Charles III of Spain
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rheinsbergWrite-up by mildred_of_midgard for cahn, who was asking which Don Carlos was involved in marriage negotiations with MT in the 1720s.
The story of Don Carlos, later Charles III of Spain, gets really confusing, because it's 20 years of shifting alliances, succession wars, and minor territories passing from one ruler to another. It's like Europe playing musical chairs, but musical territories instead. The thing to keep in mind here is that the ultimate goal is balance of power.
Don Carlos is the eldest son that Philip V (he who memorably thought he was a frog) had with Isabella Farnese. The problem is that Isabella was the second wife, and Philip had sons from his first wife (poor Marie Louise who died young). So Don Carlos and his younger brothers aren't exactly set for life here.
So Isabella, who, remember, is from Parma, devotes much of her considerable energy to trying to get her own sons, especially Don Carlos, territories to inherit. This involves maintaining a Spanish presence in Italy, trying to regain lost territory by invading, making alliances with MT's dad (Charles VI) while trying to get Don Carlos married to "one of the archduchesses (like MT)", and asserting her family's claims to be next in line after the ruling families of Tuscany and Parma die out.
After a decade and a half of invasions, diplomacy, and low-key wars that didn't get Isabella what she wanted, an alliance shift in 1731 takes place, and suddenly it becomes super easy to get territories in Italy. Ironically. In 1731, the major powers of Europe decide that Don Carlos gets to be Gian Gastone's heir in Tuscany, and also Grand Duke of Parma and Piacenza.
Gian Gastone, reluctantly acknowledging Don Carlos as his heir because he's in no position to fight this decision, quips, "Now you will see an old man of sixty become the father of a bouncing boy."
Don Carlos enters Tuscany, where he's pretty well received, and Gian Gastone takes a liking to him. But why stop with Tuscany and Parma? Sicily and Naples were lost to Spain in the Peace of Utrecht at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, not 20 years ago. Philip and Isabella tried for a reconquest and briefly occupied them again in 1717-1718. That triggered the War of the Quadruple Alliance, and Spain lost them again.
So now it's the 1730s, and Isabella and her son Don Carlos definitely want Sicily and Naples back. The War of the Polish Succession kicks off in 1733 (remember, when August the Strong dies not long after his drinking bout with Grumbkow, and his son wants to be August III, while Stanislas Leszczynski wants to be Polish king again).
Part of the War of the Polish Succession, despite its name, is Austria and Spain duking it out in Italy. (Ditto the earlier War of the Spanish Succession and the later War of the Austrian Succession.)
So in 1734, Don Carlos invades Naples and Sicily, and takes them both within about 6 months.
But that's too much Italian territory for one Spaniard to have, in the minds of the rest of Europe, when the 1735-1738 peace negotiations ensue. Deep breath for the outcome here:
* August III is acknowledged king of Poland.
* Which means Stanislas has to give up his claims to Poland.
* In return, Stanislas gets the Duchy of Lorraine, which will revert to France after his death.
* Which means FS, current Duke of Lorraine, has to give up Lorraine.
* But FS gets to be future Holy Roman Emperor, and the French recognize the Pragmatic Sanction.
* FS also gets Tuscany, having enough Medici ancestors in his family tree that he can assert a plausible claim.
* That means Don Carlos has to give up Tuscany to FS, but he gets Naples and Sicily from the Austrians instead.
* The same happens with Parma: Don Carlos gives it to the Habsburgs.
Gian Gastone is not happy about this. Taking a rare interest in international politics, he tries to push for favorable terms such that Tuscany doesn't become a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, but he loses. He does manage to make it so that it won't become part of the hereditary Austrian Habsburg domains, and that if FS becomes emperor, Tuscany has to be passed onto his younger son. This is called the practice of secundogeniture. That's why when FS dies in 1765, Leopold gets to be sole Grand Duke of Tuscany, while HRE Joseph is still just co-regent with MT in Austria.
Gian Gastone also manages to get out of Tuscany recognizing the Pragmatic Sanction (which ends up being a moot point, since he dies in 1737 and MT's dad Charles VI not until 1740, but hey, he tried), and he successfully makes it so Tuscany can pass through the female line if there are no male heirs.
He liked Don Carlos and really doesn't like the HRE, so he's not happy about this, but being the kind of person who would rather make a joke than fight a battle, he ends up asking humorously, "whether the monarchs [of Spain] would make him a third heir to his dominions, requesting to know what child France and the Empire would next beget for him."
So now Don Carlos is king of Naples and Sicily. He lives in Naples, the first king to do so in a couple hundred years of viceroys. (Naples and Sicily have been in the hands of various foreign powers for quite some time now.)
He marries Maria Amalia of Saxony, the daughter of August III of Saxony/Poland in 1738. Like his father Philip V, he enters into an arranged marriage with a thirteen-year-old, falls in love, sleeps in the same bed with her, and is faithful to her. Unlike his father, he refuses to remarry after she dies (and he also doesn't take a mistress, unlike George II).
The two of them are quite active in the ruling of Naples (less so Sicily). Lots and lots of building, transforming the cityscape of Naples. I was amused that Carlos had the San Carlo Opera House built, "although opera bored him stiff." They leave the country more prosperous than they found it. He built an institution to house, feed, and educate the poor.
He tried very hard to bring the Jews back! (I admit, I was impressed.) They had been kicked out as part of the Decree of Alhambra in 1492, by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. [personal profile] cahn, you may remember them from school as the ones who had to complete the reconquista of Spain, driving out the Moors, before they could sponsor Columbus. (You may remember "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"--did you have to learn that too?)
Anyway, 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella = "drive out all the infidels", 1740 Carlos = "bring them back!" Unfortunately, this only lasted a few years, because:
- The Jews were a bit reluctant to leave the place they'd been living for 250 years and come back to a place where everyone *except* the monarch hated them, so there wasn't a huge influx.
- The locals did in fact hate them.
- The Jesuits told Carlos that he would never get a male heir as long as there was a single Jew in the place.
So in 1747, after just 7 years of tolerance, Carlos reluctantly banned them again. :(
In 1759, Carlos' older brother Ferdinand died. He had been Ferdinand VI of Spain since Philip V died, he was the son of Philip and Marie Louise, and he apparently inherited his father's depression: staying in bed and refusing to shave. That said, he and his wife managed to get a lot of work done and leave Spain better off than they found it, including finally ending the autos-da-fé that shocked the rest of 18th century Europe so much. (Philip V had apparently attended at least one, which involved burning heretics alive.)
Since they've died without leaving an heir, Carlos of Naples & Sicily is now Carlos III of Spain. So he sets off from Naples to Spain. Since part of the deal is that just like Tuscany, Naples & Sicily follow the principle of secundogeniture so that they never merge with Spain, Carlos has to give up Naples & Sicily. His oldest son, Philip, is mentally disabled and totally incapable of ruling. (Part of the way his parents established this was by having priests test to see if he understood the articles of the Catholic faith. When word got out that he didn't, members of Protestant and freethinking Europe milked this episode for all the humor it was worth, joking, "Well, maybe that means he's highly intelligent, since I don't understand them either!")
In any case, it was clear he would need care all his life and couldn't rule. So second son Carlos (future Carlos IV) is taken along to Spain, to be the crown prince. And third son, Ferdinand, is left behind in Naples and Sicily.
Ferdinand we've met before. He was the one who married Maria Carolina, daughter of MT, and was the completely out of control brother-in-law that Joseph met and reported had slapped him enthusiastically on the behind in public. ("Walking, talking embarrassment to everyone; groper of butts", asselenak described him.) Unlike his oldest brother, he was not unintelligent, but instead completely uneducated and undisciplined, and he basically behaved like a child--romping around, tickling envoys, etc.--for his entire life.
Ferdinand and Maria Carolina were the hosts of Sir William Hamilton (stationed as envoy here, remember) and Emma Hamilton, and Emma Hamilton and Maria Carolina were BFFs. And then Nelson showed up and Emma became his mistress.
Carlos, meanwhile, went off to Spain and started putting into practice his 25 years of experience ruling Naples. He saw himself as an enlightened despot, sponsored the arts, improved commerce, etc.
He finished the process of turning Spain from a collection of semi-independent provinces into a nation state. This had really bothered Philip V, who was constantly fighting with his subjects over his desire to have an efficient, centralized government with their desire to keep their province's ancient privileges, laws, and traditions, as had been part of the conditions on which they had originally agreed to be ruled by the same king as their neighboring provinces, and not be ruled by outsiders from Madrid.
Carlos III died in 1788, leaving the throne to his second son.
Among other things, I've been reading the 17th-18th century chapters from a history of Sicily that I bought years ago to get information on a different period. The book is by John Julius Norwich, who is another opinionated writer of readable, almost novelistic, popular history. And I hit Don Carlos a couple days ago and was planning on reporting, because I knew that because of Verdi, you would want to know who this Don Carlos was. ;)
I'm sorry the politics is so complicated; there's even more changing of hands of Sicily during our period that I spared you. I tried to give you repetition of things we'd encountered before and some connect-the-dots.
selenak: (Naples and Sicily have been in the hands of various foreign powers for quite some time now.)
Depending on how you define "foreign", "quite some time" can even stretch millennia.
Because Sicily:
Olden Times when the Greeks were settling "like frogs across a pond" around the Mediterrenean, as an ancient writer puts it: settled/conquered by Greeks
New city state Rome becomes expansive conquering Republic Rome, muscling its way across the Italian Peninsula: ends up conquering Sicily (not a happy event for famous mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse)
Failing Empire Rome centuries later: *shrinks and shrinks*
Sicily (and Naples): Conquered by Normans, intermingled with
Sicily: Conquered by Saracens
Until the late 12th century, when:
Sicily: married into and due to rebellion subsequently conquered by Germans (when Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, son of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, married Constance d'Hautevill)
Other Frederick the Second, Stupor Mundi: *born from that union*
Germans: ruling Sicly (and Naples) until a few years after Federico's death (in 1250), which is when:
Pope: Hey, French Anjou people! The Church is officially tired of constantly duking it out with Frederick and his spawn. We excommunicated him twice and it didn't take. No more chances for his offspring. If you can get rid of them any military means, Sicily and Naples are yours.
Charles d'Anjou: I hear you.
Tragedy of the last Hohenstaufen: *happens, complete with the kids of Manfred of Hohenstaufen locked up in inhuman - literally, they were chained like dogs - conditions in what was once their grandfather's favorite castle, I mentioned this when we talked about Iwan IV.*
French rule of Sicily and Naples: *gives Verdi another opera subject with one bloody uprising, Les Vespres Siciliennes
Many a complicated plot point later: House of Aragon (from Spain): gets Sicily and Naples
Renaissance French Kings: Hang on! Ferrante of Aragon is a bastard! Not because he's mummifying his enemies and sitting them at his table, because he's illigitame! That means he and his kids aren't legitimate heirs, which means it's our turn again!
Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander: I'm not allied with you yet, so I disagree and get one of the kids for my daughter Lucrezia. This will prove inconvenient when I do ally with you later, but that's why Cesare kills his brother-in-law.
Ferdinand of Aragon: I'm one half of the Reconquista power couple and I say my family gets to keep Sicily & Naples
Fast forward to the 18th century:
Savoy, Austria, Spain: take their turns with Sicily & Naples
In conclusion: when exactly did Sicilians rule Sicily, or what even are "Sicilians" if not a wild mix of immigrants?
mildred_of_midgard: Oh, definitely, but I was following Norwich, and I can tell you where Norwich was coming from: in "foreign powers", "powers" is the operative word. That is, ruled by a foreign government appointing a viceroy in Sicily and treating it as a province whose purpose is to make another kingdom richer. That's plausibly different than the local ruler being of foreign extraction, but Sicily or Sicily + southern Italy being an autonomous entity. During those millennia, various rulers of foreign origin were resident in places like Palermo or at least Naples, and that's what Norwich was getting at when he said that Don Carlos was the first resident ruler in a couple centuries of viceroys.
For example, Normans like Robert Guiscard and Roger may have been foreigners, but Sicily was not being ruled by Normandy during the Norman period. And during the Aragonese period, there was some secundogeniture that's exactly comparable to the Don Carlos situation: the younger son lives in Sicily and/or Naples and rules independently, and when he ends up inheriting the throne in Spain after all, he passes on Sicily to someone else. (Or is supposed to; the new Aragonese monarch didn't always want to let go.)
Many a complicated plot point later: House of Aragon (from Spain): gets Sicily and Naples
Here's an entertaining complicated plot point forcahn:
When Pedro III of Aragon is driving out Charles of Anjou, they challenge each other to a duel!
The date for the great contest was fixed for Tuesday, June 1, 1283; unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the precise hour was not specified. The Aragonese arrived early in the morning, to find no sign of Charles. Peter accordingly announced that his was the victory, his cowardly opponent having failed to put in an appearance. Charles rode up a few hours later and claimed that, as there was now no sign of Peter, the victory was his. The two never met. The cost to both, in time as well as money, was considerable; but honor was saved on both sides.
Another Pedro III anecdote from his conquest. He meets Machalda, wife of one of the Sicilian barons:
As an excuse for her presence she had brought him the keys of Catania; but it was soon all too clear that her real purpose was to audition for the part of royal mistress. Poor Peter had an acutely embarrassing evening. He escaped only with a long disquisition on his love for and loyalty to Queen Constance—which was not, we are told, an argument that Machalda found attractive. Henceforth she made no secret of her jealousy of the Queen, and did all she could to influence her husband against the royal couple.
Now, Norwich is prone to repeating popular legends that have since been disproved, so who knows, but I found both of these entertaining.
selenak: including finally ending the autos-da-fé that shocked the rest of 18th century Europe so much
I believe you about Ferdinand doing it, but when Napoleon invades decades later, one big selling point of his propaganda will be "we'll finally end those barbaric auto-da-fés and enlighten the poor Spaniards". (This only worked on his French audience in any case, though. The Spaniards weren't impressed.)
mildred_of_midgard: Perhaps that's why? :P Honestly, I don't know when it was ended, I'm just repeating a less than scholarly source. What Spanish Wikipedia says is:
According to Emilio La Parra and María Ángeles Casado, the last general auto-da-faith held in Spain took place in Seville in 1781...It is often said that the last auto-da-fé was the one celebrated in Valencia in 1826 in which Ruzafa's teacher Cayetano Ripoll was sentenced to be executed by hanging and later burned as a heretic, but at that time the Inquisition did not exist because the king Fernando VII had not restored it after its abolition by the Liberals during the Triennium (1820-1823).
1781 would be Carlos III, not his older brother Ferdinand VI, but maybe it's like Fritz abolishing torture: it happened gradually.
mildred_of_midgard for cahn, who was asking which Don Carlos was involved in marriage negotiations with MT in the 1720s.The story of Don Carlos, later Charles III of Spain, gets really confusing, because it's 20 years of shifting alliances, succession wars, and minor territories passing from one ruler to another. It's like Europe playing musical chairs, but musical territories instead. The thing to keep in mind here is that the ultimate goal is balance of power.
Don Carlos is the eldest son that Philip V (he who memorably thought he was a frog) had with Isabella Farnese. The problem is that Isabella was the second wife, and Philip had sons from his first wife (poor Marie Louise who died young). So Don Carlos and his younger brothers aren't exactly set for life here.
So Isabella, who, remember, is from Parma, devotes much of her considerable energy to trying to get her own sons, especially Don Carlos, territories to inherit. This involves maintaining a Spanish presence in Italy, trying to regain lost territory by invading, making alliances with MT's dad (Charles VI) while trying to get Don Carlos married to "one of the archduchesses (like MT)", and asserting her family's claims to be next in line after the ruling families of Tuscany and Parma die out.
After a decade and a half of invasions, diplomacy, and low-key wars that didn't get Isabella what she wanted, an alliance shift in 1731 takes place, and suddenly it becomes super easy to get territories in Italy. Ironically. In 1731, the major powers of Europe decide that Don Carlos gets to be Gian Gastone's heir in Tuscany, and also Grand Duke of Parma and Piacenza.
Gian Gastone, reluctantly acknowledging Don Carlos as his heir because he's in no position to fight this decision, quips, "Now you will see an old man of sixty become the father of a bouncing boy."
Don Carlos enters Tuscany, where he's pretty well received, and Gian Gastone takes a liking to him. But why stop with Tuscany and Parma? Sicily and Naples were lost to Spain in the Peace of Utrecht at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, not 20 years ago. Philip and Isabella tried for a reconquest and briefly occupied them again in 1717-1718. That triggered the War of the Quadruple Alliance, and Spain lost them again.
So now it's the 1730s, and Isabella and her son Don Carlos definitely want Sicily and Naples back. The War of the Polish Succession kicks off in 1733 (remember, when August the Strong dies not long after his drinking bout with Grumbkow, and his son wants to be August III, while Stanislas Leszczynski wants to be Polish king again).
Part of the War of the Polish Succession, despite its name, is Austria and Spain duking it out in Italy. (Ditto the earlier War of the Spanish Succession and the later War of the Austrian Succession.)
So in 1734, Don Carlos invades Naples and Sicily, and takes them both within about 6 months.
But that's too much Italian territory for one Spaniard to have, in the minds of the rest of Europe, when the 1735-1738 peace negotiations ensue. Deep breath for the outcome here:
* August III is acknowledged king of Poland.
* Which means Stanislas has to give up his claims to Poland.
* In return, Stanislas gets the Duchy of Lorraine, which will revert to France after his death.
* Which means FS, current Duke of Lorraine, has to give up Lorraine.
* But FS gets to be future Holy Roman Emperor, and the French recognize the Pragmatic Sanction.
* FS also gets Tuscany, having enough Medici ancestors in his family tree that he can assert a plausible claim.
* That means Don Carlos has to give up Tuscany to FS, but he gets Naples and Sicily from the Austrians instead.
* The same happens with Parma: Don Carlos gives it to the Habsburgs.
Gian Gastone is not happy about this. Taking a rare interest in international politics, he tries to push for favorable terms such that Tuscany doesn't become a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, but he loses. He does manage to make it so that it won't become part of the hereditary Austrian Habsburg domains, and that if FS becomes emperor, Tuscany has to be passed onto his younger son. This is called the practice of secundogeniture. That's why when FS dies in 1765, Leopold gets to be sole Grand Duke of Tuscany, while HRE Joseph is still just co-regent with MT in Austria.
Gian Gastone also manages to get out of Tuscany recognizing the Pragmatic Sanction (which ends up being a moot point, since he dies in 1737 and MT's dad Charles VI not until 1740, but hey, he tried), and he successfully makes it so Tuscany can pass through the female line if there are no male heirs.
He liked Don Carlos and really doesn't like the HRE, so he's not happy about this, but being the kind of person who would rather make a joke than fight a battle, he ends up asking humorously, "whether the monarchs [of Spain] would make him a third heir to his dominions, requesting to know what child France and the Empire would next beget for him."
So now Don Carlos is king of Naples and Sicily. He lives in Naples, the first king to do so in a couple hundred years of viceroys. (Naples and Sicily have been in the hands of various foreign powers for quite some time now.)
He marries Maria Amalia of Saxony, the daughter of August III of Saxony/Poland in 1738. Like his father Philip V, he enters into an arranged marriage with a thirteen-year-old, falls in love, sleeps in the same bed with her, and is faithful to her. Unlike his father, he refuses to remarry after she dies (and he also doesn't take a mistress, unlike George II).
The two of them are quite active in the ruling of Naples (less so Sicily). Lots and lots of building, transforming the cityscape of Naples. I was amused that Carlos had the San Carlo Opera House built, "although opera bored him stiff." They leave the country more prosperous than they found it. He built an institution to house, feed, and educate the poor.
He tried very hard to bring the Jews back! (I admit, I was impressed.) They had been kicked out as part of the Decree of Alhambra in 1492, by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile. [personal profile] cahn, you may remember them from school as the ones who had to complete the reconquista of Spain, driving out the Moors, before they could sponsor Columbus. (You may remember "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue"--did you have to learn that too?)
Anyway, 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella = "drive out all the infidels", 1740 Carlos = "bring them back!" Unfortunately, this only lasted a few years, because:
- The Jews were a bit reluctant to leave the place they'd been living for 250 years and come back to a place where everyone *except* the monarch hated them, so there wasn't a huge influx.
- The locals did in fact hate them.
- The Jesuits told Carlos that he would never get a male heir as long as there was a single Jew in the place.
So in 1747, after just 7 years of tolerance, Carlos reluctantly banned them again. :(
In 1759, Carlos' older brother Ferdinand died. He had been Ferdinand VI of Spain since Philip V died, he was the son of Philip and Marie Louise, and he apparently inherited his father's depression: staying in bed and refusing to shave. That said, he and his wife managed to get a lot of work done and leave Spain better off than they found it, including finally ending the autos-da-fé that shocked the rest of 18th century Europe so much. (Philip V had apparently attended at least one, which involved burning heretics alive.)
Since they've died without leaving an heir, Carlos of Naples & Sicily is now Carlos III of Spain. So he sets off from Naples to Spain. Since part of the deal is that just like Tuscany, Naples & Sicily follow the principle of secundogeniture so that they never merge with Spain, Carlos has to give up Naples & Sicily. His oldest son, Philip, is mentally disabled and totally incapable of ruling. (Part of the way his parents established this was by having priests test to see if he understood the articles of the Catholic faith. When word got out that he didn't, members of Protestant and freethinking Europe milked this episode for all the humor it was worth, joking, "Well, maybe that means he's highly intelligent, since I don't understand them either!")
In any case, it was clear he would need care all his life and couldn't rule. So second son Carlos (future Carlos IV) is taken along to Spain, to be the crown prince. And third son, Ferdinand, is left behind in Naples and Sicily.
Ferdinand we've met before. He was the one who married Maria Carolina, daughter of MT, and was the completely out of control brother-in-law that Joseph met and reported had slapped him enthusiastically on the behind in public. ("Walking, talking embarrassment to everyone; groper of butts", as
selenak described him.) Unlike his oldest brother, he was not unintelligent, but instead completely uneducated and undisciplined, and he basically behaved like a child--romping around, tickling envoys, etc.--for his entire life.Ferdinand and Maria Carolina were the hosts of Sir William Hamilton (stationed as envoy here, remember) and Emma Hamilton, and Emma Hamilton and Maria Carolina were BFFs. And then Nelson showed up and Emma became his mistress.
Carlos, meanwhile, went off to Spain and started putting into practice his 25 years of experience ruling Naples. He saw himself as an enlightened despot, sponsored the arts, improved commerce, etc.
He finished the process of turning Spain from a collection of semi-independent provinces into a nation state. This had really bothered Philip V, who was constantly fighting with his subjects over his desire to have an efficient, centralized government with their desire to keep their province's ancient privileges, laws, and traditions, as had been part of the conditions on which they had originally agreed to be ruled by the same king as their neighboring provinces, and not be ruled by outsiders from Madrid.
Carlos III died in 1788, leaving the throne to his second son.
Among other things, I've been reading the 17th-18th century chapters from a history of Sicily that I bought years ago to get information on a different period. The book is by John Julius Norwich, who is another opinionated writer of readable, almost novelistic, popular history. And I hit Don Carlos a couple days ago and was planning on reporting, because I knew that because of Verdi, you would want to know who this Don Carlos was. ;)
I'm sorry the politics is so complicated; there's even more changing of hands of Sicily during our period that I spared you. I tried to give you repetition of things we'd encountered before and some connect-the-dots.
selenak: (Naples and Sicily have been in the hands of various foreign powers for quite some time now.)Depending on how you define "foreign", "quite some time" can even stretch millennia.
Because Sicily:
Olden Times when the Greeks were settling "like frogs across a pond" around the Mediterrenean, as an ancient writer puts it: settled/conquered by Greeks
New city state Rome becomes expansive conquering Republic Rome, muscling its way across the Italian Peninsula: ends up conquering Sicily (not a happy event for famous mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse)
Failing Empire Rome centuries later: *shrinks and shrinks*
Sicily (and Naples): Conquered by Normans, intermingled with
Sicily: Conquered by Saracens
Until the late 12th century, when:
Sicily: married into and due to rebellion subsequently conquered by Germans (when Heinrich von Hohenstaufen, son of Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, married Constance d'Hautevill)
Other Frederick the Second, Stupor Mundi: *born from that union*
Germans: ruling Sicly (and Naples) until a few years after Federico's death (in 1250), which is when:
Pope: Hey, French Anjou people! The Church is officially tired of constantly duking it out with Frederick and his spawn. We excommunicated him twice and it didn't take. No more chances for his offspring. If you can get rid of them any military means, Sicily and Naples are yours.
Charles d'Anjou: I hear you.
Tragedy of the last Hohenstaufen: *happens, complete with the kids of Manfred of Hohenstaufen locked up in inhuman - literally, they were chained like dogs - conditions in what was once their grandfather's favorite castle, I mentioned this when we talked about Iwan IV.*
French rule of Sicily and Naples: *gives Verdi another opera subject with one bloody uprising, Les Vespres Siciliennes
Many a complicated plot point later: House of Aragon (from Spain): gets Sicily and Naples
Renaissance French Kings: Hang on! Ferrante of Aragon is a bastard! Not because he's mummifying his enemies and sitting them at his table, because he's illigitame! That means he and his kids aren't legitimate heirs, which means it's our turn again!
Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander: I'm not allied with you yet, so I disagree and get one of the kids for my daughter Lucrezia. This will prove inconvenient when I do ally with you later, but that's why Cesare kills his brother-in-law.
Ferdinand of Aragon: I'm one half of the Reconquista power couple and I say my family gets to keep Sicily & Naples
Fast forward to the 18th century:
Savoy, Austria, Spain: take their turns with Sicily & Naples
In conclusion: when exactly did Sicilians rule Sicily, or what even are "Sicilians" if not a wild mix of immigrants?
mildred_of_midgard: Oh, definitely, but I was following Norwich, and I can tell you where Norwich was coming from: in "foreign powers", "powers" is the operative word. That is, ruled by a foreign government appointing a viceroy in Sicily and treating it as a province whose purpose is to make another kingdom richer. That's plausibly different than the local ruler being of foreign extraction, but Sicily or Sicily + southern Italy being an autonomous entity. During those millennia, various rulers of foreign origin were resident in places like Palermo or at least Naples, and that's what Norwich was getting at when he said that Don Carlos was the first resident ruler in a couple centuries of viceroys.For example, Normans like Robert Guiscard and Roger may have been foreigners, but Sicily was not being ruled by Normandy during the Norman period. And during the Aragonese period, there was some secundogeniture that's exactly comparable to the Don Carlos situation: the younger son lives in Sicily and/or Naples and rules independently, and when he ends up inheriting the throne in Spain after all, he passes on Sicily to someone else. (Or is supposed to; the new Aragonese monarch didn't always want to let go.)
Many a complicated plot point later: House of Aragon (from Spain): gets Sicily and Naples
Here's an entertaining complicated plot point for
cahn:When Pedro III of Aragon is driving out Charles of Anjou, they challenge each other to a duel!
The date for the great contest was fixed for Tuesday, June 1, 1283; unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the precise hour was not specified. The Aragonese arrived early in the morning, to find no sign of Charles. Peter accordingly announced that his was the victory, his cowardly opponent having failed to put in an appearance. Charles rode up a few hours later and claimed that, as there was now no sign of Peter, the victory was his. The two never met. The cost to both, in time as well as money, was considerable; but honor was saved on both sides.
Another Pedro III anecdote from his conquest. He meets Machalda, wife of one of the Sicilian barons:
As an excuse for her presence she had brought him the keys of Catania; but it was soon all too clear that her real purpose was to audition for the part of royal mistress. Poor Peter had an acutely embarrassing evening. He escaped only with a long disquisition on his love for and loyalty to Queen Constance—which was not, we are told, an argument that Machalda found attractive. Henceforth she made no secret of her jealousy of the Queen, and did all she could to influence her husband against the royal couple.
Now, Norwich is prone to repeating popular legends that have since been disproved, so who knows, but I found both of these entertaining.
selenak: including finally ending the autos-da-fé that shocked the rest of 18th century Europe so muchI believe you about Ferdinand doing it, but when Napoleon invades decades later, one big selling point of his propaganda will be "we'll finally end those barbaric auto-da-fés and enlighten the poor Spaniards". (This only worked on his French audience in any case, though. The Spaniards weren't impressed.)
mildred_of_midgard: Perhaps that's why? :P Honestly, I don't know when it was ended, I'm just repeating a less than scholarly source. What Spanish Wikipedia says is:According to Emilio La Parra and María Ángeles Casado, the last general auto-da-faith held in Spain took place in Seville in 1781...It is often said that the last auto-da-fé was the one celebrated in Valencia in 1826 in which Ruzafa's teacher Cayetano Ripoll was sentenced to be executed by hanging and later burned as a heretic, but at that time the Inquisition did not exist because the king Fernando VII had not restored it after its abolition by the Liberals during the Triennium (1820-1823).
1781 would be Carlos III, not his older brother Ferdinand VI, but maybe it's like Fritz abolishing torture: it happened gradually.
