The Lady Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  So whether she disapproved of Louis’ promoting his family’s interests over those of the Durazzos and was simply unable to control her husband’s actions, or whether she hated him but in general approved these policies, is difficult to say. What is known is that she cared for her sister’s children as though they were her own, particularly her youngest niece, Margherita, the baby born in Avignon after Maria fled there on the death of Charles of Durazzo. The most likely scenario was that she recognized Maria represented a threat to her rule and approved of her husband’s remedy, even if she disagreed with his methods.

  The irony of this situation was that the king and queen of Naples, while personally incompatible, were nonetheless united in their goals for the realm. Both desired stability and peace within the kingdom and the reestablishment of their influence as the leader of the Guelphic party throughout Italy, just as it had been during the reign of King Robert. Right after his coronation, Louis of Taranto founded a new chivalric order that embodied all the lofty goals and ideals of empire originally espoused by Charles of Anjou, chief among which, as Niccolò Acciaiuoli wrote to his cousin the bishop of Florence, was to “recover the kingdom of Jerusalem after regaining Sicily.” Nothing could have been closer to Joanna’s own conception of the responsibilities of the monarchy or of her most cherished objectives for the realm. And so she seems to have endured her personal abasement as best she could in the interests of a larger cause.

  She was rewarded for this effort almost immediately by a diplomatic coup. With the stability of the Neapolitan monarchy firmly established, and its reputation rising in Italy, one of the two warring factions in Sicily suddenly invited the king and queen of Naples to take over the island.

  As blighted as conditions in Joanna’s kingdom in the years prior to her coronation had been, those in Sicily had been even worse. Plague had swept through the island in 1347, claiming as one of its victims the regent in charge of the ten-year-old king, Louis II, and his six-year-old brother, Frederick. With no adult leader at the helm, the island divided into two camps: the Catalan party, allied to Aragon; and the Latin faction, headed by two native clans, the Chiaramonte and Ventimiglia families. A protracted civil war with no clear victor ensued until an uprising in Messina in 1353 suddenly brought Louis II, still a minor, under the control of the Catalan party. Seeking to exploit this advantage to maximum benefit, the Catalan leaders made overtures to Aragon, offering to wed Louis to Constance, one of the king of Aragon’s daughters, in exchange for help in subduing their rivals. Faced with this unexpected shift in the balance of power, the Latin faction was compelled to seek outside assistance as well. That they appealed to the island’s decades-long nemesis, the crown of Naples, was a sign of how respected Joanna’s government was in the aftermath of the war with Hungary. In exchange for military aid, the Chiaramonte family, which controlled Palermo and Syracuse, offered to return the island to Angevin rule, provided that the Latin faction, working in conjunction with the royal court of Naples, controlled the local government. A document to this effect was drafted in Palermo on February 6, 1354, and transmitted to the queen by her grand seneschal, Niccolò Acciaiuoli.

  There was no question the crown should act upon this opportunity; the problem was how to do so in the face of extremely limited resources. Naples was momentarily secure, but incursions by the free companies and the threat from the disgruntled princes of Durazzo demanded that the king and queen be prepared to act quickly. Neither Joanna nor Louis had the means to engage in a discretionary war, no matter how ardently desired. Later, in 1359, after the crown had achieved some small measure of financial stability, Louis would write: “I swear… that I have amassed this treasure myself with great effort; by practicing such harsh frugality that it was offensive for the monarchy; from a flock of nothings and crumbs fallen from a meager table; and with the aim of not being left without resources if faced with an urgent need to defend the realm: as I have been scalded by boiling liquid, I now fear a droplet of cold water.” Defense of her native realm was Joanna’s priority as well. The queen, who had been forced in the early days of her reign to give away much of the domain to favorites and family in order to buy loyalty, could no longer count on the rents and taxes associated with those demesnes. She never recovered the affluent standard of living that had characterized her youth. This reduction in the royal income has left Joanna vulnerable to the criticism of historians, who frequently cite her poverty as an example of the incompetence of her rule as compared with that of her grandfather. Yet Robert the Wise had not been required to contend with famine brought on by excessive rainfall and then the recession caused by the collapse of the super-companies, which later deepened to depression with the advent of the plague and the hostile occupation of the realm, all within a decade.

  However, one person in the kingdom was wealthy enough to finance, if not full-scale war, at least a moderate effort: the grand seneschal. As a result of his service to the crown, Niccolò Acciaiuoli had been showered with titles and properties. By this time he owned, in addition to a number of other estates, the cities and surrounding areas of Corinth, Gozzo, Malta, Amalfi, Canosa, and Lucera, which made him richer than either of his suzerains. Conscious that his own rapidly growing reputation as a statesman, not to mention any future honors or treasure, were linked to the successful execution of the grand objectives of the Neapolitan regime, Niccolò undertook to finance a small fleet from his own pocket. According to Matteo Villani, the grand seneschal organized eight galleys of various sizes and then supplemented these vessels with a plethora of rowboats and dinghies, to ferry a force of one hundred knights and four hundred foot soldiers across the Mediterranean. To ensure that his army remained provisioned in case of siege, he also brought along three barges of grain and other necessities.

  When Niccolò’s somewhat motley squadron appeared in the harbor at Palermo, the city’s Sicilian inhabitants, starved from the years of unrelenting civil war, which had destroyed the island’s ability to grow food, were not so much frightened of its warriors as in awe of their supplies. The port surrendered without a struggle on April 17, 1354. When news spread through the countryside that the invaders had arrived with enough grain to fill three ships, two thirds of the rest of the population followed suit. The only holdouts were the cities of Messina and Catania, still firmly in the grasp of the Catalan party. Niccolò, pressing his advantage, began a series of raids against these enemy strongholds but soon realized that he did not have the men or ships necessary to defeat them. He sent a series of envoys to the court at Naples urgently requesting reinforcements before the kingdom of Aragon could come to the aid of its allies. One of these, Zanobi da Strada, reported that he hounded Joanna and Louis with this request, refusing to “leave their side day or night, even when they were in bed.”

  But Joanna and Louis did not send more troops to Sicily, despite the continual badgering of Niccolò’s surrogates. Instead, they recalled the grand seneschal, leaving the task of subduing the remainder of the island unfinished. The wisdom of the crown’s retaining its own forces and resources in case of need was soon made manifest when the house of Durazzo, precluded from power by the court of Naples, provoked a crisis.

  While Niccolò labored to subdue Sicily, the crown of Naples had continued to lobby the papacy for a dispensation to marry Louis of Taranto’s younger brother, Philip, to Joanna’s sister, Maria. To counteract Talleyrand of Périgord’s influence, Joanna and Louis turned to Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who over the next several years would advance to become Talleyrand’s chief rival for influence within the Holy See. Guy had been one of Joanna’s earliest supporters. Louis of Taranto had stayed with the cardinal at his palace in Villeneuve-d’Avignon when he and Niccolò had fled Naples at the start of the war with Hungary, and Guy had been among those who pressed Clement VI to receive Joanna and legitimize her marriage at that time. Later, Guy also sided with Clement against Talleyrand on the critical issue of the king and queen of Naples’s double coronation. The cardinal now unde
rtook to use his influence at the papal court to secure Philip of Taranto’s marriage.

  But Talleyrand was equally determined to prevent this alliance and to do what he could for his nephews, and for the moment, his interests prevailed. Innocent VI refused to issue the necessary dispensation for Philip’s wedding but did authorize the marriage of Robert of Durazzo to the niece of Giovanni Visconti of Milan; the pope also demanded that Louis of Taranto surrender the property of Maria’s daughters to Louis of Durazzo, a directive with which the king of Naples adamantly refused to comply. Antagonism between Avignon and Naples deepened over the course of the summer as the stalemate persisted.

  In this poisoned atmosphere, any perceived weakness on one side was destined to provoke opportunism on the part of the other. Robert of Durazzo, having secured the approval of the pope for his marriage, left Avignon for Milan at the end of June. Along the way he was lured to the court of the count of Savoy, ostensibly to discuss inheritance rights in Achaia but actually because the count’s wife, Sybil del Balzo, aunt of Robert del Balzo (who had been so dramatically executed by Maria), in an excess of family feeling, sought to avenge the murder of her nephew. Why the countess chose to focus her revenge on Robert, who had had nothing to do with it, is unclear; most likely his proximity—he was the only Durazzo she could get her hands on—provoked her fury. In any event, on July 12, 1354, she had him arrested and Robert found himself for the second time in six years confined to a dungeon.

  The countess of Savoy’s action caught the Durazzo alliance off guard, and the Tarantos, sensing their advantage, struck. In autumn, still lacking papal approval, Philip of Taranto married Maria in the hopes that, like his brother before him, the pope would accede to a fait accompli and legitimize the union after the fact. But Innocent VI was not one to yield to pressure. Incensed by this flagrant repudiation of his wishes, and noticing also that the king and queen of Naples, due to their straitened financial circumstances, were in dereliction of the annual tribute, in January 1355, the pope excommunicated both Joanna and Louis of Taranto and placed the kingdom under interdict.

  The advantage immediately swung back to the Durazzos. By March 18, 1355, Innocent and Talleyrand, working together, had secured the release of Robert of Durazzo from his Savoyard prison. Seething, the youngest Durazzo returned to his uncle’s court spoiling for a fight. That spring, in a coordinated action, the Durazzos retaliated. On the evening of April 6, in Provence, Robert scaled a castle belonging to the Balzo family and began wreaking havoc on Joanna’s subjects in the surrounding area of Les Baux, using the captured fortress as his base of operations. He particularly soothed his wounded feelings by capturing Anthony del Balzo, provost of Marseilles and relative of Sybil, and throwing him into a dungeon. At almost the same time, Louis of Durazzo joined forces with the eldest Pipini brother, who had survived the war with Hungary and found a home with one of the free companies. The pair infiltrated the kingdom of Naples, leading their army of ex-mercenaries and hardened criminals in a revolt against the crown. In an attempt to capitalize on the sentence of interdict, the huge gang—“twenty-five hundred well-armed, well-mounted barbarians, a large number of horsemen and looters on old horses and beasts of burden, one thousand scoundrels and crooks and courtesans and a motley crew of six thousand men in all,” according to Matteo Villani—marched south carrying banners emblazoned with the insignia of the church, so that it appeared that they had been sent by the pope as a punishment relating to the interdict. The rebels set up a base camp in Apulia and began terrorizing the countryside.

  Whether Joanna had originally supported her husband’s plan to disinherit the Durazzos and marry his brother to Maria, or whether she had been forced to comply with his wishes because he threatened her physically, was suddenly no longer relevant; the danger to her kingdom drove the queen instantly into the Taranto camp. Philip of Taranto was immediately dispatched to Guy of Boulogne in Avignon to report on the crisis and see what could be done to improve Innocent VI’s relations with the royal court at Naples. Lacking ready money, Philip was authorized to offer Jeanne of Durazzo, Maria’s eldest daughter, “possibly the richest heiress in south Italy,” in marriage to Guy of Boulogne’s brother, Godfrey, in an attempt to ensure the cardinal’s good will and best efforts. This proposal was accepted by the cardinal, who immediately went to work on behalf of the Tarantos. Additionally, the queen sent Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who had returned from Sicily to help manage the crisis, to Florence and Tuscany to raise troops for a counterattack against the enemy stronghold in Apulia.

  Guy of Boulogne’s efforts to convince the pope to intervene on the side of the Tarantos were aided enormously by Innocent’s displeasure with the antics of the Durazzos. Talleyrand tried to mediate, but his nephews did not listen to him and his influence waned accordingly. The pontiff demanded that Robert of Durazzo release his hostage and surrender his stolen castle, and when the malcontent refused, Innocent began excommunication proceedings against him on May 2. The pope also condemned Louis of Durazzo’s insurrection and on May 20 lifted the interdict against Naples, thereby robbing the rebels of any lingering public credulity that the free company was operating under the approved auspices of the church. When Joanna and Louis of Taranto issued a proclamation asking the seneschal of Provence to rally their forces and take arms against Robert of Durazzo, the pope made a point of condoning their action by sending a personal representative to Les Baux to participate in the siege. It took two months, but the Provençal forces eventually recaptured Les Baux and delivered Robert of Durazzo to Avignon. As his prospects for advancement there had dwindled significantly, he left almost immediately for Paris, to see what could be done to improve his lot by putting his martial abilities in the service of the king of France.

  After trying unsuccessfully to raise troops through Niccolò, Joanna and Louis began negotiations with the insurgents and the following year arranged a compromise. The king and queen promised to transfer the property of Maria’s daughters, first to her husband, Philip of Taranto, and then later from Philip to Louis of Durazzo. They also agreed to pay the free company a monetary settlement to leave the kingdom peacefully. At the end of July 1356, the crisis averted, the mob filed out from behind its stronghold and slowly departed the kingdom.

  But it did not go very far. By August, the free company had found new employment raiding the countryside of Cesena in central Italy, only a few days’ ride from the kingdom of Naples, under the surreptitious sponsorship of the ruthlessly ambitious Visconti family of Milan.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Queen of Sicily

  As soon as the threat posed by Louis of Durazzo and the free company passed, the recapture of the island of Sicily once more became the chief focus of Joanna’s government. In September 1356, Niccolò, determined this time to complete the conquest he had been forced to suspend previously, sailed his small fleet directly to the port of Messina, still under the control of the Catalans. As the grand seneschal remembered to bring along three more barges full of grain, he had no trouble capturing the city, which by November had opened its doors to the invaders and their provisions.

  In fact, the Catalan party was in disarray even before the reappearance of the Neapolitan warships. During Niccolò’s absence, plague had struck the island again, this time smiting both the head of the Catalan party and the young king of Sicily, Louis II. The succession had passed to Louis’ fourteen-year-old brother, Frederick III, later known as Frederick the Simple, a moniker that more or less summarized the Catalans’ problem. Lacking a strong leader, the Catalan party had degenerated into warring factions, which seriously impeded their military and political effectiveness.

  The grand seneschal’s reputation as a warrior and statesman, on the other hand, had swelled while he was away. Five years later, in 1361, Niccolò would write: “The Sicilians had such an impression of me (and I wish I could live up to it) that, when they saw me appear in person in Messina, they became more terrified of this impression than of reality.” When the Neapo
litans entered the city, they discovered that their Catalan antagonists had departed in such haste that they had left behind Frederick III’s two sisters, whom Niccolò then took into “courteous custody” at the royal castle. So convincing was the Neapolitan victory, and so firm their hold over their enemy’s former citadel, that Louis of Taranto felt safe enough to visit Messina secretly the next month. Having determined that Sicily was indeed secure, the king of Naples then dramatically revealed his identity to the native inhabitants, and even trolled the coastline for an hour or so, waving ceremoniously to his new subjects from the front deck of the royal galley to general acclamation.