SICILY Al\D SOUTHERN ITALY IN AN AGE OF DISORDERnot long after. In Naples as in Hungary, it had been a short
reign; and, though he had shown ability and ruthlessness in
winning two crowns in quick succession, he had underestim-
ated the sheer persistence of opposition among the barons of
both Naples and Hungary. Other claimants still existed, and
the assumption that he could rule both Hungary and south-
ern Italy at a time of extreme disorder in Italy, of schism in
the papacy, and of uncertainty in the central European mon-
archies indicates a lack of practical political wisdom.
Against the brief gain of dominion in Hungary, with all
the vast material resources that the central European king-
doms could offer, must be set the loss of Provence, which
remained in the hands of the dukes of Anjou, providing
them with a power base from which to plan further invasons
of the Regno. Urban VI died soon after trying to launch his
own much vaunted invasion of the Regno, but in^1390 the
new pope, Boniface IX, accepted the claims of Charles III's
son Ladislas to the Neapolitan throne. For nine years Louis
II and Ladislas effectively divided the Regno between them-
selves; and, as in fourteenth-century Sicily, the arbiters of
power were the barons, notably the house of Sanseverino,
which led the pro-Provenpl faction finally into the Durazzo
camp in July 1399.
Ladislas's major achievement was that he at last addressed
the problem of baronial power in the Regno, turning on
those such as the Sanseverino and the Ruffo (in Calabria)
who had shown sympathy for the claims of Louis II of Anjou.
His brutal methods, including the mass arrest of the Marzano
at a wedding feast, are reminiscent of the more famous
machinations of Ferrante I of Naples nearly a century later.
Even so, the threat from the duke of Anjou remained con-
stant, punctuated by startling victories that assured him
briefly of ascendancy in the papal states and posed a severe
threat to Florence. Ladislas's death in^1414 thus marked the
end of a period of high adventurism in which the house of
Anjou-Provence had again and again failed to displace the
Durazzeschi, even though they frequently occupied large por-
tions of the Regno and won the support of a fickle baronage,
which had worked out that its best interest lay in a weakening
of royal authority.^15
- A. Cutolo, Re Ladislao di Angi6-Durazzo, 2 vols (Milan, 1936).