The War of the Sicilian Vespers, also shortened to the War of the Vespers, was a conflict waged by several medieval European kingdoms over control of Sicily from 1282 to 1302. The war, which started with the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers, was fought over competing dynastic claims to the throne of Sicily and grew to involve the Crown of Aragon, Angevin Kingdom of Naples, Kingdom of France, and the papacy.
Initially fought between Sicilian rebels and Charles of Anjou in Sicily and Southern Italy, the war expanded when Peter of Aragon intervened in Sicily to support the rebels and claim the throne. After Aragonese successes, the war grew into the concurrent Aragonese Crusade as the Kingdom of France intervened against Aragon in Iberia. The crusade ended in defeat, but efforts to end the war failed despite several peace treaties. Aragon gave up the crown of Sicily in exchange for papal concessions in 1297, entering into an alliance with Angevin Naples and the papacy against Sicily, but the new alliance's campaign to invade Sicily saw no success. The war ended in 1302 in the Peace of Caltabellotta, by which Sicily became an independent kingdom ruled by the House of Barcelona.
Marked by intermittent land engagements, decisive battles at sea, siege warfare and political maneuvering, the war resulted in the division of the old Kingdom of Sicily; the island of Sicily came to be ruled as the Kingdom of Sicily (Trinacria) under the House of Barcelona, while the Southern Italian territories of the former kingdom became the Kingdom of Naples, ruled by the House of Anjou. The Vesperan conflict led to an era of Aragonese expansion in the Western Mediterranean, as the kingdom gained suzerainty over the Kingdom of Majorca and Sardinia. Outlasting four kings and four popes, the twenty-year war showcased the decline of papal power in southern Europe and the rise of increasingly powerful kings in the late 13th century.
Background
Swabian Sicily and Papal opposition
The island of Sicily had been ruled as a kingdom since the early 12th century, when Norman lord Roger II of Sicily conquered the island and established the Kingdom of Sicily. Strategically located in the Mediterranean, the kingdom grew to include much of southern Italy, and was considered one of the wealthiest kingdoms in Europe. Grain produced in the kingdom's lands in Sicily and southern Italy fed the northern Italian city states and the Holy Land, while the island itself served as a staging ground for several crusades. Sicily was key to the defense of Rome and the papal states, and as such the papacy considered it vital that a friendly king occupy the throne of Sicily. Diplomatic relations between the papacy and Sicily were heavily intertwined; the papacy funded the Norman invasion of Sicily, had sanctioned the establishment of the kingdom, and the king of Sicily officially ruled as a vassal in the name of the pope.
In the 13th century, Sicily became the heartland of the Hohenstaufen empire of Frederick II of Swabia. Frederick and the papacy bitterly disagreed on issues of papal authority, and his rule resulted in a violent flare-up of the centuries long conflict between the pro-pope Guelphs and pro-imperial Ghibellines. Frederick's lands in Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire surrounded the papal states, and thus trapped the Pope between the metaphorical German hammer and Sicilian anvil.
Following Frederick's death in 1250, the Sicilian kingdom entered a period of political disarray. Frederick's inheritance passed his rule over Sicily and Germany, as well as the title of King of Jerusalem, to his son Conrad IV of Germany, but the new king was unable to immediately establish a base of power in Sicily. After securing his control over Germany in 1251, Conrad decided to invade Italy to claim his father's former lands, but died while campaigning the same year. With Conrad's death, an illegitimate son of Frederick, Manfred of Sicily, was named as regent of the Sicilian Kingdom, as Conrad's son, Conradin, was too young to rule. Like his father, Manfred quarreled with the pope over his legitimacy as ruler of Sicily. A bitter campaign of diplomatic maneuvering, punctuated by open war, began between the papacy and Manfred's Sicilian kingdom.
Seeing the opportunity created by Manfred's contested claim to the throne of Sicily, in the 1250s the papacy used a number of methods to challenge Manfred's power; most notably, the pope began to look for a potential claimant to overthrow him. An army of crusaders, acting in the name of the papacy and Prince Edmund of England, invaded Manfred's northern lands in 1253, but were defeated by the Sicilians in 1254. Capitalizing on his successes against the papacy and the Guelfs, Manfred crowned himself king of Sicily in 1258, and reached the apex of his power after the 1260 Battle of Montaperti.
However, Manfred's rule over the Sicilian kingdom was not without controversy in insular Sicily; Manfred's court was located in Naples, and his ambitions were largely focused on the Italian mainland as opposed to the island. Various cities on the island of Sicily refused to recognize Manfred's rule, and the royal government in Naples struggled to maintain its administration over the island. Several cities declared themselves free communes under the rule of the papacy, which eagerly supported Sicilian resistance as a means of undermining Manfred.
Conquest of Sicily by Charles of Anjou
At papal invitation, in 1265 the kingdom of Sicily was invaded by Charles I of Anjou, a powerful member of the French royal House of Capet. With political and financial support from the papacy and a coalition of Guelf-aligned Italian cities, Charles conducted a quick advance through Italy. Manfred was drawn into a battle at Benevento and killed, and Charles' victory allowed him to establish the Angevin Kingdom of Sicily and Naples, giving him control of Sicily and most of southern Italy. Some of the Sicilian population welcomed Charles' new regime, as Manfred's decade-long conflict with the pope had been costly for the kingdom. However, Charles' proclivity to centralize power around his throne led to resentment against the new, foreign king.
Using the conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines as a political wedge, the victorious Charles expanded his influence throughout Italy, cobbling together a formidable feudal state and forcing treaties on many Italian cities. With the Italian Ghibellines left leaderless and the Holy Roman Empire paralyzed by the Great Interregnum, resistance against Charles was scattered, and he was able to establish the Angevin kingdom as the great power in Italy. The papacy heavily benefited from the Angevin conquest, as the usurping of Manfred's throne by Charles ensured a papal ally ruled over Sicily, and Manfred's death deprived the anti-papacy Ghibellines of one of their greatest supporters in Italy.
While Charles was consolidating his rule over southern Italy, he faced a foreign competitor; in 1268 Duke Conradin of Swabia, a grandson of Frederick II and nephew of Manfred, claimed the crown of Sicily and invaded Italy with a multinational army. The invasion sparked most of Sicily to revolt against Charles, before Conradin was defeated and captured by the Angevins at the Battle of Tagliacozzo. In the aftermath of his victory, Charles - ignoring objections from the pope - had the sixteen-year-old Conradin beheaded, extinguishing the Hohenstaufen line and earning Charles the outrage of much of Western Europe.
Angevin administration in Sicily
With his immediate foes in Italy defeated, Charles cracked down on the rebellion in Sicily, executing many of the rebel leaders and sacking the city of Augusta. Whereas the island had been relatively untouched during Charles' conquest in 1265, Charles' retaliatory campaign in 1268 led to major disruptions in Sicilian society.
Charles began a new administration in Sicily that would better serve his interests; land confiscations were carried out to deprive Sicilian noblemen of their power, Frenchmen were given preferential status in government, Angevin garrisons were established on the island, and the capital of Sicily was moved from the traditional capital Palermo to Naples, where Charles held court. Charles did not visit the island after 1271, instead governing over the island via intermediaries, which was seen as a slight by some Sicilians, who had traditionally been able to petition the king in person.
Charles followed his political purge of Sicilian society with harsh economic measures. The old Sicilian tax system—developed during centuries of Islamic, Byzantine, and Norman rule—had traditionally offered many exceptions to taxes, and was replaced with a stricter taxation system which only offered tax exemptions for those of French origin, or those Sicilians who had ingratiated themselves with the Angevin–French officials. A new class of tax collectors, almost exclusively of French origin, was established to collect taxes in Sicily. The streamlining of the taxation system provided the Angevin government with ample financial resources, but the taxation changes and mass confiscation of fiefs from defeated Sicilian nobles caused economic chaos in Sicily.
The invasion, revolt, crackdown, and subsequent changes in Sicilian society displaced much of the Sicilian noble class, with many of the exiles fleeing to the Kingdom of Aragon in Iberia. Sources disagree on the effectiveness of Charles' rule, and if his policies constituted tyranny. However, the consensus remains that Charles' ambitious—and often extractive and heavy-handed—re-ordering of Sicilian society bred resentment against Angevin rule.
Planned Angevin expansion
With Sicily and Naples under his control, Charles and his Capetian relatives in France were able to greatly increase French influence in the western Mediterranean. Seizing on Sicily's wealth and strategic location, Charles planned to use the island as base to project Angevin power. From 1272 to 1276, the Angevin kingdom fought against the Republic of Genoa after Charles detained Genoese merchants in his territory, while also sending troops to drive Ghibelline supporters out of Siena, Pisa, and Tuscany.
Alongside his older brother, King Louis IX of France, Charles launched the Eighth Crusade against Tunis in 1270, using Sicily as a logistical base for the crusader army. While expensive, unsuccessful, and resultant in the death of Louis, the crusade demonstrated the value of Sicily to Charles' plans of Mediterranean expansion. However, the crusade also devastated the Sicilian economy; Sicilian men were conscripted into the crusader army, while ships and supplies were forcibly requestioned by the scattered Angevin, French, and English armies hosted on the island. Charles recognized the harm done to Sicily and the Angevin government extended tax relief to southern Sicily, but the damage done to the island embittered the Sicilian population.
In addition to his campaigns in Italy, Charles of Anjou planned to extend his control eastward into Greece, Byzantium, and the Levant. The decline of the French-dominated Latin Empire had left a scattered realm of French-controlled lands in Greece—referred to as the Frankokratia—without a powerful overlord, and Charles made plans to assume this role. For much of the later 1270s, Charles worked to prepare a large-scale invasion of Byzantium—these preparations were concentrated in Eastern Sicily and in Southern Italy, and while they stimulated the local economies there, the additional taxes raised to fund this campaign caused outrage in western Sicily. Charles had a longstanding ambition to act on the 1267 Treaty of Viterbo, which nominally gave him and his heirs the right to conquer large parts of the Byzantine Empire, and in 1271 he seized control of Corfu and costal Albania.
The papacy, originally a staunch ally, was critical of Charles' growing power in Italy and his strict rule over Sicily. However, it also saw the Angevin kingdom as a powerful tool to be used against the Byzantines and as a means to defend the Holy Land, and so a series of popes financially supported Charles' military buildup in the 1270s. Charles' rule over Sicily also allowed for an era of increased French influence over the College of Cardinals, ensuring that Angevin-French interests were supported by the papacy. Charles was also elected Senator of Rome and imperial vicar of Tuscany, and appointed officials to govern parts of the former city in his name, thus securing a solid base of political power for the Angevin kingdom.
Aragonese−Franco rivalry and Aragonese interest in Sicily
Under James I of Aragon (reigned 1213–1276), the Crown of Aragon had engaged in decades of military and commercial expansion in Iberia and the western Mediterranean. Aragon's seizure of the Balearic islands in 1232 and conquest of Valencia in 1238 opened the way for Aragonese influence to expand eastward, and James soon set his sights on Sicily and Tunis. Seeing the Sicilians as the key to expanding Aragonese power eastward, James signed a treaty of alliance with King Manfred of Sicily in 1262, sealing the treaty by marrying his son and heir Peter to Manfred's daughter, Constance of Sicily.
The Crown of Aragon and its ruling House of Barcelona were firm rivals of Charles of Anjou; Charles' first wife, Beatrice of Provence, was a member of the House of Barcelona, and Charles' marriage to her gave the Angevin ruler claim to lands the Aragonese kings claimed as theirs. When Beatrix died in 1267, Charles claimed her lands as his own and incorporated them into his growing domain, infuriating James of Aragon and his sons.