Peter of Aragon now prepared a fleet and an army on pretence of invading the Saracens in Africa. At the instigation of Charles, the Pope, on receiving news of this armament, sent an embassy to King Peter, inquiring what his intentions might be; but the crafty monarch answered that if one of his hands should reveal his secrets to the other, he would cut it off. On receiving this reply Charles contented himself with reminding the Pope that he had always looked upon Peter of Aragon as a miscreant, and in Muratori’s graphic language he fell asleep, forgetful of that old proverb which says, ‘If some one tell thee that thou hast lost thy nose, feel for it with thine hand.’
We do not know whether the final outbreak of the revolution, which had been so long and skilfully prepared, took place precisely as John of Procida had intended; but when it came it was sudden and terrible, as few revolutions have been, and the Sicilian Vespers will be remembered so long as men love liberty, and history records their deeds.
From the ancient church and cloister of San Giovanni degli Eremiti, not far beyond the royal palace, a long and dusty road leads out to what is now the chief cemetery of Palermo. It passes through a sort of half eastern, half modern suburb, where the poorer people live out of doors all day, plying their trades and doing their household work before their miserable, but not uncleanly, little houses. In older times there was no suburb there, and the broad road led between trees through the open country to a vast meadow broken here and there by clumps of trees, and surrounding the very ancient Church of the Holy Ghost. In spring, when the cool breezes blow up from the sea, when the trees are already in full leaf, and when the grass is aflame with scarlet and yellow and purple wild flowers, the good people of Palermo used to go out there on great festivals with their wives and children in holiday clothes, and taking some provision with them, wherewith to make little feasts on the grass. So it came to pass that on Easter Monday, in the year 1282, the people went out thus in long procession, in the afternoon; and they sat down in groups, and ate and drank together, and wandered about in little companies, exchanging greetings with their friends. But as they feasted, enjoying the peace and the cool air, and forgetting for a space the tyranny under which they lived, there came out a number of French soldiers of the garrison with their officers; and first they mixed with the people, though they were not welcome, and drank from cups of wine that no man had offered them, and jested grossly with the women and girls, who turned from them in angry silence. The Sicilian men grew silent too, and their eyes gleamed, but they answered nothing, and led their women away. Then suddenly the French captain, a certain Drouet, having drunk much wine, ordered his men to search the people, and to see whether they had not upon them some concealed weapons; and still the men submitted silently. But at last the French officer, seeing a very beautiful Sicilian woman walking near him with her husband, cried out to his soldiers to search the women also, and he himself laid hands upon the fairest, and pretending to look for a knife upon her he thrust his hand out to her bosom. She, being thus outraged, shrank half fainting into her husband’s arms. Then he could bear no more, and he cried out, so that his voice rang across the broad meadow, ‘Now let these Frenchmen die at last!’ And as his words pierced the air, the bells of San Giovanni rang to Vespers, and the bells of the Church of the Holy Ghost answered them, and the French officer lay dead at the feet of the woman he had insulted.
Unarmed as they were, with such small knives as some chanced to have, with sticks, with stones, and with their naked hands, the Sicilian men did their work quickly; but the Frenchmen howled for mercy, and were mostly killed upon their knees. When they were all dead, the men took their weapons and went back in haste towards the city with their women, and the cry that meant death was heard afar off and went before them. No Frenchman who met them lived to turn back, and when they were in doubt as to any man’s nation, they held him with the knife at his throat and made him say the one word ‘Ciceri,’ which no Frenchman could or can pronounce. It was dusk when the killing began in Palermo, and when the dawn stole through the blood-stained streets not one of the French was alive, neither man, nor woman, nor child. The reign of Charles of Anjou was at an end, and from that day to this no man has been king of Sicily who had not some Norman blood.
The Sicilian Vespers took place on the thirtieth of March. The example of Palermo was followed within the month of April by Messina, where the French were almost all massacred, and the fortresses seized by the population. Charles was at Orvieto, instructing his creature, Pope Martin the Fourth, says Muratori, in the art of governing the world; but Villani tells us that when he heard the news from Palermo, he raised his eyes to heaven and prayed that since his good fortune had begun to wane, ‘he might be suffered to fall by small degrees.’ He reached Naples before he heard of the rising in Messina, and at once ordered that the fleet he had gathered for invading the Eastern Empire should proceed to Messina, while he himself hastened to the straits by land, at the head of the cavalry. A hundred and thirty-three ships weighed anchor; the land forces numbered five thousand horse, and he crossed to Sicily at the end of July and laid siege to Messina. An apostolic legate entered the city, and his eloquence prevailed upon the inhabitants to propose terms of surrender; but Charles rejected them with scorn and attacked the walls, which were defended with the courage of despair by men who feared and execrated their assailants.
Palermo raised the Pope’s standard and sent ambassadors to Martin the Fourth, who dismissed them with energy and with threatening words. The defenders of Messina again offered to surrender upon honourable terms, and the legate in vain did his best to persuade King Charles to mercy. He bade Messina deliver up eight hundred hostages, to be dealt with at his pleasure, and submit to all the fiscal impositions and extortions he had practised hitherto. The Messinians answered that they would die, sword in hand, rather than obey. Beside himself with rage, Charles ordered a general assault, which was repulsed with frightful carnage. And so the siege went on for a whole month.
Meanwhile the nobles of Palermo decided upon the final step. They had revolted from Charles, their advances had been rejected by the Pope, they could not hope to resist the Angevin without help; they met in the small church now called the Martorana, and they elected Peter the Third of Aragon, the husband of Manfred’s daughter, to be king of Sicily, and his descendants after him. On the thirtieth of August, 1282, exactly five months after the Sicilian Vespers, Peter of Aragon landed at Trapani, with fifty galleys, eight hundred cavalry, and ten thousand men-at‑arms, all trained soldiers, for he had been fighting the Moors in Barbary. But when he came to Palermo, after five days, the people thought ill of his knights, from their appearance, for their armour was all tarnished and their accoutrements black with campaigning, and their cloaks were threadbare, and the light infantry men were ill clad, and all were sunburnt and thin; and in their hearts the people did not believe that such men could deliver them from King Charles. Peter held a parliament, however, and promised the nobles that he would maintain all the laws and customs of William the Good.
The two Catalan chronicles of Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner give the most circumstantial accounts of what followed. They have been published in the original Catalan language, in Barcelona. The Neapolitan historian, Tomacelli, seems to have had access to them in manuscript, but I cannot find that they have been translated.
Peter called out every fighting man in Sicily above fifteen and under sixty years of age to help him against Charles, and sent to him two knights as ambassadors, and they were tolerably well received by a party of skirmishers, who led them to the enemy’s camp. They and their squires were roughly lodged, however, in a church, without mattresses or blankets, and they slept on some hay that was there. Charles sent them two bottles of wine, six loaves of very coarse black bread, two roast pigs, and a kettle full of boiled cabbage and fresh pork. In the morning the king sent for them, and they delivered their message. ‘My lord Charles,’ said the spokesman, ‘our king of Aragon sends us to you. That you may believ
e we are his messengers, behold this credential letter he has given us.’ ‘It is well,’ said Charles. ‘Speak what the king of Aragon sends you to say.’ The ambassador presented King Peter’s letter. Charles was seated on a couch covered with rich silks; he laid the letter beside him unopened. ‘My lord Charles,’ said the ambassador, ‘our lord the king of Aragon sends us, and bids you deliver up to him the land of Sicily which is his, and his son’s, and which you have too long most wrongly held. And the people of Sicily, who are grievously oppressed by your rule, have asked help of the king of Aragon. Wherefore the king has determined to help them, they being his people and of his lands.’
The message did not lack distinctness. When King Charles heard it, he was much surprised, and some minutes passed before he answered, and he gnawed with his teeth a little staff he held in his hand. When he had thought a long time he answered: ‘Sirs, Sicily belongs neither to the king of Aragon, nor to me, but to the Church of Rome. I desire you to go to Messina, and to bid the men of the city, from the king of Aragon, that they make a truce with me for eight days, until we shall have talked with you, and you with us, of those things concerning which we have to speak.’ ‘Sir,’ said the ambassadors, ‘we will do this willingly; and if they will not, it shall not be of our fault.’
With that they left the king and went before the city of Messina, and called to the men on the wall, and the men inquired what they wished. ‘Barons,’ said the spokesman, ‘we are ambassadors from the king of Aragon, and we would speak with your captain, Sir Alaymo.’ When the me heard this, they went and told it to Sir Alaymo, their captain; and he came at once and went upon the wall, and asked of the messengers what they required. ‘Are you the captain of Messina?’ they asked. And he answered: ‘Surely, I am indeed the captain of Messina. Why ask you this?’ And they told him, and gave their message. ‘Surely,’ answered the captain, ‘I do not believe that you are messengers from the king of Aragon, and for your false words I will not have peace or truce. See that you depart at once and go your way.’
They came and told this to King Charles, and he bade them rest until the next day, promising to take counsel and give them an answer. But on the next morning they learned that he had secretly crossed the straits to Calabria during the night, and three knights came and bade them return to Palermo for King Charles would send his answer at his leisure. They knew, however, that Peter of Aragon was already in Randazzo, only two days’ ride from Messina, and they found him there and told him all.
Charles had either fallen into his own trap, or had meant to abandon the siege. When it was known that he had left Sicily a great part of his army became disorganized, many took to the ships and sailed over to Reggio, and the people of Messina sallied out against those that remained and killed many of them, and the rest slew all the horses and burned all the flour and wheat they could not take with them, and escaped. On the very day when the messengers reached Randazzo, a man came spurring towards evening, bringing news that Charles’s army had disappeared, and so King Peter rode down and entered Messina without striking a blow. His fleet also arrived from Palermo, and when forty of Charles’s galleys sailed out of Reggio, on the fifth day, fourteen Catalan ships attacked them and took twenty-one, and sank others, and put the rest to flight, and brought back many prisoners and a vast spoil; for Charles had met his match, and more, and he had been driven from Italy forever.
King Charles could not have seen the fight in which his galleys were lost, as it took place to the west of Scylla while he was at Reggio; but his rage knew no bounds when he heard the news, and he immediately conceived a treacherous plan for drawing King Peter into an ambush on pretence of single combat. He began by sending messengers to his adversary with instructions to deliver a formal insult, and that their persons might be safe he disguised his messengers as preaching friars. He sent them across the straits by night in a boat, and coming before the king they boldly told him in Charles’s name that he had not entered Sicily like a leal and true man, but that he had entered it treacherously, as he should not. But when the king of Aragon heard these words he broke into a laugh, and pretended to attach no importance to the message. ‘Sirs,’ said he, ‘I will send my messengers together with you to King Charles, to know from his own lips whether what you say be true.’ He chose out certain honourable knights of high birth and bearing, and bade them go with the messengers, and when he had instructed them he commanded them that, if the king confirmed the message, they should deal with him as with any knight who should attack their faith and honour, for he would do battle with Charles, hand to hand. The knights went over to Reggio and delivered their message. Then Charles remained in thought for a while, and said, ‘Whether you say that I have said it or not, I say it now, that he has entered Sicily treacherously and unjustly, and as he should not.’ Therefore the messengers of the king of Aragon answered and said: ‘Sir we answer you these words by the command of the king of Aragon and Sicily, our lord, and we tell you that any man who says that the king has entered Sicily treacherously and unjustly, speaks falsely and disloyally. And he says that he will fight you, hand to hand, and he gives you the choice of arms, which shall be as you please.’
Charles was enraged at this answer, and his barons besought him not to be angry, nor to answer without taking counsel; and thereupon they led him away thence, and took him into a room, and there he held a council with his barons and returned to his senses; and he answered that he would not fight the king of Aragon in single combat, but that he would fight with a hundred knights against a hundred. And his object in thus answering was that wherever the combat took place he should be allowed to bring with him enough men to get possession of King Peter by some treachery. Immediately after this, further messages were exchanged, and it was decided that the contest should take place at Bordeaux, which belonged to the king of England, who would insure neutrality and safety for all those who came to fight.
The sequel to this celebrated challenge is better known than the details which led to it, and which I have translated literally from the Catalan chronicle. Charles went to Bordeaux, indeed, but with such a force that the English king’s governor would have been powerless to save King Peter. The latter was in Catalonia, but was too wise to fall into the snare, and yet too honourable not to appear in the lists. The story of his secret ride through Spain reads like a chapter from the ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ which, like similar fictions of the age of chivalry, was doubtless imitated from the real chronicles. The story tells how King Peter reached Bordeaux in disguise, with three knights, in the company of a merchant whose servants they all pretended to be, the king himself being fully armed under his disguise. The king passed for the rich merchant’s major-domo, and ordered supper at the inns, and the three knights served their supposed master at table. Near Bordeaux they left two of the knights with good horses in case of need. When they reached the gates the king stayed without, and one of the knights went in on foot and sought out King Peter’s official representative, who had gone to Bordeaux openly, and bade him tell the seneschal to go out from the city, saying that a messenger from the king of Aragon was there, desiring to speak with him. And the seneschal did so, taking four French knights with him, and the Catalan ambassador, and a notary of the city. Peter did not reveal his identity, but ascertained from the seneschal that Charles had prepared the lists under the walls where a gate led directly into them from the fortress; and also that the king of England had commanded him, the seneschal, to give up the city entirely to King Charles during his stay, and that if Peter appeared in the lists, he would most certainly be taken prisoner. While they were talking they had ridden to the place, and when they were within, Peter set spurs to his horse and rode up and down the enclosed field. Then, riding back together, the king drew the seneschal aside, and asked him whether he should know the king of Aragon if he saw him; and the seneschal; answered that he should know him well, for he had seen him at Toulouse, and that the king had done him great honour, and had made him a present of two horses.
Then King Peter drew back the hood from his face, and said, ‘Look at me well, if you know me, for I am here, the king of Aragon; and if the king of England, and you in his name, can insure my safety, I am ready to do battle, with a hundred knights.’ When the seneschal knew the king, he wished to kiss his hand, but the king would not; and the seneschal implored him to escape at once, lest he should be deceived and taken by his enemies. Then said the king, ‘You shall make me a letter for a testimony that I have been on the appointed day at Bordeaux, in the lists where the battle was to be fought, and that you have told me that you cannot assure my safety, and that whereas the country was to have been neutral, the king of England has delivered it over to King Charles.’ The seneschal answered, ‘Surely, this is true.’ Then the notary who had been brought out of the city drew up the statement, and the French knights were called to witness it, and when they asked where the king of Aragon was, he showed himself to them, and they were much amazed, and bowed low, taking off their caps, and would have kissed his hand, but he would not suffer it. So he rode away towards Bayonne, and its near evening; and when the seneschal and the knights had returned into the city, the sun had set, and King Peter was many miles away.
It would be a pleasant task to tell the history of the war that followed the Sicilian Vespers, from the graphic chronicles of Bernat Desclot and Ramon Muntaner. Their simple accounts of men, things, and battles bear the stamp of truth and the sign manual of the eye-witness. Therein may be found in detail the bold deeds of Roger di Lauria, King Peter’s famous admiral, and all that brave Queen Constance did with his help to hold Sicily while Peter himself was fighting against the king of France on his own borders, and against his own brother James of Majorca; and how at last the Admiral Roger defeated the king of France and drove him from the walls of Gerona. And at last, after much brave fighting, and having secured the succession of all his dominions, including Sicily, to his sons, King Peter of Aragon passed away peacefully, after a long illness, on the eve of Saint Martin’s Day, in the month of November, in the year 1285. His great enemy, Charles of Anjou, had died in Foggia in January of the same year, while preparing a formidable army with which to invade Sicily, while the French were attacking King Peter in Catalonia. He left his kingdom at war with Sicily and his eldest son Charles a prisoner in the hands of Queen Constance. Nor was the young prince’s captivity without danger; Pope Martin the Fourth had sent legates to Messina to negotiate for his liberation, and as they could not obtain it on the terms they demanded, they pronounced the major excommunication against all the Sicilians and the royal house of Aragon. Three years had not passed since the general massacre of the French, and the people of Messina now rose in tumult and attacked the prisons where the French prince and his companions were confined. Crying out for vengeance for the death of Manfred and Conradin, they heaped up wood against the prison doors, and more than sixty French nobles perished miserably in the flames. The young prince, now Charles the Second, was saved, we know not exactly how, but some say that he had been secretly removed from the prison and sent to Catalonia before the attack. Soon after this Pope Martin the Fourth died also, having, as Muratori says, emptied the treasury of his excommunications upon all Ghibellines, and upon whosoever chanced to be the enemy of his master, Charles of Anjou.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1450
