Conradin, from the scaffold, had cast his glove among the crowd, and called on Peter of Aragon, husband of Constance, daughter of the noble Manfred, to avenge him, and assume his inheritance. In Sicily, where the exactions, the tyranny of the French were most intolerable, a secret correspondence was kept up with Peter of Aragon, and he was entreated to deliver the island from its French masters. But before he was ready, an outbreak of the populace precipitated matters. On Easter Tuesday the inhabitants of Palermo had gone forth in pilgrimage to a church outside the town to vespers. French soldiers, mingling with the people, began to assault the young women. The Sicilians, the fathers, brothers, lovers, remonstrated, and bade the French keep away from the festival. The French gathered together and laid their hands on their swords. At this juncture a beautiful girl, with her betrothed, approached the church. A Frenchman, named Drouet, in wantonness of insult, went up to her and thrust his hand into her bosom. The girl fainted in her bridegroom’s arms. A cry was raised of “Death to the Frenchmen!” and a youth started forward and stabbed Drouet to the heart.
This was the signal for a general insurrection. The cry spread to the city: every house was searched, and every person whose dress, speech, appearance, proclaimed him a Frenchman was massacred without mercy. Neither old age, nor sex, nor infancy, was spared. And in those Sicilian vespers, over two thousand of the Provençal and Angevin nobles and their wives perished under the knives of the justly incensed Sicilians.
When Charles heard of the massacre he burst into paroxysms of wrath. He is described as next having sat silent, gnawing the top of his sceptre, and then breaking forth into the most horrible vows of revenge.
Nor was the Pope behindhand in threats. It was to the Pope that Naples and Sicily owed the incubus of Charles and his Provençals. Clement IV. indeed was dead; Martin IV. now sat in his chair; but though there was a change in the person of the Chief Pontiff, there was no change of mind and policy.
The Palermitans sent an embassy to the Pope to deprecate his wrath, addressing him: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!” But even this adulation could not abate his rage. He proclaimed a crusade against the Sicilians. Heaven was promised to those who should draw the sword against them. Anathema was proclaimed against all who took their side.