Charles II of Naples

“ It must not, however, be supposed that the French king was actuated solely by compassion for the unfortunate exile. He too had ambitious ends to attain, and he too imagined that Zizim might assist in the execution of his schemes. History leaves no doubt that the conquest of Naples, though the primary, was not the ultimate object of Charles's expedition into Italy. The wildest of chimeras possessed his brain, and he imagined that the whole Turkish empire was destined to fall before his inefficient means and inexperienced sword. Naples was to be, in fact, but a step to Constantinople. ”

“ The assistance of a vicar enabled him to escape from the growing administrative cares and devote himself solely to asceticism, apparently the only field of human activity in which he excelled. His Opuscula, published by Telera at Naples in 1640, are probably not genuine; he was indoctus libris. A fight between the Colonna and the Orsini, as well as hopeless dissensions among the cardinals, prevented a papal election for two years and three months after the death of Nicholas IV. Charles II. of Naples, needing a pope in order that he might regain Sicily, brought about a conclave. ”

“ As a result of this victory Charles was soon master of almost the whole kingdom, and he entered Naples, which now became the capital instead of Palermo. He persecuted the nobles who had sided with Manfred, and established a military despotism which proved more oppressive than that of the Hohenstaufens had ever been. Old laws, customs and immunities were ruthlessly swept away, the people were ground down with taxes, and the highest positions and finest estates conferred on French and Provençal nobles. ”

“ I desire above all things peace.” He was convinced that the holy see could not long maintain itself without help from the princes, and above all made much of those who reigned over Italy. He thought once of conferring the title of king on Cosmo, or at least of making him archduke. He refused nothing to his vassal Philip II for the kingdom of Naples, and allowed him to oppose the formality of the exequatur to his own decrees. Still less did he combat the measures which the king took in Milan to restrain the privileges left by Charles V to the senate and the last communal liberties. ”

“ The necessity, however, of residence in Spain prevented his taking a personal part in the great fight with Francis I. for Italy. He could claim no credit for the capture of his rival at Pavia. When his army sacked Rome and held Pope Clement VII. prisoner, he could not have known where this army was. And when later the French overran Naples, and all but deprived him of his hold on Italy, he had to instruct his generals that they must shift for themselves. The world had become afraid of him, but knew little of his character. In the second main division of his career Charles changed all this. ”

“ During his abode at Rome, the citizens, in order to attach him to them, made him their senator, and the pope invested him with the kingdom, on condition that he should pay annually to the church the sum of fifty thousand ducats; and it was decreed that, from thenceforth, neither Charles nor any other person, who might be king of Naples, should be emperor also. Charles marched against Manfred, routed his army, and slew him near Benevento, and then became sovereign of Sicily and Naples. ”

“ Alfonso II of Naples attacks Genoa but is defeated by the Swiss. Charles VIII enters Italy. Sudden and mysterious death of Giovanni Galeazzo Maria. Charles enters Tuscany. Piero surrenders Sarzana and offers to give up Pisa and other cities. The people rise and drive Piero out of Florence. Charles grants the Pisans their liberty and proceeds to Rome.
1495 Lodovico, alarmed at Charles’ success, forms a league against him, with the pope, the emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand of Spain, in Venice. Charles leaves Naples and with difficulty returns to France. ”

“ In order to set his hands free, he made treaties that were disadvantageous to France with Henry VII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic. He was invited to cross the Alps by Ludovico il Moro (p. 374) , by the Neapolitan barons, by all the enemies of Pope Alexander VI. The special ground of the invasion was the claim of the French king, through the house of Anjou, to the throne of Naples. In 1494 Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, and, with the support of Ludovico, advanced from Milan, through Florence and Rome to Naples. ”

“ Charles, crowned by the pope in 1266, marched to take possession of his lord's grant. Manfred was defeated and slain at Benevento. The whole Sicilian kingdom became the spoil of a stranger who was no deliverer to any class of its people. The island sank yet lower. Naples, not Palermo, was the head of the new power; Sicily was again a province. But a province Sicily had no mind to be. In the continental lands Charles founded a dynasty; the island he lost after sixteen years. ”

“ It has been called the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Catholic reaction. It was neither the one nor the other, but only one incident in the long, stubborn process of the Hispanization of Italy and the church. For centuries no emperor had had so much power in Italy as had Charles. With Naples and {381} Milan were now linked Siena and Genoa under his rule; the states of the church were virtually at his disposal, and even Florence, under its hereditary duke, Alexander de' Medici, was for a while under the control of the pope and through him, of Charles. ”

“ The kingdom of Sicily and Naples has not been wanting in men to desolate it; where now are they that will defend it?" This letter of the Pope's announced storms ready to break forth. Many of those who had called Charles to the throne regretted the house of Swabia, and directed their new hopes toward Italy, strengthening Conradin, heir of Frederick and of Conrad. This young Prince quitted Germany with an army and advanced toward Italy, strengthening himself in his march with the party of the Ghibellines, and with all those whom the domination of Charles had irritated. ”

“ Charles I acknowledged king. He enters Naples in triumph. The seat of government is transferred from Palermo to Naples. Charles at once makes himself unpopular by his oppression.
1267 The pope makes Charles ruler of Tuscany and the citizens of Florence offer him the signoria for ten years. The Ghibellines induce Conradin to enter Italy and proceed against Charles.
1268 Defeat and capture of Conradin at the battle of Tagliacozzo. Conradin beheaded at Naples. This disaster crushes the hopes of the Ghibellines in Italy. Louis IX and Pope Clement IV protest against Charles’ cruelties. ”

“ There fell out in the states of Naples and Sicily, which had so often changed masters, that which almost always takes place after a revolution: deceived hopes were changed into hatreds; the excesses inseparable from a conquest, the presence of an army proud of its victories, with the too violent government of Charles, animated the people against their new King. ”

“ France, as ruler of Naples, could overrun the rest of Italy, and as master of the Pope could use the authority of the head of Christendom to give legitimacy to further schemes of aggression. A sense of common danger drew the other powers of Europe together; and a League of Spain, the Empire, the Pope, Milan, and Venice forced Charles VIII. to retire from Naples (1495) , where the French conquests were rapidly lost. ”

“ But while the bells were still ringing in the steeples, he drew aside the Venetian envoy. “I have had bad news,” he whispered. “Naples is lost. Let us form a league against the common enemy.”
This was in the end of February. During the next month there was much secret business in the diplomatic world. Ever since the entry of the French into Rome the great powers had looked unkindly on the triumph of Charles VIII. The Emperor beheld with dismay the alliance of Ghibelline Milan and the Ghibelline Colonna with the King of France. ”

“ The result of this, even in the hands of a man like Pius II, not wholly without loftier impulses, is seen in his complaint, March 12, 1462, to the Milanese envoy. All the States of Italy, he said, were hostile, save Naples and Milan, in both of which the existing governments were precarious; his own subjects were always on the brink of revolt, and many of his Cardinals were on the side of France, which was threatening him with a Council and was ready to provoke a schism unless he would abandon Ferdinand of Naples for René of Anjou. ”

“ While Charles VIII pretended to be the legitimate heir of the kingdom of Naples, the duke of Orleans, who succeeded him under the name of Louis XII, called himself heir to the duchy of Milan. Maximilian, ambitious as he was inconsistent, claimed in the states of Italy prerogatives to which no emperor had pretended since the death of Frederick II in 1250. The Swiss had learned, at the same time, that at the foot of their mountains there lay rich and feeble cities which they might pillage, and a delicious climate, which offered all the enjoyments of life ”

“ A revolt in Sicily is put down the following year. Sicily is used as a starting-point for the African wars.
1554 Charles gives his son Philip the title of king of Naples, on Philip’s marriage to Mary of England.
1556 Abdication of Charles V. Philip I (II of Spain) receives the Two Sicilies as part of his dominions. The kingdom becomes merely a Spanish province. Pope Paul IV wishes to drive the Spaniards from Naples and makes a league with Henry II of [670] France for that purpose. Francis, duke of Guise, grandson of René II of Lorraine, plans to obtain the crown of Naples. ”

“ In Italy the Templars were not numerous, and the pope had better control over the machinery for their destruction. In Naples the appeal of Edward II. was in vain. The Angevine dynasty was too closely allied to the papacy to hesitate, and when a copy of the bull Pastoralis prœeminentiœ, of November 21, 1307, was addressed to Robert, Duke of Calabria, son of Charles II., there was no hesitation in obedience. Orders were speedily sent out to all the provinces under the Neapolitan crown to arrest the Templars and sequestrate their property. ”

“ Colossal figures in marble of the most famous rulers of Naples occupy niches on the façade of the Royal Palace, and here Roger the Norman, Frederick II., the Swabian, who founded the university, Charles of Anjou, Alfonso of Arragon, Charles III., Joachim Murat, and Victor Emmanuel II. gaze stonily from their retreats at the noisy tram and rushing motor-car.
The Spanish Bourbons were the last to rule in Naples before Italy was united towards the close of the last century. They did much to improve the city but nothing to help its people. ”

“ Naples became incorporated in the kingdom of Italy in 1861 after the Bourbon dynasty had been swept away by Garibaldi.
Napoleon I., emperor of the French, born at Ajaccio, Corsica, the second son of Charles Bonaparte and Lætitia Ramolino; trained at the military schools of Brienne and Paris; distinguished first as a captain of artillery at the siege of Toulon in 1793; elected general of brigade in the Italian campaign of 1794 ”

“ Carlos III, who succeeded in 1759, came from Naples with the highest ideals of royal supremacy, coupled with less respect for ecclesiastical claims than was current in Spain; he surrounded himself with advisers such as Roda, Campomanes, Aranda and Floridablanca, who were more than suspected of leanings to modern philosophism, and his reign of benevolent despotism was marked with a series of measures designed to diminish or abolish the privileges of inquisitorial officials, to repress abuses and to tame arrogance. ”

“ There were Piazze in other cities but when, under Charles V, the national Parliament was discontinued, the Piazze of Naples arrogated to themselves its powers and framed legislation for the whole kingdom. A Spanish writer, in 1691, informs us that no viceroy could govern successfully who had not dexterity to secure the favor of a majority of the Piazze, for the people were obstinate and tempestuous, easy to excite and difficult to pacify, and, if the nobles and people were united, God alone could find a remedy to quiet them. ”

“ The generous conduct of Charles of Bourbon to his heirs is not so well known. Soon after his accession to the throne of Naples, that prince settled a liberal pension on the son of the historian, declaring, that "it did not comport with the honor and dignity of the government, to permit an individual to languish in indigence, whose parent had been the greatest man, the most useful to the state, and the most unjustly persecuted, that the age had produced." ”

“ Ten times more a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples575 leaving scarcely a rack behind—some troops decimated by disease and unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor. Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar yoke. ”

“ Charles came to Naples with a new fleet from Provence, and was preparing to invade Sicily again, when he contracted a fever and died at Foggia on the 7th of January 1285. He was undoubtedly an extremely able soldier and a skilful statesman, and much of his legislation shows a real political sense; but his inordinate ambition, his oppressive methods of government and taxation, and his cruelty created enemies on all sides, and led to the collapse of the edifice of dominion which he had raised. ”