In his determination to root out the Hohenstauffen from Italy, Pope Clement IV. offered the crown of Naples and Sicily to this Charles. This was, as Mr. Addington Symons well says, “the most pernicious of all the evils inflicted by the papal power on Italy and on Provence.” Then followed the French tyranny, under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni; Benedict XI. was poisoned at the instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was transferred to Avignon.
Provence was henceforth involved in the bloody wars of Italy; its wealth, its manhood, were drained away, its Count passed to Naples to keep there his Court as a King, to the neglect of good government at home.
Romeo underwent the fate of all honest and strong men. He had made himself enemies, who accused him to the prince of having enriched himself at the expense of the province.
Romeo produced his accounts before the prince, showing that he had not betrayed his trust to the value of a denier; and then, resuming his pilgrim’s habit, resumed also his wanderings. Finally he retired to the castle of Vence, where he died. His will was dated December 18th, 1250. Dante places him in Paradise:—
“Within the pearl, that now encloseth us Shines Romeo’s light, whose goodly deeds and fair Met ill receptance. But the Provençals, That were his foes, have little cause for mirth. Ill shapes that man his course, who makes his wrong Of other’s worth. Four daughters were there born To Raymond Berenger; and every one Became a queen; and this for him did Romeo, Though of mean state, and from a foreign land, Yet envious tongues incited him to ask A reckoning of that just one, who return’d Twelve-fold to him for ten. Aged and poor He parted thence; and if the world did know The heart he had, begging his life by morsels, ’Twould deem the praise it yields him, scantly dealt.”
Charles of Anjou was at all points opposite to his brother Louis IX.—the Saint. The latter was true to his word, just, merciful, and devoid of personal ambition. But Charles was rapacious, cruel, and of a vehement character. His young wife, moreover, the sister of three queens, excited him to aspire after a crown; and he saw in the county of Provence only a stepping-stone towards a throne. He hoped to acquire that of Constantinople, and he supposed that he was on his way thereto when he listened to the summons of the Pope to dispossess Manfred of the Sicilies. This disastrous resolve decided the fate of Provence, and was the prime cause of its ruin. If in the Count of Anjou there had been a glimmer of political sense, he would have seen how precarious a matter it was to accept a sovereignty as a feudatory of the Holy See, and to become the sport of circumstances ever shifting. He would have perceived how fatal it would be to his fortunes to oscillate between two centres; to exhaust the sources of his real strength in Provence to maintain himself in Naples. The nobility of Provence shared in his infatuation and eagerly joined in the undertaking. At the accession of Charles under the wise government of Raymond Berenger, and the judicious husbanding of its resources by Romeo de Villeneuve, Provence was at its acme of prosperity. Charles brought it to ruin. After the execution of Conradin, he rode roughshod over the people of Naples and Sicily. To his exactions there was no end. The great fiefs were seized and granted to Provençal or Angevin favourites; the foreign soldiers lived at free quarters, and treated the people with the utmost barbarity. There ensued an iron reign of force without justice, without law, without humanity, without mercy.