Chapter 3THE RISE AND FALL OF
CHARLES OF ANJOU
THE SEARCH FOR A CHAMPION
As early as 1252 the papacy had explored the possibility
of securing the services of Charles, Count of Anjou, brother
of King Louis IX, as leader of an invasion of southern Italy,
in order to displace the hated Hohenstaufen. As count of
Provence from the 1240s, Charles had access to considerable
financial resources; but first he needed to subdue opposition
in the county (notably that of Marseilles, which last revolted
in 1263).^1 His success in Provence meant that even the lords
of those parts of Italy closest to Provence, such as the count
of Saluzzo, began to acknowledge Charles as overlord. Not
merely had he acquired, after fifteen years of intensive work,
a wealthy Mediterranean domain; he had also begun to take
careful notice of events inside Italy, entering the same arena
as his future rival King Manfred.
Charles appears to have been driven by an acute ambi-
tion for power; and yet he saw himself also as God's agent,
sent to scourge the unfaithful. He could be ruthless to his
enemies: he hanged membenkof the greatest families of
Marseilles who opposed his rule. Yet he was also capable of
practical generosity: the community of Marseilles was granted
some commercial privileges by him, despite its past disloyalty.
A Genoese poet remarked that he was 'greedy even when he
was not a count, and became doubly so as king'; other poets,
even if in his pay, were far more positive. Not surprisingly,
l. For the early phase of Charles's career, see P. Herde, Karl I. von Anjou
(Stuttgart, 1979); Italian version: 'Carlo I d'Angio', Dizionario biografico
italiano, s.v.; also S. Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers. A history of the Medi-
terranean world in the thirteenth century (Cambridge, 1958).