DRAGUIGNAN
The Department of Var—A lifeless town—Dolmen—S. Armentarius kills
a dragon—The old walled town—The Fronde—The Sabreurs and the
Canifets—Les Tourettes—Joanna I. of Naples; her story—The Crown of
Jerusalem—Charles I. of Anjou—Death of Conradin—Murder of Andrew of
Hungary—Philippine Cabane—Louis of Hungary invades Naples—Joanna
buys a sentence clearing her of guilt by the sale of Avignon—Joanna’s
many sales—Again declared innocent—Charles of Durazzo—Urban VI. and
Clement VII.—Urban incites Charles against Joanna; her assassination;
her character—Butello—Death of Charles—Joanna II. makes Réné her
heir—Pedigree—Joanna and Caracciolo.
DRAGUIGNAN is the capital of the Department of Var. The name of the
department is a misnomer. It received the name when the department
extended to that river, formerly the boundary of France. But when,
in 1860, Nice was ceded to France and the department of the Maritime
Alps was formed, then a slice of territory, through which flowed the
River Var, was detached and united to the newly constituted department.
The consequence is that the River Var at no point runs through the
department to which it gave its name.
Draguignan is not an interesting town. It lives on its character as
departmental capital. It has no manufactures, no trade, no life save
that which is infused into it when the young folk come up there for
examination for professions, and from the military who are quartered
there, and from the prisons which accommodate the criminals of the
department. Draguignan is supposed to have been a Greek town called
Antea. But there must have been people living here in prehistoric
times, for near the town is a dolmen as fine as any in Brittany or
Wales. It is composed of four upright stones supporting a quoit
eighteen feet long and fifteen wide, and the height above the ground is
seven feet.
In the Middle Ages the place was called Drachœnum, and it was fabled
that the old town stood on the heights above, as the plain was ravaged
by a dragon. St. Armentarius, Bishop of Antibes (A.D. 451) slew the
monster, whereupon the people came down from the heights and settled
where is the present town. The town really began to flourish in the
thirteenth century, when, owing to the silting up of the port of
Fréjus, that city declined in prosperity. Then it was surrounded by a
wall pierced by three gates, of which two remain. Within the old walls
the streets are scarce six feet wide, and the houses run up to a great
height. The sun never penetrates to their pavement. The town was also
defended by a castle on rising ground. In 1535 Draguignan was one of
the principal Sénéchaussées of Provence. She rapidly spread beyond the
walls, and then a second circuit of walls was erected where is now the
boulevard; but portions of the ramparts to the east and north-east
still remain.
In 1650 Draguignan was the scene of bloody fights on account of the
troubles of the Fronde. During the minority of Louis XIV., the Regent,
Anne of Austria, committed all authority to Cardinal Mazarin. He
loaded the country with taxes, took away the privileges from the
towns, and from the nobles, and strove to centralise the Government
and establish the despotism of the Crown. This roused the fiercest
opposition, and the country was divided into factions; one for the
Court and centralization, the other for the maintenance of local
self-government. This latter party was the Fronde. In Draguignan some
Frondists attempted to get hold of the castle; the people rose, armed
with spits and clubs, and drove them away. The parties distinguished
themselves by wearing ribbons, white or blue.
Two years later civil war broke out again between the Sabreurs, the
Fronde party, and the Canifets, the favourers of Royal prerogative;
each was headed by a young peasantess armed with a scythe. Frightful
violence ensued. The mayor and many officers of the town were killed.
Men, women, and children were massacred indiscriminately as this or
that faction got the upper hand.
The king sent troops to Draguignan, and ordered the demolition of the
castle, which was the bone of contention between the parties, and most
of the Sabreurs fled into Piedmont. The story goes that a cavalry
regiment called La Cornette blanche was quartered in the town, and
having behaved with great insolence, the people rose in the night and
massacred every man in the regiment, But in the municipal records there
is nothing to be found to confirm the tradition.
Les Tourettes by Fayence, easily accessible from Draguignan, is a most
extraordinary pile, like no other castle known. In the time of the
religious wars it was held by the Carcists, and they, being short of
provisions, at night raided the neighbourhood. The people of Fayence
complained to the Governor of Provence, and he authorised them to take
what measures they liked to free themselves of the inconvenience.
Accordingly they sent for a cannon from Antibes and proceeded to
batter the castle down; and by keeping up an incessant fire they made
the castle too hot for the Carcists, who fled, and then the good folk
of Fayence proceeded to gut and unroof the castle, so as to save
themselves from further annoyance from that quarter.
Draguignan was supplied with water by a canal cut, so it is asserted,
by Queen Jeanne I. of Sicily, and she is also credited with having
built the church at Salernes at the confluence of the Bresgne and the
Brague, and to have resided at Draguignan.
It is remarkable that only two names of their former rulers have any
hold on the imagination and hearts of the Provençals of to-day, and
these the names of two totally different characters—_la reino Jeanno_
and good King Réné. It was through Queen Joanna or Jeanne of Sicily
that King Réné acquired his empty royal titles. At Grasse a flight
of stone steps built into a vaulted passage is all that remains of
her palace. Houses said to have been occupied by her are pointed
out in many places, but in some instances, as in that of the pretty
Renaissance palace of Queen Jeanne at Les Baux, there is confusion made
between her and Jeanne de Laval, the wife of King Réné.
It may be asked, How in the name of Wonder did Joanna obtain the title
of Queen of Jerusalem, so as to transmit the Crown of the Holy City to
Réné through her grandniece, Joanna II.?
The bitter and implacable hostility borne by the Popes to the German
Imperial House of Hohenstauffen led Urban IV. to invite S. Louis, King
of France, to assume the title of King of Sicily and Naples. But the
delicate conscience of Louis revolted from such an usurpation. If the
Crown were hereditary, it belonged to Conradin, grandson of Frederick
II., the Great Redbeard, Emperor, King of Germany and of Sicily. But
Charles of Anjou, the brother of S. Louis, was less scrupulous. He
accepted the invitation. On the death of Urban, Clement IV. pursued the
same policy. Manfred, the uncle of Conradin, then wore the Crown of the
Sicilies. He was defeated by Charles and fell in battle, 1266, before
the army of the Pope and of Charles of Anjou, marching as crusaders.
Manfred left an only child, Constance, married to Peter III., King of
Aragon. Conradin, at the head of an army, advanced to claim the Crown
that was now his by right, regardless of the excommunication and curses
hurled at him by the Pope. He was defeated and taken prisoner. Clement,
fearful lest Charles should deal leniently towards the last of the
Hohenstaufens, wrote to urge him to smother all feelings of pity.
“The life of Conradin,” he wrote, “is the death of Charles; the death
of Conradin is the life of Charles”; and the Anjou prince had the
last male of this noble race executed publicly. As Conradin stood on
the scaffold, he flung his glove among the people, crying out that he
constituted the King of Aragon his heir.
Charles was now King of the Two Sicilies. But he was ambitious of a
more splendid title, and he bought that of Jerusalem from Mary of
Antioch, daughter of Bohimund V., who inherited the title of King of
Jerusalem from his mother, Melusina, daughter of Amaury de Lusignan,
twelfth sovereign of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem
itself had fallen into the hands of the Saracens in 1244.
To return now to Jeanne de Naples.
Joanna I. of Naples was born in 1327, and was the daughter of Charles,
Duke of Calabria, and of Marie de Valois, his second wife. Charles was
the only son of Robert the Good, King of Naples, who was the grandson
of Charles of Anjou, brother of S. Louis, to whom had been given the
Crown of Naples by Pope Urban IV., determined at any cost to destroy
the Hohenstauffen dynasty.
Charles, Duke of Calabria, died before his father, and Joanna succeeded
to the throne at the age of sixteen.
She had been badly brought up. Philippine Cabane, a washerwoman,
wife of a fisherman, had been nurse to Charles, and she became later
the nurse and confidante of Joanna. She was a very beautiful and
a thoroughly unprincipled woman. On the death of her husband she
married a young Saracen slave in the service of Raymond de Cabane,
_maître d’hôtel_ to the King. Raymond fell under the influence of this
Saracen, and he introduced him to King Robert, who created him Grand
Seneschal, to the indignation of the Sicilian nobility, and himself
armed the Saracen knight.[9] Soon after marrying this man, we find “la
Cabanaise,” as she was called, installed as lady of honour to Catherine
of Austria, first wife of Charles of Calabria. Soon she induced Raymond
to adopt her husband, and to give him his title and bequeath his
fortune to him. Catherine of Austria died, and then Charles married
Marie de Valois; and when Jeanne or Joanna was born, Charles entrusted
his child to this infamous woman.
King Robert had been younger brother of Charles Martel, King of
Hungary, and the Crown of Naples was liable to be disputed between the
branches. It was therefore deemed advisable to marry Joanna to Andrew,
son of Caroly I., and grandson of Charles Martel, King of Hungary.
Joanna and Andrew were married when mere children—she, in fact,
was only seven when affianced to him. She and Andrew never liked
each other, and when they occupied one throne, dislike ripened into
aversion; two factions rent the Court with their rivalries, one
favoured by the King, the other by the Queen. At last Philippine Cabane
induced Joanna to acquiesce in a plot to murder Andrew. One evening in
September, 1345, when the Court was at Averso, the chamberlain of the
King entered the bedroom, where were Andrew and Joanna, and announced
to him that he had despatches of importance to communicate. Andrew rose
from bed and went into the adjoining apartment, where he was set upon,
and hung from the bars of the window with a rope into which gold thread
had been twisted by the hands of Joanna, for as Andrew was a king, “Let
him be strangled royally,” she had said.
The body of Andrew was left hanging from the window for two days.
Joanna at the time was aged eighteen, but she was utterly corrupt in
mind. At quite an early age she had had a _liaison_ with the son of _la
Cabanaise_. Pope Clement VI. deemed it incumbent on him as suzerain
to order the murderers to be punished; but only accessories suffered.
Philippine was tortured and died under torture. Her son, Robert de
Cabane, was also made to suffer in like manner; but a wad was put in
his mouth to prevent him from betraying the part the Queen had in the
murder, and those publicly executed were also so gagged that they might
not reveal her complicity in the crime.
In less than two years after, on August 20th, 1347, Joanna married
Louis of Tarentum, her cousin, who had been one of the prime
investigators of the murder. But Louis, King of Hungary, was determined
to avenge the death of his brother, and he marched an army against
Naples, under a black flag, on which was embroidered a representation
of the murder of Andrew.
Louis of Tarentum headed an army of Neapolitans against the invader,
but it dispersed of itself, and Joanna fled with him to Provence in
January, 1348, leaving behind her, in heartless indifference, her son,
the child of the murdered Andrew.
On reaching Provence she found the barons there by no means disposed to
receive her with cordiality. The atrocity of the crime revolted them,
and for a whole year they held her in prison. She was arraigned before
the world as an adulteress and a murderess.
At length, thanks to the intervention of Pope Clement VI., she was
allowed to take refuge in Avignon, where she arranged terms with
Clement, that he should declare her innocent and sanction her marriage
with her cousin, in exchange for which favour she was to make over
to him, for a nominal sum, the city of Avignon without the Venaissin
previously acquired. The stipulated sum was 80,000 gold florins,
amounting to about £128,000 in modern money. The sale was in direct
contravention to the terms of the will of King Robert, who constituted
her heiress with the proviso that she was not to dissipate the Crown
lands and rights in the Two Sicilies and in Provence. It was further
a breach of a solemn oath she had taken to the barons “that she would
never alienate or wrong her royal and loyal estates of Provence.” But
Joanna was in need of money to prosecute the war against Louis of
Hungary. For this purpose she sold rights and domains wherever she
could find a purchaser. She disposed of the forests of the Montagnes
des Maures to the town of Hyères, and the fishing in the lake of
Hyères as well. The rights of the Crown to the harvest of the kermes
or cochineal insect that lived on the oaks, were also sold. Parts of
the Estérel were alienated. Marseilles and other towns bought of her
valuable privileges.
Meanwhile, Louis of Hungary had lost much of his army about Naples,
swept off by plague. He himself returned to Hungary, carrying with
him the son of Joanna, born two months after the death of Andrew,
deserted by her at Naples; the child, however, died soon after. Joanna,
whitewashed by the Pope, returned to Naples in 1348, in August,
whereupon Louis again appeared in Italy at the head of an army, but met
with small success, and a truce was arranged; whereupon Joanna returned
to Avignon, there to have her guilt or innocence formally tried before
three cardinals nominated by the Pope.
Louis accused Joanna of being more than accessory to the murder of her
husband, and Louis of Tarentum of being an instigator of the crime, and
Cardinal Talleyrand Perigord as having also been in the plot.
Joanna appeared before the Papal Commission. She pleaded guilty only
to having disliked her husband, and claimed that this was due to
witchcraft. She was acquitted as innocent of all charges brought
against her; and as the Pope was regarded as infallible judge, in
morals as in matters of faith, the world was constrained to acquiesce
in the judgment.
Joanna returned to Naples, where she held a gay, voluptuous court,
frequented by the wits and artists of Italy. Boccaccio wrote for
her his filthy tales, which he afterwards grouped together in the
_Decameron_. Petrarch corresponded with her. Leonardo da Vinci painted
her portrait; pupils of Giotto painted for her; Troubadours sang before
her, and were fulsome in their praise.
But her rule was no rule at all. The country suffered from
misgovernment. Companies of adventurers ravaged the kingdom, and
carried their depredations to the very gates of Naples. Joanna cared
for none of these things; did not give over her revelries and carnival
entertainments. Her husband Louis was offended at her shameless
gallantries, and beat her with his fists. He died in May, 1362; and
she at once offered her hand to James of the House of Aragon, claimant
to the throne of Majorca, a young and chivalrous prince. He accepted,
and they were married in 1363; but she would not allow him any further
title than that of Duke of Calabria.
He was disgusted with the frivolity of her Court, and with her conduct,
and fearing lest the same fate should befall him that had come on her
first husband Andrew, he quitted Naples and fled to Spain. James of
Aragon died, and in 1376 Joanna married Otto of Brunswick. This fourth
marriage offended Charles of Durazzo, grandson of John de Gravia,
younger brother of Robert, King of the Two Sicilies, who calculated
on succeeding to the throne and the county of Provence should Joanna
die childless. His father Louis had been poisoned by Queen Joanna. Now
ensued the great schism.
For seventy years the papal court had been at Avignon, and the Romans
were sore that the money accruing from the influx of pilgrims,
litigants, and suitors to the Pope should flow into the pockets of
the Avignonese instead of their own. Gregory IX. had come to Rome,
urged thereto by S. Catherine of Siena; and there he died in 1378.
Thereupon the Romans, armed and furious, surrounded the conclave of the
Cardinals, shouting for a Roman Pope. At the time there were in Rome
sixteen Cardinals; eleven were French, four Italian, and one Spanish.
Intimidated by the menaces of the populace, quaking for their lives,
the Cardinals elected the Archbishop of Bari, a narrow-minded man,
of low birth, coarse manners, no tact, and, as proved eventually, of
remorseless cruelty. He showed at once of what stuff he was made by
insulting the Cardinals, and by threats of swamping the college with
Italian creations. The Cardinals fled to Anagni, where they issued
a declaration that the election was void, as it had been made under
compulsion, and that their lives had been threatened. However, the
newly-elected Pope assumed the name of Urban VI. As Archbishop of
Bari he had been the subject of Joanna, and she hailed his elevation,
and sent him shiploads of fruit and wines, and the more solid gift of
20,000 florins. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, went to Rome to pay
his personal homage. But his reception was cold and repellent, and he
retired in disgust.
Only four Cardinals adhered to Pope Urban. The Cardinals at Anagni
proceeded to elect Robert, Bishop of Geneva, to the papal throne, and
he assumed the title of Clement VII.
Joanna had sent a deputation to Urban, headed by her grand chancellor,
Spinelli. In public, Urban treated the deputation with a torrent of
abuse, saying that he would eject the queen from her throne, and shut
her up in a cloister; aye, and would put in her place a man capable
of governing well. Spinelli replied that the people were content with
their legitimate sovereign; that she was not fit for a cloister; and
that if force were used she would find arms ready to defend her.
Urban had thrown down the gauntlet. Joanna, furious at the insult, at
once acknowledged Clement as Pope.
At first the rival Popes hurled ecclesiastical thunders at each other;
each denounced his rival as Antichrist, and each excommunicated
his rival’s adherents. France, Spain, Scotland, the Two Sicilies,
acknowledged Clement; Germany, Hungary, and England, and the major part
of Italy, recognised Urban.
All the fury of this latter was now turned against Joanna, and he sent
a deputation to Hungary to incite Charles of Durazzo to take up arms
against her. Charles was not willing to do so. He knew that now Joanna
was an old woman, and most unlikely to have children, and that in a few
years inevitably the crown would fall to him.
But at this juncture, Joanna made a fatal mistake. Hearing of what the
Pope had done, and supposing that Charles would at once comply with his
urgency, she declared that she disinherited Charles, and bequeathed
all her rights to the Two Sicilies and to Provence to Louis of Anjou,
second son of King John of France.
Thereupon Charles hesitated no longer. He raised an army in Hungary,
and prepared to invade Neapolitan territories. Pope Urban hired the
services of a ruffian captain of a Free Company, Alberic Barbiano, to
assist. Urban was not, however, prepared to support Charles without
getting some advantage out of him, and he bargained with him that the
Principality of Capua should be given to his nephew, Butillo Prignano.
When Charles arrived in Rome, Urban decreed the deposition of Joanna,
and invested Charles with the sovereignty, and himself crowned him. In
the meantime Urban was busy in forming a party in Naples against the
Queen, to whom Clement had fled. Among the twenty-six Cardinals whom
he created in one day were several Neapolitans of the highest families
and dignities in the kingdom. He degraded the Archbishop of Naples,
and appointed in his room Bozzato, a man of influence and of powerful
connexions in the city. By this means he secured a faction in Naples,
opposed to Joanna and to her Pope. The new Archbishop set himself at
the head of the opposition. Clement was so alarmed for his safety that
he embarked, escaped to Provence, and retreated to Avignon.
The Hungarian and Papal forces marched into the kingdom of Naples, and
met with no organised resistance. Joanna was besieged in the Castel
Nuovo, and Otho of Brunswick was captured in a sortie. Joanna in vain
awaited help from the Duke of Anjou, and was forced by famine to
surrender. She was confined in Muro, and at first was well treated, as
Charles hoped that she would revoke her will in his favour. But when
he saw that she was resolved not to do this, he sent to ask the King
of Hungary what was to be done with her. The answer was that the same
measure was to be meted out to her that had been measured to Andrew;
and she was either strangled whilst at her prayers, or smothered under
a feather bed, on May 12th, 1382.
She was buried first at Muro, and then her body was transferred to
Naples.
Opinions were divided as to her character. Angelo de Perugia qualified
her as “santissima,” and spoke of her as “l’onore del mundo, la
luce dell’Italia”; Petrarch greatly admired her; and recently,
Mistral has composed a poem in which she is painted as a blameless
and misrepresented personage. Her sister Maria was almost as bad as
herself. She also had her husband, Robert des Baux, murdered. It is
true that she had been married to him against her will. When she got
the power in her hands she flung him into prison, and, entering the
dungeon, along with four armed men, had him assassinated before her
eyes, and the body cast out of a window and left without burial, till
Joanna heard of her sister’s action, when she sent and had the body
decently interred.[10]
After that Joanna had been put to death, Marie, natural daughter of
Robert of Naples, and aunt of Joanna, was tried and executed as having
been privy to the plot to murder Andrew. This Marie had carried on an
intrigue with Boccaccio, and is believed to be the Fiammetta of the
_Decameron_; but according to others, Fiammetta was intended for Joanna
herself.
The Pope’s nephew, who was to be invested with the Principality of
Capua as the price of Urban’s assistance, soon after this broke into a
convent and ravished a nun of high birth and great beauty. Complaints
were made to the Pope. He laughed it off as a venial outburst of youth;
but Butillo was forty years old. The new king’s justice would not,
however, endure the crime. A capital sentence was passed on Butillo.
Pope Urban annulled the sentence, and Butillo was, if not rewarded,
bought off by being given a wife, the daughter of the justiciary, and
of the king’s kindred, with a dowry of 70,000 florins a year, and a
noble castle at Nocera. Thus satisfied, Urban excommunicated Louis
of Anjou, declared him accursed, preached a crusade against him, and
offered plenary indulgence to all who should take up arms against him.
The War of Inheritance ensued after the death of Joanna, devastating
alike Naples and Provence.
Charles of Durazzo, whom Urban had crowned, had married his cousin
Margaret, daughter of his uncle Charles, who had been executed in 1348
by Louis of Hungary, for having counselled the murder of his cousin
Andrew. The father of Charles had been, as already intimated, poisoned
by Joanna. Louis, King of Hungary, died in 1382; whereupon Charles
claimed that kingdom, but was taken by Elizabeth, widow of Louis,
thrown into prison, and murdered there by her orders. Charles left a
son, Ladislas, and a daughter, Joanna. Ladislas was poisoned in 1414,
as was supposed, and then Joanna II. became Queen of the Two Sicilies.
Although twice married, she had no family, and she adopted Réné of
Anjou and Provence as her heir, and died in 1435.
The whole pedigree is such a tangle, and the place of each actor in
the historic drama so difficult to fix without having a genealogical
table before the eye, that I have appended one, omitting all such
entries as do not specially concern the story. I may merely add that
Joanna’s second husband was her cousin, descended from Philip of
Tarentum, brother of her grandfather, Robert of the Sicilies. Also,
that the county of Provence descended to Joanna I. and Joanna II.,
through their common ancestor, Charles II. of Anjou, son of Charles
I. and Beatrix, the heiress of that county. About her I shall have
something to say later on.
Joanna II. was not much better as a woman than Joanna I. She was
enamoured of her handsome seneschal, Gian Caracciolo, who did not
respond to her advances. One day she inquired of her courtiers what
animal each mainly disliked. One said a toad, another a spider:
Caracciolo declared his utter loathing for a rat.
Next day, when he was on his way to his room, he met a servant of the
Queen with a cage full of rats. As he was attempting to pass by, the
domestic opened the cage door, and out rushed the rats. Caracciolo
fled, and, trying every door in the passage, found all locked save one,
that into the Queen’s apartment. She created him Duke of Avellino and
Lord of Capua. One day, in 1432, relying on the favour he enjoyed, he
asked to be created Prince of Capua. When she refused, he boxed her
ears. This was an outrage she could not forgive, and by her orders he
was assassinated in his room.[11] The Queen died two years later.
“Jeanne II.,” says Alexis de Saint Priest, “fit assoir tous les vices
sur le trône des Angevins sans la compensation d’aucun talent, ni
d’aucune vertu.” Joanna I. had some cleverness, and in that, and in
that alone, was superior to the second Joanna.
Charles I.═╤═Beatrice, heiress of Provence.
Duke of Anjou, │
son of Louis VIII. │
of France, K. of │
Naples 1266, K. │
of Jerusalem 1277, │
_d._ 1285. │
┌——————————┘
│
Charles II. (the Lame)═══╤═══Mary, heiress of Hungary.
K. of Naples and │
Jerusalem, │
crowned 1289, _d._ 1309. │
│
┌———————————————┬—————┴————————————┬———————————————┐
│ │ │ │
Charles Martel, Robert, Philip, John of Gravina,
K. of Hungary, K. of Sicilies, Prince of Duke of Durazzo.
_d._ 1301. _d._ 1343. Tarentum. │
│ │ ↓ │
Charles II., Charles, │
K. of Hungary, Duke of Calabria, │
_d._ 1342. _d._ 1328. │
│ │ │
┌—┴——————————┐ ├——————————————┐ ┌———————————┴———┐
│ │ │ │ │ │
Louis, Andrew = Joanna I., Mary══╤═══Charles, Louis,
K. of murdered _d._ 1382. _d._ │ beheaded poisoned
Hungary, 1348. 1366. │ 1348. 1362.
_d._ 1382. │ ┌—————┘
│ │
Margaret═══╤═══Charles III.,
_d._ 1412. │ Duke of Durazzo,
│ murdered
┌——————————————————————————————————————┤ 1386.
│ │
Joanna II., Ladislas,
Q. of Sicilies and Jerusalem, King of Hungary, the
and Countess of Provence, Sicilies, and Jerusalem,
_d._ 1435. Constituted Réné _d._ 1414.
of Anjou her heir.
[Illustration: THÉOULE]