^44 



SICILIES, THE TWO. 



of Messina, under the name of the kingdom of the 

 Two Sicilies. This union of Naples and Sicily 

 continued 150 years. Palermo was his residence. 

 Each country preserved its existing laws. In 

 Naples however, besides the ancient Lombard laws, 

 the French feudal law was also introduced. To 

 the pope, as lord paramount of Naples, a tribute 

 was paid of a palfrey and a bag of ducats. When 

 William, grandson of Roger II., c.ied, in 1 189, the 

 race of Tancred became extinct. The German 

 emperor, Henry VI., of the house of Hohenstaufen, 

 now claimed the right of succession to the throne 

 of Naples and Sicily, as belonging to his wife, 

 Constantia, the daughter of Roger II. The Sicili- 

 ans, however, detested the German dominion, and 

 elected Tancred, natural son of Roger, to be their 

 king, and, after his early death, made choice of his 

 son, William III., a minor. Henry VI. then en- 

 tered the kingdom a second time, with more suc- 

 cess than during the lifetime of the brave Tancred, 

 and, by horrid cruelties, maintained possession of it. I 

 His memory was held in abhorrence by the Sicili- ! 

 ans ; but they, nevertheless, allowed his son Fre- ! 

 deric II., a child three years old, to succeed him, 

 in 1 1 97. During the reign of this distinguished 

 emperor, Naples was made the capital. The neigh- 

 bourhood of the powerful imperial house was dis- 

 agreeable to the popes, and pope Urban IV. granted 

 the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, on the death of 

 Conrad IV. (1254), to Charles of Anjou, brother 

 of Louis IX., of France, who caused the legitimate 

 heir, Conradin of Suabia (1268), to be beheaded. 

 Sicily, however, freed herself, in 1282, from the 

 oppressions of the French (see Sicilian Vespers'), 

 by the aid of king Peter III., of Arragon, whom 

 Conradin had made his heir, and whose wife was a 

 daughter of Manfred, natural son of the emperor 

 Frederic II. Sicily now remained separated from 

 Naples for 160 years. She acknowledged Peter 

 III., of Arragon, as her sovereign, who left this 

 kingdom to his younger son James. The kings of 

 Arragon withdrew the island from the feudal sway 

 of the pope, and Sicily was united to the Spanish 

 monarchy until the time of the Spanish war of suc- 

 cession. In Naples, the house of Anjou maintained 

 itself, and Charles bound himself to pay an annual 

 tribute to the pope of 8000 ounces of gold, and 

 every three years to send a white horse to Rome. 

 His great-grandson, Charles Robert, king of Naples, 

 was made king of Hungary by the Hungarian diet, 

 in 1307. After the death of king Robert, in 1343, 

 under the reign of queen Joanna I., his grand- 

 daughter, great disturbances arose in Naples; for 

 pope Urban VI. crowned Charles of Durazzo, of 

 the house of Anjou-Naples in Hungary, as king of 

 Naples. He caused queen Joanna to be suffocated 

 in 1382, and united the kingdoms of Hungary and 

 Naples; but in the year 1386, he was assassinated 

 in Hungary. His son Ladislaus maintained a suc- 

 cessful struggle for the throne of Naples with Louis 

 of Anjou, the adopted son of Joanna. He took 

 possession of Rome, and was on the point of unit- 

 ing the whole of Italy into one kingdom, when he 

 died, in 1414. Upon this, his sister, queen Joanna 

 II., in the year 1420, adopted king Alfonso V., of 

 Arragon and Sicily, who drove his rival, the French 

 prince Louis III., of Anjou, out of Naples in 1458. 

 Thus arose the jealousy between France and Spain, 

 which, towards the end of the fifteenth century, 

 wrapt the whole of Italy in flames. Alfonso V. 

 was succeeded in Naples by his natural son Ferdi- 

 nand I., whose grandson, Ferdinand IT., was at- 



, tacked by Charles VIII., of France, the champion 

 ! of the claims of the house of Anjou, and whose 

 second son, king Frederic III., was dethroned by 

 his cousin, Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Spain 

 and Sicily, in conjunction with Louis XII. of 

 ) France. The conquerors disagreed respecting the 

 ', partition of Naples, and the cunning Ferdinand the 

 Catholic (see Ferdinand V. of Arragon, and Gon- 

 salvo) managed to maintain himself in the sole 

 possession of the whole, by artifice and force, 

 I in 1504. During this warfare of countries and 

 crowns, which had been carried on for centuries 

 almost without interruption, the constitution of the 

 [ cities had been developed, and the kings of the 

 house of Anjou began to summon delegates from 

 them to the diet, which had been done previously 

 in Sicily ; but the feudal system continued, and the 

 barons were constantly increasing their privileges. 

 They even acquired the right of life and death over 

 their vassals, in return for which the kings hoped 

 to obtain their assistance in time of war. Thus 

 the people were plunged into the greatest misery ; 

 and at no time have the Neapolitans been able to 

 withstand foreign arms. The aristocracy, however, 

 remained the same under every sovereign, and the 

 depraved manners of the court, and the example of 

 such licentious princesses as the two Joannas, cor- 

 rupted the public morals. At that period there 

 were feudal estates, which limited the power of the 

 kings. But in the two centuries after the peace 

 with France in 1505, during which the kingdom of 

 the Two Sicilies remained a part of the Spanish 

 monarchy, the diets were no longer convened in 

 Naples, and the viceroys consulted merely with a 

 committee of the estates, in which the city of Na- 

 ples represented the whole third estate. Thus the 

 regal power increased, and with it the burden of 

 taxes. The rebellion which took place in April, 

 1647 (see Massaniello'), owing to the arbitrary mode 

 of raising the taxes, might, under more prudent 

 management, have led to independence. Still more 

 did the prosperity of the country decline under the 

 oppression of the nobility and the power of the 

 clergy. No law limited the extension of the pro- 

 perty of the church, and both in Naples and in 

 Sicily, two thirds of the landed property gradually 

 came into their possession. On the extinction of 

 the Austro-Spanish male line, in 1700, Naples and 

 Sicily fell into the hands of Charles V., of Spain, 

 who governed arbitrarily, without consulting the 

 chambers. At the peace of Utrecht, through the 

 influence of the English, who were jealous of their 

 commerce, Naples and Sicily were divided: the 

 former fell to Austria, the latter to Savoy. King 

 Philip V. of Spain re-conquered Sicily in 1717, at 

 the instigation of Alberoni, but was forced to cede 

 it to Austria in 1720 ; and Savoy received Sardinia 

 in return (see Sardinian Monarchy*), by which 

 means the Two Sicilies became a part of the Aus- 

 trian dominions; however, in the war which was 

 occasioned by the election of a king for Poland, in 

 1733, Spain conquered the Two Sicilies, and re- 

 tained them at the peace of Vienna (1735), for the 

 Infant Don Carlos. In 1759, when he ascended 

 the Spanish throne, under the name of Charles III., 

 he conferred the kingdom of the Two Sicilies on 

 his third son, Ferdinand, and decreed, at the same 

 time, that it should never again be united to the 

 Spanish monarchy. Ferdinand reigned in the Two 

 Sicilies under the name of Ferdinand IV., (see 

 Ferdinand I., the title which he took after hav- 

 ing united all his states under one kingdom of 



