The Sicilian Vespers was a successful anti-French rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out on Easter Monday, 30 March 1282 amid the wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy. Over the course of six weeks, Sicilian rebels rose up against the French King Charles of Anjou and massacred 13,000 French men and women, depriving the French of control over the island and inviting King Peter III of Aragon to take the throne. This rebellion, and the ensuing Angevin-Aragonese confrontation, resulted in the War of the Sicilian Vespers.
Background[]
In 1258, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II's illegitimate son Manfred seized the throne of Sicily after hearing a false rumor of his nephew Conradin's death. Manfred's attempts to reconcile with the Papacy were unsuccessful, however, due to the long-running rivalry between the Holy Roman Emperors and Popes. Pope Urban IV and Pope Clement IV refused to recognize Manfred's accession to the throne and excommunicated him, and the Papacy made plans to depose Manfred by force of arms. England was uninterested, but Urban IV later settled on the French nobleman Charles of Anjou, the brother of King Louis IX of France. Charles defeated and killed Manfred at the Battle of Benevento in 1266, and, in 1268, Charles also defeated and executed Conradin, who also attempted to stake his claim on the Sicilian throne. King Charles angered his Sicilian subjects by granting his French, Provencal, and Neapolitan subjects lucrative posts abroad while snubbing the Sicilian nobility, and he also implemented high taxes to pay for his attempt to forge an overseas empire at the expense of the Byzantines. Meanwhile, King Peter III of Aragon married Manfred's daughter Constance of Sicily, who claimed the Sicilian throne for herself, and Byzantine agents worked with the Sicilian diplomat John of Procida to stir up anti-Angevin unrest in Sicily.
Uprising[]
At the start of the Vespers sunset prayer on Easter Monday, 30 March 1282, French soldiers in Palermo began to harass local Sicilian women, feeling them up while searching for weapons. A sergeant named Drouet pestered a young woman with his advances until her husband killed Drouet with a knife; when the other Frenchmen attempted to avenge their comrade, the crowd of Sicilians attacked the French first with rocks and then with weapons, killing them all. Messengers then ran across the city to spread the word of the uprising against the French, and armed Sicilian men chanting moranu li Francisi ("Death to the French") filled the streets. The Sicilian mob poured into inns and houses inhabited by the Frenchmen, massacring Frenchmen, their French and Sicilian wives, and even their children. The Sicilians also went to the Dominican and Franciscan convents and forced the priests to pronounce the word ciciri, a word the French could not pronounce; they slew those who failed the test. By the next morning, 2,000 French men and women had been slain. Over the next two weeks, Sicilian messengers encouraged uprisings across the island before the French could organize resistance, and, within six weeks, all of the island apart from the well-fortified and pro-French city of Messina had been freed of French occupation. On 28 April, Messina finally rebelled, setting fire to King Charles' fleet in the harbor. By then, a new pope, the French Pope Martin IV, had come to power and refused to recognize Sicilian independence as a Venetian-style republic, instead directing the Sicilains to recognize Charles as their king. As a result, the Sicilians unilaterally invited King Peter III of Aragon to seize power, and he landed at Trapani on 30 August 1282, arrived at Palermo on 2 September, and was crowned king on 4 September 1282.
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