END OF JOAN’S CAREER
Joan Detained at Aix—Greeted as a Queen—Joan Pronounced
Innocent—Plans to Regain Naples—Sale of a City—Return to
Naples—Indecisive War—Proposal for Personal Conflict—Flight of the
Royal Family—Maria’s Narrow Escape—Hungarians Repulsed—Pope Clement
as Intermediary—Departure of the King of Hungary—Festivity in
Naples—Death of Louis and Joan’s Further Marital Adventures—Joan in
Trouble—Her Untimely End.
In those days of the King of Hungary’s assize in Naples, Queen Joan
reached her county of Provence and began to travel across it from Nice,
where she had landed, towards Avignon.
On coming to the town of Aix, however, to her astonishment and
perplexity, her journey was interrupted by the townspeople, who, albeit
they received her with every mark of respect, yet set a guard about
the castle of the place, the Château d’Arnaud, in which she stayed; and
refused to let her issue thence until, as they said, they should have
had word from Avignon—but in regard to what matter they would not tell
her at once. Only after two months had gone by did the Archbishop of
Aix present himself before her with an explanation. It appeared that,
at the very moment of Joan’s landing in Provence, news had been brought
to Aix that the King of France had sent his son, the Duke of Normandy,
to Avignon to negotiate with Joan as to the cession of Provence to
the French Crown in exchange for a proportionate territory elsewhere;
so that, on seeing Joan arrive thus timely in their midst, the people
of Aix imagined, not unnaturally, that her presence among them must
be connected with the negotiations in question. And, as they were
determined to die to the last man rather than pass under the detested
rule of the French, they had resolved, if need be, to keep the Queen
a hostage among them, in order to prevent her from carrying on the
dreaded negotiations. Having however, and to their great thankfulness,
received from the Sovereign Pontiff himself an absolute denial of
any such purpose of negotiation, they at once and with many apologies
restored the Queen to liberty.
On leaving Avignon, what was her delight on seeing the beloved Louis
of Taranto come out to meet her, accompanied by all the Cardinals then
in attendance upon the Pope! Joan was now, indeed, greeted as a Queen
by her people, who strewed the way with flowers, the while a number
of mounted pages rode beside the royal pair, holding above them a
canopy of crimson velvet; and, from every church the bells pealed out
a welcome to the Sovereigns. In the castle they were received with
all pomp and circumstance by the Holy Father, who embraced and blessed
them; after which they took up their residence in the Ursuline convent;
and a little later, to complete the gladness of Joan, her younger
sister, Maria, now the mother of two baby girls, arrived at Avignon
from the stricken city of Naples. After the death of her husband in the
castle of Aversa, Maria, bearing her children in her arms, had taken
refuge from the reprisals of the King of Hungary in the monastery of
Santa Croce, where the monks took her in and fed and sheltered her
during some days, although they knew that not only their lives but
the existence of the monastery itself would fall a sacrifice to the
Hungarian’s anger should he ever learn of their charity to the widow of
Charles of Durazzo. At length she had contrived, thanks to the disguise
of an old monastic gown, to embark with her babies upon a ship bound
for Provence; and her account of the things that were being done by
the Hungarian in Naples made both Joan and her husband long to get back
there with an army behind them, that they, in their turn, might satisfy
their vengeance.
About this time there arrived, too, at Avignon ambassadors from the
King of Hungary to the Pope, demanding in no measured terms the formal
condemnation of Joan as an accessory before the fact to the murder of
her husband, and her deposition from the throne of Naples; and, most
especially, that the Holy Father should give the kingdom instead to
Louis of Hungary. And now the Pope appointed a day for Joan on which
to plead her cause before him and to disprove the charges made against
her if she could; and this she did so ably that those who heard her
broke into loud applause, and the Pope pronounced her innocent before
all the world, and the Hungarian envoys were compelled to go away
empty—although, to this day, there are those who have their doubts
as to the veracity of Joan’s denial of the sin imputed to her. At any
rate, Pope Clement, who was a good and truth-loving Pontiff, believed
her, and there is an end of it.
After the discomfiture of the Hungarians, the Pope confirmed the
marriage of the Queen to her cousin, Louis of Taranto, and bestowed
upon the latter the title of King of Naples and of Jerusalem; he had
already, on March 27, given him the Golden Rose. Simultaneously, the
Holy Father sent an apostolic legate, Cardinal de Boulogne, to the King
of Hungary, at Naples, to persuade him to cede the kingdom peaceably to
its rightful sovereigns.
While the Cardinal was engaged on this difficult task, Nicholas
Acciajuoli betook himself, likewise, into Naples and set about raising
an army wherewith to drive out the Hungarians in the event of their
refusing to listen to the Cardinal’s arguments. But, to maintain such
an army, great expenses were unavoidable; and the Queen, who had sent
him in answer to a deputation of Neapolitans entreating her to return
and rule over them, was now obliged to raise money by every means at
her disposal. For this purpose she sold all her jewels; but, these
proving insufficient, she begged the Pope to buy of her the city of
Avignon. To this he consented, and on June 19, 1348, gave her for it
a sum about equal to sixty thousand pounds of our money. Which amply
disproves the statement made by Alexandre Dumas,[12] who says that
the sale took place on the day immediately prior to Joan’s trial,
suggesting as he does that the Pope’s decision was influenced by his
eagerness to acquire possession of the city—for the trial was held
almost at once after Joan’s arrival at Avignon, on March 15.
In the meantime the King of Hungary had declined to accede to the
Pope’s instance that he should retire from Naples to his own kingdom;
and so there was nothing left for Joan and Louis of Taranto to do but
to dispossess him at the sword’s point. Thanks to the indefatigable
efforts of Acciajuoli—and, in perhaps even greater measure, to the
misrule of the Hungarian himself—matters were now ripe for an armed
intervention in Naples, where every strong place had surrendered to
the enemy, with the glorious exception of the castle of Melfi, of
which Lorenzo Acciajuoli, the son of Nicholas, was the commander.
From Melfi, where he had conferred with his son, Nicholas Acciajuoli
travelled throughout the country, crying the Queen’s acquittal and the
confirmation of her union with Louis of Taranto and proclaiming far
and wide the great indulgences and blessings promised by the Pope to
all who should submit themselves to their lawful rulers, Queen Joan and
her consort, King Louis. And, finding himself everywhere greeted with
tumultuous declamations of loyalty towards Joan and of detestation of
the Hungarian, Acciajuoli returned to the Queen at Avignon with the
news that she might safely entrust her cause to her own people.
On September 10, 1348, she left Provence for Naples, accompanied by her
husband and her sister and the counsellors, Acciajuoli and Spinelli.
But, when they came to the shores of Naples, they could not land in the
harbour because all the castles on that side of the city were occupied
by the Hungarians, so that they had to go on to where the mouth of the
classic river, Sebeto, was crossed by a bridge, the Ponte Guiscardo;
thence they were escorted by the nobles and townspeople to the Palazzo
Adjutorio by the Porta Capuana, where they proceeded to establish
themselves and their Court.
For many months the fortunes of war inclined first to one side and
then to the other. It began by Nicholas Acciajuoli’s blockading the
Hungarians in their strongholds, whilst Louis of Taranto employed his
energies in reducing various of the rebellious barons to allegiance.
Little by little, he extended his operations from the city of
Naples into the furthest confines of the kingdom; until, by dint
of perseverance, he had contrived to make himself, as it appeared,
master of it. But suddenly his good-fortune deserted him, owing to his
abandonment by one of the King of Hungary’s mercenaries whom Louis had
seduced to the side of the Queen by heavy bribes. This was that Werner
who styled himself “the enemy of GOD,” and who now resold himself to
the Hungarian, to whose Vicar-General, Conrad Wolf (Conrado Lupo, as
the chronicler makes it), he opened the gates of Benevento.
The consequence of Werner’s treachery was to force Louis of Taranto
to fall back upon Naples; when the King of Hungary, on learning of it,
made all speed to rejoin his troops—he had fled from Italy for a while
to escape an epidemic of the plague—before Aversa, bringing with him
heavy reinforcements. Landing at Manfredonia, he advanced, practically
unopposed, so swiftly as to take his adversary completely by surprise.
Having made himself master of the fortresses of Trani, Canosa, and
Salerno in rapid succession, thus hemming in Louis of Taranto on the
east and on the south, he proceeded to lay siege to Aversa on the
north of Naples. This new move threatened disaster to Joan and her
husband, who, being forced to remain on the defensive in Naples, were
obliged to witness the spectacle of as gallant a resistance as was
ever made by any beleaguered garrison; and that without being able to
come in any way to the assistance of Pignatelli, the commandant of the
place, and his heroic soldiers, who only numbered about five hundred
men, as against some seventeen thousand of the enemy’s forces. During
three months Pignatelli flung back the King of Hungary’s attacks upon
the town; until finally, despairing of taking Aversa by assault, the
Hungarian resolved to reduce it by starvation.
Gradually the circumstances of the little garrison became hopeless; so
that Pignatelli was confronted with the alternative of surrender or of
death either by starvation or in a last grapple with the besiegers. To
add to the general distress, a fleet of vessels bringing reinforcements
to Queen Joan from Provence under the leadership of Renaud des
Baux—some relation this, I fancy, of that terrible Chief Justice,
the Count of Monte Scaglioso—and upon the timely arrival of which all
depended, was delayed by contrary winds so that none could say where it
was or whether it would ever arrive at all.
Under these circumstances, Louis of Taranto, abhorring the thought of
allowing the brave Pignatelli and his soldiers to sacrifice themselves
to no purpose (seeing that the ultimate surrender of Aversa was
inevitable), sent a message to the King of Hungary inviting him to
a personal encounter, in the same spirit in which the Emperor Paul
Petrovitch sent a similar challenge to King George III of England.
Louis of Taranto’s proposal to the Hungarian was simplicity itself:
that he of them who should kill the other should be King of Naples and
of Jerusalem. To this the King of Hungary consented, with the advice
of his counsellors, stipulating only that the combat should take place
in the presence of the Emperor of Germany, as Cæsar and sovereign lord
of all the princes of the West; or of the King of England, as a friend
of both parties; or of the Patriarch of Aquileia, whose pretensions
to equality with the Pope the Hungarian appears to have been by way of
encouraging in revenge for Clement VI’s decision in favour of Joan.
These proposals, however, came to naught, for in the meanwhile Aversa
surrendered to the Hungarians; so that there was no longer any call for
him to risk his life for nothing. He had only to close in upon Naples,
and the doomed city must at once fall into his hands; it was not more
than twelve miles from Aversa to the capital and the Hungarian advance
guard under Lupi was soon visible to the Neapolitans at the Porta
Capuana; for it was easier for them, being mounted troops, to approach
the city from the direction of Poggia than from that of Capodimonte,
the more direct but more hilly road to Aversa.
Providentially, it was at this moment that the ships of Renaud des Baux
hove in sight of Naples and speedily came to anchor in the port. Now
it chanced that Maria of Durazzo with her two children had taken refuge
from a possible sack of the city by the Hungarians in the Castel dell’
Uovo, that, as the reader will remember, stands upon a rock surrounded
on three sides by the sea and connected with the mainland by a causeway
on arches. Both John and Louis, being occupied in the town itself at
the time of the fleet’s arrival, and supposing that Maria had already
preceded them on board the flagship, remained at their posts until
the last, encouraging their people and exhorting them to hold firm
against the foe. But the Neapolitans, preferring surrender to possible
annihilation, sent out a deputation to the King of Hungary to beg for
terms; to the great anger and sorrow of their rightful sovereigns,
who only now, when all seemed over, reluctantly sought the shelter of
Des Baux’s vessels, off the Castello dell’ Uovo. Here, being now much
pressed for time, they embarked on the nearest of the ships and, still
in the belief that the Duchess of Durazzo was safe on board that of the
Admiral, they gave the signal to depart and sailed out of the harbour
followed, as they imagined, by the rest of the fleet; for it was now
drawing on to night, and too dark for them to see clearly what was
taking place in rear of them.
Not until they reached Gaeta, towards noon of the following day, after
fighting their way through a dreadful storm, did they realise that the
Admiral’s ship with the Queen’s sister on board was not with the rest
of the squadron that now came toiling, ship by ship, at long intervals
into the harbour. What had happened to it? Had it sunk or been flung
ashore by the waves during the night at some lonely spot upon that
inhospitable coast? This was the agonising question that Joan asked of
herself and of Louis and of all about them. And none could answer her.
Suddenly, as all hope of her ever again holding her sister in her arms
seemed to be on the point of vanishing from before Joan’s eyes, a cry
of joy broke from her where she was leaning upon the gunwale of the
vessel, her gaze fixed upon the sea and the cloud-scuds to southward.
Hastening to her side, Louis saw that a ship in difficulties, a
considerable distance from them, was being driven, in spite of
persistent “tacking,” towards them in the harbour of Gaeta. Thinking
it must be the Admiral, Louis hoisted signals to him, that he should
join them; but, to his amazement, no attention was at first paid to his
signals; by which I mean to say that Louis had flown the Royal Standard
and that the other only continued the more desperately to endeavour to
keep out to sea.
Of a sudden, though, the newcomer’s sails were seen to collapse and
fall to the deck; and, judging from the way in which she was tossed
and rolled about by the waves, albeit without changing her position,
the watchers could see that she had cast anchor. Without further delay,
Louis, in order to put an end to Joan’s suspense, ordered a boat to be
lowered and, together with several of his comrades-in-arms, sprang into
it and was rowed out—not without considerable difficulty—to the vessel
in the offing.
On drawing alongside, their feelings may more easily be imagined than
described at hearing the cries of a woman in distress come to them
from out the creaking, storm-tossed galley which was unquestionably
that of Des Baux. Moreover, the deck was crowded with sailors, who now
called to them to come quickly. Clambering over the side by means of a
rope-ladder thrown down by the crew, Louis of Taranto and his comrades
rushed towards the Admiral’s quarters at the poop end of the deck, to
find his cabin shut and barred, the while the voice of Maria of Durazzo
called to them from within, with redoubled energy, to come to her
assistance. In an instant they had broken down the door and, surging
into the roomy cabin, found themselves in the presence of Maria and
of the Admiral, who was endeavouring to stifle her cries and to push
her, with the help of his son, Robert des Baux, into a cupboard of the
apartment.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Louis of Taranto smote the Admiral with
his sword, so that he fell dead, whilst Maria sank on to a couch, her
face in her hands to shut out the sight of the killing. But, having
slain the Admiral, Louis was content and ordered Robert des Baux to be
merely put in irons and taken with them back to the other vessel, where
Queen Joan was waiting so feverishly to learn if her sister were alive
and on board or not. And when Maria at last rejoined the Queen she told
her how, having once taken her away from the Castel dell’ Uovo on his
flagship, the Admiral, instead of sailing in the wake of the rest of
the fleet, had shaped his course for Marseilles; how he had tried to
compel her to marry his son, and how at length the sailors, learning of
it, and angered at his attempt to make the coast of France instead of
following the Queen, had broken into mutiny on coming within sight of
the ships at Gaeta.
It would seem that the younger Des Baux was less to blame in the affair
than his father. At any rate, there is no evidence to show that he
shared the latter’s fate; although this may well have been owing to
the fact that, soon after Louis of Taranto’s return with her sister
to the Queen, news was brought to them from Naples of a sudden change
in the situation there. It appeared that, soon after the departure
of the Queen and her husband from the city, the answer of the King
of Hungary to the deputies sent out to surrender the city to him was
received and made known to the inhabitants. But of such a nature was
it, so atrociously haughty and so sinister withal, that, rather than
submit themselves to so despotic and so resentful a Prince, the unhappy
Neapolitans declared their intention of dying with arms in their hands
in the defence of their families and their homes. No sooner did the
Hungarians learn of this resolve than a desperate attack was delivered
by them upon the Porta Capuana, which they succeeded in penetrating,
and compelled the defenders to fall back towards the harbour and the
fortresses in the southern quarter of the city.
As the Hungarians were, however, advancing through the black, deserted
streets upon the Castel Nuovo in the hope of capturing at least a
portion of the royal family, the amazing rashness of their venturing
thus under cover of night into the midst of an hostile, well-armed, and
well-barricaded populace suddenly became patent to the Neapolitans;
as well as the extreme exhaustion of the Hungarian men and horses.
No sooner had the Neapolitans recognised their opportunity than they
seized it, flinging themselves upon their enemies, whom they now beat
back to the Porta Capuana and out through it into the country beyond,
amidst great slaughter and an indescribable confusion, taking no
prisoners but killing all who fell into their hands.
This was practically the end of that war of the Hungarians against
Queen Joan and Louis of Taranto, after whom messengers were despatched
that night to Gaeta, asking them to return and to lead their subjects
once more against the foreigners, who, said the message, had been
beaten back from Naples and were in full retreat upon their former
eastern base about Benevento. Soon after the return to Naples of Joan
and Louis, however, a truce for twelve months was arranged between
them and the Hungarian, who was now more willing to listen to reason
than he had been before; so that when the Pope was invited by Joan to
mediate between them, he welcomed the suggestion thankfully enough.
Pope Clement’s first proposal, though, that Joan should make the King
of Hungary the heir to her crown, and so put her sister Maria out of
the succession, Joan refused even to contemplate; and then the Pope
suggested that she should pay a lump sum in cash to the King of Hungary
as ransom for all the fortresses that he still held in his hands in the
Kingdom of Naples; in return for which he was to abandon all further
claims upon and to the Crown.
To this Joan agreed willingly; but, when the proposal was made known to
the King of Hungary, he said: “It is not for money or lands that I have
fought, but for vengeance on my brother’s murderers. But now my work
is done; the angry shades are satisfied, and I am going back to my own
country.” Nor would he accept so much as a single piece of money for
all the strong places and the power that were still his in the Kingdom
of Naples; but gave all over, undefiled by money, to Joan, and then
departed as he had come, triumphant and unapproachable.
After Louis of Hungary had gone away, there came a legate from the
Pope to crown Louis of Taranto as King of Naples and to solemnly ratify
once more his marriage with the Queen. All of which was carried out on
May 25, 1351, and the next three days, with an accompaniment of much
feasting and tourneys; also a general amnesty was issued to all who had
in any way taken part against their lawful sovereigns in the late wars.
The ecclesiastical ceremonies took place in the Chapel of Justice built
by Charles II, to which Joan afterwards added the Church called “Chiesa
dell’ Incoronata,” in memory of her wedding to Louis of Taranto. Among
the frescoes in the Church are portraits of Joan and of Louis and
of the infant son of the Duke of Calabria, all painted by Roberto di
Oderisio or, as some say, by his master, the great Giotto himself. It
is recorded that the festivities passed off to the satisfaction of all
and were only marred by a single untoward event. For it happened that,
as King Louis was riding back from his coronation beside the Queen,
and was passing through the Porta Petruccia towards the Castel Nuovo,
a party of ladies threw down upon him an immense quantity of flowers,
making his horse rear up and break the rein. To save himself, lest it
should fall and crush him, the King sprang out of the saddle; but in
doing so he loosened the crown so that it fell from his head into the
roadway and was broken into three pieces. And that same day there fell
sick and died his infant daughter by Joan. However, the King forbade
that the festivities should be spoiled by mourning; and so they were
carried to their conclusion. And in memory of his coronation King Louis
instituted the Order of the Knot.
The short rest of his life, though, was full of wars and disquiet and
disillusionment, for he was constantly employed in repressing rebellion
and in checking the independent tendencies of his barons. Among the
most formidable of the disturbers of his peace was Louis of Durazzo,
brother of that evil Charles who had perished by order of the King of
Hungary at Aversa. Louis of Durazzo was defeated, however, and ended
his days in the Castello dell’ Uovo. But he left behind him a son,
Charles, whose life was spared in answer to the pleading of Joan, who
took charge of him and loaded him with kindnesses and married him to
her niece, Margaret, the daughter of Maria of Durazzo and of that other
Charles.
Worn out by incessant campaigning, King Louis fell victim to a malarial
fever on June 5, 1362, in the forty-third year of his age.
Soon afterwards Joan married James of Aragon, King of Minorca, who
had first fallen in love with her at Avignon, where the history of his
fortunes and adventures, combined with the melancholy handsomeness of
him, had made a deep impression both upon Joan and upon her sister. For
James of Aragon had spent no less than thirteen years of his life as a
prisoner in an iron cage, and was even said to have been reduced to the
necessity of begging his bread. No sooner was he married to Joan than
he devoted himself to making war upon Pedro the Cruel, the usurper of
his throne, and died near Navarre, in 1375.
After King James’ demise, Joan married again, as her fourth husband,
Duke Otho of Brunswick; by now, having no children alive of her
own, she adopted as her successor Charles of Durazzo, her nephew by
marriage, whose life she had saved.
During the next few years Joan, as the result of a quarrel with Pope
Urban VI (who as Bartolomeo Prignani had been formerly one of her
own subjects), gave her support to the anti-Pope, Clement VII, whom
she sheltered in the Castello dell’ Uovo. For this she was promptly
excommunicated, being at the same time declared deposed from the
throne, whilst her subjects were formally relieved of their allegiance
to her. The Crown of Naples was bestowed by the Holy Father upon
Charles of Durazzo, whom Joan had already proclaimed her successor
and who now showed his gratitude in the following remarkable manner:
Hastily borrowing an army from his great uncle, old King Louis of
Hungary, who was still alive, Charles set out for Naples, where his
wife and their two children were even then living as honoured guests
and relatives under Joan’s roof. So soon as she learned of this, Joan
sent word to Louis of Anjou, brother of the King of France, to say that
she appointed him her successor instead of Charles and begging him to
come to her aid against the latter.
On the approach of Charles’ army, Joan sent out his wife and children
to plead with him that he would treat her generously; but, instead of
doing so, Charles laid siege to Joan in the Castel Nuovo; her husband,
Duke Otho, he had blockaded behind him in the castle of Aversa. At
length, though, the German fought his way through the containing force
before Aversa and fell upon Charles of Durazzo’s flank and rear guard
by way of Piedigrotta. Long the unequal combat raged, but at last when
Otho himself, after being wounded and having broken his sword, and,
thanks to his leading his men and becoming separated from them in the
midst of the enemy, had been taken prisoner, the little remnant of his
followers, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, had no choice but to
surrender. Whereupon, Charles of Durazzo redoubled his efforts against
the Castel Nuovo and, shortly afterwards, succeeded in taking it; after
which he wrote to the King of Hungary to say that the Queen of Naples
was his prisoner and asking that monarch’s good pleasure in regard to
her.
Some months now passed, during which Otho of Brunswick, on promising
to quit Neapolitan territory for ever, was given his liberty; and
the French army of Louis of Anjou compelled to abandon its march upon
Naples. At the end of that time an answer was received from the King
of Hungary, commanding that Joan should be put to death as a last
propitiatory sacrifice to his murdered brother.
Since the taking of Naples the Queen had been sent for safekeeping to
the castle of Muro in Calabria.
On the 5th of May, 1385, as she was praying in her room there, that
looked out over the ravine and the town below, the door was opened very
stealthily, so that the Queen thought it was one of her maids and did
not turn her head to look at the intruder. Nor did she ever, in all
probability, see who it was that had entered; for, in the same moment,
a cord was slipped over her head and swiftly drawn tight about her
throat as only a man of strong hands could draw it; so that she died
instantly, her unfinished prayer upon her lips. And the four Hungarian
soldiers, who had seen her die, left her lying there and went away
quietly to report to their commanding officer that the thing was done
as it had been ordered. And the cord with which they had done it was
the same with which Andrew of Hungary had been strangled at Aversa; so,
at least, it is said.