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MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY |
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BOOK
V.
CONRAD IV—WILLIAM—RICHARD.
CHAPTER VIII.
RICHARD. [ 1266— 1267.
Affairs of Germany — of Austria — of Thuringia — Spirit of
Confederation — Position of Conradin — Affairs of Italy — of Lombardy — Fate of
Enzio — Affairs of Florence — Charle's Tyranny — Ambition — Conradin in Lombardy — Deserted by German — Preparations
of Charles.
In Germany, during the whole period of Manfred’s
reign, the state of anarchy described as prevalent at the time of his
election, had been continuous. The strong oppressed the weak, princes and
nobles were at war with each other; and the strangely arbitrary acts in
which they were able to indulge themselves may be judged from a
single instance. In 1259, Conrad von Hochstaden, the already mentioned
Archbishop of Cologne, without a shadow of pretext, seized a son of Abel
King of Denmark—on his way home from studying at the Paris University—thus
to extort a ransom, so enormous, that the raising it, provoked a rebellion
in Denmark, ultimately causing the murder of the king, and the
accession of his brother Christopher. To heighten the confusion, the
archbishops and bishops were for the most part at feud with their
chapters; which chapters, when vacancies occurred, usually contributed
their quota to the general distraction, by double elections. Why Alexander
IV and Urban IV did not take the opportunity offered them,
of confirming, by exercising, the supremacy that Innocent IV had
claimed over the Empire, and decide between the rival sovereigns elect,
neither of whom was in a position to excite apprehension of his power as
emperor, is a mystery. Some writers suggest, that Richard, who was held to
be the more lawfully elected of the two, had offended the Popes by
declining to plead his cause before their tribunal;
but the probability seems to be, that they thought to derive more
advantage from the anarchy of the Empire, than from such an exercise of
authority. Certainly they, like Clement IV, indefinitely postponed the
task of deciding; and thus, in fact, sanctioned the German princes in
withholding obedience. They thus neutralized all Richard’s best efforts to
restore order, and obliged him rather to augment
the evil he wished to remedy, by reducing him to the necessity of courting
the powerful, at the expense of the weaker, vassals.
When, in 1264, Richard was recalled to England by his
brother Henry, to assist him against the angry Barons, and with him taken
prisoner at the battle of Lewes, the Dukes of Bavaria deemed the
opportunity favourable for bringing forward the claims of their nephew,
then a fine boy about twelve years old, to his ancestors’ throne.
It has been thought that the great vassals, even the Ghibelines, were
unwilling to make any change in a government, to them perfectly satisfactory,
by two emperors, the one fast bound in Spain, the other a prisoner in England.
But their conduct need not be imputed to fear of control by
a boy-emperor, for, why should they brave excommunication, merely to
seat a nearly friendless youth upon his forefathers’ throne”. And with threats
of such sentence Urban inforced his prohibition
of a new election; Richard’s captivity, he asserted, not impairing his right to
the crown, if he had any, and still less Alfonso’s. To this general
prohibition he added one mbre specific and yet more
imperative against ever, under any circumstances, electing Conradin; against
even granting him his patrimonial fiefs; in a sort of circular Philippic,
addressed to all the German Princes, he treats the young representative of
the house of Swabia, as the heir only to the crimes and anathemas
of his race. The Pope added a vehement reprimand to Eberhard,
Truchsess von Waldburg, Bishop of Constance —with whom the scheme of then
advancing Conradin’s claim appears to have originated—for defending the
interests of the persecuted orphan in Swabia, as hereditary Duke.
Conradin’s uncles quietly submitted, and the anarchy was merely a little
heightened during Richard’s fifteen months’ captivity. In 1265, the King
of the Romans recovered his liberty; and visited Germany, as before.
Alfonso, as before, remained in Castile, exercising such acts of
sovereignty as, at that distance, he conveniently could; for instance, at
Toledo he gave the Duke of Upper Lorrain investiture of his duchy—now the
only duchy of Lorrain—and received his homage; but the Duke
stipulated that, if Alfonso did not appear in Germany, as King of the Romans,
or Emperor, within two years, his homage should be null.
To detail the condition of Germany with respect to
feuds, even as succinctly as heretofore, were needlessly tedious; that
condition is no longer essential to the appreciation of individual Emperors;
whilst the state of society is fully pourtrayed,
when said to continue what these pages have depicted. But a few words
touching two of the feuds, with which the reader is already acquainted,
may not be unseasonable.
In Bohemia, Ottocar had succeeded to his father, and
continued, for a while, at war with the King of Hungary and the Duke of
Bavaria. But at length, finding peace indispensable to him, he negotiated with
his most formidable enemy, his western neighbour, who, obtaining the
restoration of the originally ceded provinces upon the Ens, acknowledged
him as Duke of Austria. Bela IV, upon whose eastern frontier, as upon
Poland’s, the Mongols again hung so threateningly, that western Germany
awoke from her dream of security, seemed little in condition
for vigorous hostility. Nevertheless, he refused to acquiesce in the
King of Bohemia’s acquisition of Austria, without obtaining, like Duke
Lewis, some share of the spoils. Whilst the Archbishop of Mainz was
labouring, if not, as might be expected, to arouse his fellow-princes to
arm for the common defence, yet, by processions and other religious
ceremonies, to avert a calamity so frightful as subjugation, or destruction, by
savages; Bela, regardless of the impending danger, and the horrors which
he knew from experience, thought only of enlarging his menaced dominions
by wresting Styria from Ottocar. This war was marked by all the cruelty,
but too often commemorated in these pages: the Czechs being represented as
worthy rivals therein of the Mongols. Though professedly Christians, they, like
them, desecrated churches by the massacre of those who had hoped protection
from the sanctity of the altar; and, upon one occasion, are reported
to have carried babies, dragged by the feet from their cradles, to
the Cathedral, there to dash their brains out against the pillars, or the
pavement.
At length, in 1261, Ottocar, as warlike as Bela, and, being younger, more alert, had so decidedly the
advantage, that the Hungarian monarch, under Mongol pressure, sued
for peace. He offered to renounce his pretensions to Styria, and, by way
of cementing the union of the two kingdoms, Hungary and Bohemia, to give his
beautiful granddaughter, Cunegunda, in marriage to Ottocar, if freed from
his elderly wife, Queen Margaret. Under Popes such as Innocent IV,
Alexander IV, and Urban IV, a prince, whose good
will was thought desirable, found the sacramental character of matrimony
no insuperable obstacle to a release from its shackles. Ottocar, upon the
double plea of Margaret’s sterility—which might have been anticipated when
the marriage was proposed—and of her having pronounced, not the
irrevocable nun’s vow, but some preliminary vow, from which she had been
expressly relieved by Innocent IV, with a positive injunction not to
bind herself further, obtained his divorce. That, in repudiating the Duchess of
Austria, he kept her duchy, to which he could no longer advance any shadow
of a claim, scarce need be said. Discarded and despoiled,
Margaret retired to the convent, which, unwillingly, and for herself
unfortunately, she had left to wed him. King Richard was but too happy to purchase the support of Bohemia and
Austria by sanctioning any, the most extravagant, of Ottocar’s pretensions, and durst not oppose the further increase of this, now
formidable, vassal’s power, when the childless Duke of Carinthia dying,
bequeathed him, as next of kin, his duchy. It was probably to expiate the
above-mentioned sacrilegious desecration of a Cathedral, that Ottocar, in
the year I26d, undertook a Crusade, in aid of the Marians, against
the Heathen Prussians. Urban IV gave him beforehand all he should conquer; and,
in his conquest, he founded Konigsberg. Upon this Crusade Rudolph
of Habsburg accompanied Ottocar, having to obtain relief from a
two-fold excommunication, incurred by two offences —the first, his
fidelity to his imperial Godfather: the second, burning a nunnery, in the course of his war with the Bishop of Basle. The
only drawback to Ottocar’s prosperity, at this time, appears to have been the conduct of his
beautiful Hungarian consort, who is said to have amply revenged the wrongs
of her predecessor.
The contest for Thuringia ended, in 1263, in the final
joint acceptance of the compromise often previously proposed, half agreed to,
and again broken off, which assigned the western provinces, as the
landgraviate of Hesse, to Sophia, Duchess of Brabant, and the eastern to
Hermann, Margrave of Misnia, to be permanently absorbed in
his margraviate. The ultimate adoption and ratification of this
arrangement was effected by the intervention
of Albert Duke of Brunswick, whose sister was now married to Henry
the Child, Sophia’s son and her heir, though, haying an elder
half-brother, not of Brabant.
In the north-east, the Teutonic, or Marian Knights, as
immediate vassals of the Empire, were rapidly conquering and converting
Prussia, Esthonia, and Livonia. The last process
they sought to facilitate, as well as to establish more securely their own
domination (against which Ottocar never seems to have advanced any claim
upon the strength of Urban’s grant), by colonizing those countries with
Germans. They built towns for their colonists, and for their conquered
subjects; but, perceiving in them no tendency towards the prosperity which
the German towns derived from their commerce, these military monks, by a
curious anomaly, solicited and obtained, from Urban IV, permission to
trade in ships of their own, freighted with their own produce, without
derogating from their knighthood, or their nobility.
The development of civic power, so seemingly
incongruous with the feudal system, yet, at this epoch, so important and
peculiar an element of feudal Germany, was now rapidly progressive. The
Rhine League, and the imitations to which, throughout Germany, its
success had given birth, were flourishing. The Westphalian towns had a
league with each other, with towns upon the Elbe, and with others upon the
Baltic. The Slavonian towns upon the Baltic formed a separate federation,
as the Wendisch League. Other Leagues arose; as
one of German seaport towns upon the Baltic and upon the Ocean, with
Dutch, Flemish, and even Brabant towns; making war or peace at their
discretion with the Kings of Denmark and Norway; and highly favoured by Countess
Margaret. Others, less considerable, consisted of Saxon and of Prussian
towns. None of these leagues were individually permanent, but in
themselves, or through the habits and opinions which they indicated and
fostered, they all contributed to the development of the long-enduring and
mighty Hanseatic League; which now, in the second half of the thirteenth
century, was growing into strength. But, during the distracted period
under consideration, the German spirit of federation was not confined to
towns. The robber-knights, and petty plundering nobles, against whose
marauding propensities the towns had leagued themselves, being struck with
the efficiency of such co-operation, formed counter leagues amongst themselves,
to enable them to prosecute their system of highway robbery, in spite of all the defensive means of their intended
prey. The laws passed at a Synod held in 1266, by Engelbert von
Falkenberg, Archbishop of Cologne, for the repression of violent outrages
perpetrated upon, and also by, ecclesiastics, are alone sufficient proof
of the need there was for defensive confederation.
That the Bishop of Constance had undertaken the charge
of Conradin’s interests in his patrimonial duchy has been said. The
duchy—already much reduced, and claimed as a
lapsed fief by the King of the Romans, when Alexander IV forbade his
giving the heir, according to promise, investiture,—the
prelate did not judge the time propitious to any attempt at recovering;
but he encouraged the disinherited to assume his birthright, by acting as
Duke, in every way that might gain him partisans. Thus
guided, Conradin appointed the chief Swabian noble, the Graf von Wurtemberg, Marshal of Swabia, and Graf von Lichtenberg,
Landgrave of Lower Alsace. But if these appointments and his hopes of the duchy
were shadowy, Bishop Eberhard had recovered for him his allodial heritage
there, together with several family fiefs; and was anxiously watching
for an opportunity to seat him upon his ancestral throne.
Meanwhile, Conradin remained under the sole
guardianship of his uncle, Duke Lewis, to which his mother left him. The gloom
of the Bavarian court, after the dreadful catastrophe of Duchess Mary, and the
horror felt by the widowed Elizabeth for her brother, as the assassin of
his innocent wife and her ladies, are the alleged motives for her
second, very inferior marriage. Upon the 6th of October, 1259, the widow of Conrad IV, gave her hand to Meinhard, Graf von Gorz,
and followed him to his county, abandoning her son to the care of that
brother, from whom she herself shrank. But the royal orphan was not,
therefore, neglected. Duke Lewis caused him to be carefully educated, in
companionship with a kinsman, two or three years older than himself, one
of the many pretenders to the duchy of Austria. This was Frederic, the
son of Gertrude, by Margrave Hermann of Baden; whom with his sister,
upon becoming for the second time a widow, she had, as before said, made
over to their father’s aunt Agnes, now dowager-Duchess of
Bavaria. The warmest friendship appears to have united these highborn, but
unfortunate, fatherless, and, virtually, motherless, youths, doubly
related to each other, through both parents; and of whom one, Frederic,
seems to have been wholly dependent upon the Duke of Bavaria for support
and education, though wherefore, being a prince of Baden, is not explained.
Conradin, thanks to the exertions of the Bishop of Constance, was not so
destitute; but, even the fragments that he
possessed, of the splendid heritage to which he was born, excited general
cupidity. Privileges, concessions, promises, were extorted from the boy;
and his two maternal uncles themselves, Dukes Lewis and Henry, required him
to make a will by which, should he die childless, he bequeathed them his
allodial property, and pledged himself to endeavour to obtain for them the
inheritance of his fiefs, partly as next of kin, and partly in
consideration of what they had done for him. The young testator
reserved to himself the power of providing for a wife, or rather
for a widow, and of endowing pious institutions.
This had been the state of Germany during Manfred’s
reign, and there his fall had no influence. In northern and central Italy the case was different; but Milan, the great
Lombard leader of Guelph interests, even had she retained her pristine
ardour in the cause, was in no position to triumph in the Ghibeline
catastrophe. But the quarrel with the Pope, consequent upon his
consecrating a Visconti her Archbishop, and the interdict laid upon the
city for expelling, instead of acknowledging, the prelate, had so far changed
the sentiments entertained by the Milanese towards Manfred, as to prevent
their holding any intercourse with the Provencal invading army;
though not sufficiently to elicit assistance in opposing its
progress. Presently, however, resentment against their ex-Captain-General
Palavicino, so thoroughly overpowered this lukewarm regard for Manfred,
that Napoleone Torre, who had either succeeded to Filippo, or been
admitted by him as a colleague, not only concluded a treaty with Charles,
during his sojourn at Rome, but solicited and received a Podesta from
Milan at his hands. Charles appointed an actual foreigner, a new
phenomenon in Italian history. Enguerrand or Barral, or Emberra—the
name being thus variously given—de Vaux, a Provencal, whose virulent
persecution of Ghibelines so disgusted the Milanese, as again to damp
their Guelph zeal. He literally tortured to death fifty-two persons for no
other offence than kindred with Ghibelines; and Torre, to whom he owed his
power, cried in horror: “The blood of these innocent persons will be
required of my children!” whilst the indignant multitude expelled their
foreign Podestà. The citizens are said, in this surfeit of Guelphism, to have wavered between the two parties;
but every Torre was innately Guelph, and Napoleone was moreover anxious
for the revocation of the interdict; wherefore, he both offered the
sovereignty of the city to Charles, and, on the 23d of March, of the
following year, 1267, concluded a treaty with the Marquesses of Este and
Montferrat, and with Vercelli, Lodi, Padua, Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Bologna,
Ferrara, and with other nobles and cities of less note; by which such
authority over northern Italy was granted to the new King of the Two
Sicilies, as had not, since the civil war under Henry IV, been conceded to the
Emperors, the acknowledged lawful sovereigns of Lombardy.
Charles, in direct violation of his treaty with the
Pope, accepted this protectorate of Lombardy, and, in his new capacity,
added ambassadors of his own to those despatched by Milan, to treat with
Clement, relatively to the interdict and the rival archbishops. The Envoys
urged that, had the Torri and Milan aided the Ghibelines, Charles’s
army could not have passed through Lombardy; consequently Manfred
could not have been conquered; and that services so momentous should not
be overlooked, for the sake of an Otho Visconti, whose friends and family
were attached to that protector of heretics, that archenemy of the
Church, Palavicino. They therefore prayed that his Holiness would revoke
the interdict, depose Otho de’ Visconti, and consecrate Raimondo della
Torre, Archbishop of Milan. Otho, who was present, alleged in reply,
that, by the tyranny of the Torri alone, had his family
been compelled reluctantly to seek the protection of
Palavicino; whose principles they abhorred, and to whom the
Torri had, on the contrary, voluntarily given the command of Milan.
Clement, whose determination had been previously formed, listened quietly
to the arguments on both sides, and then said: “Not till the earth have
ceased to bear fruit, the stars to shine, and tempests to disturb the
air, will I relieve the Torri from the justly incurred anathema of
the Church.” Hereupon, the plenipotentiaries of the house of Torre made
unconditional submission; and the Pope, despite his just professed
implacability, granted the solicited relief. But neither their readmission
into the pale of the Church, nor Charles’s exercise of his
sovereign authority, availed to quell the violence of the
factions distracting Milan.
The depression of the Lombard Ghibelines, upon
Manfred’s overthrow, was proportionate to the exultation of the Guelphs. In
utter despondency, Palavicino sought and obtained a reconciliation with
the Church; but benefited little thereby. And he, so lately the Lord
of Cremona, Brescia, Piacenza, Pavia, Alessandria, Tortona, and
temporarily even of Milan, saw his dominions reduced to two insignificant
castles. Amidst this series of disasters there is some satisfaction in adding,
that Doara’s treachery procured him no better fortune ; he lost his share of the seignory of Cremona, and
with it all consequence in Lombardy.
If Bologna could not be made more Guelph than she was, one melancholy consequence, of the more than
melancholy catastrophe, attested the fierceness of her party spirit. The
captive Enzio, soothed and cheered by love and friendship, had thus far
borne his imprisonment patiently, in confident hope, that the extravagant
offers of ransom incessantly tendered, by his father and his half-brothers,
Conrad and Manfred, must, as passion subsided, be ultimately accepted.
Manfred, less sanguine in this respect, had projected his release by arms,
at the very moment when the aggression of Charles perforce confined his
attention to the defence of his own realms. But, with Manfred, fell
Enzio’s last hope from his family, whose power he saw transferred to their
worst enemies; and he resolved to liberate himself. Two of his friends,
named Gonfaloniere and Asinelli, agreed to
assist his escape, even at the price of accompanying his flight as exiles,
and a cooper, named Philip, of extraordinary bodily strength, who
habitually brought casks of wine to the prison, having frequently
expressed deep commiseration for the young King’s lot, was fixed upon as
the active agent. A large reward was offered him
if he would carry Enzio out in a supposed empty cask, when, as he must
needs avoid punishment by flight, the rescued King would take him into his
own service. The cooper consented, and the execution of the scheme was
cautiously prepared. For a length of time, Philip regularly supplied Enzio
with wine—which, as he was allowed to entertain his friends, was
largely consumed—bringing a full cask upon his back, and carrying the empty cask in like manner away. When the guards and prison
authorities, accustomed to the process, had ceased to pay attention to
Philip’s movements, the day was fixed. Gonfaloniere stationed himself,
with four fleet steeds, at the place to which the prisoner was to
be carried, whilst Asinelli, in the prison,
helped to pack Enzio into the cask, and superintended Philip’s exit. All
went wrell. The robust cooper carried
his heavy load as though it had been a feather, passed jailers and
soldiers, as usual, exchanging jokes with them, and was hastening to
the appointed spot, saunteringly followed by Asinelli, when either a soldier or a servant girl, for
upon this point authorities differ, exclaimed that a lock of fair hair hung
down from the cask. Philip was still near enough to the
prison guards, for the exclamation to be fatal. He was called back
and the cask opened. Enzio was thenceforward buried in a dungeon,
inaccessible to love or friendship. Of his intended deliverers,
Gonfaloniere heard a rumour of detected plots, in time to escape upon one
of the horses provided for the party: the complicity of Asinelli and the cooper being flagrant, they expiated,
the one his friendship, the other his mercenary compassion, with
their lives. A8 Enzio now finally disappears from the stage, it may
here, if somewhat prematurely, be stated, that in his dungeon he lived, or
languished, four years, and, in 1271, died, leaving one child by Adelasia;
a daughter named Helena, married to a Conte Donoratico of Pisa, a son of the Conte Ugolino Donoratico,
whose atrocious doom Dante has celebrated. Her husband was not amongst
his father’s companions in the tower of Hunger,—but
one of her sons was. To Helena’s husband, as such, Enzio bequeathed the
kingdom of Sardinia. Whether any descendants of her sons still exist, is
uncertain.
In Tuscany, no immediate fruits of Manfred’s
destruction appeared, save in ever-Guelph Florence, whence the
slain monarch’s Lieutenant, Conte Guido Novello, was
promptly expelled. The other Ghibeline authorities were, for
the moment, suffered to remain; party triumph being temporarily satisfied
with a sort of compromise, to wit, giving the Ghibeline Podesta a
colleague, in the person of a second Podesta, a Guelph; and hampering both
with what might be called an Executive Council, consisting of
thirty-six Priors, elected indiscriminately from all classes, and changed
every two months, superadded to the regular popular Councils. As a further
step in democracy, Consuls, flags, and Gonfalonieri (standard-bearers)
to carry them, were at this time assigned severally to the seven Arti
Maggioriy or Chief Trades, as the words must, comprehensively, be
rendered, although the list includes professions, the seven Arti Maggiori being
those of Lawyers, Merchants, Bankers or money-changers—usually
goldsmiths—Wool-manufacturers, Physicians—comprehending apothecaries and
druggists, if such separate departments existed,—Silk-manufacturers, and
Furriers, or rather dealers in skin, since the tanners ranked with the
furriers. The more moderate Florentine democrats hoped, that the extensive participation in the exercise of authority, resulting
from the last but one of these arrangements, and the facility of
communication and co-operation afforded by the last, might so far check
the mania for innovation, as to produce some degree of tranquillity. But
Florence was too passionately Guelph to be tranquil, whilst
Ghibelines polluted her atmosphere. Broils arose, and, within
the year, the Ghibelines were expelled, and again admitted; upon
which last occasion the plan for procuring quiet, that had failed at
Milan, was adopted; to wit, blending the factions by intermarriages.
If Charles, when he felt himself securely seated upon
the throne of the Two Sicilies, disowned the engagement— which the Popes
had made a sine qua non condition of the grant—to confine
his power and influence within the limits of that kingdom, his promise to
abrogate those laws of Frederic IPs, that restricted Church rights and
privileges, he faithfully kept. Not that his bigotry was honest
enough to induce the sacrifice of his own authority to the Pope; the
laws, which restored regal power at the expense of the papal, were perhaps
the only part of the new Code that he would willingly have preserved. But
his intensely jealous hatred of Frederic and Manfred impelled him, at
whatever cost, to destroy every work of theirs, effacing, if
possible, their very names from the memory of their former
subjects. Hence the more of the “divine Swabian Code” he could
annihilate, the more agreeable to him. Thus actuated, not even the amount
of power and patronage, to be surrendered, prevented his executing this
condition; and he abrogated Fredericks laws restrictive of papal
authority and ecclesiastical exemptions, confirming all the concessions
wrung from the dying Empress-Queen’s maternal anxieties, of rights enjoyed
by her Norman ancestors.
Having thus far rescinded new code to his own
detriment, Charles proceeded to do so for his advantage. He resumed all the
oppressive feudal prerogatives of the crown that Frederic had renounced, adding
others previously unknown in Italy, though not uncommon in France; such as
compelling com to be ground at the royal mills, pasturing royal flocks and
herds in vassals fields, even of green corn, and
the like. He reimposed upon the nobles the feudal services from which
Frederic had relieved them, retaining the money payments that
should purchase the relief; and, either as part of this system
of abrogation, or in some measure to reconcile the Great Vassals to
increased burthens, he restored all the inconvenient and disorder-generating
rights of jurisdiction, annihilated or controlled by the code. If he did not
abrogate the provincial diets instituted by Frederic, for the prevention
of local abuses, the redress of local grievances, &c., he insured
their falling into desuetude by never assembling them. In fact, he had filled
the offices, which these diets were intended to superintend and control,
with the foreign adventurers to whose swords, and with the native
traitors to whose treason, he owed his kingdom; and to free
their wanton tyranny from legal restraint was, in his eyes, a cheaper
remuneration than lavish grants of confiscated fiefs. For the same
economical reason, perhaps, he suffered Manfred’s laws for the protection of
female chastity to fall into desuetude; that they did slumber
unexecuted, being evident from the complaints, ere long so
numerous, of French and Provencal licentiousness, displayed
in violence as well as seduction. He endeavoured to force trade to
those seaports exclusively, which were Crown property, by laying embargoes
upon all others; whilst discovering his motive, by imposing heavy tolls,
duties, &c«, upon all transactions in those belonging to the
crown; these he rendered yet more onerous, by the mode of levying them, by
hampering restrictions, and otherwise. All tolls, duties, &c., with
taxes of all descriptions, and even judicial fines, were farmed out to the
highest bidder; whilst the King tried other modes, legal and illegal, of raising
and of sparing money. He compelled all neighbours of crown lands to rent those
lands at an exorbitant rate, and he manned his fleets by a species of
arbitrary conscription, imprisoning the whole family of such as absconded.
He endeavoured at once to relieve his constant pecuniary wants, and to indulge
his own and the Pope’s hatred of the splendid dynasty of
sovereigns whom he had supplanted, by calling in Frederic’s
beautiful golden augustali. which
he, first, intrinsically depreciated, by diminishing the quantity of gold
they contained, and then, disfiguring them with a new stamp, reissued
as Carlini, nominally at their original value. He endeavoured
to change the name of Manfred’s new-built town from Manfredonia to Siponto Nuovo; but here even his despotism was foiled
by the stronger despotism of habit, and to this day Manfredonia remains
Manfredonia. He was more successful in the annihilation of public
documents, relative to the reigns of Henry VI, Frederic II, Conrad IV,
and Manfred; for, whilst those of the Norman monarchs abound, and
some even of Lombard princes exist, of the four Swabian reigns only the
decrees issued during two years, by Frederic, can be found in the
Neapolitan archives; and the Sicilian contain nothing, that could indicate
the island’s having ever been governed by a single Swabian heir of
those Norman kings.
Yet, with all these varied forms of oppression and
extortion, combined with his own habitual frugality, and his study to satisfy
his followers with other than pecuniary rewards, so extravagant were the
demands made upon him by adventurers and traitors, that, whilst Manfred
had derived ample means from moderate duties, &c., Charles, with
far heavier, seems always in difficulties, borrowing on every side. In
borrowing of his own subjects, noble or mercantile, his object might
indeed be supposed, to secure their fidelity through their interest; but
he borrowed likewise of independent states, granting, as a premium, commercial
advantages, injurious to his own subjects; and, finally, he borrowed of
usurers.
In order to characterize Charles’s government, his various modes
of oppression have been given collectively; although, of course, they did
not burst at once, as a whole, upon the Sicilies.
Enough, however, did, to fill the nation with repentance for having
deserted Manfred. Knowing that his urgent need of money,
like his father’s, had invariably been caused by the enmity of popes,
the Sicilians had thought to escape all demands upon the purse when
their King should be the friend of the Pope. Great was their disappointment.
Upon one portion of continental Sicily, however, Charles pressed with
peculiar tyranny; this—need it be said?—was
Luceria, where the Saracens, gratefully loyal to the memory of Frederic
II, Conrad IV, and Manfred, if they did not singly attempt to resist
the conqueror, submitted in gloomy silence, looking anxiously for some
heir of the race they loved and revered. The sentiments they betrayed,
Charles punished by every kind of oppression; and Clement, far from
blaming this display of tyranny, seems to have thought that he himself
reached the extreme verge of excusable toleration, when he forbore to require
from Charles, that which Manfred had been excommunicated for refusing;
to wit, their expulsion from the kingdom.
But, if in this respect blameless in the eyes of the
Pope, Charles taught his suzerain, nearly as early as his subjects, to
regret his, perhaps unavoidable, adoption of his predecessors’ policy. He
delayed the payment of the stipulated tribute far beyond the stipulated
time. He altogether resisted the claim to the covenanted additional
50,000 marks, even when Clement offered, by way of composition, to
accept 40,000; and be refused to fulfil the engagement, to which he had pledged
himself, of resigning the Roman Senatorship.
Upon this, solemnly and repeatedly promised, resignation, Clement
positively insisted. Charles proposed that the Pope should privately
invest him with the office he then held, and would still seem to hold,
by popular election: which investiture, constituting him a papal
officer, his receiving it would be, on his part, a full acknowledgment of
the Holy Fathers temporal sovereignty over Rome. The appropriate answer was, a
dignified reprimand, purporting, that to say one thing in public and do
the direct contrary in private, was unbeseeming the papal or the kingly
character. Charles then professed to comply and resign the office; but
neither recalled his appointed deputy from Rome, nor ceased to entitle
himself Senator.
In Tuscany, likewise, Charles violated or evaded, as
he had previously done in Lombardy, the compact in virtue of which he was
king; but did so in a less glaringly offensive style; and Clement rather
sanctioned than blamed his proceedings. The Florentine Guelphs, growing
impatient of the attempt to reconcile them to the Ghibelines, had sought
aid against their fellow-townsmen from the new King of Sicily; who sent
them 800 French horse under Guy de Montfort, and the very rumour of their
approach again expelled the Ghibelines. The fuorusciti retired to Pisa and Sienna—then the only cities in Tuscany
avowedly of their party, though a few more were so, secretly;
and through the intervention of Clement and Charles, as if by a final
arrangement, to preclude their ever being readmitted, one third of their
property was confiscated to the public treasury, one third assigned, as
compensation, to those Guelphs whose possessions they had
devastated, and the remaining third, liberally granted to the
owners themselves for their support.
In Tuscany, Charles having, thus far, acted in perfect
concert with the Pope, can hardly be said to have infringed his promise of
non-intervention. But his position there was unsatisfactory to the King,
who aimed at the authority that Manfred had exercised over Florence,
whilst Ghibeline; and the success of the secret emissaries
he employed, to obtain this authority, is an instance of the suicidal
absurdities into which the excited spirit of faction can be betrayed. The
hyper-ultra-democratic—if such a mongrel re-duplication of prefixes be
admissible—passion reigning in Florence, is apparent in the device for
letting the whole population participate, momentarily at least,
in the government. Yet did Charles’s emissaries, erelong, by
intrigue, and skilful stimulation of Guelph hatred for Ghibelines, seduce
these republicans into making the King a spontaneous tender of sovereignty
over their city. Charles played coy, professing to desire only the
hearts and good will of the Florentines; but, being pressed, accepted
the office of Podesta for ten years, and instantly appointed a deputy to
exercise the authority intrusted to him. Other Tuscan towns followed the
example of Florence; and Charles, no longer affecting to decline,
gave them creatures of his own, either as Podestas, subject to his
dictation, or as his Governors. But the most remarkable part of the affair is,
that Clement betrayed no displeasure at these repeated violations, by his
self-willed and unscrupulous vassal, of what had been esteemed an indispensable
article of the convention. The explanation may, perhaps, be, that, finding
protest and remonstrance fruitless, he sought, by sanctioning, to regulate,
what he was powerless to prevent. Certain it is, that in the summer
of this year, 1267, he appointed Charles to one of those posts in
Tuscany, from which by treaty he, as well as Urban, had so carefully
excluded him, although what that post was, at least in name, is disputed.
Some writers say, that of Imperial Vicar, to
which Popes have claimed the right of appointing, when there was no
Emperor; and this Clement held to be the case, until he should have
decided between Richard and Alfonso. But a different and altogether novel
title, that of Conservator of the Peace for a period of three years, has
likewise been given to this office, with the addition, that the Pope, in
conferring it, bound Charles by oath both to execute it literally,
under pain of excommunication for every act tending to
provoke hostilities, and, within a month after his decision between the
candidates for the Empire, to lay it down—a natural condition if the title
were Imperial Vicar, not otherwise—neither retaining a fortress in
Tuscany, nor taking any money thence.
Charles now, for the first time, visited his great
benefactor; and at Viterbo, upon the 4th of June, 1267, signed a convention touching his office in Tuscany, accepting
all the restrictions the Pope had attached to the appointment. In
this interview he appears to have so completely gained the good will and
good opinion of Clement, that, by relieving him from all embarrassments at
home, to render his whole force disposable in Tuscany, a body of Papal
troops was sent to hold the still sullen and disturbed Saracens
of Luceria in check.
Charles then repaired to Florence, where he was
received with all imaginable honours, and the citizens swore obedience to him
and to the Church; abjuring any possible connexion with the orphan heir of the
Swabian Emperors, and pledging themselves never to acknowledge any
German monarch, whose claims w ere not sanctioned by the Pope.
And now the Conservator of the Peace, as if in mockery
of the title, and in breach of all his compacts, even the last, with
Clement, attacked every Tuscan town and castle that had given shelter to
Tuscan Ghibelines, destroyed the weaker, and waged war against the still
formidable Pisa. Nor was any semblance of moderation observed in
the conduct of hostilities so wantonly begun by this Conservator of Peace.
All possible damage was done to the possessions of Ghibelines, whilst in regard to the persons of the vanquished, men, women,
children, and even ecclesiastics, were tortured or massacred without mercy.
In one captured town, Santo Ilario, 400 human beings were thus
butchered.
Again Clement rebuked, remonstrating against the
aggressive course pursued by the Conservator of the Peace in Tuscany;
against the King’s savage treatment of his Sicilian prisoners in France;
against his breach of engagements entered into by his own officers; against his
tyranny, and general misgovernment in his vassal kingdom, as e.g. his
neglecting the advice of his official councillors to follow that of
sycophants; his arbitrary imposition of taxes, and his connivance at the
violence and the vices of his licentious followers, who plundered the
rich, oppressed the poor, and outraged women. Finally, he admonished him
that he had better be beloved than dreaded. The letters containing these
remonstrances still exist, as evidence to the truth of the charges brought
by Ghibelines against Charles of Anjou. But the Holy Father remonstrated
and admonished in vain. The King, who no longer needed his support, had
chosen his course, and pursued it.
Nor was Charles content with the authority which, in
direct violation of his plighted oaths, he had acquired over Italy. In
September of this same year, 1267, he advanced a claim, the ground of
which eludes all power of conjecture, to Sardinia; and was opposed by two
rivals, the one, namely, the Infante Don Henrique of
Castile, upon grounds equally inconceivable; the other, Don Jay me, King
of Aragon, upon the plea, then deemed irrefragable, save against the
Papal See, that his ancestors were amongst the original reconquerors of the island from the Moslem.
All three referred their pretensions to the Pope, as
suzerain of Sardinia; but Clement was unwilling to pronounce, and the strange
claim would be of no moment, did it not appear a principal cause of the quarrel
that ensued between Charles, and his kinsman and ally, Don Henrique;
concerning whom a few words become necessary.
Don Henrique was nearly related to both Charles and
Conradin, his grandmother, Queen Berengaria, being the elder sister of
Charles’s mother, Queen Blanche, whilst his own mother was Beatrice,
daughter to the murdered King Philip. A defeated insurrection having, some
years since, driven him from Castile, he had, with a younger brother,
Don Fadrique, and a band, probably of his confederates, passed over into
Africa. There, he had been engaged, with his band, as a Condottiere, by
the Moslem King of Tunis, had fought in his wars, and in his service
had accumulated considerable wealth. Charles’s projected invasion of the
Sicilies, when reported at Tunis, opened a new scene of action to the
Infantes; and Don Henrique, leaving a division of his band with Don
Fadrique in Africa, passed over to Italy with the larger part, from 300 to
800 horsemen, mostly Spaniards, and proffered the use of his lances, and, what
was even more acceptable, the loan of some 60,000 or 80,000
doubloons, to his enterprising relation. Don Henrique’s
voluntary subordinate connexion with a Mohammedan sovereign, might be
supposed objectionable in the eyes of those who deemed the toleration of
Mohammedan subjects a sin so irremissible, as to require the
excommunication of the infant descendant of the offenders. But no, the
fierce bigot, Charles, thankfully accepted both offers, with
large promises of punctual repayment and ample remuneration; whilst
Clement seems to have been passive in the arrangement. It has been asserted
that each party endeavoured to overreach the other; but in what way
the Prince could overreach the King does not appear;
that Charles had his Spanish kinsman’s money is certain;
as also that he evaded the promised repayment, and, in various ways,
thwarted the lender’s views, relying upon the possession of his money for
binding him, till repaid, to the interest of his royal debtor. When he
found the resignation of the Roman senatorship unavoidable, he served himself by promoting the election of Don Henrique
in his stead. This the Pope resolutely opposed—as rendering the
resignation nugatory—but could not prevent; and the new Senator,
accustomed to control the unruly, showed himself so well qualified for his
office, administering justice impartially, and re-establishing order
amongst the turbulent Romans, whilst in various ways
conciliating their good will, that Clement was speedily reconciled
to his appointment.
Such was the state of affairs when the conflicting claims to Sardinia were advanced. Don Henrique demanded
his doubloons of the King of the Two Sicilies, therewith to support
his pretensions, but readily acquiesced in the proposed reference to the papal
tribunal. Of payment from Charles he naturally
found less chance than ever; but, had the Pope been compelled to give
Sardinia a king, he must have preferred Don Henrique, as the safest of the
three, whilst his royal vassal, whose insatiable ambition excited his
daily increasing alarm, was evidently the most objectionable. Unsatisfied with
Italy and its islands, he had concluded a treaty with the ex-Emperor of
Constantinople, Baldwin II, whom he pledged himself to assist
vigorously in recovering his throne, in consideration, not so much
of the marriage of one of his own daughters to the Latin ex-Emperor’s
son and heir, Philip, as of this Emperor’s engagement to cede to the Sicilian
crown the districts of Epirus that had formed Helena’s wedding portion, if
not the principalities of Achaia and the Morea, still held by their Latin
conquerors, and one third of any future conquests; the choice of the third
being with the King of the Sicilies.
Deeply indeed was Clement by this time displeased with
Urbans selected vassal monarch, who manifestly aimed at power as
formidable as ever had been that of the German Emperor-King of Sicily; and
very general was the sympathy with his dissatisfaction. The regrets of the
Sicilians and Apulians for their Suevo-Norman sovereigns were gradually assuming an
active form. Even the Guelphs, in most parts of Italy, were beginning
almost to share the Ghibeline abhorrence for the Guelph prince, raised
upon the ruins of a House, so long the object of their dread
and aversion. All eyes now turned to the last scion of that House for
relief. It may seem strange that Italian eyes should not have turned to
Manfred’s sons, as compatriots, rather than to Conradin, who had once
been rejected as the German boy. But Manfred’s children, with the
exception of his eldest daughter, the Crown-Princess of Aragon, besides being
mere infants, unable even to appear as leaders, were prisoners in the
hands of Charles, and to name them as rivals, would have sealed their
death-warrant; whilst Manfred’s open recognition of Conradin, as his
rightful heir, might not be without influence in their selection of him.
A Ghibeline mission to Germany was committed to
Manfred’s two surviving gallant uncles, Galvano and Federigo Lancia, who
had one mangled, suicide-brother, if not two, as well as their royal
nephew, to avenge, and to his two equally gallant friends, Marino and
Corrado Capece, the guides of his flight to Luceria. With some companions
of less note, they started for Germany, bearers of the nation’s invitation
to the heir of two splendid dynasties, to place himself at their head, and
expel the usurper of his birthright. They visited Pisa on their way.
This Ghibeline vassal-republic had never ceased to deplore
the selfish impulse that had prevented the capture of Charles of
Anjou by Guido Novello, and gladly adjoined two of her citizens, charged
with liberal proffers of ships, men, and money, to the Sicilian deputies.
Sienna followed the example of Pisa, as did the Ghibelines of Lombardy.
This deputation from half Italy reached the Court of Bavaria,
and laid the wishes and entreaties of their party before the
heir and his guardian uncle. A family council was
immediately assembled to deliberate upon so momentous a proposal.
To this Council, the Envoys of public feeling and
opinion, rather than of any formed confederacy, passionately depicted the
intense detestation that Charles had already excited throughout the
Sicilies, where the whole nation would rise as one man, at first sight of
the lawful heir of their beloved native Kings, Frederic, Conrad,
and Manfred. They averred that throughout Italy, whilst the Guelph
usurper was hourly more and more alienating the Guelphs, the oppressed and
scattered Ghibelines, weak only from their dispersion, were sighing for a
leader, around whom they would instantly congregate; and thus so
numerously reinforce any body of Germans
Conradin might be able to bring with him, as at once to redeem
the enterprise from any reproach of temerity, could such be cast upon
the assertion of an indisputable birthright. To these last representations
the city deputies, and especially the Pisans, gave weight, by the promises
of effective support with which they were charged.
Conradin, now in his fifteenth year, eager for action,
as every clever, high-spirited boy will be, and further excited by the
achievements of his grandfather, Frederic II, when only one year older
than himself, would have instantly closed with the proposals of those who
invited him to be their leader, their suzerain, and their king. But
his mother, the widowed queen, shuddered at thus risking her son, the
only fruit of her splendid marriage with the husband of her youth. She dreaded
the country, ever inimical if not fatal to the Swabian dynasty, the
country where Henry VI and his grandson, her own Conrad, had,
under very suspicious circumstances, died in the prime of life; where
her son’s grandfather, the mighty Frederic II, had been persecuted and
betrayed, till, worn into premature decay, he expired, an old man at
little more than fifty years of age; where his uncle Manfred, who,
whatever his faults towards his nephew, was an able, valiant warrior and
an excellent sovereign, had so recently perished in the toils of the
blackest perfidy and treason; where another gallant uncle, Enzio, was
pining in hopeless captivity, notwithstanding the incessant efforts of his
father and brothers to ransom him. Earnestly she pressed
these Italian tragedies upon her brothers and upon her boy, whom she
implored to prefer moderate domains in cheerful Swabia, to a kingdom in a
land undermined by the powers of darkness; to pass his life amongst honest
German kinsfolk and vassals, rather than in a never-ending struggle for an
object, probably unattainable, amongst doubtfully loyal subjects, intermingled
with known enemies, and worse, with lurking traitors.
The mother’s prudence was disdained as mere feminine
cowardice. Conradin’s youthful eagerness, in which his cousin Frederic of
Austria fully sympathized, was irresistible, perhaps infectious; even his
austere uncle, Duke Lewis, and his step-father,
Earl Meinhard, both men of an age at which caution usually tempers
rashness, and undazzled by personal interest, pronounced the prospect
of success so satisfactory, that they would take part in
the adventure. Conradin immediately assumed the title of King of
Sicily, and the deputies were joyfully dismissed to prepare his Italian
partisans, as well as his vassals and subjects, for co-operation in his
hazardous undertaking. Corrado Capece was named Viceroy of Sicily, and
despatched to collect, as he best could, such a body of troops as might
enable him, in spite of the Angevine
officials, to land, raise the island on behalf of the rightful heir,
and so possess himself of his viceroyalty. To Galvano Lancia were
committed friendly overtures to the Roman Senator, whose dissatisfaction
with Charles was matter of public notoriety.
Even whilst these preliminary arrangements were in
progress, from the very moment that the determination to attempt the
adventure was known, knights poured in from all sides, tendering their
swords to seat the last of the House of Hohenstaufen upon the throne of
his Norman ancestry; where he would, it was hoped, gather strength
to recover the grander heritage, the Empire, bequeathed him by his
Swabian and Franconian ancestry. All necessary preparations were soon
completed; and, at the head of an army, amounting to 10,000 men, Conradin,
accompanied by his uncle Lewis, his step-father,
and his young kinsman, Frederic of Austria, in the autumn of 1267,
crossed the Alps by the Tyrolese pass.
With this army, Conradin, on the 20th of October,
reached Verona, and was received by the new Ghibeline Lord of the city, Mastino della Scala, with both the cordiality and the
honours due to the heir of so many monarchs, the natural Head of the
Ghibelines. Here Conradin paused to concert measures with his Italian partisans, and arrange his future proceedings. And,
when he saw deputies from all Lombard Ghibelines gathering
around him, he might well feel confident in the promised success.
To Verona came deputies from Palavicino, also from Doara; the Legate, by tricking out of his own share
of Cremona, after employing him to steal Palavicino’s, had revived
his Ghibelinism; and, in expectation of Conradin’s triumph over the
usurper, anxious to clear himself from suspicion, founded or unfounded, of
treachery towards Manfred. Thither came, likewise, deputies from Vicenza,
Padua, and Mantua, from the fuorusciti of
Ferrara, of Brescia, and of Bergamo; Mantua and Brescia having changed
sides since last they were named. These deputies, in the names of
their respective senders, professed the warmest joy at the presence in
Italy of the heir of the Swabian Emperors and the Norman Kings, together
with the most fervent zeal in his cause. At Verona he received an envoy
from Don Henrique, who saw his German kinsman’s enterprise with
satisfaction, as likely to promote his own vengeance upon his tyrannical
and selfish French kinsman; and cared little for the future pleasure or
displeasure of a Pope, from whom he despaired of obtaining an adjudication
in his favour, touching Sardinia. He had therefore readily given ear to
Lancia; and, as soon as he learned that Conradin had actually
crossed the Alps, prepared actively to promote the success by which he
hoped to profit. To this end he had, in the first place, invited the
principal Roman Guelphs to a banquet at the capitol; and, when they
appeared, seizing his unsuspecting guests, had thrown them into prison.
Having thus guarded against any opposition to his measures, he appropriated to
his military purposes the hoarded treasures of churches and
cloisters, and despatched the envoy in question, to offer Conradin his
own and his band’s services, including those of his brother, Don Fadrique,
and the troop left with him in Africa. To Conradin no offer could have
been more welcome; it was thankfully accepted, and a treaty of
alliance concluded between the two cousins; which Galvano Lancia, who
had returned to the young King of Sicily either with, or before the Envoy,
carried to Rome. He was there received as the representative of royalty,
and the Swabian banner was displayed upon the city walls.
From Apulia, likewise, good tidings reached Verona; tidings that, no
sooner did the Lucerian Saracens hear the heir
of the monarch they loved and reverenced was in arms to assert his
birthright, than they openly rose against the usurper, the, to them
hateful, creature of a Pope, whom they alike dreaded and detested, and
whose troops they appear to have driven away. Many of their
Christian neighbours were reported to be secretly in
correspondence with the Saracens.
The young Adventurer’s heart swelled high with
exultation, whilst the pontiff and his royal vassal were seriously alarmed. But
not therefore were the mother’s forebodings proved idle: the ground was
hollow under the sanguine Conradin’s feet.
Party spirit in Italy, high as it runs, seldom appears
to be quite disinterested. Most of Conradin’s zealous partisans expected
money, with which at least to equip themselves and their followers, from
him; and he, far from having any to give them, had on his part relied
upon pecuniary assistance from them, to facilitate his
operations. But, if these clamorous demands, and the hesitation consequent
upon his inability to satisfy them, seemed thus early to justify the
widowed Queen’s distrust of Italian loyalty, her confidence in the honest
affection of her simple-minded German kindred, for which she would have
had her son forego the prospect of winning his patrimonial crown, was
not similarly justified. In the Duke of Bavaria, remorse had not produced
liberality or disinterestedness. If he did not refuse his nephew the
further supply of cash wanted for the relief of his most pressing
necessities, he required, as security for the loan, a mortgage of all
his remaining yet unincumbered Swabian property. Graf Meinhard is
said, in like manner, to have obtained from Conradin a bequest or
assignment of his Tyrolese county of Botzen (I tai ice, Bolsano). The uncle and stepfather,
having thus secured to themselves, in case of the worst, the whole of the
royal and imperial orphan’s actual possessions, alleged such a pious dread
of excommunication, as compelled them, upon being threatened with the
sentence, immediately to return home with their vassals, leaving the two
lads, the eldest under nineteen years of age, unguided, unfriended, amidst
the difficulties and perils into which they had deliberately led them, or
at least encouraged them to plunge. A desertion, that seems almost as
unaccountable, as heartless; for—though Clement was prodigal of
excommunications, interdicts and deposals from dignities, lay or
ecclesiastical, towards Conradin’s friends, as of vituperation towards the
yet innocent boy, to whom he imputed all the sins habitually laid by
Guelphs to the charge of his race—the Duke and Earl could not
but know, when they embarked in the enterprise, that they were
incurring these sentences. And, even were the
atrocious conjecture, relative to the uncle, admitted, that he promoted an
attempt which he judged desperate, in order to free himself from the
burthen of his nephew and cousin, whilst inheriting the property of the
former, the stepfather could, originally, anticipate no advantage to
himself from the destruction of his wife’s son. It is possible,
however, that, having built upon a spontaneous rising of half
Italy, they may have taken fright at the preliminary demand for money,
and thus their conduct have simply been, first, rash and next dastardly,
rather than originally treacherous or perfidious. Of the volunteer
knights, many had by this time exhausted their own resources,
and would be disappointed at not being permitted to live at free quarters
upon the Italians, whose good will was Conradin’s
main reliance; others were discouraged by the desertion of two powerful
princes, the young leader’s pseudo-paternal relatives and chief supporters; and
all these followed their example, abandoning the enterprise, to return
home.
Conradin’s German army was thus reduced from 10,000 to
3000 men; but in the S000, who had stood the trial, justly did the royal
Adventurer feel implicit confidence. Amongst them some writers have again
numbered Rudolph of Habsburg, who assuredly might feel his service due to
Frederic Il’s despoiled grandson and heir. But the report does not rest
upon good authority; that he should have joined the two armies of Manfred
and of Conradin seems unlikely; his name never occurs in the narrative of the
expedition; and he does not appear to have again been excommunicated,
after his Prussian crusade, as he surely would have been, if with
Conradin. Whether Rudolph were with him or not, however, Frederic
of Austria remained; and Frederic, whose three years’ eldership gave him,
in his younger kinsman’s eyes, all the dignity and weight of manhood, was
everything to Conradin. Moreover, the Italian Ghibelines knew that they
were already committed, beyond hope of pardon from Charles and
Clement; and saw, that, if they suffered the present, in many respects
favourable, opportunity, to pass unused, they would thus renounce the last
chance of regaining the ascendency, or even of recovering their property.
Therefore, how grievously soever disappointed and dissatisfied at the meagre
support obtained from Germany, they exerted themselves vigorously.
The efforts of the Lombard Ghibelines were early
cheered by success in Sicily. Capece had obtained from Pisa the loan of a
squadron of ships, with which he had visited Tunis; where the Moslem
sovereign, either in kindness to the Castilian princes, who had so long
faithfully served him, or to revenge the fall of his old ally,
Manfred, readily permitted Don Fadrique to embark with the remainder of
the band, consisting of Moors and Spaniards. These, united to Capece’s
Germans and Italians, made a force of from 800 to 1000 men, but so cramped
do they seem to have been for ship-room, that their horses, with the exception of some twenty, were perforce left
in Africa. This little army effected a landing in Sicily, where
Capece announced himself as Viceroy for King Conrad II—his father
Conrad, the fourth, as Emperor, was, there, the first of the name. Charles’s
governor, Foulque de Puyregard, well knowing the
hatred borne by the Sicilians to the French, marched to defeat this
handful of invaders before an organized insurrection should supply them
with the numbers in which they were deficient. But he was too late to
forestall that already organized insurrection. No sooner was the battle
fairly engaged, than the Sicilian Barons and their vassals in Puyregard’s ranks, tore their Angevine flags to
pieces, and displaying Suevo-Norman colours, turned
against the French. The abhorred foreign intruders were completely
defeated. Puyregard took refuge in Messina, which, trembling under a
French garrison, professed loyalty to Charles. But in
the course of November, 1267, every part
of the island that was not so coerced, declared for Conradin,
acknowledging Capece as his lieutenant.
Charles was pursuing his triumphant, anti-Ghibeline
career in Tuscany, when he heard of Don Henriquezs deserting his
cause, of the insurrection at Luceria, and of the landing in Sicily. The
Pope earnestly pressed him to leave the independent Tuscans to themselves,
and return home to prepare, by quelling the insurrection, for
the defence of his kingdom. But Charles, looking upon Conradin himself as
the sole source of danger, judged that, could he be intercepted, and
either destroyed or forced to abandon his attempt and retreat, the
insurrection would spontaneously fall to pieces. He therefore persevered
in his endeavours, to foil any hopes his rival might entertain of
help from Tuscan Ghibelines; and his plans seemed most successful; for in the course of January, 1268,
he compelled the most formidable of these Tuscan Ghibelines, the
Pisans, to sign a treaty of alliance with him. And well pleased was he to
have accomplished this, when he found other expectations disappointed. He
and Clement had trusted to the known Guelph temper of the lately revived
Lombard League, for at least impeding Conradin’s advance from Verona. But
the anger of Torre at the Pope’s pertinacious rejection of his brother, in
favour of the detested Visconti, as Archbishop of Milan, conquered his
party spirit; and he refused to arm in the cause of the Pope and his King.
The influence of Milan induced the League to remain neutral, and Charles
was stunned by the intelligence, that, upon the 20th of this same January,
Conradin and his army, marching unopposed, as amongst
friends, through Lombardy, had reached Pavia.
Much had now been achieved on both sides, but neither
could as yet feel success insured. Charles, conscious
that he was far from having crushed the Tuscan Ghibelines, saw the
importance of excluding his rival from a country that swarmed with secret
foes, ready to join any one against himself. He accordingly devoted the
months of February and March to guarding those passes of the Apennines,
that lead from the vicinity of Pavia into Tuscany. Then, satisfied that
every reasonable precaution had been taken, and all he could hope to do there
done, he followed the Pope’s advice, and prepared to put down rebellion at
home. Again he visited Viterbo on his way, and
found Clement, in his horror of the Swabian monarchs, unusually
disposed to overlook bis royal vassal’s offences against truth
and humanity. As soon as Charles was secure of cordial cooperation in this
quarter, he hastened to his own dominions; despatched part of his army to
reinforce his Lieutenant in Sicily, whom he exhorted to mistrust every one, and make the securing Messina his especial
business. This done, he led his remaining troops against the Saracens of Luceria.
BOOK
V.
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