172 clifford r. backman
Sicilian crown technically had not been the Sicilians’ to give; it belonged to Charles II
of Naples, whom the people had ousted in a popular rebellion. James had recognized
Charles’ claim to Sicily in order to secure papal support for his own ascendancy to the
throne in Barcelona, and had promised to aid Charles in removing his brother. After
delaying as long as he could, he was finally bowing to papal pressure and preparing his
attack force. James had dispatched Bernat to assure Frederick that his true allegiance
was to his brother, however, and that the aid he would deliver to Charles would be
scant and altogether ineffective. An important and delicate matter, obviously—one
that had important implications for Mediterranean politics.
While conferring with Frederick and the Sicilian parliament, Bernat heard of a large
merchant vessel laden with gold, silks, and spices from Alexandria and fast approach-
ing the Sicilian port of Siracusa. As Frederick himself described in a subsequent letter
to his brother,
Ambassador Bernat then rushed back on board the two galleys that you had assigned to
him for this very embassy and sailed with all speed for Siracusa. There he found the ship
in port, but it had already been unloaded, its riches and goods warehoused in the city.
(For full text see Appendix)Bernat—who was also, at the time, the admiral of the Crown of Aragon’s naval
forces—nonetheless seized the ship, its captain, and its crew, and informed the local
officials that he was holding them captive. He demanded that all the ship’s treasures
and cash be delivered to him, plus an extra sum to ransom the captain and sailors,
Rather than risk violence, the Siracusan officials handed over the entire treasure and
the ransom to Bernat—who then sailed directly back to Messina, where he calmly
resumed his negotiations with the royal court.
After Bernat’s diplomatic mission was completed, the Sicilian court complained
to the government in Barcelona about his brash action. The affront came neither
from the fact of the pirate raid nor from its tangential relation to a diplomatic
errand, but from Bernat’s use of unnecessary force. Worse still, this was not the first
time Bernat had acted with such audacity. Complaining that Bernat’s men had
issued gratuitous beatings to the captive crew and had gone so far as to steal the
trade ship itself, the court in Messina demanded compensation from King James
and urged him to keep a tighter rein on his hard-charging favorite. The Sicilian
demand, however, is remarkable for its calm, bureaucratic tone; it reads almost like
a bureaucratic form that needed only to have the names of the participants and the
list of items stolen inserted.
Juraj DaničićIn 1469, control of the Adriatic town of Senj, along the Croatian coast, was awarded
to the pirate army called the Uskoks. Senj, though small, dates to prehistoric times,
and the Romans had used it as a strategic stronghold against the Illyrians to the north.
A Roman Catholic diocese was established there in 1169, and for nearly 100 years it
was under the authority of the Templars. The Uskoks held it from 1469 to 1617. The
Uskoks were a Croatian fighting force with the dual mission of checking both Venetian
and Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. Senj being so small a site and caught between