THE ENCHANTED CASTLE OF THE EGG
AND THE SUCCESSION OF THE KINGS WHO HELD IT
In Naples one is never very far from history, and when I arose from my
pleasant seat beneath the palm tree, plodding on down the long and
beautiful avenue of the Villa garden I came out at no great distance
on the sunny Piazza della Vittoria--a name which, I suspect, connects
itself in the fancy of many visitors with some of the wild triumphs of
Garibaldi. But the piazza has an older history than that. It
commemorates the sea battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria,
the youthful son of the great Emperor Charles the Fifth and of Barbara
Blomberg, washerwoman of Ratisbon, led the united fleets of Venice,
Spain, and Rome into the Gulf of Lepanto as the Turks were coming out
and administered a drubbing under which the throne of the Caliph
rocked and tottered, all so long ago as the year 1576. Naples had the
best of reasons, as I have said already, for rejoicing over any event
which reduced the sea power of the Turks, and I do not doubt that the
child of Kaiser and of washerwoman had an intoxicating triumph on this
spot which has so long forgotten him.
At this point I hesitate, as the ass did between two bundles, a
dilemma often thrust on one in Naples. For if I turn towards my left
and mount the hill, I reach the Piazza dei Martiri and the pleasant
strangers' quarter. But since my aim is not to describe things known
easily to all who visit Naples, but rather to talk at large of what
the guide-books do not mention, I take the other way and move out on
the sea-front again, just where the Via Partenope, a new road, runs
towards the ancient castle at the point.
As I approach the centre of this ancient city, scene of so many bitter
conflicts, it becomes the more needful to select those epochs which
are most worthy to be remembered, to let all the ghosts of great names
flutter by except a few, and those the few whose memories rise
oftenest. The choice is easy. All the deepest tragedy of Naples closes
round the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen and the fall of that of
Aragon. I must explain briefly how these houses held the throne of
Naples and of Sicily.
The Normans founded that kingdom in the year 1130. They won it by
conquest from Lombards and from Saracens; and they placed their
capital at Palermo, where their rule on the whole was just and
splendid, and their throne gained lustre from Arab art and Arab
learning, so that those were happy days for Italy and Sicily, held by
strong sovereigns who kept in check all dangers from without. But even
in the good times the seed of trouble was sprouting fast; for the
first Normans, superstitious in their piety, and anxious to obtain a
legal title to the lands their swords had won, accepted the feudal
lordship of the Pope; and thus originated the papal claim to alter the
succession of the realm at will.
The male line of the Normans failed. Constance, the heiress of the
house, carried the throne to the Emperor Henry VI., son of the great
Barbarossa, and as resolved as he to turn into realities the shadowy
claims of the Emperors to the overlordship of all Italy. But the Popes
already claimed the universal spiritual dominion, as the Emperors
claimed the temporal; and since in the rough-thinking minds of men
there was but little comprehension of the theoretical distinction
between the dominions of spirit and of matter, it happened often that
even in the understanding of Pope and Kaiser themselves the difference
was lost, and the two claims worked out to rivalry and the clash of
interests which wrought much bloodshed.
There was not room in Italy for two universal rulers, both holding of
God, even though one ruled spiritual things and the other temporal.
The theory was clear, but who could interpret the practice on all
occasions? Every Pope was greedy for temporalities; and no Kaiser,
unless wholly occupied in taming rebellious barons beyond the Alps,
could refrain from meddling with spiritual affairs. Thus arose two
parties throughout Italy, and all the land was cleft with the feuds of
Guelf and Ghibelline, the former holding to the Pope, the latter
dreaming, as Dante did, of the days when the Emperor should descend
from the Alps again brandishing the sword of judgment, and purge away
the foulness from the lovely cities which stood oppressed and
mourning. Day and night, in the fancy of the great Florentine, Rome
lay weeping, widowed and alone, calling constantly, "Cesare mio, why
hast thou deserted me?"
More often than not the Emperors did not come, and the Pope grew ever
stronger. But when the successor of St. Peter saw his great rival
established by natural inheritance in the territory which was not
only the fairest of all Italy, but also the one over which he claimed
feudal rights, it was certain that there could be no peace; and the
conflict might have broken out at once had not the Emperor died and
his widow granted the Church great power over her young son, whom the
Pope might naturally hope to mould into what he would.
But the lad grew up strong and self-reliant, a noble and a splendid
monarch, worthy of the fame which clings to this day about the name of
the Emperor Frederick the Second. Alone of all the line of Western
Emperors this one lived by choice in Italy. He loved the blue sea and
the purple mountains which guard the land of Sicily. His heart was in
the white coast towns of Apulia and the ranges of long low hills which
look towards the Adriatic over the flat plains of Foggia, where the
hawks wheel screaming in the clear air and the great mountain shrine
of Monte Gargano towers blue and dim above the heel of Italy. He loved
the Arab art and learning. He was no mean poet--a troubadour,
moreover; and withal a just and upright ruler, with aims far greater
than those of the age in which he lived, a monarch born for the
happiness of nations, had only the Pope been able to bate a little of
his pride and tolerate the rival at his gates.
But those were days in which the Popes would endure no compromise; and
from the hour in which he entered man's estate to that in which he
laid down his weary life in an Apulian castle, Frederick was in
continual warfare with the Church. Had he lived, who knows how that
struggle might have ended, or by what devices the prince who was
Emperor as well as King, and had the prestige of the Holy Roman
Empire at his back, might have met the dangers gathering round his
kingdom? For the Pope was negotiating with other princes, offering
them the inheritance of Naples if they would but turn the Hohenstaufen
out; and at length, after an English prince had refused the
enterprise, Charles of Anjou took it up, brother of St. Louis, and a
man accounted the first warrior of his age. By this time the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies had passed to Manfred, the favourite child of
Frederick the Second, though born of an unlawful union. There was a
child in Germany of lawful blood, one Conradin; but he was still
playing with his mother, and of no age to stem the troubles of the
kingdom. Moreover, he was reported dead, and Manfred seized the throne
with the goodwill of the people, who loved him well, and keep his
memory unto this day; for he was handsome and gallant, "Bello e
biondo" the Apulians call him still, a king whom a man might follow
and a woman love, and, but for the Pope and his restless enmity,
Manfred also, like his father, might have made the happiness of a
whole people.
But Charles of Anjou descended suddenly and met Manfred in battle
outside Benevento. It was the 26th of February, in the year 1266.
Manfred, watching the battle from a hillock, saw his troops waver; and
suspecting treachery, which was indeed abroad that day, he rushed into
the thickest of the fight, and was slain by an unknown hand as he
strove to rally his Apulians.
That day there fell before the French spears not only a noble king,
but the peace and happiness of southern Italy. Charles of Anjou was a
grim and ruthless tyrant, whose conceptions of mercy and justice were
those of a hawk hovering above a hen-coop. He denied burial to the
body of his enemy, and caused it to be flung naked on the banks of
the river, where every soldier as he passed cast a stone at it. He
seized Manfred's luckless queen, Helena, and kept her prisoner with
her children until death released them. He overthrew good laws and set
up bad ones. He sought to stamp out loyalty to the old kings by exile
and the sword. In Sicily he wrought unutterable woe, such as in the
end turned the blood of every islander to fire and his heart to stone,
and produced a massacre from which no Frenchman escaped. All the world
knows that great act of retribution by the name of the Sicilian
Vespers.
But in the meantime Conradin had grown up to tall boyhood, and his
heart was already brave enough to rage when he saw his kingdom in the
hands of a cruel conqueror, and his own subjects slain and banished
because they loved his house. His mother wept, but the boy did what
any brave boy of kingly blood would do. I will tell the tale of that
great tragedy later, when I reach the square outside the Carmine where
the last scene was played out, and the boy-king lost the game, but
carried all the honours with him from the world, leaving eternal
infamy for a heritage to the foe who slew him.
So Charles of Anjou possessed the kingdom. But it brought no happiness
to him or to his race. His own days were tortured by the loss of
Sicily, and every one of those who followed him reigned uneasily. Even
his grandson Robert, called "The Wise," is suspected of having won the
throne by murder. Robert's granddaughter, Queen Giovanna, whose sweet
memory we found on the slopes of the Posilipo, was privy to the murder
of her husband, and was herself smothered with a pillow. The other
Joanna, who followed her, was the most profligate woman of her age,
and in her ended, meanly and sordidly, the line of Anjou sovereigns.
[Illustration: NAPLES]
Then came the House of Aragon, which had reigned in Sicily ever since
the Vespers, and now expelled the last scion of Anjou and established
a kingdom which seemed likely to be stable. But the claims of the
royal house of France were only dormant; and before the end of the
century they started up again, eager and adventurous, in the heart of
the young King, Charles the Eighth. It was the wily Duke of Milan,
Ludovic Sforza, named the Moor, who incited this young man to lead the
French chivalry through the passes of the Alps. He was the warder of
Italy, and he betrayed her. It would be hard to name any one act of
man since God divided light from darkness which has let loose upon the
world such tremendous consequences of woe.
It is not my duty here to describe those consequences, nor to tell how
the French invasion resulted very shortly in riveting on Naples the
long Spanish slavery, which in the middle of the last century became a
monarchy again, and in 1860 was torn from the hold of the Bourbons,
and made free at last, by the grace of God and the valour of true
heroes, each one of whom dared all for Italy.
"Blessed is he of all men, being in one
As father to her and son,
Blessed of all men living, that he found
Her weak limbs bared and bound,
And in his arms and in his bosom bore,
And as a garment wore
Her weight of want, and as a royal dress
Put on her weariness.
"Praise him, O storm and summer, shore and wave,
O skies, and every grave;
O weeping hopes, O memories beyond tears,
O many and murmuring years."
I will quote no more, even of these immortal verses. Since it was
given to an English singer to voice the rapture with which all good
men hailed the salvation of Italy, it is but just that every visitor
should read the "Song of Italy" himself. I would that everyone among
them had it by heart and could catch some thrill from the noble
passion of the verses.
This has been a long discourse. But if certain things happened a great
while ago, is it my fault? Or again, am I to blame for the strange
neglect of Italian history in schools? The lesson is done now, and the
sun is still bright and hot on the Via Partenope. Even the enchanted
Castle of the Egg, black and grim as it usually looks, has caught the
glow, and is steeped and drowned in warm light. A quiver of haze hangs
over the sea, tremulous and burning. The wind has dropped, and a
midday silence has descended upon Naples. It is the hour when
sacristans bar the church doors and seek the solace of slumber, when
the vetturini congregate on the shady side of the piazza and cease to
crack their whips at the sight of strangers. On the castle bridge a
sentry paces to and fro. There are one or two restaurants below him in
the shadow, neither good nor bad, but good enough; and I order my
colazione in one which looks towards the sheer cliff of the
Pizzofalcone, and from which towards my right I can look out upon the
harbour, can catch a glimpse of the Castel Nuovo, the old royal
dwelling of the Houses of Anjou and Aragon, and see beyond it the old
city bathed in sunshine sloping to the curving sea.
The Pizzofalcone is the Falcon's Beak. If it were not too hot to think
much about anything, I might perhaps detect the resemblance. But at
this hour, in this city, and in face of this sun, one does not think;
one sits and lets half realised ideas drift past as they will. The
Pizzofalcone looks to me much like any other cliff, rather dangerously
near the castle, which could easily be dominated from the height by
even the smallest modern guns. There was once a villa of the Roman
Lucullus on that height. Statesman and epicure, he had another on this
island; or perhaps the two formed part of a single domain, which must
have been rarely lovely in those days when waving pine trees filled
the hollows of the cliff and the sea broke white and creamy on the
strand of Santa Lucia. It was not this handsome quay stretching on
beyond the castle which set the Neapolitans singing--
"Oh, dolce Napoli,
Oh, suol beato."
For the truth is that modern works of engineering have not yet proved
as prolific in poetry as the abuses they replace, and the Neapolitans
have not written about their sea-wall any song one half so sweet as
that which was inspired by the pretty, solitary creek outside the city
bounds, bad as it is understood to have been in morals. There were,
and are still, caverns all along the cliffs of Santa Lucia which were
sad places in the old day, full of riotous and evil people who
resorted thither for the worst of ends. For this reason Don Pietro di
Toledo, when he was Viceroy, ruined some and closed others, by which
act he at once improved the morals of Naples and enriched its
folklore, for nothing stimulated the imagination of the people so much
as the idea that their caverns were lying empty and silent. They
believe now that some are the haunt of witches, while others are
filled with treasure. One or two are worth seeing still if a guide can
be found to show them.
But I sat down here to talk of tragedies connected with this castle.
Some people may think it would be better to do so within and not
without the walls, and they are welcome to their opinion; but I have
tried both courses and think not. The interior of the castle is badly
modernised. The custodian is stupid and knows nothing. The old chapel
is a kitchen, and when I went to see the spot where the spirit of
Queen Helena wrote the word "revenge" upon the altar I found it full
of soldier cooks washing potatoes for the garrison. The prisons are
either forgotten or not shown. Inside the walls there is nothing but
disillusion and regret.
Queen Helena was the young wife of Manfred, who, as I said above, was
slain at Benevento, defending his kingdom against the butcher, Charles
of Anjou. The poor girl was at Lucera with her children, when they
brought her news that her husband, kingdom, and home were all lost;
and her first natural impulse was to flee to the protection of her
father, the Greek Emperor in Constantinople. So she took to horse, and
rode down out of the hill country through the coast plains of Apulia,
where but a few weeks earlier she had hunted and feasted with her
lord, and so came to the port of Trani, where she had touched land and
met the King in all the splendour of his retinue when she came from
the east a happy bride. One can fancy with what fearfulness this
little band of fugitives rode towards the sea, carrying with them the
children of the slain King, and how often they must have turned their
heads to watch lest they might see the spearpoints of Anjou flashing
among the defiles of the mountains. At Trani surely they would find
servants loyal enough to speed them on board ship before they cast
themselves at the feet of the conqueror; and as she rode beneath the
gateway of the white-walled town and saw the green Adriatic stretching
far towards the shores of Greece, the Queen's heart must have leapt
amidst its sorrow at the thought that she had brought her dead lord's
boys in sight of safety and of freedom.
Alas, poor Queen! The whole land was turning like a flower to the sun!
The Castellan of Trani spoke her fair. A month before he would have
given all he had to gain her favour, and now--he did but beg her rest
until a ship could be got ready, and instantly sent off tidings to the
French. Ere morning mother and children were riding once more across
the plain, their horses' heads turned from the sea, and their bridles
guided by French hands. Neither the sorrow of the Queen nor the youth
of the children touched the heart of Charles. He would have none of
the blood of Manfred left in freedom, and Queen and children died
after many years in prison.
Queen Helena was shut up in this castle for some years. Men say it was
at Nocera that she died, but it must have been here that her noble
spirit fretted most sorely against fate, bruising itself like a poor
lark flapping against its prison bars. For in the corridors of this
old castle her spirit used to walk on the eve of Ascension every year,
pacing slowly from her cell to the chapel of the castle, where she
wrote upon the altar the word "revenge" with finger dipped in blood.
Nothing could erase those letters till the night of the Sicilian
Vespers, when the French were hunted and slain in every street and
alley of Palermo. After that dread act of vengeance wrought in her own
capital city, the spirit of Queen Helena was never seen again.
It is in sight of these grey walls, which stood here before Naples
was a kingdom, certainly in the year 1140, that every pageant and
almost every tragedy in the long story of the city has passed by. In
those days when dukes ruled Naples, and the age of Greek dominion was
but just over, the castle was called "Castello del Salvatore," the
Castle of the Saviour, with the addition of the words "near Naples,"
for the old walled city which made such valorous defences lay beyond
the ridge. Sometimes, again, it is spoken of as "Castello Marino," a
name which sufficiently explains itself; but nowhere is its present
designation used in ancient documents until the year 1352, when it
appears in the rules of the Order of the Holy Spirit, founded by Louis
of Anjou, and appears, moreover, not only as "the Castle of the Egg,"
but as "the Castle of the Enchanted Egg," thus showing that the legend
concerning the magical foundation of the fortress had gained strength
enough to displace one, if not two, ancient titles, and attach itself
inseparably to the spot.
There is in this fact something very singular; and one would willingly
ask the dead centuries why they left us the heritage of this
mysterious name. Of itself, the ancient castle must remain in all
men's minds as the chief interest in Naples, the most marked object on
its beautiful shore, and the central point of its romantic story. But
beyond the beauty and the interest, one is piqued with curiosity; and
the sense of mystery clinging to the castle lends it a charm to which
no one can remain insensible. There are few points near Naples,
whether on hillside or in valley, from which one does not see the
enchanted castle low down by the water's edge, swept by cloud and
sunshine, or wet with spray, when the storm wind drives along the
shore, a witness of past ages, the one thing in Naples which has not
changed, except only the blue sea and the contours of the
everlasting hills.
[Illustration: NAPLES--CASTLE OF ST. ELMO]
No castle builder of the days when artillery had come into use would
have set this fortress on the shore beneath the Pizzofalcone, whence
it could be so easily bombarded. It is rather curious to sit under
these old walls, and turn one's eyes in succession to the three
castles of the city. This is much the oldest, and the least
defensible. Then came Castel Nuovo, a little higher in the town;
Charles of Anjou founded it; and lastly St. Elmo, high upon the
hillside, in a perfect situation, of all others best suited to be the
_arx_, or citadel. Why, one wonders, did not the first builders use
it, and let the city grow around it? or at least, why did they not
place their keep and fortress on the Pizzofalcone? an eminence well
suited for defence. Surely those first Greek settlers who came across
the hills from Cumae could not have overlooked the merits of this site!
Perhaps, as some scholars hold, Neapolis, "the new city," could not be
built upon the Pizzofalcone because Palaeopolis, "the old city," was
already there. I cannot tell. There are no answers to these questions,
which recur again and again as one wanders round these coasts, none
the less absorbing because one must speculate on them in vain.
But in Naples one must not spend time in chasing shadows. I have still
to speak about the French bombardment of the enchanted castle; but
first I will take up the tale of the fall of the House of Aragon where
I left it in my last chapter, when King Alfonso, terrified and broken
by nameless fear, leapt down shuddering from his throne, and fled from
royalty and kingdom, to die a penitent monk in a monastery in Sicily.
It was a well-nigh hopeless task for his son Ferdinand to maintain
the sceptre thus hastily thrust into his hands. The French were
already over the borders of his kingdom. They had stormed and sacked
the Castle of Monte di San Giovanni, putting the garrison to the
sword. "This," says Guicciardini with scornful bitterness, "was the
sum of the opposition and trouble which the King of France met with in
the conquest of a realm so noble and so splendid; in the defence of
which there was shown neither skill, nor courage, nor good counsel, no
desire for honour, no strength, no loyalty." The Neapolitans were
strongly posted at San Germano, the River Garigliano flowing like a
moat in front, and their flanks guarded by lofty mountains; but they
fled without a blow, before they even saw the French, leaving their
guns behind, and falling back on Capua.
At Capua, that ancient city of delights, which turned the strong
Carthaginian invaders into feeble voluptuaries, cowardice was fitly
followed up by treachery. The troops were under command of Gianjacopo
Triulzi, a captain of repute, "accustomed to make profession of
honour," observes Guicciardini, in his dry, contemptuous way. This
honourable captain seized the moment when his young master had been
called back to Naples by disorders in the city, to deliver over his
whole command to the French. Ferdinand hurried back; but arrived too
late. He returned with a few followers to Naples. The whole city was
in an uproar, the mob was already sacking the stables of the Castel
Nuovo. There was no more hope of stemming the tide. The young king,
brave, just, and personally popular, was overwhelmed by the misdeeds
of his house. The very guards of his palace were inclined to seize his
person; but he distracted their attention by admitting them to sack
the castle, and while they were quarrelling over their booty, he left
the castle by the secret postern towards the sea, and embarked on a
light galley bound for Ischia. There as he stood in the stern, and
through the black smoke of the burning ships, destroyed by his orders,
saw home and kingdom lost by the sins and dishonour of other men, he
repeated over and over, as long as he could still see Naples, those
words in which the psalmist tells us that except the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
But the Castle of the Egg still held out for him, and the French,
having seized a little tower on the height of Pizzofalcone, bombarded
the fortress from that eminence. King Charles the Eighth himself was
there watching the practice of his gunners, when two light galleys ran
across from Ischia, touching shore at the old mole, and from one of
them landed Don Federigo of Aragon, uncle of the King, who had dwelt
at the French Court, and knew both Charles and his barons. They took
him up to the height, and when the French King saw him coming, says
Passaro, that most gossipy of chroniclers, "he leapt down from his
horse and bowed down to the ground, and embraced Don Federigo with the
greatest pleasure, and took him by the hand and led him apart to a
spot beneath an olive tree, where they began to talk together, but of
what they said I know nothing, though many supposed that King Charles
was trying to treat with King Ferdinand, offering him great lordships
in France, but he would not, and Don Federigo left him and went back
to his ships."
A strange interview, surely, between King and Prince, while the French
gunners stood waiting with their matches burning, and the standard of
Aragon still flew over the enchanted castle. It fell ere long, and
the whole kingdom was in the hands of Charles. It is true he had not
the wit to keep it. But anyone who wants to know that story must seek
it in Guicciardini, and may live to thank me for referring him to one
of the greatest and most interesting writers whom the world can show.