This letter outlined clearly the Hungarian response, not to Andrew’s murder, but to Joanna’s proposed remarriage. No accusation against the queen of Naples had been levied by her husband’s family in the more than three months since the assassination. Only after her daughter-in-law revealed her intention to marry outside the house of Hungary did Elizabeth discover her to be a murderess. Had Joanna consented to marry the third son, Stephen, the Hungarians would likely never have made the charge in the first place, but this Joanna had preemptively indicated she would not do by sending her envoys specifically to negotiate that she be released from the original contract. For the Hungarians to achieve their ambitions in Naples, which, as articulated in the January 15 letter to Clement, involved setting up Stephen in Joanna’s place (Louis needed to reside in Hungary in order to maintain his power base) and taking Charles Martel away from his mother for the purpose of inculcating him with Hungarian values and ambitions, Joanna would have to be deposed. Hence the need to fling the web of guilt as widely as possible, and above all, to ensnare the queen in the net, for her culpability was the foundation on which all Hungarian hopes rested.
The delivery of a healthy child seems to have infused Joanna with new purpose, for soon after the birth of her son, the queen took action to protect herself by publicly renouncing Robert of Taranto’s suit in favor of that of his younger brother Louis. Ironically, Joanna found the support she needed to reject Robert from within her cousin’s own family. Louis was favored by both his mother, Catherine of Valois, and by her chancellor and chief adviser, Niccolò Acciaiuoli, both of whom had their own reasons for championing this match. Niccolò’s sister was Charles of Artois’ second wife, and both Charles and his son Bertrand were suspected of having participated in the conspiracy to murder Andrew. Niccolò was much closer to Louis than to Robert; Louis listened to him, whereas Robert did not. Also Robert, who was arrogant and overbearing, had quarreled openly with his mother. Catherine disliked him almost as much as Joanna did, and had appealed to her brother Philip of Valois to support Louis’ suit over that of his elder brother. The French king agreed and intervened with the papacy on Louis’ behalf.
Although Louis was Joanna’s only real alternative—she needed a husband quickly, someone who understood the internal politics of Naples, which precluded obtaining a suitor from outside the kingdom, and after Agnes’s betrayal, there was no chance of her turning to the Durazzo side of the family—there are indications that this match was more than simply a political arrangement. Louis was among those whose names had been romantically linked with Joanna’s by the chroniclers. Like Andrew, Louis was a year younger than Joanna—nineteen to her twenty—but he was also strong, blond, and exceedingly handsome. Most important, Louis was known for his prowess at arms. He was a practiced warrior who could protect his wife, her infant son, the court, and the realm. Joanna wrote to the pope explaining that she had changed her mind for the good of the kingdom, based on the advice of the prelates and barons who were her counselors, but Clement didn’t believe her. In a letter to the king of France dated March 30, 1346, the pope revealed that Louis had been chosen over his brother because he had promised to shield the queen’s favorites from prosecution for conspiring to kill Andrew. “If his marriage [to Joanna] is accomplished, those who are vulnerable for being suspected of participating in the criminally infamous death of the king are guaranteed by Louis to be declared safe from punishment,” Clement wrote.
It does appear that, by this time, whatever doubts Joanna may have entertained initially regarding Philippa and her family’s role in Andrew’s murder had passed. The queen gave every indication of a woman convinced of the innocence of those with whom she was intimate, and she actively sought to protect them. Her attitude may have been a reaction to Robert’s aggressive attempts to wed her, but it might also have been because Joanna understood that her courtiers were obvious targets. Although there are no extant descriptions of Raymond of Catania, Robert of Cabannis, and Sancia of Cabannis, they were the children and grandchildren of an African slave, and so it is likely they were black. Their racial heritage did not affect Joanna’s judgment of their abilities, nor her affection for them, but others within the kingdom felt differently. When Boccaccio had written of Philippa’s husband, “What a ridiculous thing to see an African from a slave prison, from the vapor of the kitchen, standing before Robert, the King, performing royal service for the young nobleman, governing the court and making laws for those in power!” he was probably expressing not simply his own feelings but an opinion generally held by the public, and which would then have also applied to the man’s descendants. Louis may well have urged his suit against that of his brother Robert by promising to defend the queen’s intimates from the mania of a witch hunt.
Robert had no intention of withdrawing gracefully from his engagement, however. The crown was within his grasp, and he was determined to possess it, with or without the consent of the bride. Louis was equally resolved to frustrate his brother’s suit and marry Joanna himself. There followed the sort of drama that served as fodder for the songs of the troubadours throughout the ages. Brother fell upon brother and army upon army, all battling for the hand of the queen. Civil war rent the kingdom.
Because his elder brother controlled the family estates, allowing Robert to call on his own vassals to provide men and arms for the struggle, Louis was forced to recruit the bulk of his army from outside the kingdom. Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who had strong ties to Florence (his cousin was bishop there), utilized two Florentine agents to scout among the available manpower in Tuscany and the surrounding area. Necessarily, they relied on mercenaries. The agents were not particularly selective about enlistment, with the result being that a large percentage of those who marched south to Louis’ aid were Ghibellines who carried standards and banners identifying them as such. When these troops entered the capital city of Naples, it appeared to the populace as though the queen had appealed to the kingdom’s most feared adversary, the emperor, for reinforcements against her Guelphic subjects.
Robert was quick to capitalize on this political weakness. He banded together with his cousin Charles of Durazzo, who was only too happy to participate in any activity that might result in the deposition of Joanna in favor of her sister, and the two portrayed themselves as stalwart defenders of the church. Since the Holy See had undertaken to expose and punish Andrew’s executioners, in an adroit bit of partisan maneuvering, Robert and Charles suddenly embraced this cause as their own, announcing that they were not fighting Joanna because she had chosen to wed Louis over Robert, but because she and her lover were harboring the queen’s favorites, who had murdered her husband. The fact that Andrew had by this time been dead for six months and neither man had thought to pursue his killers before Joanna announced that she was marrying Louis was conveniently forgotten.
The impetus for Robert’s and Charles’s newfound zeal to see justice done may be traced to Hugo del Balzo, the count of Avellino and Joanna’s seneschal in Provence, who was in this instance acting as a secret agent on behalf of the pope. Boccaccio wrote that Hugo “conspired with all of the princes” to investigate and then pass judgment on the alleged miscreants. Frustrated that the two cardinals originally chosen for this mission had been so long detained by other business, Clement sought in the count of Avellino the clandestine services of a less public emissary. Buttressing this theory is the fact that Hugo, who had been away on crusade for much of the previous year, returned to Avignon in time to meet with the pope on January 8, and by February 13 was on his way to Naples.
This new strategy on the part of the queen’s antagonists had the added attraction of targeting precisely those wealthy and titled individuals who in the past had denied Charles’s access to power and were currently resisting Robert’s attaining the throne. If they could be proven to have conspired against Andrew, then not only would Robert’s and Charles’s political opposition be swept away in a single stroke, but all the culprits’ considerable property would be decl
ared forfeit and could be seized by the victors as spoils. This was such a good plan that Robert and Charles must have wondered why they had not thought of it themselves.
The long investigative delay into Andrew’s murder had indeed served to weaken the queen’s position. Although Joanna had only acceded to the pope’s wishes by accepting church authority over the case, and was in fact waiting with everyone else in the kingdom for the arrival of the two cardinals charged with delving into the matter, the unpardonable tardiness of the papal investigators gave the queen the appearance of deliberately obstructing justice. A dreadful crime had been committed, and retribution ought to have been swift and terrible. When this did not occur, the atmosphere festered and the population first wondered, then grew restive. It was a relatively simple matter for Robert and Charles to coalesce popular opinion around their cause, particularly after the arrival of the Ghibelline mercenaries. Citizens from as far away as Salerno, Nido, and Capua poured into the capital to demand that the queen surrender her favorites. Robert, Charles, and Hugo del Balzo, with their supporters (by this time all the Durazzo brothers were involved), moved among the populace spreading the rumor that Joanna had been prevented from bringing Andrew’s executioners to justice by her cronies. The vigilantes raised tempers in hopes of inciting a mob. They also obtained the discreet services of a noted cutthroat by the name of Fra Moriale.
Matters came to a head on March 6, 1346. To reduce the risk of violence to the general population, Raymond of Catania, in his position as seneschal of the court, issued a decree prohibiting the carrying of arms in public. When Raymond and a small party of knights bravely took to the streets of Naples to ensure that the order was enforced, they were ambushed by Fra Moriale and his men. A terrific fight ensued, and when it was all over, Fra Moriale had earned his pay. Raymond of Catania was taken prisoner.
His persecutors brought him first to a main public square, to be exhibited in front of the populace during torture, to satisfy the bloodlust of the mob. However, as it was important that just the right conspirators be named during interrogation, Robert and Charles left nothing to chance and had Raymond’s tongue cut out, and all their questions accompanied by drum rolls, so that none of their audience could hear clearly. After that, they took their captive into Robert’s castle and placed him on a balcony, so that Raymond’s agony, if not his actual confession, was comprehensible to the crowds below. In this way they obtained the names of a satisfying (and expected) number of high-level conspirators: the marshal of the realm, the count of Terlizzi; the grand seneschal, Robert of Cabannis; Nicholas of Melizzano, a member of the royal household (who actually seems to have participated in the killing); Joanna’s nurse, Philippa the Catanian; Philippa’s granddaughter, Sancia; Charles of Artois and his son Bertrand; Tommaso Mambriccio’s brother and sister; and a number of others associated with Joanna’s circle. Such was the persuasiveness of Robert’s and Charles’s methods that Raymond of Catania himself confessed to the slaying, even though it had been established several months previously that the seneschal had been asleep in his room at the royal residence at Aversa at the time Andrew was killed.
When the identities of the accused were later revealed to the crowd by a public notary (Raymond of Catania, being unable to speak, was forced by his tormentors to nod his head after each name was read as verification), it caused a sensation. Under the leadership of Robert, Charles, and Hugo del Balzo, the mob was subsequently incited to frenzy, generously armed with cutlasses and spears, and then pointed in the direction of the Castel Nuovo. According to yet another chronicle of the period, the enraged citizens, carrying Guelphic banners identifying themselves as warriors for the church, shouted, “Death to the traitors!” “Death to the whore of a queen!” and “Surrender the traitors!” as they converged on the castle.
This show of force, while undoubtedly dramatic, was not particularly effective. Daggers and javelins are not much good against sturdy stone walls. The Ghibelline mercenaries hired to protect Joanna and her court merely locked the impregnable front door and rained ballistics down on the hordes below—arrows from the crossbows, rocks and other heavy projectiles, loose tiles, wood originally meant for the cookstoves, pots and pans, anything that came to hand.
In fact, Joanna was not even present at the Castel Nuovo during the attack. Unbeknownst to her persecutors, the queen had repaired to the Castel dell’Ovo, the most secure fortress in Naples and her family’s traditional retreat for safety, to be with her child, as a much later letter dated August 28, 1347, attested. “Nobis absentibus abinde,” Joanna wrote. “From me, who was away from there [the Castel Nuovo].”
The mob fell back but did not disband, and a new plan of action was hastily devised. It was decided to surround the castle, institute a state of siege, and wait for supplies to run out. This second strategy was far more successful, particularly as the Ghibelline mercenaries seemed to be as interested in looting their employers as they were in defending them. After three days the castle was forced to come to terms and surrender the accused.
Even then, those negotiating within the Castel Nuovo in the queen’s name on behalf of the terrified courtiers did their best to protect their familiars from the vigilante justice of the mob. A deal was brokered through Hugo del Balzo whereby Hugo, Robert, and Charles pledged that the prisoners would be transferred unmolested to the Castel dell’Ovo for safekeeping until the chief justice of the kingdom could investigate to see if the charges against each suspect had merit. Only then would the law of the land be applied and capital punishment meted out if appropriate. To ensure further protection from the seething multitudes, Hugo offered to transport the captives from the Castel Nuovo to the Castel dell’Ovo, about a half mile up the coast, by sea in one of his own galleys. This proposal was accepted by the accused, which included the count of Terlizzi, Robert of Cabannis, Sancia of Cabannis, Philippa the Catanian, and Nicholas of Melizzano, among others. To the chagrin of the victors, Charles and Bertrand of Artois, father and son, had managed to escape the Castel Nuovo undetected and were later discovered to be under the protection of the empress of Constantinople at one of her castles outside the city.
The prudence of the Artois’ decision to evade capture and take their chances with Catherine of Valois was soon made manifest. The vessel containing the prisoners never reached the Castel dell’Ovo. Instead, Hugo del Balzo, with a blithe disregard for the formalities of the just-concluded agreement, stopped his galley a little out to sea, about midway between the point of departure and the supposed destination, and much to the enjoyment of a large crowd of spectators on the beach, proceeded to torment his helpless passengers. “In front of the whole city and upon the open sea—with the entire population watching—he [Hugo, count of Avellino] naturally tortured poor Philippa, Sancia and Robert [of Cabannis] upon a monstrous rack,” reported De Casibus, a chronicle of the time. “Whoever was a friend of Avellino… immediately tortured Sancia, the countess of Marcone,” the Chronicon Siculum agreed.
When Hugo finished at sea, he took his anguished, mutilated captives (Philippa was in her sixties and Sancia was pregnant) to the duke of Durazzo’s castle so as not to deprive his compatriots of the pleasure of interrogating their former political opponents. They then spent the night being further tortured by Charles of Durazzo in the secret recesses of his dungeon. Finally, an emissary sent by Joanna, who voiced the strongest protest of this treatment, managed to wrest the suspects away from the duke the next morning with the help of a guard of knights loyal to the queen. Even then the prisoners were not transferred to the Castel dell’Ovo, as originally agreed, but, more ominously, to the Castel Capuano, the same prison at which the convicted Pipini brothers had been detained.
The surrender of these courtiers, formerly among the most wealthy and influential nobles in the kingdom, marked a clear victory for the queen’s antagonists. In the aftermath of the tumult, Louis of Taranto was forced to retreat north to Capua with what remained of his troops, leaving the capital city under the cont
rol of his rival. Over Joanna’s vehement objections, Robert took advantage of his newfound power to move in with her at the Castel Nuovo and soon thereafter began publishing royal proclamations. His first edict, issued March 25, stipulated the arrest and expulsion of the mercenaries fighting on behalf of his brother. On April 4, this command was buttressed by a notice tacked up on the doors of all the principal buildings, including the cathedrals of Naples and Aversa, forbidding any citizen of the realm to obey an order given by Louis. At the same time, Robert urged the pope to issue the dispensations which would allow him to wed Joanna, arguing that the marriage had been made necessary by the recent civil unrest and other pressing matters of state.
The queen resisted her cousin’s tactics tenaciously. She sent secret emissaries to the pope charged with communicating her adamant refusal to marry Robert. Conflicting edicts emerged from the Castel Nuovo as Joanna battled her unwanted suitor for power. On April 26, Robert had himself named captain general of the kingdom, the highest military position in the land. On April 30, the queen specifically assigned Louis of Taranto control of a large battalion attached to one of the royal castles. By a May 6 proclamation Robert took control of all public finances. On May 30, Joanna pointedly assigned Louis state revenues in the amount of six thousand ounces of gold.
The Lady Queen Page 16
