CHAPTER XXVII.

FOREIGN POLICY OF ARAGON.

(1276-1327.)

I.-Peter the Great.

PETER THE THIRD OF ARAGON, the eldest son of James the Conqueror, succeeded to the crown of his father in 1276. Yet he prudently refused to assume the style and title of King of Aragon until he was acknowledged by the States-General, and solemnly crowned at Saragossa; and when the ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Tarragona he gave further proof of his prudence by a formal and public protest to the effect that he received the crown from the hands of the archbishop in nowise as the gift of the Romish Church, and that he neither directly nor indirectly accepted the shameful submission that had been made by his namesake and ancestor, Peter II., to Pope Innocent at Rome.1 He would reign, he said, as the independent king of an independent people. Yet, in spite of all his prudence, the Catalans were found to complain that he did not, after his coronation as King of Aragon at Saragossa, immediately proceed to Barcelona to confirm the laws and customs of Catalonia, and they actually rose in rebellion against their acknowledged sovereign on account of this constitutional slight. But this local petulance was of no long duration, and the Catalans were soon numbered among the most loyal subjects, as they were ever the boldest soldiers, of the King of Aragon.

The difference between the political condition of Castile and

1 The order for the coronation and consecration of a king of Aragon, as laid down and prescribed by Peter III., is exceedingly interesting. It is reprinted in the Documentos Ineditos, tom. xiv., p. 555 et seq. The king was to put the crown upon his own head: Y que no le ayude niuguna persona, ni el arzobispo ni ninguna persona de cualquiera condición que sea, ni adobar, ni tocar la pont. Ibid., P. 503.

Aragon at the close of the thirteenth century is very remarkable, and must never be lost sight of by the student of Spanish history; for in Aragon and Valencia from the death of King James I. there were no more Moors to conquer, and the fighting men of Aragon were compelled to turn their eyes and their arms abroad to Sicily, Naples, Rome and even Constantinople— while the ecclesiastics sought to combat rather the heretic than the infidel, and the lawyers of every degree had leisure to criticise the constitutional shortcomings of their kings. Thus, throughout the whole of the fourteenth century, while Castile was the land of civil war and domestic intrigue, Aragon was the country of foreign adventure and constitutional purism. The kings of Castile had the virtues and the vices of the warrior; the kings of Aragon those of the politician. It was not until these complementary characteristics were fairly united by Ferdinand and Isabella that the true greatness of Spain became apparent.

The troubles and the glories of the life of Peter III. came alike from across the sea.

One of the most romantic and complicated chapters in the history of medieval Italy-when popes strove with emperors, and Frenchmen with Italians, and Guelphs with Ghibellines; when crowns, were flung about like tennis balls, and excommunications flew as thick as javelins-was the great struggle of the thirteenth century for the possession of the ancient and famous island of Sicily. Of the origin of the historic dispute; of the excommunication of the Emperor Frederick II., of his elder son, Conrad, Duke of Suabia, and of the younger, Manfred, King of Sicily; of the donation of Sicily by the French

1 Naples and Sicily were conquered by the Normans (1058), under Roger, son of Tancred, who took the title of Count of Sicily. His son, Roger, took the title of King of the United and Independent Monarchy of the two Sicilies, 1129-31. Roger, styled Roger II., was succeeded by:William I., the Bad

1154-1166.

William III., dethroned by the Emperor Henry VI.,

Note.

For the continuation of the succession, from the division of Naples and Sicily in 1282, see post, vol. ii.

Pope Urban IV., to the French Prince Charles of Anjou; of the escape of John of Procida, and the sudden turn of the wheel of politics by the election of the Italian, Nicolas III., to the primacy of the Christian world; of the confederation of Rome and Constantinople against Anjou and France, it is impossible to speak here in any detail. It must suffice to recall that Peter of Aragon had married, in 1260, the Princess Constance, daughter of Manfred, King of Sicily, and grand-daughter of the great Emperor Frederick II. of Germany. If a German marriage had led Alfonso X. to seek an Imperial crown at the hands of popes and electors far away beyond the frontiers of Castile, Peter III. found himself, on his accession to the throne of Aragon, a claimant to the crown of an island kingdom within easy reach of his coasts.

1

Manfred, King of Sicily, had fallen in battle at Benevento, maintaining his rights against the papal pretender, Charles of Anjou, in 1266; and Charles of Anjou had taken possession of Sicily. Conradin, the last titular Duke of Suabia, a grandson of the Emperor Frederick II., and nephew of the fallen Manfred -a youth of sixteen years of age—had himself perished by the hands of the executioner in 1268, a victim to the tyranny of the French usurper. As he stood on the scaffold, in the great square at Naples, the young prince had taken off his right hand glove and flung it down among the crowd below, a royal gage or token, crying to the world for vengeance. The precious relic was picked up, and carefully preserved by an Aragonese knight, who found means to convey it across the sea to the court of his sovereign, where it was delivered to the lady Constance, the wife of Peter of Aragon, the daughter of Manfred, the aunt of Conradin, and the rightful Queen of Sicily. But Charles of Anjou, supported by the Pope and Philip of France, remained in possession of that fair island, and vexed the inhabitants with unheard of extortions and cruelty for sixteen long and dreadful years (1266-1282).

Ever since the execution of Conradin, Peter had naturally turned his eyes towards Sicily, but neither he nor his father had made any attempt to interfere in the affairs of that kingdom. Yet on his accession to the crown of Aragon his first care had been the unobtrusive preparation of a fleet, which was constructed in the ports of Valencia and Barcelona, not only with astonishing despatch, but with no less admirable secrecy. The affairs of Sicily gradually engrossed the attention of

1 Quintana says it was a ring.

Europe; and even the Emperor of the East, Michael Palæologus, ranged himself amongst the enemies of Anjou. After the death of Nicholas III. in 1280, a Frenchman once more ruled the Christian world as Martin IV.; and Peter of Aragon was excommunicated. But the signal for combat at closer quarters was not any change of policy by popes or by kings, but that uprising of the people of Sicily, exasperated beyond the limits of human endurance by their foreign oppressors-that wild and sudden massacre of the hated French throughout the island-that is known and spoken of in history as the Sicilian Vespers (1282).1

Charles of Anjou, as might have been expected, was enraged at this popular revolt; and his not unreasonable indignation was intensified by his natural ferocity. Deeply wounded, at once by the loss of his companions, the loss of his kingdom, and the loss of his credit, he hastened to collect a fleet and an army, and with threats of terrible vengeance against his Sicilian subjects, he proceeded to blockade Messina. The citizens prepared for a gallant defence. The time for intervention had at length arrived, and Peter of Aragon set sail with his newly-constructed fleet from Barcelona.

Prudent as ever, and uncertain how he might be received, even as a deliverer of the Sicilian people, the king steered, not for Messina, but for the coast of Barbary; and it was only after a pretended campaign against the Moors in North Africa that he suffered himself to be persuaded by successive Sicilian envoys to carry out his own well-considered plans, and to advance to the relief of Messina. He arrived off the coast of Sicily in September, 1282, and was immediately proclaimed king amid the acclamations of the inhabitants.

His appearance before Messina, with his Aragonese soldiers and sailors, and some irregular troops from Mauretania, the famous Almogavares, was the signal for the immediate raising

2

1 Eight-and-twenty thousand Frenchmen are said to have been killed. The story of the Sicilian Vespers and of the revolution that followed in Sicily is fully told by Muratori. As to the influence of John of Procida in the national rising, see Un periodo delle Istoria Siciliane, by Michaele Amasi (1842).

2" These Almogavares, of whom mention has so frequently been made, lived only for fighting," says Zurita, "and never inhabited either cities or populous communities, but were, like wild beasts, ready to be let loose on their prey. Their arms were spear, sword, dagger, and mace, but they had no defensive armour. They fought generally on foot, but if they killed a horseman and captured the horse, they could use it in battle. Their way of fighting, when assailed by the cavalry, was to place the handle of the lance against their feet, to hold out the sharp point against the horse, to spit the animal, and then, with the rapidity of lightning, fall on the encumbered horseman and despatch him." Dunham, iv., pp. 63, 64.

of the siege, and the relief of the blockaded city. Charles of Anjou fled into Calabria. The Sicilians, relieved from the hourly approaching danger of famine or massacre, accorded a hearty and grateful welcome to their new king. The destruction of the French fleet by a small squadron of Catalonian ships, under the command of the gallant Roger de Lauria,1 completed the triumph of Aragon; and the generosity of Peter, who refused to kill a single prisoner of the 4000 that fell into his hands, but enlisted the greater part of them in his own army, and dismissed the malcontents with an abundant viaticum to their own homes, deservedly raised his reputation as a soldier, a king, and a man.

Charles, when he was at length driven out of Reggio, and forced to abandon Calabria, defied his successful rival to knightly combat or wager of battle for the possession of Sicily; and proposed that 100 knights of France should meet as many Sicilian and Aragonese champions in the lists, in a solemn tourney at Bordeaux, in the summer of the following year, when Edward I. of England would keep the lists and decide upon the issue of the combat. This strange challenge, favourable as it was to the vanquished Angevins, was accepted by the victorious Aragonese; and the 1st of June, 1283, was fixed for the combat. Peter at once summoned his queen and her sons to Sicily, and having provided for the administration of the island during his absence, set sail on his gallant errand for France by way of Spain, and arrived, after an adventurous journey, true to his tryst, on the 31st of May, at Bordeaux. King Edward, the judge, was not present. The combat had been forbidden by the Pope; but every preparation had been made for the surprise and slaughter of the Aragonese. The tourney had been turned into a trap. Peter, happily forewarned, escaped in the disguise of a travelling merchant into Spain; and Charles was baulked of his prey. But if treachery had failed to remove an obnoxious rival, the Church was ready

1 Roger de Lauria was of Italian blood, but Aragonese by adoption. The name is spelt Loria and del Oria. He wrote it himself Luria as a Catalan, but the modern Castilian spelling adopted by French and English writers is de Lauria.

The command of the fleet had been entrusted, in the first instance, to En Jacme Perez, a natural son of the king. But he had proved unequal to his charge, even though he was seconded by the gallant Catalan, Pedro de Queralt, who continued to hold a subordinate command under Roger de Lauria.

2 The administration included the Queen Constance, heiress of Sicily; the Infante, James of Aragon; Alaymo di Lantini, the Justiciary; Roger de Lauria, the Admiral, and the celebrated John of Procida.