THE RISE AND FALL OF CHARLES OF ANJOUKingdom of Aragon managed to dislodge Peter III.^47 His king-
dom in Spain was, like Sicily, technically a papal fief, and so
like Sicily the pope assumed he could assign it to another
prince. Aragon was formally conferred on Philip III's son
Charles ofValois (1284) but the French crusade met with dis-
aster; this will be discussed further in the following chapter.
In Italy, too, Peter managed by a combination of luck and
determination to hold and strengthen his position. Charles
of Anjou's son Charles, Prince of Salerno, was captured at sea;
the delighted Neapolitans took the news as an invitation to
riot against the French. Although Charles I arrived soon in
person to restore order, the exuberance of the Neapolitans
at his son's defeat revealed how limited was Angevin support
even in the areas which he himself controlled.^4 R
THE AFTERMATH OF THE REVOLT OF THE VESPERS
On 7 January 1285, his work incomplete, Charles I died at
Foggia. He is said to have spoken these words:Lord God, as I truly believe that You are my Saviour, I beg
You to have mercy on my soul. Just as You know that I took
the Kingdom of Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for
my own profit or covetousness, so therefore You will pardon
my sins.^49The Sicilian Vespers should not, in fact, be seen as a revolt
against Charles of Anjou so much as one against decades of
tight-fisted government, accentuated by the loss of capital
status of Palermo, and by the political aspirations of the
island's lawyers, petty nobles and great merchants, many of
whom were not deeply rooted in the island. They certainly
were not simply seeking to recover a romantic past in which
the island had been the home of varied communities and a
glorious royal court. The republican ambitions of the rebels
are so constantly emphasised that it comes as little surprise
4 7. J.R. Strayer, 'The crusade against Aragon, 1285', in J.R. Strayer, Medi-
eval statecraft and History (Princeton, 1971).- For the captivity of Charles of Salerno, see M.R. Toynbee, StLouis of
Toulouse (Manchester, 1929), pp. 49-54. - Villani's Chronicle, trans!. Rose E. Selfe and ed. P.H. Wicksteed (Lon-
don, 1906), p. 275, given in modernised French.