THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN KINGDOMS 1200-1500that they were unable to save the kingdom ofjerusalem from
extinction at the hands of the Egyptians in 1291. Charles had
conquered Sicily by means of a crusade, and he never ceased
to take crusading seriously; his Balkan wars themselves were
part of a grander strategy which would supposedly culminate
in the Christian recovery of Jerusalem.TROUBLE AT HOME
Charles was not left free to concentrate on his eastern Medi-
terranean projects. The north Italian towns were not all in
Guelf hands; his successes were arousing some alarm among
those who were content to see him rule in southern Italy but
not to see him emerge as the imperial substitute in northern
Italy. Partly these changes reflect the instability of the town
governments, too: the Genoese, for instance, broke with
Charles when a Ghibelline faction took power in^1270 and
Charles gave active help to their exiled Guelf opponents.~:^1
And there were signs that the free communes resented some
of the financial impositions of the Angevins: the inhabitants
of Asti rapidly grew restive, and by 1273 they were involved
in a secret Ghibelline alliance which brought together sev-
eral north-west Italian cities and lords.~^4 A further reason for
Charles's loss of influence was the awareness of Pope Gregory
X that the long proposed limitations on Angevin power in
the former imperial lands of northern Italy had never seri-
ously been enforced. Gregory recognised Rudolf of Habsburg
as King of the Romans (1274); he invited Rudolf to travel to
Rome for the imperial coronation. But Rudolf not unnat-
urally attracted the loyalty of the Ghibellines in northern
Italy, and Gregory X openly encouraged all the Lombards
to act graciously towards the King of the Romans. Gregory
tried hard to show himself as peacemaker in northern Italy;
thus he suggested to Rudolf that he formally grant Charles
of Anjou the county of Piedmont as a fief, while intimat-
ing secretly that he thought this would be a disastrous act
of generosity.~' The reality was that Rudolf and Charles
remained deeply suspicious of one another.
- Leonard, Angioini, pp. 135-7, 141-2.
- Ibid., pp. 142-5.
- Runciman, Sicilian Vespers, p. 167.