Chapter X (5)

But the night of the same day is come, and all is not yet done. Not content with its triumph, the people demands that all Paris should honour it with a festival, whether it will or not. Down the Boulevards come the hordes again, slowly, and pausing as they came on: they are chanting, in measured notes, the words "_Des lampions! des lampions!_" amidst the cries of "Illuminate, or we break your windows! Down with the aristocrats!" Why all Paris should be illuminated, because it has pleased King People to make a demonstration, it would be too insolent to inquire. It is a fancy, a caprice--and autocrats will have fancies and caprices. It is the people's will; and, however fantastic or unreasonable, the will must be obeyed. "_Des lampions! des lampions!_" The monotonous chant is impressed upon the ears with stunning force, until you believe that you must retain it in your bewildered brain until your dying day. And as they come along, see how readily the will of the people is obeyed! There is no readiness so quick as the readiness of fear. Up and down, from above and from below, right and left, in long irregular lines, until the lines of light become more general and more regular--see the illumination bursts forth from the façades of all the houses. Windows are rapidly opened on every side, in sixth stories as on first floors, on every terrace, on every balcony; and lamps, lanterns, candles, pots of grease, all flaming, are thrust out at every one. See! how the light darts up and down like wildfire, dancing along the houses in the darkness of the night, with an increasing phosphoric flicker. You may mark the progress of the mob, as it goes farther on in dusky mass, and is lost to sight in the gloom, not only by the eternal monotonous cry that bids the inhabitants illuminate, coming from the distance, but by the gleaming track it leaves behind it like a gigantic, broad tail of fire. Presently all the Boulevards will be brightly lighted; and the gleams of the many thousand points of light will illuminate a thickly moving crowd of beings, that look like the uneasy spirits of some gloomy pandemonium. Fairy-like, however, has the magical illumination sprung forth at the people's bidding, and fairy-like does it flicker on all sides in the night. All the other principal streets are burning also on either side, like long bands of spangled stuff glittering in the sun. The Faubourg St Germain, suspected of legitimacy, has long since been the first to yield to threats, and demonstrate at its windows its supposed sympathy in a people's triumph; and to-morrow we shall be told by the republican papers, how Paris was in an ecstasy of joy--how all the population strove in zeal, with one accord, to _fêter le peuple généreux_--how spontaneous was this illumination of republican enthusiasm. Spontaneous was the feeling that dictated it, certainly; but it was the spontaneity of fear--the fear of the quietly-disposed in the face of a reckless and all-powerful mob!

Let us turn now from the glittering illuminated streets.

What is that unusual light, streaming dimly, and in blurred rays, across the damp night air, from the windows of the chapel of St Hyacinthe, attached to the church of the Assumption in the Rue St Honoré? In such a place, at such an hour, it has something ghastly and unearthly in its nature. And hark! from within there comes a noise of hoarse murmuring, which swells sometimes suddenly into discordant shouts, that are almost groans. The impression conveyed by both sight and sound is little like any that Paris, even on its murkiest nights, and under its most dismal veil, ever bestowed on you before. The unwary wanderer in Paris streets by night, in search of romance, may have had visions of theft, assassination, misery, crime, before his eyes, in the dark silent thoroughfares, but always visions of a most positive earthly nature; now he cannot help fancying himself transported into some old town of mystic Germany, with some fantastic, mysterious, unearthly, Hoffmannish deed going on near him. Are the headless dead, among the victims of a prior revolution, risen from their bloody vaults, to beckon unto their ghastly crew new victims of another? or are demons rejoicing in that once sanctified building, that the reign of men's most evil passions should have begun again in that disturbed and fermenting city? Such is the first impression the dim scene conveys. Do you ever remember such in other days? Let us follow those dark forms that are gliding across the court of the church, and mounting the steps of the illumined chapel. We enter; and the scene, although neither ghastly nor demoniac, is scarcely less strange than if spectres and demons had animated the interior. Faintly lighted by a few dripping candles is the long dismantled chapel; and damp, dreary, funereal-looking, is the whole scene. A dim crowd, in this "darkness visible," is fermenting, thronging, struggling, and pushing in the aisle. At the further end, in that vaulted semicircle where once stood the altar of the Lord, rises a complicated scaffolding behung with black cloth. With your imagination already excited, you may fancy the dark construction a death-scaffold for the execution of a criminal--it is only the death-scaffold of the social state of France. We are in the midst of a republican club. On the highest platform, occupying the space where was the altar, sit president and secretaries of the society--the new divinities of the consecrated building. Yes! the new divinities; for they arrogate to themselves the same right against which they declaimed as blasphemy in kings--the "right divine." You will not listen long before they tell you so; besides, their first maxim is, "_La voix du peuple est la voix de Dieu_." On the lower platform before them stand the orators. Hark to the doctrines that they promulgate for the subversion of all existing order in the country, amidst shouts and screams, and cries of violent opposition sometimes, but generally of applause. See! the haggard, lanky-haired republican youths, who have shouted out all their fury, give way to a quiet, respectable-looking old man, whose gray hairs glimmer faintly in the candle-light. A feeling of greater calm comes over you: you imagine, after all this "sound and fury, signifying nothing," his old head will pacify the hot, maddened blood of frantic boys. What does he say?--"Yes, the republic is one and indivisible--it is more than indivisible--it is GOD!" You shrink back disgusted. Can the rhapsody of republican fanaticism go further? Are these Christian men? or are they really evil unearthly beings in a human form? The confused scene around you is almost enough to make you think so. But real enough is the eternal clatter of the president's hammer on his table. He rolls his eyes furiously; he browbeats every orator who may not be of his own individual opinion, and dares to be "moderate" when he is "_exalté_;" and when your head aches--your heart has ached long ago--with the furious noise of the president's hammer, which you expect every moment to smash the table to pieces, you edge your way out of the dark fermenting crowd, and hurry forth, glad to breathe the purer air of heaven.

Ferment there is ever enough now in the streets of Paris by night: it ceases not. There are throngs pouring in and out of all the various thousand-and-one republican clubs of Paris, like wasps about their nest; but it is in the dim night air, and not in the bright sunlight of day--in dirty coats and smocks, and not with bright wings and variegated bodies. The wasp, too, stings only when he is attacked--the republican wasps seek to attack that they may sting. The _al fresco_ clubs also crowd the Boulevards, in the chance medley confusion of all men and all principles. But see! there is here again, in the Rue du Faubourg du Roule, a confusion of a still more complicated nature--the swarming in and out of the small district school-house is even more virulent than is usual. It is another night-scene, such as the old _habitué_ of Paris never witnessed, certainly. What is occurring? Let us crowd in with the others. What a scene of frantic confusion! A crowd springing upon benches, howling, screeching, yelling. At the further end of the low room is a ruined gallery, in which stands, surrounded by his friends, a man dressed in a red scarf, with the red cap of liberty on his head: he has a pike in his hand, and he vainly endeavours to make himself heard by the excited crowd. For some time you will be unable to comprehend the nature of the scene: at last you discover that an _ultra_ republican, of the most inflamed ideas, wants to establish a Jacobin club. A "Jacobin club!" There is terror in the very word, and in all the fearful recollections it conveys. But here the good sense of the artisans and small tradespeople of the district is against so appalling a reminiscence of a fatal time. "Down with the _bonnet rouge_!" they cry. "Down with the red scarf! No Jacobins! no Jacobins! their day is gone. No terror!" Thank God! there is some good sense still among the people. "Down with the president--away with him!" they cry. He doffs at last his blood-red Phrygian cap--they are not content: he doffs his blood-red scarf--they are not content: he lays aside his red cravat--they are not content: the pike--all--his very principles, probably, if they would have them. But no. They make a rush at last up into the "tribune;" they drive the would-be Jacobin and his friends down. In vain a small minority declares them all "aristocrats--paid agents of legitimacy"--I know not what republican names of reproach. The honest workmen thrust the party forth from their district school-house. They escort these objects of their contempt with ironical politeness to a side-door, bearing the candles they have seized from the tribune in their hands. The door is closed over the Jacobin party--a shout of triumph resounds. But in the street, before the school, is long a noisy throng. The good moon, although now and then obscured by passing clouds, shines kindly on it. She seems to smile more kindly upon those who have done a good deed, although a deed of suppressed violence, than on most of the distracted throngs she illumines in her course over the disturbed city. Good moon! would we could accept thy augury, and hope for holy calm! The scenes thou shinest upon cannot continue thus, 'tis true. A change must come--a change for the better _or the worse_. Heaven grant that our foreboding prove not true--that, when thou comest forth in thy fulness again, another month, thou mayest smile on better order, on calmer groups!

Before we part company, old _habitué_ of Paris, we must cast a glance at all the public buildings we pass. On all--public offices, columns, fountains, monuments, churches, dismantled palaces--on all alike floats the republican banner--on _all_ are painted in broad characters the words, "LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ!" "_Fraternité!_" Vain word, when each man grows day by day more and more bitterly his neighbour's enemy. "_Egalité!_" Vain word again, and vain word ever, spite of the efforts of the rulers of France to bring down to one level all the intelligence, the talent, the feelings, and passions of human nature, that Providence, in its holy wisdom, has made so different and so unequal. "_Liberté!_" Vainest word of all! In the present state of things, there is constraint in every scheme, tyranny in every tendency, despotism in every doctrine.

But enough. We will not begin to discuss and speculate upon the destinies of France. All this sketch would strive to do, is to convey an idea, however vague, of the present outward state of Republican Paris.

THE SPANIARD IN SICILY.[5]

[5] _Histoire de la Conquête de Naples par Charles d'Anjou, frère de
St Louis._ Par le Comte ALEXIS DE ST PRIEST, Pair de France. 4 vols.
8vo. Paris, 1848. Vol. iv.

The insatiable spider, who, after securing in her gossamer meshes ample store of flies for the day's consumption, again repairs, with unwarrantable greed, to the outer circles of the delicate network, in quest of fresh and superfluous victims, must not wonder if, on return to the heart of the citadel, she finds a rival Arachne busy in the larder, and either is expelled from her own cobweb, or suffers seriously in ejecting the intruder. At risk of offending his admiring biographer by so base a parallel, we compare Charles of Anjou to the greedy spider, and think him justly punished for his rash cupidity by the evils it entailed. This French count, who, although a king's brother, had no chance of a crown save through aggressive conquest, found himself, whilst still in the vigour of life, and as the result of papal favour, great good fortune, and of his own martial energy, sovereign of an extensive and flourishing realm. King of Southern Italy, Protector of the North, Count of Provence, Vicar of Tuscany, Senator of Rome, all-powerful with the Pope--whose word had then such weight that his friendship was worth an army, whilst from his malison men shrunk as from the dreaded and inextinguishable fire of Greece--Charles of Anjou was still unsatisfied. The royal spider had cast his web afar; it embraced wide possessions, with whose enjoyment he might well have been content, whose administration claimed his undivided attention. But on their verge an object glittered from which he could not avert his eyes, whose acquisition engrossed his every thought. "'Twas the clime of the East, 'twas the land of the sun," the gorgeous and romantic region so attractive to European conquerors. Doubtless, crusading zeal had some share in his oriental cravings; but ambition was his chief motor. He was willing enough to wrest Palestine from the infidel, but his plan of campaign led first to Constantinople. His notion was to seek at St Sophia's mosque the key of Christ's sepulchre.

Whilst thus looking abroad and meditating distant conquest, Charles treated too lightly the projects of a prince, less celebrated, but younger and more crafty than himself, who silently watched the progress of events, and skilfully devised how best he might derive advantage from them. Pedro of Arragon, who had married Mainfroy's daughter, Constance, cherished pretensions to the crown of the Sicilies; and, ever since the year 1279, he had been intriguing with the chiefs of the Ghibellines, with a view to an invasion of Charles's dominions. He spoke publicly of Sicily as the inheritance of his children, and did not dissimulate his animosity to its actual ruler. Whilst Charles prepared a fleet for his Eastern expedition, Don Pedro assembled another in the harbour of Portofangos, and kept it in constant readiness to sail, but none knew whither. Its destination was suspected, however, by some; and the Pope, who entertained no doubt concerning it, demanded to know Pedro's intentions, whilst Philip III. of France, at the request of his uncle, Charles of Anjou, sent ambassadors to the Arragonese monarch to make a similar inquiry. The answer given is variously stated by the archives and chronicles of the time, as evasive, prevaricatory, and even as a direct falsehood. It left no doubt upon Charles's mind that mischief was meant him by the Spaniard. "I told you," he wrote to Philip, "that the Arragonese was a contemptible wretch." Unfortunately, he carried his contempt of his wily foe rather too far; he would not believe that so small a potentate, "_un si petit prince_," would dare attack him in Italy, but took for a strategem the avowal of his intentions that appears to have escaped Pedro, and thought his views were directed in reality to Provence, whither he accordingly despatched his eldest son. Meanwhile, Don Pedro lingered in port, in hopes of an insurrection in Sicily, which John of Procida and others of his Sicilian adherents were fomenting by every means in their power, until his position became positively untenable, so pressed was he with questions by different European powers, and even by his own great vassals. One of these, a _rico hombre_, by name the Count of Pallars, having publicly asked him, in the name of the Arragonese nobility, the object of his voyage, and whither it would lead, Don Pedro replied: "Count, learn that if my left hand knew what my right was about to do, I would instantly cut it off." And still he clung to the Catalan coast, always on the eve of departure, but never lifting an anchor, until the tidings, so long and ardently desired, at last reached his car. They were unaccompanied, however, by the popular summons and proffered sceptre he had sanguinely and confidently anticipated. But we are outstripping events, and must revert to the eloquent opening of M. de St Priest's fourth volume.

"The name of Sicily is illustrious in history. If the reputation of a people had for sole foundation and measure the number of inhabitants, the extent of its territory, the duration of its influence, the Sicilians, impoverished by continual revolutions, decimated by sucessive tyrannies, more isolated from the general progress by their internal organisation, than from the mainland by their geographical position, would hold, perhaps, in the annals of the world, no more room than their island occupies on the map of Europe. But they need not fear oblivion: they have known glory,--and what glory touches, though but transitorily, for ever retains the mark. For individuals as for nations, it suffices that their lot be cast in those rare and splendid epochs whose contact ennobles every thing, which illuminate all things by their brilliancy, and stamp themselves indelibly upon the memory of the remotest generations. Happy who then lives, for he shall never die! Vast kingdoms, boundless regions, peopled by numerous races, powerful by material force, but intellectually vulgar, then yield in dignity and grandeur to the least nook of land, to some petty peninsula or remote island. Such was Greece, such also was Sicily, her rival, her competitor, and the asylum of her illustrious exiles.

"In the middle ages there was no vestige of the ancient Trinacria--of that land of art and learning, the home of every branch of human knowledge--of that politic and warlike power which yielded to Rome and Carthage only when she had made them dearly pay a long-disputed victory--of that Sicily, in short, which Plato taught and Timoleon governed--which Archimedes defended and Theocritus sang. Formerly the whole island was covered with cities. In the thirteenth century, most of these had disappeared. Agrigentum could boast but the ruins of its colossus and temples. Syracuse still retained some shadow of past greatness: she was not yet reduced, as now, to the quarries whence she sprung; she had not yet become less than a ruin; but her splendour was extinct. Catania, overthrown by earthquakes, found it difficult again to rise. Nevertheless other Sicilian towns preserved their importance, and Christendom could not boast cities handsomer and more populous--more abounding in wealth and embellished by monuments--than commercial Messina and kingly Palermo."

These two cities were at the time referred to the abode of luxury and pleasure. Messina, at once the market and the arsenal of the island, "_portus et porta Siciliæ_," as Charles of Anjou called it, was the principal posting-house upon the road from Europe to Asia, and was enriched by the constant passage of pilgrims and crusaders. Sumptuary laws were deemed necessary to repress the extravagance of a population whose women wore raiment of silk, then more precious than silver and gold, with tiaras upon their heads, encrusted with pearls and diamonds and other precious stones. Asia and Europe were there united; Catholics and Mussulmans lived side by side in peace and amity. In the streets, the Arab's burnous and the turban of the Moor moved side by side with priestly robe and cowl of monk. The pleasures there in vogue were no longer the simple and innocent ones vaunted by Virgil and Theocritus. It was a hotbed of debauchery, frequented by pirates, gamblers, and courtesans--a mart of commerce, whither traders of all nations repaired. Palermo, on the other hand, was the residence of kings. The Normans established there the seat of their power, inhabiting it constantly; and although the wandering life of Frederick of Swabia denied him a fixed abode, he loved Palermo the Happy, and dwelt there whenever able. Very different were the predilections of Charles of Anjou. He disliked Sicily as much as he loved Naples. By an effect, perhaps, of that love of contrast often found implanted in the human breast, his stern and sombre gaze took pleasure in the bright and joyous scenery of his continental dominions, which it could not derive from the more sad and serious beauties of the opposite island. Moreover, he held the Sicilians disaffected to his rule, and his hand was heavy upon them. Heavier still, doubtless, were those of his delegates and officers, who presumed upon his known dislike, and upon his preoccupation with schemes of foreign aggrandisement, to exceed the measure of oppression he prescribed and authorised. A very different course should have been adopted with a nation already abundantly prepared to detest their French masters. The antagonism of character was alone sufficient cause for mutual aversion. There was no point of sympathy between conquerors and conquered--nothing that could lead to friendly amalgamation. On the one hand, reserve, dissimulation, silence; on the other, an indiscreet frankness, vivacity, and noise. On both sides, a strong attachment to their native country, and conviction of its superiority over all others--a strong partiality for its language, usages, and customs--a sincere contempt for all differing from them. M. de St Priest, who strives earnestly, but not very successfully, to vindicate the memory of his countrymen of the thirteenth century, is still too veracious a historian not to admit that they treated with shameful insolence and rudeness a people whom the kindest treatment would with difficulty have induced to look kindly upon their conquerors. He is painfully anxious to make out a good case for those he calls his "brothers," (very old brothers by this time,) but succeeds so little to his satisfaction, that he is fain to throw himself on the mercy of his readers, by asking the rather illogical question, whether the crime of a few individuals is to be imputed to a nation, or _even to a part of a nation_? Then he enumerates some of the grievances which brought on the massacre known as the Vespers. "It is certain," he says, "that Charles of Anjou, not by himself, but by military chiefs, to whom he abandoned himself without reserve, abused of the means necessary to retain in subjection a people hostile to his cause, and whom that very excess of oppression might drive to shake off an iron yoke. He abused of the feudal prerogative which gave him right of controlling the marriages of the vassals of the crown, by compelling rich heiresses to marry his Provençal adherents, or by retaining in forced celibacy noble damsels whose inheritance the royal exchequer coveted." This is pretty well for a beginning, and enough to stir the bile of a more patient race than the Sicilians, even in an age when such acts of feudal tyranny were less startling and odious than they now would seem. But this is merely the first item. Charles also abused of an old law that existed both in Sicily and Spain, and which has been but recently abolished in the latter country. The law of the _mesta_ gave the sheep of the royal domain right of range of all the pastures in the country, no matter who the proprietors. With this vexatious privilege Charles combined exorbitant monopolies. He compelled the rich landholders to take on lease his horses, flocks, cattle, bees, and fruit-trees, and to account to him for them every year at a fixed rate, even when disease decimated the animals, and the sirocco had withered and uprooted the trees and plants. And nothing was less rare, M. de St Priest acknowledges, than the personal ill-treatment of those who delayed to pay the impost, often twice levied upon the same persons, under pretence of chastising their unwillingness. Imprisonment, confiscation, and the bastinado, punished their indigence. The nefarious tricks played with the currency completed the measure of misery poured out upon the unhappy Sicilians. Like Alphonso X. of Castile, and most of the potentates of the period, Charles coined pieces of money with much alloy, which he named, after himself, _Carlini d'oro_, and exchanged them by force against the augustales, an imperial coinage of the purest gold. The public voice was loud against such tyranny and abuse, but it reached not the arrogant ears of the Beaumonts, the Morhiers, and other haughty Frenchmen who successively governed Sicily. The Bishop of Patti and brother John of Messina, complained to the Pope in presence of Charles himself. The king heard them in silence, but, after the pontifical audience, he had his accusers seized. Brother John was thrown into a dungeon, and the bishop only escaped prison by flight.

Besides the heavy griefs above stated, other grounds of complaint, more or less valid, were alleged against Charles I. Amongst these, he was accused of persecuting highwaymen and banditti with overmuch rigour. The nations of southern Europe have ever had a sneaking tenderness for the knights of the road. He was also reproached with the abolition of certain dues, unjustly exacted in the ports of Patti, Cefalu, and Catania, by the bishops of those towns. M. de St Priest brands the Sicilians as barbarians for thus quarrelling with their own advantage. But it is a fair query how far Charles made the diminution of episcopal exactions a pretext for the increase of royal ones, and whether the draconic system adopted for the repression of evil-doers, may not have been occasionally availed of for the oppression of the innocent. Then the Sicilian nobles, lovers of pomp, show, and external distinctions, grumbled at the absence of a court; and this was in fact so weighty a grievance, that its removal might perhaps have saved Sicily for Charles, or at any rate have retarded the revolt, and given him time to prosecute his designs on the East. Palermo might have been conciliated by sending the Prince of Salerno to live there. A gay court, and the substitution of the heir to the throne for obscure and detested governors, would have made all the difference. Charles did not think of this, and moreover he had no great affection for his eldest son, "a prince of monkish piety, timid and feeble, although brave; a dull and pale copy of his uncle Louis IX., and whose faults and virtues were not altogether of a nature to obtain his father's sympathy. When speaking of the Prince of Salerno, the King of Naples sometimes called him '_That Priest!_'" The strongest motive of discontent, however, the most real, and which placed the nobility and higher classes amongst the foremost of the disaffected, was the bestowal of all public offices upon foreigners. At the beginning of his reign Charles had left to Neapolitans and Sicilians all fiscal and judicial posts, lucrative to the holders and productive to him; the strangers who accompanied him, ignorant of the country, would not have known how to squeeze it properly, as did Gezzolino della Marra, Alaimo de Lentini, Francesco Loffredo, and other natives. In these he reposed confidence, and, even after the defeat of Conradin, he still left Sicilians in the places of _Maestri razionali_, _Segreti_, _Guidizieri_, &c. But about 1278, we find Italian names disappearing from the list, and replaced almost entirely by those of Provençals and Frenchmen. At that date there seems to have been a clean sweep made of the aborigines. Such a measure was sure to cause prodigious dissatisfaction and hatred to the government. Those who depended on their places were reduced to beggary, and those who had private fortunes regretted a state of things which swelled these, besides giving them influence and power.

To the latter class belonged Alaimo de Lentini, one of the richest and best born of the Sicilian barons, possessed of great political and military talents. He had served Mainfroy, had quarrelled with and been proscribed by him, and then, espousing the interests of Charles, had shown himself an implacable persecutor of his countrymen. His good qualities were frequently clouded and neutralised by his versatility and evil passions; his life was a mingled yarn of noble actions and frequent treachery. Left to himself, he might have bequeathed a higher reputation to his descendants, but he was led astray by the evil influence of his wife. He was already in the decline of life when he married this woman, who was of plebeian birth and Jewish origin, but the widow of Count Amico, one of the principal nobles of Sicily. Her name was Maccalda Scaletta, and soon she obtained complete empire over Alaimo. Of dissolute morals, ironical wit, and of an insolent and audacious character, that feared nothing and braved every thing, Maccalda's youth had been more adventurous than reputable, and amongst other pranks she had rambled over all Sicily in the disguise of a Franciscan monk. Her love of pleasure was not more insatiable than her vanity, and she eagerly desired to figure in the first rank at a court. So long as Alaimo retained the high office of chief magistrate of Sicily, her gratified pride allowed him to remain a faithful subject: but towards the year 1275, Charles of Anjou suspected and dismissed him, and thenceforward Alaimo, instigated by his wife, was the mortal enemy of the French. He joined the intrigue set on foot by John of Procida in favour of the King of Arragon, and laboured efficiently in the cause of his new patron.

M. de St Priest does not himself narrate the oft-told tale of the Sicilian Vespers, but gives the accounts of Saba Malaspina and Bartolomeo de Neocastro, asserting that of the former writer to be the most correct, as it is certainly the most favourable to the French. He then enters into a long argument on points of no great importance; his logic being principally directed to show that if the French fell an easy prey to the infuriated Sicilians, it was through no lack of courage on their part, but because they were unarmed, surprised, and overmatched. He also takes some useless trouble to upset the story generally accredited of the immediate cause of the massacre, namely, an insult offered to a bride of high birth. The spirit of exaggerated nationality, apparent in this part of his book, stimulates his ingenuity to some curious hypotheses. It is a French failing, from which the best and wisest of that nation are rarely quite exempt, never to admit a defeat with temper and dignity. There must always have been treachery, or vastly superior numbers, or some other circumstance destructive to fair play. Not a Frenchman from Strasburg to Port Vendres, but holds, as an article of faith, that, on equal terms, the "_grande nation_" is unconquered and invincible. M. de St Priest seems to partake something of this spirit, so prevalent amongst his countrymen, and actually gets bitter and sarcastic about such a very antiquated business as the Sicilian Vespers. "Who does not recognise in this story (that of the insulted lady) an evident desire to exalt the deed of the Sicilians of the thirteenth century by assimilating it to analogous traits, borrowed from Roman history? Who does not here distinguish a Lucretia, or, better still, a Virginia; a Tarquin, or an Appius? The intention is conspicuous in the popular manifestos that succeeded the event. In these, reminiscences of antiquity abound. The heroes of the Vespers sought to make themselves Romans as quickly as possible, lest they should be taken for Africans." And so on in the same strain. "It is clearly seen," says the French historian in another place, "that the first outrage upon that day was perpetrated by the Sicilians, and not by the French; we behold brave and unsuspicious soldiers, inspired by good-humoured gaiety and deceitful security, barbarously stricken, in consequence of demonstrations, very indiscreet certainly, but whose inoffensive character is deposed to by a contemporary, hostile to the French and to their chief." The facts of the case are told in ten words. By a long course of injustice and oppression the French had dug and charged, beneath their own feet, a mine which a spark was sufficient to ignite. It is immaterial what hand applied that spark. Enough that the subsequent explosion involved the aggressors in universal destruction, and freed Sicily from its tyrants. The statement of Saba Malaspina is not, however, altogether so exculpatory of the French, on the unimportant point of ultimate provocation, as might be inferred from some of M. de St Priest's expressions. "When the Signor Aubert (Herbert) d'Orleans governed Sicily," says the chronicler, "several citizens of Palermo, of both sexes, went out of the town to celebrate the festival of Easter. Some young strangers joined them, and perhaps amongst those were many who carried weapons, concealing them on account of the edict forbidding them to be borne under very severe penalties. Suddenly some French varlets, probably servants of the justiciary of the province, associated themselves with the public rejoicings, less, however, to share than to trouble them. Would to heaven they had never been born, or had never entered the kingdom! At sight of all this crowd which danced and sang, they joined the dancers, took the women by the hands and arms, (more, perhaps, than was decent and proper,) ogling the handsomest, and provoking, by significant words, those whose hands or feet they could not press. At these excessive familiarities, which may be said, however, to have been inspired only by gaiety, several young men of Palermo, and certain exiles from Gaéta, lost their senses so far as to assail the foreigners with injurious words, such as the French do not easily suffer. Then said the latter amongst themselves, 'It is impossible but that these pitiful _Patarins_[6] have arms about them, otherwise they would never venture such insolent language; let us see if some of them have not concealed swords, or, at any rate, poignards or knives.' And they began to search the Palermitans. Then these, very furious, threw themselves upon the French with stones and weapons, for a great number came up who were armed. The varlets fell for the most part stoned and stabbed to death. Thus does play engender war. The entire island revolted, and every where was heard the cry, 'Death to the French!'" The details of the ensuing massacre are as horrible as they are well known; and M. de St Priest passes lightly over them. Men, women, and children, soldiers and priests, all fell before the vengeful steel of the insurgents. The little fortress of Sperlinga alone afforded shelter to the fugitive Frenchmen, giving rise to the proverb still current in Sicily, "_Sperlinga negó_."[7] Messina, however, at first took no part in the movement, and continued tranquil in the possession of a French garrison. This was cause for great alarm to the Palermitans, already somewhat embarrassed with their rapid victory and sudden emancipation. Messina hostile, or even neuter, nothing was done, and Sicily must again fall into the vindictive hands of Charles of Anjou. As usual, in Sicilian revolutions, Palermo had given the impulse, but a satisfactory result depended on the adhesion of Messina. Flattering overtures were made by the insurgents to the Messinese; but the latter still hesitated, and, far from joining the massacre, sent six galleys to blockade Palermo, and armed two hundred cross-bowmen to reduce the fortress of Taormine. The effort was in vain. Instead of attacking Taormine, the bowmen re-entered Messina, and pulled down the _fleurs-de-lis_, whilst the inhabitants of Palermo, upon the appearance of the galleys, hoisted the Messinese cross beside their own flag, and fraternised with the fleet that came to block their port. This completed the revolution, and Messina also had its massacre. The viceroy, Herbert of Orleans, finding it impossible to hold out longer in his fortress of Mattagriffone, capitulated, and embarked for Calabria with five hundred Frenchmen, amidst the menacing demonstrations of a furious mob. Sicily was declared a republic, and a deputation was sent to the Pope, to place it under his protection. An attempt made by the Arragonese party to obtain the preference for Don Pedro was premature, and consequently failed.

[6] "Is it true that virgins, torn from their mothers' arms, were the
habitual victims of the conqueror's brutality?... Is it true that,
when a Frenchman met a Sicilian on horseback, he made him dismount,
and forced him to follow upon foot, however long the road? Is it true,
that the foreigners could not find themselves with the people of the
country without insulting them with the odious name of _Patarins_, an
insult which the Sicilians repaid with usury, by styling them
_Ferracani_?"--_St Priest_, vol. iv. pp. 23, 24.

[7] Since augmented into the Latin line--

"Quod placuit Siculis, sola Sperlinga negavit."

Charles of Anjou was with the Pope at Montefiascone, when news reached him of the revolt and massacre at Palermo. His first emotion was a sort of religious terror, which expressed itself in the following singular prayer, recorded by Villani and all the historians:--"Lord!" he said, "you who have raised me so high, if it be your will to cast me down, grant at least that my fall be gradual, and that I may descend step by step." Although he as yet knew nothing but the insurrection of a single town, he seems to have beheld the shadow cast before by the evil day at hand. He left Montefiascone, having obtained from Martin IV., whose indignation equalled his own, a bull of conditional interdiction against the Sicilians, should they not return to their allegiance. The Pope also sent Cardinal Gerard of Parma to Sicily, to bring about the submission of the rebels. But at Naples Charles learned the insurrection of Messina, and his fury knew no bounds. Neocastro and other chroniclers represent him as roaring like a lion; his eyes full of blood, and his mouth of foam, whilst he furiously bit the baton he bore in his hand--a favourite practice of his when angry and excited. After writing to his nephew, Philip of France, for a subsidy and five hundred men, he set sail himself with his queen, Margaret of Burgundy, at the head of the formidable armament fitted out for the conquest of the East. There were two hundred vessels bearing an army composed of French and Provençals, of Lombards and Tuscans, including fifty young knights of the noblest families in Florence, and (a strange spectacle in the host of Mainfroy's conqueror) a thousand Lucera Saracens. The total was fifteen thousand cavalry and sixty thousand infantry, and the rendezvous was at Catona, a Calabrian town opposite Messina, where, by the king's orders, forty galleys already awaited him.

Undaunted by the formidable array, the Messinese prepared a vigorous defence, repairing their walls, barricading their port with beams, and even assuming the offensive with their galleys, which chased some of the King's into the port of Scylla. Yet a bold and sudden assault would probably have taken the town, and the reduction of all Sicily must necessarily have followed. This course was urged by Charles's principal officers; but he preferred the advice of the Count of Acerra, who, from cowardly or perfidious motives, urged him to wait the result of the legate's negotiations with the rebels. This was a fatal error. Delay was destruction. At the very moment it would well have availed him, Charles abdicated his usual fiery impetuosity in favour of temporising measures. Encamping four leagues to the south of Messina, he lost precious time in idle skirmishes. Whilst he burned their woods and vines, the Messinese raised fortifications, and named Alaimo de Lentini captain of the people, the chief office in the new republic. Whilst Alaimo took charge of the defence of Messina, his wife Maccalda, with helm on head and cuirass upon breast, armed and valiant like another Pallas, marshalled the garrison of Catania.

Hostilities were about to commence when Cardinal Gerard of Parma reached Messina. Alaimo received him with the greatest respect, and offered him the keys of the town in token of liege homage to the holy see. The Cardinal replied by a vague offer of pardon if they submitted to the King. "At the word submission, Alaimo snatched the keys from the legate's hand, and exclaimed in a voice of thunder, 'Sooner death than a return to the odious French yoke!' After this theatrical burst, probably a piece of mere acting on the part of a man who had served under so many banners, serious negotiations began." It was impossible to agree. The exasperation of the Messinese reached a height that terrified the legate, who made his escape, after placing the city under interdict. The proposals he took to Charles were "the immediate raising of the siege, and return of the army to the Continent; taxes as in the time of William the Good; and, finally, a formal engagement that the island should no longer be garrisoned by French or Provençals, but by Italians or Latins. "If these conditions are refused," said the bold Messinese, "we will resist till death, though we should eat our children!" The Cardinal admonished Charles of the prudence of accepting these terms, hinting that it might be less necessary to observe them, when the island was again in his hands. Charles was too angry and too honourable to listen to the jesuitical insinuation, and war was the word. The legate returned to Rome, in despair at the hot-headed monarch's intractability. Charles's knights and officers were clamorous for an instant assault; but he preferred a blockade, not wishing, he said, to punish the innocent with the guilty. M. de St Priest discredits the motive, and attributes such unusual forbearance on the part of the Lion of Anjou to the fear of losing, by the indiscriminate pillage that would follow a successful assault, the great riches Messina was known to contain.

The foe's decision published, Messina threw away the scabbard. A life of freedom, or a glorious death, was the unanimous resolve of its heroic inhabitants. Every man became a warrior; the very women gave example of the purest patriotism and sublimest devotedness. "Matrons who, the preceding day, clothed themselves in gold and purple, young girls, brought up in the lap of luxury and ease--all, without distinction of rank or riches, with bare feet and dresses tucked up to the knee, bore upon their shoulders stones and fascines, and heavy baskets of bread and wine. They helped the labourers, supplied them with food, attended to all that could increase their physical and moral strength. From the summit of the ramparts they hurled missiles on the besiegers. They held out their children to their husbands, bidding them fight bravely, and save their sons from slavery and death. _Oh! it was a pity_, says a song still popular in Sicily, _great pity was it to see the ladies of Messina carrying chalk and stones._"

"Deh com' egli é gran pictate
Delle donne di Messina,
Veggiendo iscapighate,
Portando pietre e calcina."

Not long ago a wall was still shown, built by these heroines. The names of two of them, Dina and Clarentia, have been handed down to posterity. Whilst Dina upset whole squadrons by hurling stones from warlike engines, Clarentia, erect upon the ramparts, sounded the charge with a brazen trumpet. Such incidents gave a fine field to the superstitious and imaginative; and persons were not wanting who affirmed they had seen the Virgin Mary hover in white robes above the city, whilst others maintained she had appeared to Charles of Anjou's Saracens.

The great assault was on the 14th September 1282. "You have no need to fight with these boors and burgesses," said Charles to his knights; "you have merely to slaughter them." He undervalued his foe. In vain did his chivalry advance against the town like a moving wall of steel; in vain did his fleet assail the port. Beams and chains, hidden under water, checked and destroyed his shipping; men and horses fell beneath the missiles of the besieged. One of these would have killed Charles, had not two devoted knights saved him. They covered the King with their bodies, and fell crushed and lifeless at his feet. On the side of the Sicilians, Alaimo displayed great military talents and personal courage. He was every where to be seen, animating his men by his example. When the French were finally repulsed with terrible loss, and compelled to raise the siege, Charles tried to corrupt Alaimo by immense offers, and went so far as to send him his signature upon a blank paper. The Sicilian resisted the temptation--rejecting treasures and dignities, to yield, at a later period, to the influence of a treacherous woman.

Meanwhile the deputation charged to offer Sicily to the Pope, returned with a refusal. Martin IV. would have nothing to say to them. He would have better served Charles by acceptance. Subsequently he might have restored the island to the King. As it was, he drove the Sicilians into the snares of the aristocratic league that supported Pedro of Arragon. The republican government was unequal to the task it had undertaken, and the Pope's rejection of the protectorate threw them into great perplexity. A meeting was held to debate the course to be adopted; and the Spanish party, schooled by former failure, achieved a decisive triumph. Its leaders remained mute; but an old man, of such obscure condition that his name was not exactly known, harangued the assemblage, recalled the memory of the house of Swabia, reminded his countrymen that Constance was the legitimate heiress to the crown, and proposed to offer it to her husband, the King of Arragon, then at the port of Collo, on the coast of Africa, near Constantina. The words were scarcely spoken, when a thousand voices extolled the wisdom of the speaker, and ambassadors were immediately named from the people of Palermo to the King of Arragon. Don Pedro had lingered at Portofangos, in expectation of such a summons, for more than a month after the insurrection at Palermo; but finding the secret negotiations of John of Procida with the chiefs of the Sicilian aristocracy less immediately successful than he had hoped, he had sailed for the coast of Africa, on pretext of interfering in a quarrel between the King of Constantina and two of his brothers, but in reality to be nearer the stage on which he hoped soon to play an important part. He affected surprise at the arrival of the Sicilian envoys, who threw themselves at his feet, bathed in tears and dressed in deep mourning, and in a studied harangue implored him to reign over Sicily, and relieve them from the intolerable yoke of the Count of Provence. They said nothing of Conradin's glove,--the anecdote, M. de St Priest says, not having been yet invented.

Don Pedro delayed reply till he should have consulted his principal vassals. Most of them urged him not to engage in a hazardous enterprise, that would draw upon him the displeasure of the King of France; "but to be content with what he already possessed, without seeking to acquire what would assuredly be valiantly defended. Don Pedro heard their objections in silence, and broke up the council, merely announcing that the fleet would sail next day, without saying whether for Catalonia or Sicily. According to one account, scarcely credible, and bearing strong resemblance to a popular report, he declared the wind should decide his destination. The wind blew for Sicily, much to the discontent of some of the barons, and to the secret and profound joy of the King. After a prosperous voyage of only three days' duration, Don Pedro landed at the port of Trapani. The inhabitants received him as a liberator, and he proceeded to Palermo, where his stay was one unbroken triumph." He did not remain there long. He was as active and indefatigable as Charles of Anjou; like him sleeping little, and rising before the sun. He resolved to march to the succour of Messina, and to intercept the French army's communications with Calabria. He sent forward two noble Catalan knights to warn the King of Naples off the island, with the alternative of war should he refuse. A judge from Barcelona accompanied them,--it being the custom of the time to compose such embassies partly of military men, and partly of persons learned in the law. The envoys were courteously received in the French camp, but their lodging did not correspond with their reception. Either through contempt or through negligence, they were quartered in a church, without bed or chair, and had to sleep upon straw. At night they received two jugs of black wine, six loaves equally dark coloured, two roasted pigs, and an enormous quantity of bacon-soup. Coarse fare and hard couch did not, however, prevent their sleeping soundly, and repairing next morning to the royal presence, richly attired in fine cloth lined with vair. Charles, who was unwell, received them reclining under curtains of magnificent brocade, and with a little stick between his teeth, according to his habit. He listened patiently whilst the chief of the embassy summoned him to evacuate the island, and replied, after a few minutes' reflection, that Sicily belonged neither to him nor to the King of Arragon, but to the holy see. "Go then," he said, "to Messina, and bid the people of that city declare an eight days' truce, for the discussion of necessary things." This the ambassadors agreed to do, but got a rude reception from Alaimo, who would not credit their quality of Arragonese envoys, when he heard them advocate a truce. Don Pedro was no longer at liberty to treat with Charles, even had he wished it: the Sicilians, at least that party of them that had invoked his aid, had done so for their own ends, and would permit no transaction. The ambassadors returned to Charles and announced their ill success, and the King bade them repose till next morning, when he would speak further with them. But the next morning they learned that he and the Queen had left the camp during the night, and had embarked for Calabria. Many historians have severely blamed this retreat; M. de St Priest vindicates its wisdom and propriety. Defection was increasing in Charles's army, weary of a fruitless siege that had lasted seventy-four days, and he was in danger of being cut of from Calabria; for although he still had his fleet, it consisted of heavy, unwieldy transports, and was very unmanageable. Soon after his departure from Sicily it was destroyed and captured by the Arragonese fleet. He began also to form a juster estimate of his formidable adversary, whose politic and generous conduct contrasted with his own severity, often pushed to barbarity. He resolved to try a system of conciliation with the Sicilians; and, being too proud and stiff-necked to adopt it in person, he sent his son Charles, Prince of Salerno, to carry it out. "It was necessary to find a pretext in order honourably to absent himself. The customs of the time furnished him with one. He did not show himself their slave, as has often been said, but made them serve his purpose, and skilfully used them to mask the difficulties of his position. It was not, then, from a Quixotic and foolish impulse, unbecoming at his age, but with a political object,--in order to escape from the scene of his disappointments and defeats, and to draw his enemy from that of his victories and triumphs,--that he took the resolution to challenge Pedro of Arragon to single combat." A friar bore the cartel; Pedro accepted it; and this strange duel between two powerful kings was fixed to take place in a plain near Bordeaux, an English town, as the chroniclers call it, Bordeaux then belonging to Edward I. of England. Pending the preliminary negotiations and arrangements for this combat, hostilities continued, and the results were all in favour of Don Pedro. His natural son, Don Jaime Pâris, or Peres, admiral of the Catalan fleet, made a night excursion from Messina to Catona, upon the opposite coast, surprising and massacring five hundred French soldiers. Carried away by youthful ardour, he then pushed on to Reggio; but fell into an ambush, and lost a dozen men. Although the final result of the enterprise was highly satisfactory, Pâris returning victor with a rich booty, his father, indignant that his orders had been overstepped, spared his life only at the entreaties of his courtiers, degraded and banished him, and gave the command of the fleet to Ruggiero de Lauria. This was a lucky hit. Lauria, although violent and perfidious by character, was of courage as great as his good fortune was invariable. Once at the head of the Arragonese fleet, the success of Don Pedro ceased to be doubtful.