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Epidemiology of extended-spectrum β-lactamase–producing Enterobacterales in five US sites participating in the Emerging Infections Program, 2017
- Nadezhda Duffy, Maria Karlsson, Hannah E. Reses, Davina Campbell, Jonathan Daniels, Richard A. Stanton, Sarah J. Janelle, Kyle Schutz, Wendy Bamberg, Paulina A. Rebolledo, Chris Bower, Rebekah Blakney, Jesse T. Jacob, Erin C. Phipps, Kristina G. Flores, Ghinwa Dumyati, Hannah Kopin, Rebecca Tsay, Marion A. Kainer, Daniel Muleta, Benji Byrd-Warner, Julian E. Grass, Joseph D. Lutgring, J. Kamile Rasheed, Christopher A. Elkins, Shelley S. Magill, Isaac See
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- Journal:
- Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology / Volume 43 / Issue 11 / November 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 14 February 2022, pp. 1586-1594
- Print publication:
- November 2022
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Objective
The incidence of infections from extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)–producing Enterobacterales (ESBL-E) is increasing in the United States. We describe the epidemiology of ESBL-E at 5 Emerging Infections Program (EIP) sites.
MethodsDuring October–December 2017, we piloted active laboratory- and population-based (New York, New Mexico, Tennessee) or sentinel (Colorado, Georgia) ESBL-E surveillance. An incident case was the first isolation from normally sterile body sites or urine of Escherichia coli or Klebsiella pneumoniae/oxytoca resistant to ≥1 extended-spectrum cephalosporin and nonresistant to all carbapenems tested at a clinical laboratory from a surveillance area resident in a 30-day period. Demographic and clinical data were obtained from medical records. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) performed reference antimicrobial susceptibility testing and whole-genome sequencing on a convenience sample of case isolates.
ResultsWe identified 884 incident cases. The estimated annual incidence in sites conducting population-based surveillance was 199.7 per 100,000 population. Overall, 800 isolates (96%) were from urine, and 790 (89%) were E. coli. Also, 393 cases (47%) were community-associated. Among 136 isolates (15%) tested at the CDC, 122 (90%) met the surveillance definition phenotype; 114 (93%) of 122 were shown to be ESBL producers by clavulanate testing. In total, 111 (97%) of confirmed ESBL producers harbored a blaCTX-M gene. Among ESBL-producing E. coli isolates, 52 (54%) were ST131; 44% of these cases were community associated.
ConclusionsThe burden of ESBL-E was high across surveillance sites, with nearly half of cases acquired in the community. EIP has implemented ongoing ESBL-E surveillance to inform prevention efforts, particularly in the community and to watch for the emergence of new ESBL-E strains.
7 - The Norman Kingdom of Sicily: Projecting Power by Sea
- Edited by Georgios Theotokis
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- Book:
- Warfare in the Norman Mediterranean
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 21 October 2020
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2020, pp 177-194
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Summary
In the twelfth century, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily rose to rival the great maritime republics of the Italian peninsula for dominance of the Mediterranean. But it did so in a manner quite dissimilar to that of Genoa, Pisa, or Venice. The Norman realm's unique approach to the development and employment of naval power has much to do with how the kingdom was created and the mindset of its creators. Those who founded it were, at their core, mounted men-at-arms and conquerors. The Normans who migrated into the Mezzogiorno (southern Italy and Sicily) in the eleventh century were indigent knights – soldiers of fortune – offering their swords for rent in return for plunder. When their activities inevitably evolved from mercenary enterprise and organised brigandage to overt conquest, the Normans adopted sea power as a pragmatic means for effecting the seizure of Sicily – the island that would ultimately become the core of their kingdom. Their first ships were commandeered vessels of commerce that they used to literally ferry their armies across the Strait of Messina. Once the conquest was completed, they deployed their burgeoning fleets almost entirely to defend their acquisition and aggrandise its hegemony to include the whole of the central Mediterranean.
In comparison, the north Italian maritime republics had adopted an altogether different modus operandi for employing their naval capability. And they did so to achieve vastly contrasting objectives, also rooted in their origins. They were born as mercantile communities wedded to the sea. While their citizens may have begun as freebooters and coastal traders, these innate seafarers quickly embraced maritime commerce on a grand scale as their principal occupation. And the nature of that commerce was overwhelmingly the transportation of desired goods from their sources to markets where they could be sold at a significant profit or exchanged for products in demand elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. As a consequence, the primary purpose of their fleets was to expand their markets and extend their trade routes. Routes to the Orient became particularly lucrative, especially after the onset of the crusading movement in the late eleventh century.
Frontmatter
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp i-iv
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Index
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 316-336
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3 - Battle of Tagliacozzo (23 August 1268)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 36-47
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Summary
IF MANFRED HAD TRULY been the last Hohenstaufen heir standing, then Benevento might have been the last battle that Charles of Anjou needed to fight to secure his kingdom; and perhaps the Crown of Aragon would never have had cause to intervene at the urging of the Regno's refugees. After all, Anjou's victory had, in a solitary stroke, virtually vanquished the Hohenstaufen hierarchy in the Mezzogiorno. Manfred's wife, Queen Helena, her daughter Beatrice and three bastard sons had been incarcerated in the Castello del Parco of Nocera; and all Ghibelline resistance had been cowed into conformity. Most of the kingdom's towns and territories, including Sicily, had submitted without a struggle. Even Manfred's formidable fleet surrendered docilely. Charles had assuaged much of the opposition's animus by offering a general amnesty, of which even such staunchly loyal Hohenstaufen supporters as the Lancias had availed themselves, albeit following a brief imprisonment. But, of course, Manfred was not the last of his line: his nephew Conradin was not only alive and safe with his mother, Elizabeth of Wittelsbach, under the protection of his uncle, Duke Louis II of Upper Bavaria, but he was also approaching maturity. He would be at the core of a cascade of challenges to Charles's rule that would eventually usher on stage the Aragonese admiral who would prove to be Anjou's undoing.
Forced vows of faithfulness notwithstanding, the campaign to wrest the crown of Sicily from Charles of Anjou and place it on Conradin's head began bare months after Benevento. And at its heart was the House of Lancia. Galvano, the family patriarch and King Manfred's uncle, had been a Hohenstaufen adherent since before Emperor Frederick II had made him justiciar of Sicily in 1240. He was prominent among a number of Ghibelline loyalists who made their way to Bavaria in the summer of 1266. There was also Conrad Capece who had been Manfred's vicar for Sicily, soon followed by Conrad of Antioch, the son of Frederick of Antioch who was Manfred's half-brother. Even Manfred of Maletta, the king's former chamberlain whose steadfastness had been suspect, crossed the Alps in hopes of convincing Conradin to claim his crown. But it was Galvano di Lancia along with his brother Frederick who would become critical to rousing martial support for the undertaking.
15 - Truces and Treaties (June 1287–November 1291)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 210-222
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FOLLOWING THE BATTLE OF THE COUNTS, the war was transformed au fond by a fitful series of failed truces and treaties. Roger of Lauria, himself, inaugurated the process. Rather than subjecting Naples to the sack in the immediate aftermath of his triumph, as his Sicilian confederates would have wanted, he negotiated a truce with Robert of Artois and co-regent of the Regno, Cardinal Gerardo da Parma. Sicilian partisans such as Bartolomeo Neocastro were sharply critical of the pact, and some, like Niccolo Speciale, even considered it treasonous, but Lauria's professed loyalty was to the Crown of Aragon, not Sicily, and the circumstances strongly suggest that the admiral's diplomacy was at the behest of King Alfonso III. Along with the throne, Alfonso had inherited from his father all the crown's troubles with the Cortes. And the Cortes were no more supportive of the Sicilian adventure than they had been under the previous king; nor could they legitimately be compelled to do so, since the Crown of Aragon remained under papal anathema. In fact, rather than accede to the crown's appeals for more funding for the war, the Cortes reportedly dispatched envoys to France offering to recognize Charles of Valois as their liege lord in return for acknowledgment of their sovereign rights. Alfonso caved in to their demands on 20 December 1287 before anything could come of the overture, but the message was clear: he had to rid himself of this prolonged, coffer-draining conflict. Roger's truce with Robert of Artois was, thus, probably part and parcel of the process of disengagement, authorized by Alfonso himself.
For his part, Roger saw the negotiated ceasefire as a means of compensating his mariners, most of whom had not been paid for months. As was mentioned earlier, the exorbitant ransoms obtained as a result of the agreement satisfied that need. Seizing Naples was not a realistic option in any event. The fleet apparently possessed no siege machinery and, according to Mott, ‘was not organized for an amphibious operation against a large city’. Camillo Manfroni confirms this by noting that Lauria had to content himself with ‘devastating the neighboring lands, the Neapolitan islands and the cities of Sorrento and Castellammare’.
7 - Aragonese Intervention (August–October 1282)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 90-103
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Summary
IN THE LATE SUMMER of 1282, while Charles of Anjou was conducting a constricting siege of Messina that would quite probably determine Sicily's fate, Peter of Aragon was struggling with a stubborn conundrum in Collo. He had positioned himself almost perfectly to intervene, but he could not do so unless he was invited. Otherwise he would be risking the appearance to the Sicilians and the rest of Europe of simply replacing one unwanted autocrat with another. Peter knew he was the solution to the Sicilian predicament; he just needed to convince the Sicilians of it.
Since arriving in Africa at the end of June, Peter had claimed a nearly deserted Collo and the adjacent coast, but he did not have the manpower to march on Constantina. He could only fortify his encampment and lead the occasional foray inland, while awaiting further developments on Sicily. In the meantime, incessant Saracen raids and the challenges of supplying and motivating a restive soldiery in an inimical environment proliferated. Eventually his counsellors, reportedly including Roger of Lauria, recommended that he dispatch an embassy to the pope, ostensibly to request ‘money and indulgences’ for the conquest of ‘Barbary’ for Christianity. But Michele Amari cites French sources to allege that this embassy, composed of Guillem de Castelnou and Pedro de Queralt, pulled into Palermo with their two galleys before ever reaching the papal palace at Montefiascone. Steven Runciman's reading of contemporary references led him to fundamentally concur, except that he believes that the Aragonese ambassadors met with the parliament of Palermo on the way back from Rome. No matter – the result was the same: Peter's request for papal support was rejected by Martin IV as he must have expected, but Castelnou's clandestine conference with the Sicilians in Palermo proved fruitful.
In truth, the Sicilians must have realized by this time that they had little choice in the matter – Anjou was literally at the gates of Messina with a huge army, even as the papacy adamantly refused its aegis. They soon dispatched a delegation to Collo that included two envoys from Palermo and three from Messina. They came in a pair of llenys sometime in mid-August.
Contents
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp vii-vii
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Epilogue
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 302-308
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THE WAR OF THE SICILIAN VESPERS subtly shifted westward the fulcrum of power in the medieval Mediterranean, and the Catalan fleet under Roger of Lauria served as a strong catalyst for that realignment. The moribund Eastern Empire was gradually receding under Ottoman pressure, and the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem existed in exile only, after the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291. As a result, such traditional maritime powers as Venice and Genoa lost some of their reach and dominance. Catalonian commerce, attended by its newfound naval capability, began to fill the void. By seizing Sicily and the adjacent islands in the course of the war, the Catalans of the Crown of Aragon were able to establish control of the central Mediterranean in much the same way the Normans had under King Roger II. ‘If, as was stated, the purpose of the Sicilian expedition were to establish a base for further economic penetration, the project succeeded,’ concludes J. Lee Shneidman, who adds, ‘Not only were Sicily and Malta brought under Catalan hegemony but the Tunisian islands of Djerba and Kerkenna near Gabes and Sfax were occupied, thus insuring Catalan domination of the narrowest part of the sea.’ This, of course, facilitated Catalan expansion eastward into Muslim as well as Christian-controlled lands. Within a few years after the war ended, Catalan merchants were nurturing mercantile networks from Tlemcen to Tripoli in North Africa, while their agents traded in Famagusta on Cyprus, Alexandria in Egypt and in the Syrian towns of Aleppo, Alexandretta and Damascus – not to mention doing an extensive business throughout what remained of the Byzantine Empire. All of this, of necessity, entailed the maintenance of an imposing naval capability – one that Roger of Lauria had meticulously developed.
The most spectacular miltary penetration of the East by the Catalans in the aftermath of the Sicilian Vespers was the mercenary enterprise called the Grand Catalan Company (Map 1). Saddled with hosting what was essentially an army of bribed brigands, Frederick was desperate to rid his kingdom of the almugavars and other such adventurers-for-profit following the Peace of Caltabellotta. So he sanctioned and materially supported Roger de Flor's scheme to offer his services and those of his fellow soldiers of fortune to the Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II Palaiologos, who was fending off the incessant assaults of the Ottoman Turks at the time.
5 - Angevin Consolidation and Aggrandizement (1268–1282)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 66-78
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Summary
FOLLOWING THE BATTLE OF TAGLIACOZZO, Charles of Anjou had wasted no time asserting his authority over north and central Italy while consolidating his control of the Kingdom of Sicily (Map 4). The clemency he had employed in the aftermath of the Battle of Benevento as a means of winning over dissidents had been discarded. He now ridded himself of rivals with a combination of ruthless retribution and relentless repression. He began by opportunistically seizing several key administrative positions. On 12 September 1268, barely three weeks after his victory at Tagliacozzo, Charles wrote to his brother King Louis IX to inform him that the citizens of Rome had chosen him senator for life by ‘unanimous’ acclamation. And Pope Clement IV, sometime prior to his death at Viterbo on 29 November, had named Charles as Imperial Vicar for Tuscany. Furthermore, temporary leadership vacuums in both the papal curia and the court of the Holy Roman Empire meant that Anjou held in his hands undisputed power on the peninsula.
Charles exploited these newly acquired appointments with dispatch. By the end of September, he was in Rome installing an Angevin autocracy that controlled virtually all aspects of the city's administration. He used his imperial vicariate to eliminate opposition in Tuscany by appointing Jean Bitaud as his representative in the region. The latter led the Florentine Guelphs to victory over the Sienese at Colle di Val d'Elsa on 17 June 1269, prompting Siena's submission in August of the following year. An alliance with jealous Genoa had isolated Pisa and forced it to plead for peace in the spring of 1270. As for northern Italy, most of the Piedmont willingly submitted to him, but Lombardy remained resistant – particularly the Ghibelline cities of Pavia and Verona. That said, while the majority of Lombardy's lords and municipalities opposed Angevin domination, they were at least solidly Guelph. Charles contented himself with assigning a seneschal to represent his interests in the province.
ANGEVIN REPRESSION
Anjou was far more proactive with regard to the Regno. Remnants of the Swabian rebels had sought safe haven with the Saracens of Lucera who were still in revolt. Charles himself laid siege to the city in April 1269, and by 28 August he had finally starved it into submission. The Muslim inhabitants were shown mercy but dispersed throughout the Regno. The Christian rebels, tellingly, were all summarily executed.
18 - Aragon's Invasion of Sicily at Anjou's Bidding (1298/1299)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 256-270
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Summary
IN THE AFTERMATH OF CATANZARO, the lack of an effective naval force initially prevented the Angevin–papal coalition from making much progress in its quest to wrest Sicily from Frederick. The only favourable development was the defection to the Angevin cause of Catalan captain Berenguer de Sarria (a colleague of Lauria), who cobbled together a flotilla of twenty galleys to raid Marsala, Malta and Pantelleria in February 1298. When Frederick quickly equipped around thirty galleys at Palermo to hunt him down, Sarria set course back to Naples, however, leaving little lasting damage in his wake. Thus, it became painfully apparent that there was no real hope of returning Sicily to Angevin control unless James of Aragon was convinced to assume a more active role in the endeavour. Accordingly, Pope Boniface ardently renewed his entreaties to King James, promising to finance his participation with papal tithes. He also persuaded the king's uncle, James II of Majorca, to pledge his allegiance to the Crown of Aragon as a condition for the return of the Balearics to his suzerainty. This arrangement also satisfied the latter's ally, Philip IV of France, engendering a general peace between the two kingdoms. Furthermore, a truce with Ferdinand IV of Castile temporarily freed Aragon from peninsular entanglements. In sum, the timing was finally right for James to help resolve the Sicilian issue once and for all.
SIEGE OF SYRACUSE (AUTUMN 1298/WINTER 1299)
That spring, James applied his papal bounty to the assembly of an 80-ship fleet (30 Provençal galleys and 50 Catalan). Marino Sanudo Torsello claimed that it carried 1,200 cavalry and 20,000 almugavars, but Giovanni Amatuccio relied on Angevin records to reach a more reasonable estimate of 500 knights and 3,000 infantry of mixed ethnic origins. No matter the exact numbers, it was a formidable force that represented a clear and present danger to Frederick and his Sicilian subjects. The arming of such an armada and its purpose could not have been kept secret from the young sovereign. After all, its mariners and military personnel had been recruited from Aragon, Catalonia, France, Provence and the Regno. Consequently, on 15 April Frederick hired Corrado Doria, a former Genoese fleet commander and Capitano del Popolo (‘Captain of the People’), to hurriedly equip a fleet of 64 ships, upon which some 700 horsemen were embarked.
13 - France's Crusade Against Aragon (May–November 1285)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 177-197
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Summary
NEITHER THE DEMISE OF CHARLES of Anjou nor the continued incarceration of his son and heir brought the bloody conflict to a conclusion. The combustible forces that had ignited it had not yet abated, much less dissipated. The impetus for dynastic territorial expansion, papal power politics and the Sicilian aspiration for some level of self-determination continued to rage like a conflagration burning out of control, consuming all before it.
The war merely entered a brutally destructive new phase, while sustaining a temporary change of venue from the Italian peninsula to the Iberian. The prize in contention was the very Crown of Aragon itself. As was previously noted, Pope Martin IV declared Peter III, whom he had excommunicated on 13 January 1283, forfeit of his kingdom at Orvieto on 21 March. He followed it up in August by dispatching legate Jean de Cholet of Saint Cecilia to Paris to offer the throne of Aragon to Charles of Valois, the third son of King Philip III of France. Philip formally accepted on 2 February 1284 and the papal legate, with all due ceremony and solemnity, invested the young prince with the Crown of Aragon on 27 February. Of course, it would not be as easy as all that to actually claim the crown. Philip and his papal patron realized that Peter was unlikely to relinquish the throne without registering a strong objection, that is, the French would have to take it by force. Accordingly, Pope Martin issued a papal bull on 3 May, formally installing Charles of Valois as King of Aragon and, the following month, he officially proclaimed a crusade to wrest the reins of power from Peter, the excommunicate.
PHILIP'S INVASION OF CATALONIA (SPRING 1285)
Pope Martin passed away in Perugia on 28 March of the following year (1285), but what he had set in motion had taken on a momentum of its own. By the second Sunday after Easter (mid-April 1285), Philip had mustered a massive army at Toulouse. In order to do so, he had collected church tithes with papal permission, heavily taxed his own feudal aristocracy and even borrowed 10,000 livres tournois from the bankers of Bruges. According to Bernat Desclot, the effort produced ‘the most mighty army that the crown of France had gathered together in that part within a hundred years’.
19 - Lauria's Last Great Campaign (Summer 1299–Spring 1300)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 271-288
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DESPITE THE DEPARTURE OF KING JAMES of Aragon after the Battle of Capo d'Orlando, the Angevin reconquest of Sicily seemed to proceed apace, at first. Within three weeks of the victory, Pietro Salvacoscia, one of Frederick's most effective fleet commanders, went over to the Angevins and delivered the islands of Ischia, Capri and Procida to King Charles, who promptly made him protontino (vice admiral) – second only to Roger of Lauria. Roger, himself, quickly reclaimed several of his previous possessions in the Val Demone (northeastern Sicily): Castiglione, Rocella and Placa (Map 6). Niccolo Speciale insisted that Francavilla would have also returned to the admiral's allegiance had it not been dominated by the castle enfeoffed to Corrado Doria, his opposite number. Duke Robert of Calabria, whom his father (King Charles II) had appointed as his Vicar-General for the island on 24 July 1299, made slower progress. Marching towards the east coast, he stopped to besiege Randazzo, one of the most densely populated towns on Sicily at the time, but its fiercely independent citizenry steadfastly resisted. Robert eventually accepted Roger's advice and moved on to more fruitful, obliging objectives on the south side of Mount Etna, with Catania as the ultimate objective.
The Angevin army was, thus, able to occupy with ease Adernò (modern Adrano), on the southwestern foot of the volcano. Robert soon laid siege to Paternò, a city a mere 14 miles (22.5 km) northwest of Catania. The local lord, Manfred Maletta, surrendered it on the second day. Maletta was then induced to also give up Buccheri, another small city under his control in the Val di Noto (southeastern Sicily) about 30 miles (50 km) west of Syracuse (Map 6). From there, Roger took a detachment of troops to nearby Vizzini, which he cajoled into submission through the persuasion (presumably at sword point) of a certain Giovanni Callaro, a favourite son of the city whom Lauria had captured at Capo d'Orlando. Afterwards, Roger rejoined Robert at Palagonia and the two of them marched south beyond Vizzini to Chiaramonte, about 10 miles (16 km) north of Ragusa. Chiaramonte was a fief of the eponymous noble family, one of the most powerful on Sicily and staunchly loyal to Frederick, so its citizens refused to yield without a fight. It was a terrible mistake, for which most of them paid with their lives in ghastly fashion.
17 - Switching Sides (December 1293–April 1297)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 236-255
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IF THE ADMIRAL OF ARAGON had, in fact, intended to intimidate the Angevins with his actions in the summer of 1292, he succeeded admirably. Shortly after Roger's return from the raid on ‘Romania’ in the early autumn, rumours reached Charles II of Naples that Lauria was planning an ambitious assault on the Amalfi coast, ostensibly to punish Positano and other nearby ports for the harassment of Sicilian shipping. At least forty vessels and 2,000 almugavars as well as an equal number of Messinese mariners were reported to be involved. The ultimate objective, however, was the occupation of Monte Sant'Angelo a Tre Pizzi (just above Positano) – the highest summit in the Lattari Mountains, which formed the spine of the Sorrento Peninsula. This deeply concerned Charles because he knew that, from this vantage point, Lauria's almugavars could ravage the entire region and Angevin cavalry would be helpless to hamper them in the rugged terrain. It was an alarming threat to the heart of the Regno. The feared incursion never actually materialized. Nonetheless, the mere possibility frightened Charles into fortifying not just the mountaintop in question, but the entire Amalfi coast.
The king of Naples knew, however, that such preventive measures were only palliative and did not deal with the underlying problem: Aragon's supremacy at sea under the supervision of its gifted admiral. Desperate to counter it, Charles again dispatched envoys to Genoa in December 1292 to propose a mutual military aid pact that would provide the Regno the required sea power. To entice the Genoese into an alliance, the Angevin ambassadors offered them the one commodity that they needed the most: the grain of the Mezzogiorno. Without the wheat of southern Italy and Sicily, Genoa would all but starve. In order to acquire it, Genoese merchants were compelled to pay the onerous dazio d'uscita (‘export tax’). The Angevins promised total exemption from the dazio d'uscita on the first 30,000 salme (1 Sicilian salma = 275 litres) from Sicily per year and a reduction of more than half on the next 30,000 salme extracted per annum – once the island was conquered for the Regno. Until such time, the Genoese were to be permitted to export 200,000 ‘measures’ (presumably roughly equivalent to the Sicilian salme) from the ports of Provence, free from duty.
Bibliography
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 309-315
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1 - Battle of Benevento (26 February 1266)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 9-24
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WHEN CHARLES, COUNT OF ANJOU and brother of King Louis IX of France, emerged with his assembled forces from the Samnite Apennines to arrive on the east shoulder of Monte San Vitale just above the fortified city of Benevento on the afternoon of 25 February 1266, his heart must have sunk. There, camped beneath the walls of the city on the south side of the swollen River Calore, was the entire army of his archenemy: Manfred, King of Sicily. He had not expected him to be there.
Charles had just marched his army from Rome, where on the day of the Epiphany (6 January) he had been anointed by the papacy to assume Manfred's crown. His objective was Naples, Manfred's residence and unofficial capital. So he had taken the Via Latina, an old Roman road that ran through Frosinone and Anagni. He faced little resistance as he crossed the River Liri at Ceprano. On 10 February his invading army had even captured the seemingly impregnable castle of Cassino (called San Germano at the time) from a detachment of 2,000 Saracens sent by Manfred to hold the pass. But there he learned that Manfred was waiting in force behind a heavily fortified bridge on the Volturno River near Capua, which blocked the main access route into the Regno (the medieval appellation for the Kingdom of Sicily – from the Italian word regno, meaning ‘kingdom’). Deciding that the most prudent course of action was to flank Manfred to the east, Charles diverted his legions eastward past Telese into the rugged Taburno Camposauro Mountains and through the narrow defile of Vitulano just west of Benevento. It was a horrific miscalculation. The track made for an arduous trek in the dead of winter. Seasonal downpours had turned mountain streams into raging torrents. Most of his supply wagons had to be abandoned. By the time his men stumbled out into the Calore Valley, they had devoured most of their beasts of burden and even some of their destriers (the costly warhorses of the knights). It was a drained and dispirited force that now faced a well-rested and well-fed adversary, protected by a nearly impassable river in the shadow of a well-defended city.
4 - Aragonese Expansion (1229–1282)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 24 October 2019
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- 18 October 2019, pp 48-65
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Summary
IT WAS, IRONICALLY, Charles of Anjou's conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily that put him on a collision course with another emerging Mediterranean power: the Crown of Aragon. At precisely the moment that Anjou was establishing a dominant position in the centre of the Middle Sea, Aragon was in the process of an aggressive eastward expansion that would eventually foist it into direct conflict with Angevin interests and introduce Anjou to the admiral who would ultimately end his aspirations of empire.
Like the Kingdom of Sicily, the Crown of Aragon (as it was commonly known) was a relatively new realm (Map 5). As fortune would have it, they were both established at about the same time – in the early twelfth century. The former was founded on 27 September 1130 when Pope Anacletus II issued a papal bull recognizing Roger II de Hauteville as king of Sicily, and the latter was effectively born on 11 August 1137 with the betrothal of Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona to the Infanta Petronilla of Aragon. And both were destined to become sea powers – Sicily because it was an island kingdom and the Crown of Aragon because its Catalonian component was centred on the vibrant port city of Barcelona. But the two kingdoms did not clash in any significant manner prior to the thirteenth century, largely owing to the fact that Catalonian maritime expansion was impeded by Moorish-held Majorca (Mallorca) and Menorca (Minorca) in the Balearics, which stood astride the trade routes to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. All that changed shortly after the accession of James I to the throne of Aragon on 12 September 1213.
CONQUEST OF MAJORCA BY JAMES I (1229–1231)
Prior to James's coronation, Aragon had been dominated by twelve noble families whose primary ambition comprised extending their power southward into the Muslim-controlled portion of the Iberian peninsula – particularly the kingdoms of Valencia and Murcia. This served as an additional brake on Catalonia maritime penetration into the Mediterranean. But James and his successors realized that the Crown of Aragon's inherent lack of resources severely restricted its potential for aggrandizement at the expense of its Muslim neighbours.
11 - Battle of Malta (8 June 1283)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 24 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2019, pp 147-159
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Summary
ON 1 JUNE 1283, FOR A BRIEF SPAN of time the struggle for the Kingdom of Sicily shifted to the outskirts of Bordeaux, then a possession of Edward I ‘Longshanks’ of England. It was there that a set of lists had been set up just outside the city walls, where the two sovereigns and their entourages of royal champions were to fight for the fate of Sicily. And, indeed, the two kings arrived at the appointed place on the appointed day, but it was all a chivalric charade. Neither side had intended for the issue to be settled in the lists.
The Catalan chronicles describing the affair – those by Ramon Muntaner and Bernat Desclot – are remarkably similar. Charles of Anjou had come by way of Rome, where he had petitioned Pope Martin for additional funding and urged him to declare a crusade against Aragon. Martin inveighed strenuously against the ‘duel’ and even dispatched a letter to Edward forbidding him to act as ‘marshal of the field’ for the tournament. (Edward's neutrality could also have been in question, since his daughter Eleanor was betrothed to Peter's eldest son Alfonso at the time.) Ultimately, however, the pontiff complied with Anjou's request and formally declared Peter deposed as king of Aragon on 21 March 1283. Charles then went on to Paris, where he had sought the support of his nephew, King Philip III of France. The latter had not only agreed to supply his uncle with sixty of the hundred knights who were to be his champions (the other forty were to come from Provence), but also to accompany him to Bordeaux with his own retinue of knights – 8,000 according to Desclot; 12,000 by Muntaner's estimate. Clearly the aim here was an ambush, under the dubious dodge that the king of France was not a signatory to the duel's stipulated conditions.
Peter of Aragon, for his part, was no fool. He must have suspected treachery all along, because he was circumspect to the point of being outright clandestine in his journey to Bordeaux. Before departing Messina, he had tasked Roger of Lauria, his newly appointed admiral, with secretly outfitting four galleys crewed only by Catalans.
12 - Anjou's Dreams of Empire Dashed (June–November 1284)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 24 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2019, pp 160-176
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THE ANGEVIN ANSWER to the devastating defeat at Malta was to assemble overwhelming force. Within weeks of losing the Provençal fleet, Charles of Anjou and his son Charles of Salerno embarked upon an aggressive campaign to construct an armada so massive that it would swamp its Aragonese counterpart by its sheer size. They began by cajoling Pope Martin into contributing ecclesiastical tithes earmarked for crusades to the Holy Land. Loans were acquired from the great banking families of Florence and Lucca; the merchants of Tuscany were tapped as well; and even Edward I of England was convinced to lend some funds to the cause. And, of course, taxes were collected ruthlessly throughout Provence and the Regno to finance the effort. Prince Charles even went so far as to garnish his father's crown jewels for cash, but the king derailed the transaction, offering up his silver tableware instead. It is estimated that the two Angevin royals raised around 335,000 ounces of gold between September 1283 and June 1284 alone.
These funds were used to underwrite a vigorous shipbuilding programme in Angevin arsenals from Provence to Apulia. At the same time, the great maritime cities of Genoa, Pisa, Venice and Ancona were approached with lucrative offers to lease fully crewed combat vessels. The House of Anjou petitioned Pisa for fifty galleys, for instance, and Genoa for forty. Unfortunately for Charles and son, both the Genoese and the Pisans demurred because they were, once again, distracted by open hostilities with one another, while Venice (and probably also Ancona) chose to adhere to a policy of strict neutrality concerning the conflict. Nonetheless, the Angevins were able to generate more than enough warships on their own. Upon his return to Provence after the abortive duel at Bordeaux, Charles of Anjou reportedly oversaw the production of thirty-four to thirty-eight galleys at his shipyard in Marseilles, while his son was able to equip another thirty at Naples. To these numbers, Brindisi added as many as forty. The Angevin Registers also listed around thirty galleys from Gaeta and another sixty-eight gathered from various ports in Apulia and the Abruzzi. The latter two provinces also produced at least fifty taride. Dozens of other transport ships were collected from Calabria, the Basilicata, the Terra di Lavoro and the Capitanata. Altogether, Angevin naval assets must have exceeded 200 by the late spring of 1284.
20 - Endgame (Spring 1301–Summer 1302)
- Charles D. Stanton
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- Book:
- Roger of Lauria (c.1250–1305)
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 24 October 2019
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2019, pp 289-301
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CHASTENED BUT UNDETERRED by the mixed results of his last expedition, Roger of Lauria settled upon an even more aggressive naval strategy the following year to bring Sicily to heel. Subduing the island clearly depended upon extending the Angevin power base beyond Catania and the Val di Noto; and the most efficient means of doing that was to impose naval supremacy on Sicily's shores through the vigorous use of the Angevin fleet – especially since the Sicilians no longer possessed a fleet to oppose it. Accordingly, Roger first returned to Naples in order to acquire more supplies to replenish Angevin strongholds on the eastern end of the island and to procure more ships for the fleet. When he sailed back to Catania in the spring of 1301 having achieved his purpose, the admiral shared his strategy with the duke: they would divide the armada into two squadrons with Roger leading one to subjugate the northern shores while Robert took the other to suppress the southern littoral (Map 6).
The plan's implementation, of course, turned out to be much more problematic than its conception. Unsurprisingly, a pronounced dichotomy in seamanship and judgment dictated that Robert would fare far worse than Roger. The former chose to begin his cruise by assailing Syracuse, despite the fact that, two years before, the city had so stubbornly resisted James II of Aragon that the king had been compelled to abandon his first effort to conquer the island altogether, having achieved little. Predictably, the Syracusans summarily dismissed their assailants on this occasion as well, prompting the Angevins to move on to Scicli (just south of Ragusa), which also rebuffed them. In July, Robert's fleet found itself sailing by Scoglitti (a few miles up the coast towards Gela), when a violent storm struck it from the southwest. Gale force winds drove many of the ships ashore despite frantic attempts to anchor them. Niccolo Speciale reported that twenty-two galleys broke up on the rocks at Camerina just southeast of Scoglitti near modern-day Marina di Ragusa. The duke and the rest of his fleet would have suffered a similar fate, had not the captain of his flagship decided to run before the wind instead of fighting it.