QUEEN JOAN OF NAPLES
A Conspicuous Feminine Sinner—Marriage of State—Her Beauty—Her
Hungarian Husband—Petrarch and the Monk—Joan’s Ascent to the
Throne—The Naples Succession—Her Favourites—The Churches of
Naples—Joan’s Lovers—Factions of Naples—Charles of Durazzo—A Bold
Proposal—Charles’ Ambitious Plots—War of the Factions—Disappearance
of Maria—Becomes the Wife of Charles—Joan’s Horror.
Of all feminine sinners known to history, Joan of Anjou, Queen of
Naples and of Jerusalem, affords, perhaps, the most conspicuous
example of the perils attendant upon what are known as “marriages of
State”—that is to say, marriages brought about for reasons of State
and without reference to the personal inclinations of the contracting
parties themselves.
The elder of the two daughters born to Charles, Duke of Calabria
and Marie of Valois—both of whom had predeceased their father and
father-in-law, Robert, King of Naples—Joan was married as a child of
fourteen to her cousin Andrew, the grandson of King Charles of Hungary,
the brother of King Robert; and, on the death of the latter in the
month of January, 1343, succeeded him as his granddaughter on the
throne of Naples. At that time Joan, although not yet fifteen years
old, was beautiful with the beauty and grace of a grown woman; her
eyes were of a shade of brown so deep as to be almost black; whilst the
pallor of her complexion was enhanced by the lustrous dark hair of her
which she wore, according to the fashion of the day, in two long and
heavy plaits that fell nearly to her knees, moreover, her tall, slender
figure added several years to her appearance, whilst the expression of
her face, albeit sensitive and gentle, was one of determination and of
a latent strength of purpose far beyond that of most girls of her age.
For Joan of Anjou had already learned the meaning both of love and of
hate—the hate of her husband and the guilty love of another than he.
The name of the man for whom she had, even then, betrayed her Hungarian
husband was Robert of Cabano, the son of Filippa Cabano, and her
husband, Raymond, a Saracen, bought out of slavery by another Raymond
Cabano, who had given him his own name in baptism and had procured for
him the post of head cook to Charles the Hammer, King of Naples and
elder brother of King Robert, the grandfather and precursor of Queen
Joan. From being head cook, Raymond had since risen to the most eminent
post of Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples.
The way of Joan’s loveless marriage—the source of all her sins and
misfortunes—to her cousin Andrew of Hungary was this: It had been
arranged by her grandfather, King Robert, in the intention of making
amends to Andrew for having usurped the sovereignty of Naples from
Andrew’s father, Carobert of Hungary, the oldest son of King Robert’s
brother, Charles the Hammer. With this object, King Robert had caused
Andrew to be brought as a child to his Court at Naples, that the boy
might become fitted by education and surroundings to be the husband of
Joan and share with her the crown of Naples and of Jerusalem. For, be
it said, the Hungarian-born Andrew was by nature uncouth and savage
and cold, and altogether unsuited, both in his temperament and his
views of life, to fulfil King Robert’s expectations of him. Instead
of growing more tender, more responsive and affectionate in the genial
surroundings of the Neapolitan Court, as had been hoped might prove to
be the case, he seemed, on the contrary, to become daily more reserved,
more imbued with the sense of his own importance, more generally
domineering and less sympathetic towards those about him. However,
his marriage with Joan had been duly solemnised some months before
the death of old King Robert in order that the latter’s fondest wish
might be accomplished betimes; but, to the rage and disappointment of
Andrew, as soon as the King was dead, Joan alone had been proclaimed as
his successor by her cousin, Charles, Duke of Durazzo and Albania, who
had presented her as their sole, legitimate sovereign to the populace
assembled below the windows of the Castel Nuovo in a room of which King
Robert’s dead body, the breath but scarcely gone out of it, lay still
warm upon the bed on which he had died. Moreover, not only Charles
of Durazzo, but others, including principally Robert of Cabano and
another cousin of the Queen, Louis of Taranto, had absolutely refused
to do homage to Andrew of Hungary; to Joan alone had they bent the knee
and sworn fealty. Only one person of all those present had protested
energetically against the exclusion of Prince Andrew from the immediate
proclamation of sovereignty; this was a certain Father Robert, a monk,
the tutor of Andrew, whom he had accompanied from Hungary to Naples and
whom he never deserted as long as the Prince lived. This Father Robert
earned the especial dislike of Petrarch, to whom the monk’s austere
and masterful personality was as gall on the tongue, to judge from the
poet’s description of him.
As has been told then, by the time that King Robert passed away,
leaving his kingdom to Joan and to Andrew, her consort, these two
had been man and wife for long months; during which period Joan had
loved, not her husband, but the handsome swaggering Saracen, Robert of
Cabano. But by now, when she was become Queen of Naples by the death
of her grandfather, Joan had grown weary of the insolence of Robert’s
dominion over her and was minded to throw off the yoke of it. Also,
her affections—which, be it said in justice to her, had formerly been
consistently offered to her husband and as consistently rejected by
him—had turned towards one of the very few completely disinterested
and unselfish persons at the Court. This was Bertrand of Artois, whose
father, Charles of Artois, had been appointed by King Robert’s will
one of the regents of the kingdom until Andrew and Joan should have
attained their twenty-fifth year.
Joan had only one sister, Mary, a mere child, who was scarcely thirteen
years old when Joan came to the throne; this Princess Mary, by the
terms of King Robert’s testament, was to inherit the throne in the
event of her elder sister’s dying without issue; in addition, the
old King had expressed a wish that Princess Mary should be affianced
either to Louis, King of Hungary, elder brother of Andrew, or,
failing Louis, to the Duke of Normandy, eldest son of the King of
France. In case of the death without heirs of both Joan and Mary, the
sovereignty would by rights fall to Charles of Durazzo, eldest son of
King Robert’s younger brother, who had died some years previously,
John, Duke of Durazzo and Albania. John of Durazzo had left behind
him a widow, Agnes, and two younger sons besides Charles; these were
Ludovico, Count of Gravina, and Robert, Prince of the Morea. The
youngest brother of King Robert, Philip, Prince of Taranto, who had
likewise predeceased him, had also left a widow, who bore the title
of Empress of Constantinople, inherited from her grandfather, Baldwin
II, and three sons, Robert, Philip, and finally Louis of Taranto, the
handsomest and most accomplished knight of his day, then but barely
turned three-and-twenty. There had survived King Robert, too, his widow
Sancia of Aragon, a character as noble and holy as the majority of
those composing the Neapolitan Court were debased and self-seeking and
unscrupulous. Before departing this life King Robert had obtained from
Queen Sancia a promise to the effect that she would remain in the world
and at Court for a whole year, in order to watch over the young King
and Queen, Andrew and Joan—it being Queen Sancia’s announced intention
to enter as soon as possible into a convent, there to end her days
in peace and prayer—and to protect their relationship to one another
from the perils which, as the dying man had clearly foreseen, must
inevitably menace it. And, very particularly, he had warned his widow
to be on her guard, where Joan was concerned, against three especial
dangers—the love of Bertrand of Artois, the beauty of Louis of Taranto,
and the ambition of Charles of Durazzo.
So that, no sooner was King Robert dead, than his wishes in respect to
the mutual sovereignty of Andrew and John were contemptuously put aside
by those who proclaimed Joan, and Joan alone, as their new Queen to
the Neapolitan people; but Joan’s acquiescence in their proclamation
of her as sole sovereign cannot be overlooked, foreshadowing as it
would almost seem to do some already half-formed instinctive project of
becoming actually that which she had been proclaimed to be—the single
occupant of the throne.
Instantly, moreover, her Hungarian husband and his partisans, Father
Robert, the Dominican Friar, together with divers Hungarian nobles
and Giovanni Pipino, Count of Altamura, one of the most powerful
lords of the kingdom and the most hated by the people, held counsel
among themselves as to how they might best defeat the projects of the
Queen’s party. This, they decided, could only be done by acquainting
King Andrew’s mother, Elizabeth of Poland, and his brother, King Louis
of Hungary, with the terms of King Robert’s last will, and of how a
conspiracy had been set on foot to deprive King Andrew of his rightful
share in the government of Naples. Also, a complaint in the same
terms was to be sent to the Pope at Avignon, and a request made of the
Holy Father that he would issue a Bull of coronation on King Andrew’s
behalf, thereby duly confirming him in his rights of, at least, equal
sovereignty with Joan, his wife. At the same time, Father Robert tried
to impress upon Andrew the advisability of coming as soon as possible
to some kind of understanding upon the subject with Joan herself before
her favourites should have alienated her affections entirely from him.
These favourites whom the good monk had in mind were some of them men
and some of them women. Of the men—Robert of Cabano, Louis of Taranto,
and Bertrand of Artois—we have already seen something; of the women we
have as yet made acquaintance with only two—Filippa Cabano, the mother
of Robert the half-breed, and formerly governess to the Princesses
Joan and Mary; and the Empress of Constantinople, their aunt and the
mother of Louis of Taranto and his brothers. Besides Donna Filippa
and the Empress, however, there were three others who had influence
over Joan—the Countesses of Terlizzi and Morcone, daughters of Donna
Filippa, and, lastly and supremely, a young and lovely girl of sixteen,
known simply as “Cancia,” who occupied, officially, the position of
tiring-woman to the young Queen.
Cancia had been put into this employment by her protectress, Donna
Filippa, in order that, by her wiles and companionship, she might
corrupt the spirit of Joan and render her the more averse to the
remonstrances of Father Robert, the Dominican, on behalf of Andrew of
Hungary, his pupil; and so bring her more and more under the influence
of her lover, Robert of Cabano, Filippa’s own son. And Cancia had
played her part so effectually that, it is said, Joan loved her more
even than she did her own sister, Princess Mary.
And, as it happened, Donna Filippa was beginning to suspect that, at
last, Joan was tiring of her intrigue with Robert, and that she might
at any moment turn elsewhere for the love denied her by her rightful
husband—for life without love was insupportable to Joan’s passionately
affectionate nature.
Old King Robert—Robert the Wise, as he is commonly styled—was buried
behind the high altar in the Church of Santa Chiara that he had built
himself; where his splendid Gothic tomb may be seen to this day, having
on it his likeness both as King and as Franciscan monk; for he was a
Tertiary of Franciscans and died, as becomes one, in their uniform. In
the same Church are to be found the tombs, too, of many of the actors
in the tragedy of Queen Joan; of her father and mother and her little
sister Maria; and of Maria’s children by three successive husbands,
together with the graves of Charles of Durazzo and of Raimondo Cabano,
the Seneschal. And here, in passing, I would like to say that there are
no Churches in the whole world that can compare with the old Churches
of the city of Naples for the number and the beauty and the poignant
interest of the tombs that these contain.
Some days after King Robert’s burial in Santa Chiara, Joan was
approached by Filippa Cabano with a request that she would create
Filippa’s son, Robert, Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom in succession to
his father, who was but shortly deceased; also, that he might receive
the title of Count of Eboli. To both these outrageous demands the young
Queen at first turned a deaf ear; not until Filippa—who was accompanied
by Robert in person—threatened to make known to all the world the fact
of Joan’s new intrigue with Bertrand d’Artois did the young Queen
surrender to her demands. It would seem that Filippa had, for some
time, suspected the cooling of Joan’s fondness for her son; and so had
determined to obtain from her for Robert a commanding and unassailable
position in the State.
In that same State of Naples, then, there were already two increasingly
definite factions, each with a different aim: the party of the
Dominican Father Robert and of the Hungarian nobles, that sought to
bring about the supremacy of King Andrew and the subjugation of Queen
Joan; and the party of Donna Filippa, with their programme of “Naples
for the Neapolitans”—that is, firstly, of securing sole sovereignty
for the Queen, and, secondly, of making the Queen herself the puppet of
their own will and the instrument of their aggrandisement.
And round about these openly contending factions there prowled,
watchful and ruthless, Charles of Durazzo, seeking only the opportunity
to make himself master of the situation. There were no lengths to which
Duke Charles was not prepared to go in order to attain his aim and to
satisfy the ambition that devoured him; no crime, however frightful,
from the contemplation of which he shrank as a means to his end.
Cost what it might, he would be King of Naples and of Jerusalem. The
chroniclers describe him as a pale man with close-cropped hair and a
thick beard; and, when agitated, he had a trick of frowning. Charles
of Durazzo had felt greatly aggrieved at the bestowal of Joan’s hand in
marriage upon Andrew of Hungary; for he, Charles, had been the nearest
in blood of all King Robert’s nephews to the throne, and to him, as
such, Joan ought to have been given. But never for an instant had he
allowed so much as a glimpse of his disappointment to be seen by any
one; never once had he suffered a breath of complaint to escape him.
Nevertheless, his resolve was only the stronger for the iron
self-discipline of the man; and, now that Joan was Queen, the hour
was come for him to try the first of the two alternatives by which
he was to achieve his object. He was still a bachelor, and Joan had
found favour in his eyes by reason of her loveliness; therefore, before
having recourse to the other expedient that he had laid out for himself
in case of need, Charles had determined to attempt the enlistment of
Joan’s coöperation in his designs.
With this object he obtained a private audience of the Queen, and
straightway proceeded to lay siege to her sympathies by every kind of
flattery and the most skilful hints of the dangers that threatened
her from the side of ungrateful and grasping favourites. Though he
named no names, yet Joan understood only too well whom he meant and
could not help evincing signs both of her comprehension and of her
agreement with him. From that he went on to speak more particularly of
the popular rejoicing at her succession to the throne; and, finally, of
the universal regret that she should be compelled by an unkind fate to
share that throne with one in every way unworthy both of herself and of
it.
Seeing clearly who it was to whom he referred in these terms, Joan
attempted feebly to protest; but was powerless to prevent him from
continuing with what he had to say of the certainty he felt that, if
Andrew of Hungary were ever to be admitted to an actual share in the
government, the people of Naples would infallibly rise in arms against
him and the detested Hungarians who surrounded him. It would, indeed,
Duke Charles assured the unhappy Queen, be only another instance of the
Sicilian Vespers; the Neapolitans would, of a surety, rise up as one
man and exterminate their foreign oppressors, including Andrew himself
and the monk whose mistaken counsels had inspired him with so suicidal
an ambition.
“But of what fault do they accuse Andrew?” asked Joan, uncertainly.
In reply, the Albanian said that the people hated the Prince for his
stupidity, his coarseness, and savagery; that the nobles accused him
of violating their privileges and of surrounding himself to their
detriment with the basest adventurers; and that, lastly, he himself,
Charles of Durazzo, accused Andrew of making Joan’s life a misery to
her.
And then, before she could recover from her amazement at his boldness,
Charles wound up by offering to remove Andrew from her path by
murdering him; whereupon, the better part in Joan triumphing for a
moment over the lower side of her nature, she dismissed Charles angrily
from her presence, calling him coward and insolent. Without undue haste
or appearance of anger, Charles left her, merely reminding her that it
was not altogether impossible that, some day, it should be his turn to
condemn and hers to be judged.
So that Duke Charles, having failed in his attempt to obtain Joan’s
consent to the murder of Andrew, must instead have recourse to the
second of the alternatives that had presented themselves to him.
This was to make himself the husband of the next heir to the throne—the
thirteen-year-old Maria, sister of Queen Joan. On reaching his own
palace, therefore, he sent for a notary, one Nicholas of Melazzo, whose
fate he held in his hands by means of a certain knowledge, and ordered
him to draw up a contract of marriage between the Princess Maria,
his cousin, and himself, Charles of Durazzo. This the notary, albeit
terrified at the audacity of the thing (seeing that Maria, as will
be remembered, was intended by the terms of King Robert’s will to be
the wife of either King Louis of Hungary or of the Duke of Normandy),
consented to do; and then Duke Charles ordered him at the same time to
seek out Tommaso Pace, the valet of King Andrew and the notary’s own
closest friend, and to find out if Pace had been approached at all by
any of Queen Joan’s partisans with a view to drawing him into any plot
against Andrew’s life. For, as Charles argued, if such a conspiracy
should ever arise, those concerned in it would be almost sure to
endeavour to win over the King’s valet to their undertaking in order
the more easily to carry it into effect.
From that day on it was noticed that a complete change had taken
place in the manner of the Duke of Durazzo towards King Andrew—or, to
give the latter the only title hitherto accorded to him, the Duke of
Calabria. For, whereas hitherto Charles had shown himself the reverse
of friendly towards Andrew, and had been ever the loudest in his denial
of Andrew’s right to be crowned King of Naples, he now overwhelmed the
Hungarian with every kind of courtesy and friendly advance. Charles
even took pains to propitiate Andrew’s shadow, the honest Dominican,
excusing himself to Father Robert for his outrageous conduct in
proclaiming Joan alone as their new Queen to the people of Naples by
pleading the necessity of making an apparent concession to the popular
dislike of the Hungarian element in the kingdom. He did not hesitate
to declare to Father Robert his detestation of the persons who were
bent upon estranging the young Queen from her husband for their own
ends; finally he concluded by placing what power he possessed at the
monk’s disposal for the purpose of defeating the machinations of Joan’s
treacherous favourites directed against her rightful husband and the
legal partner of her throne.
To these assurances Father Robert lent a willing, although not an
entirely believing, ear; for he could only attribute the change in
Duke Charles to some misunderstanding with the young Queen. At the
same time, Charles and Andrew of Hungary were become the closest of
comrades; never, now, was Andrew seen in public without his Albanian
cousin by marriage; never did he withdraw himself from the circle of
his friends to the seclusion of his apartments but Charles of Durazzo
walked at his elbow.
And so things went on for a while, until at length the whole Court
was ranged definitely on one side or on the other: on that of Queen
Joan and the Neapolitan people itself to whom Andrew and his followers
were entirely odious, or, else, on that of Andrew and those who
hoped eventually to make him sole sovereign of Naples to their own
advantage—the Hungarian “Hey-ducs,” the Count of Altamura, and their
kind.
The war of the factions had begun by the omission of Andrew’s name
from all the proclamations, warrants, and so forth issued by the Queen
in her own sole name. In retaliation for this indefensible slight,
Andrew had ordered his followers to break open all the prisons within
reach and to liberate their tenants, criminal or otherwise, in his
name alone and in honour of his succession to the throne of Naples.
He had also loaded the members of his own party—and especially the
execrated Altamura—with honours and riches by means of patents signed
by himself, only, as the one supreme temporal authority in the kingdom.
It may be added that, in all these arbitrary and illegal measures,
so admirably calculated to arouse the bitterest anger and the most
murderous hatred of the Queen’s supporters against him, Andrew of
Hungary’s one confident adviser was none other than his evil genius,
Charles of Durazzo. From that moment the party of Joan, led by the
Counts of San-Severino, Mileto, Terlizzi, Balzo, Morcone, Catanzaro,
and Sant’ Angelo, and, more especially, by the Queen’s ex-favourite,
Robert of Cabano, Count of Eboli, and his successor in her affections,
Bertrand d’Artois, was resolved upon ridding the land of Andrew and of
his minions. Of all the angry barons who had rallied to Joan’s support,
the last mentioned, Bertrand d’Artois, really loved her for herself,
and was actuated by no motive of personal gain, except—alas!—his
lawless hope of becoming united to her in matrimony once her husband
were removed from the path of his criminal passion. In vain his father,
the brave and noble Charles of Artois, one of the regents of the
kingdom, strove to dissuade him from the perilous course of a love as
treasonable as it was immoral; nothing was of any avail to hold back
the young man from the pursuit of his designs.
More successful, however, was the restraining influence of another
parent over another child in the same situation—the influence of the
Empress of Constantinople over her youngest-born, the handsome Louis of
Taranto, who, in deference to his mother’s entreaties, turned away his
eyes as well as he could from his lovely, ill-mated cousin.
After the rupture between Joan and the Duke of Durazzo, many weeks
elapsed without her either meeting him or hearing much of his doings,
beyond that he was become the inseparable comrade of her husband;
although, indeed, at times she cannot have helped wondering what shape
his enmity towards her might eventually assume.
One radiant morning of spring, however, as she was in her room in
the Castel Nuovo, looking out over the town and the sea beyond, all
shimmering in the sunlight, towards Sorrento, there came a knock on the
door, and Donna Filippa Cabano, mother of the Grand Seneschal, entered
precipitately, her face blanched with alarm and anger, to say that
Princess Maria, Joan’s little sister, was nowhere to be found.
A short while previously the child had been playing happily by herself
in the castle grounds; and then, soon afterwards, she had simply
disappeared, none could say where or in what direction.
Joan’s consternation may be more easily imagined than described. Her
love for Maria was the one perfectly innocent, unspoilt love of her
whole existence, the very tenderest spot in all her heart. And now
Maria was gone from her; the horror and grief of it were such that she
shrieked as though a live coal had been laid upon her breast. That,
however, was only in the first anguish of her loss; recovering herself
quickly, she broke out in a storm of anger upon those responsible by
their want of vigilance for the catastrophe; such was the Queen’s fury,
indeed, that Filippa fled from her in fear for her life. Instantly, the
whole castle was in an uproar, its inhabitants scouring every nook and
cranny, indoors and out; but without success; and, presently, the whole
city of Naples was bent distractedly upon the same quest, hunting high
and low for the beloved little girl. All, though, was in vain; and,
albeit, during that day and many days and nights to follow the search
was diligently pursued, yet, in spite of every effort, no trace could
be found of the lost Princess.
The only drop of comfort vouchsafed to Joan, during all those weary
hours of agonising anxiety, came from Bertrand d’Artois, who had been
led, somehow, to suspect the agency of the Duke of Durazzo in respect
to Maria’s disappearance; a drop, however, that Joan refused to accept,
saying that such a thing was beyond the bounds of probability. For no
one, even, of Duke Charles’ household, let alone the Duke himself, had
so much as set foot within the castle precincts since the day when he
had left the place in anger. No stranger, even, had set foot, that
morning of Maria’s disappearance, inside the gates, except Nicholas
of Melazzo, for whose integrity Tommaso Pace, Prince Andrew’s own
body-servant, was willing to answer on his life.
In this manner a month went by, bringing to Joan despair of ever seeing
her sister again, until on April 30, 1343, there occurred an event
so amazing as to deprive her at first of every other sensation; until
her astonishment turned to fury at the insolent daring of it. On first
learning of it, she refused to believe it, and then, as the certainty
of it took the place of incredulity, her indignation knew no bounds.
For, on the stroke of noon of that day, she learned that her sister
had become the legal wife of Charles of Durazzo, having been publicly
married to him at an altar erected in the open air and in sight of all
the people before the Church of Saint John by the Sea, not a bow-shot
distant from the great gates of the Palazzo Durazzo. The marriage had
been solemnised by Duke Charles’ chaplain, the necessary dispensation
for the marriage of cousins, one of them being a minor, having been
received from Rome the day before; and, at its conclusion, the newly
wedded pair had faced the spectators hand in hand, and had solemnly
declared that they took one another as husband and wife, calling upon
God and the people to bear witness to it. Their announcement had been
acclaimed with tumultuous vociferations of applause and delight; after
which the Duke and Duchess of Durazzo received the Papal benediction,
prior to being escorted in procession round the city by their
men-at-arms and the sympathetic populace to the beating of drums and
the blowing of trumpets.
So that Charles of Durazzo was now the husband—and it need hardly be
said, the master—of the thirteen-year-old heir to the throne. And when,
after curbing the useless rage in her heart, Joan summoned the pair to
receive her congratulations, she realised her folly in quarrelling with
that all-daring and remorseless man; also, she understood that nothing
short of the throne itself—let the price be what it might—would ever
satisfy his lust of power and glory and hate.
Thenceforth, the temptation of Joan to be, in very truth, at once the
real ruler of her own dominions and, at the same time, the arbiter of
her own destiny, increased and grew to terrific powers; the desire to
satisfy her wishes absolutely in everything became a kind of diabolical
possession, sweeping away every consideration of virtue and of mere
worldly prudence; save only when, in rare intervals of reaction, she
would fall upon her knees in the solitude of her chamber, her face in
her hands, sobbing as though her heart would break with the horror of
her situation.