach, and in 1272 Charles proclaimed himself king of Albania after he had conquered lands along the Albanian coast that had previously been part of the despotate of Epirus. He still thought that Byzantium was within his grasp, but a reunion of the Greek and Latin Churches now seemed imminent, and since Michael Palaeologus was in serious discussions with the papacy on the subject, Charles’s ambition remained frustrated.

  Pope Gregory was, however, in a position to grant Charles a consolation prize: the kingdom of Jerusalem. Deprived of the city of Jerusalem and with its capital in Acre, the tiny kingdom that clung to the Syrian coast was not much of a gift. Hugh III of Cyprus had been crowned its king in 1269, but the faction-ridden local nobility disgusted him and in 1276 he returned to his island throne. This left Mary of Antioch as a claimant, and she was ready to sell her rights to Charles of Anjou. With papal approval the deal was done in 1277, and following the application of some strong-arm tactics by Charles’s agents the local nobility swore fealty to their new king.

  Simon de Brion’s election to the papacy as Martin IV on February 22, 1281 was an encouraging moment for Charles. The count had gone so far as to imprison two obstreperous Italian cardinals to ensure that the conclave voted unanimously for the French cardinal who had been Louis IX’s chancellor in 1259–61. Michael VIII had found it difficult to sell the idea of a Church reunion in Constantinople, and the new pope helped Charles by excommunicating the Greek emperor. In 1281–82, therefore, and with papal approval, Charles could at last prepare to go to war against Byzantium.

  Initial land campaigning designed to break out from Charles’s Albanian base provoked a Byzantine counter-attack which put his army to flight. Campaigning in Achaea had also gone badly, with the principality proving a problem in other respects. The deal of 1267 meant that Charles was now lord of Achaea as well as its suzerain, following the death without issue in 1271 of his son Philip, who had been his vassal in the Peloponnese principality. But the Villehardouin family contested his succession, and although possession of Achaea gave Charles’s Angevin dynasty a major role in Frankish-occupied Greece, squabbling over the succession ensured over a century of civil wars. Still, in the summer of 1282, Charles’s hopes must have been bolstered by the sight of the 400 ships he had assembled at the great port of Messina in readiness for the attack on Constantinople.

  A REVOLT IN SICILY

  On the evening of March 29, however, just as the church bells of Palermo started to ring in readiness for the service of Vespers, a quarrel broke out between French officials and some locals. A contemporary account of the evening describes a Frenchman pestering a young married woman, whose husband then attacked the lout and stabbed him to death. Whatever the cause, a spark had been lit and in the ensuing massacre the local Palermitans killed as many of the French as they could find. The rebellion spread after local leaders were elected in Palermo, and six weeks later Charles of Anjou’s French government had lost control of most of the island of Sicily. By the end of April even well-fortified Messina was lost to the French, and the rebels set fire to Charles’s armada.

  Why did this happen, and how spontaneous was it? Charles’s French administrators could certainly be harsh, and his decision to base himself in Naples had isolated him from the island of Sicily. And there was a long history of Italian communalism behind the demands sent to a predictably unsympathetic papacy: the rebel leaders wanted their cities to be self-governing and directly answerable only to Martin IV as their suzerain. To some extent therefore this was a popular revolt. But the rebellion following the Sicilian Vespers incident was also part of the diplomatic politics of European princes.

  After the pope had rejected their demands rebel leaders sent a message to King Peter III of Aragon, whose wife Constance was Manfred’s daughter and a claimant to the Sicilian throne. Peter was well placed to champion the claim made in the summer of 1282 since his navy—a newly built fleet intended to protect his subjects’ trading interest in north Africa—was located at Tunis just a couple of hundred miles to the south of Sicily. There was also another element to the Sicilian Vespers incident: Peter’s Aragonese kingdom contained numerous Sicilian refugees who hated Charles. These exiles tended to be Ghibellines who opposed papal territorial power in Italy, and in the past Charles had shown no qualms about killing people who held such views. In 1272 he had declared war on Genoa, a city run by Ghibellines whose revolts, partly financed by the Greek emperor Michael VIII, spread across north Italy. By 1275 the Ghibellines had forced Charles to withdraw from Piedmont, but their hostility remained intense.

  John of Procida, Manfred’s former chancellor and once a counselor to Frederick II, was an all-important point of contact between all these groups, and the strength of his devotion to the Staufen memory was equaled only by his detestation of Charles. In 1282 John was 72, but this gifted conspirator’s age did not stop him from being an effective liaison between the emperor Michael in Constantinople, the Aragonese court and Charles’s opponents in Sicily.

  The Sicilians’ appeal to Peter and Constance of Aragon was accepted, and on August 30, 1282 the Aragonese fleet docked at Trapani. The king promised a restoration of ancient Sicilian liberties rather than free communes, but the undertaking was good enough for the islanders and he was acclaimed Peter I of Sicily on September 4 at Palermo.

  Charles could still rely on the papacy for support. Martin IV first excommunicated Peter of Aragon and then declared that Charles of Valois, son of France’s King Philip III (“the Bold”) should rule Aragon. These actions were part of a pattern of consistently craven support for Charles of Anjou, and Martin’s subservience to French interests had a serious long-term effect in undermining the papacy’s spiritual authority as an independent power. The pope’s further announcement of 1284 that the war against the Sicilians would be an Aragonese Crusade devalued the vocabulary of an ideal that was once supposed to unite all Christian princes and their subjects.

  ABOVE The Sicilian Vespers—a rebellion that took place on March 30, 1282 in Palermo against French rule in Sicily under Charles of Anjou—led to a war that lasted until 1302. This depiction of the event that may have triggered the uprising was painted by Francesco Hayez (1791–1882) in 1846.

  Christendom itself therefore was a major casualty of the Sicilian Vespers incident. The war to which it gave rise lasted until 1302, and as an essentially Franco-Spanish conflict it showed the energy of national governments guided by rulers’ ambitions. The intervention of Philip III of France in 1284 saw his major force advancing on Aragon through Roussillon to advance the claim of Charles of Valois. This force, however, was decimated by disease, and in 1285 the French king died at Perpignan. Despite the deaths in the same year of Charles of Anjou and of Peter of Aragon, the war continued. By 1302 Charles of Anjou’s son and successor, Charles II of Naples, had to concede the futility of any further attempt at invading Sicily, and Frederick III, the son of Peter III of Aragon, was confirmed as the island’s king.

  THE HOUSE OF ANJOU-NAPLES

  The alliance that Charles of Anjou formed with Hungary’s Arpad dynasty had momentous consequences. His son Charles (1254–1309), the future Charles II of Naples, married Maria, the daughter of Stephen V of Hungary (1239–72). His daughter Elisabeth, married Stephen’s heir, Ladislaus (1262–90). Maria claimed the throne of Hungary after Ladislaus IV died without issue, but the Hungarian aristocracy turned to Andrew III (c.1265–1301), a Venetian nobleman descended from an earlier Arpad monarch, Andrew II (1177–1235).

  Queen Maria transferred her Hungarian dynastic rights to her eldest son, Charles Martel of Anjou (1271–95), who died youn
g, and with Andrew III finding it difficult to assert his authority the Angevin claim was supported by Hungary’s Church leaders. Charles Martel’s son, Charles Robert (1288–1342), pursued his claim to the throne in Hungary from 1300 onward, and his coronation as Charles I of Hungary in 1312 marks the start of the Hungarian Angevins’ dynastic history. Primogeniture should have also made him his grandfather’s heir in Naples, but Charles II chose his youngest son Robert of Anjou (1277–1343) as successor.

  Crowned king in 1309, Robert was an enlightened patron of the arts, and as leader of the Guelph party in Italian politics he resisted the territorial ambitions of the emperor Louis IV (1282–1347) in north Italy. Ancestral guilt about Charles I of Hungary’s exclusion from the line of Neapolitan succession nonetheless clung to Robert, and following the death of his own son and heir he wished to make reparation. He therefore arranged for his granddaughter Joanna (1328–82)—who had become his heir—to marry prince Andrew, Charles I of Hungary’s younger son and the brother of Louis I (1326–82), who succeeded to the Hungarian throne in 1342. The Angevin dynasty’s Italianizing influence had by now raised Hungary to new levels of cultural achievement and economic growth, and in 1370 Louis also became king of Poland in succession to his maternal uncle, Casimir III. In his will, King Robert of Naples specified that Prince Andrew and Joanna were both to be crowned monarchs of Naples in their own right. Joanna, however, refused to share sovereignty, and in August 1344 she was crowned sole monarch. In 1345 her husband Andrew was murdered by Neapolitan aristocrats determined to prevent his coronation, and although a trial held under papal auspices in Avignon acquitted Joanna of complicity the event undermined her authority.

  Determined to avenge his brother’s murder, Louis invaded Naples on several expeditions conducted in 1346–48 and again in 1350 but failed to establish himself as the kingdom’s permanent ruler. The beleaguered queen’s decision to adopt Louis I of Anjou (1339–84), a younger son of John II of France, as her heir established a junior Angevin line in opposition to the senior line whose rights of succession were represented by Charles of Durazzo (1345–86), a direct descendant of Charles II.

  Joanna’s support for the Avignon papacy during the western schism led in 1381 to her official condemnation by Pope Urban VI as a heretic. He bestowed her kingdom, which was a papal fief, on Charles of Durazzo, who arranged for Joanna to be murdered in 1382. The prince of Durazzo then ruled as Charles III of Naples, and he also tried to seize the Hungarian throne after Louis I died and during the minority of Louis’s heir, Mary (c.1371–95). Here though he was less successful. The Hungarian Queen Mother Elisabeth arranged for Charles’s assassination on February 7, 1386, and Mary was reinstated. Mary’s husband Sigismund (1368–1437), originally a German prince whose father was the emperor Charles IV, became entirely devoted to the Hungarian cause, and his long reign as king of Hungary from 1387 onward ended any prospect of an Angevin restoration.

  Charles III was succeeded as king of Naples by his son Ladislaus (1376–1414), who nonetheless had to fight Louis II of Anjou (1377–1417) for his inheritance. Louis II reigned in Naples for ten years (1389–99) before being ejected by forces loyal to Ladislaus, whose sister and successor Joan II of Naples (1373–1435) was the last Anjou-Durazzo to reign in Naples. Local anti-French sentiment was revived by the behavior of Joan’s husband, James of Bourbon (1370–1438), the count of la Marche who acquired the title of king on marriage. After a riot broke out in Naples in 1416 James had to remove the French administrators he had introduced to the kingdom. Renouncing his regal title, James had left Naples by 1419 and the senior Angevin line of Neapolitan monarchs became extinct when Joan died. She had settled the succession on René of Anjou (1409–80) of the junior Angevin line, but his reign was brief (1438–42). Following a successful siege of Naples in 1441–42, Alfonso V (1396–1458), king of Aragon and of Sicily, accomplished the tremendous feat of reuniting the island of Sicily with the southern Italian mainland in one kingdom, which he ruled as a dependency of Aragon.

  The marriage of Sigismund, son of the emperor Charles IV, and Mary of Hungary can be seen in the background of this illustration from the 1468 edition of the Chronicles written by the French historian Jean Froissart (c.1337–c.1405).

  THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

  1337–1453

  The conflict that consumed English and French energies for well over a century from 1337 to 1453 was, in fact, a series of wars punctuated by periods of peace. Dynastic rights were at the core of the hostilities, with England’s Plantagenet kings asserting against the French dynasty of the Valois their claim to be kings of France. The war ended in the expulsion of the English forces from France—with the exception of Calais and the area surrounding the city. But the impact of the war transcends the story of dynastic rivalry, for the conflict also witnessed momentous developments in military technology and gave birth to a new and energetic sense of national identity in both England and France.

  Although England’s dynasty of Anglo-Norman rulers had retained Normandy as a fief for themselves and their heirs, as dukes of Normandy they were nonetheless obliged to swear fealty to the French Crown. William the Conqueror and his heirs resented this vassalage, and by the same token France’s Capetian dynasty disliked the fact that a constituent part of their realm was being governed by a foreign power. These tensions were compounded by the rise to power of the Plantagenets (sometimes known as the Angevins), since they were a thoroughly Anglo-French dynasty. At the height of their power, England’s Plantagenet kings controlled not just Normandy but also Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Poitou, Gascony, Saintonge and Aquitaine. England’s kings therefore not only ruled more French lands than did the French Crown, but also owed vassalage to a dynasty far less powerful than themselves.

  THE BACKGROUND TO WAR

  The weakness of England’s position during the reign of John (1199–1216) allowed Philip II Augustus of France to seize most of the ancient English territorial holdings. At the Battle of Bouvines (1214) in modern Flanders King Philip II Augustus defeated Otto IV, the German emperor, and Otto’s ally King John of England. John’s humiliation was a major factor in his decision to capitulate to the demands of the English baronage and to sign the Magna Carta. Philip’s victory meant that he could now assert control over Anjou, Brittany, Normandy, Maine and Touraine. As a result, the Angevins’ French territories were reduced to parts of Gascony. It was this humiliation, compounded by further defeats in the Saintonge War (1242) and the War of Saint-Sardos (1324), that the English aristocracy were now determined to avenge.

  RIGHT The Battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346 is depicted here in the 14th-century section of the Grandes Chroniques de France (1274–1461).

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  THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR

  1324 The War of Saint-Sardos results in defeat for the English at the hands of the French, and leads indirectly to the overthrow of Edward II of England.

  1328 Death of Charles IV. Philip of Valois, a nephew of Philip IV, is crowned as Philip VI, the first Valois monarch.

  1337 Philip VI claims English-held Gascony as his own fiefdom; Edward III claims to be France’s rightful king. War starts.

  1346 English victory at Crécy leads to capture of Calais.

  1356 English victory at Poitiers.

  1360 Treaty of Brétigny: Aquitaine, Gascony, western Brittany and Calais are ceded to England.

  1369 Gascon nobles reject Prince Edward’s tax measures. War resumes.

  1372 Poitiers is retaken.

  1389–1415 The second peace between France and England. Civil conflict in France between Burgundian and Orléanist (subsequently termed “Armagnac”) aristocratic factions.

  1399 Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV) seizes the English throne from Richard II.

  1415 Henry V declares war. English gain victory at Agincourt. After further victories at Caen (1417) and Rouen (1419), Normandy is English controlled.

  1420 Treaty of Troyes: Charles VI recognizes Henry V as his heir.

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421 A Scottish army that has arrived in France defeats the English at the Battle of Bauge.

  1422 Death of Henry V and of Charles VI. The infant Henry VI is crowned king of England and of France. War continues.

  1429 Jeanne d’Arc helps to relieve the English siege of Orléans. Rheims opens its gates to the dauphin’s army and he is crowned as Charles VII.

  1435 Treaty of Arras: the Burgundians agree peace with Charles VII.

  1449 French recapture Rouen, as well as Caen (1450), and Bordeaux and Bayonne (1451).

  1453 An Anglo-Gascon force is defeated at the Battle of Castillon. Calais is the English Crown’s sole foreign territorial possession.

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  The extinction of the main line of the Capetian dynasty provided the English with a pretext for war. Philip IV left three male heirs on his death in 1314: Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV. He also left a daughter, Isabella, who was the wife of Edward II of England and the mother of Edward III. Louis X died in 1316 and his son, John I, died months afterward. Philip V now claimed the Crown for himself and used the ancient Salic law and its prohibition of female succession to the French throne in order to set aside the claims of Louis’s other child, Joan. Charles IV used the same authority to set aside the claims of Philip V’s daughters when the king died in 1322.