The Sicilian Vespers

By 1282 the kingdom of Sicily had been part of Charles of Anjou’s patchwork empire – it also included Provence and Albania – for 16 years. But his eyes were on a bigger prize: he had assembled a fleet to take Constantinople. As for Sicily, he disdained it, and the islanders despised him. Room enough for the Byzantine emperor Michael Palaiologos – and other enemies, such as Peter III of Aragon – to put their money to work.

On 30 March that year, at the hour before Vespers, Easter celebrations were being held in the square outside the Church of the Holy Spirit near Palermo. A drunk Frenchman named Drouet assaulted a married woman. Her husband stabbed him to death. The moment escalated. The crowd fell on the other French present and slaughtered them too.

A cry rang through the streets, ‘moranu li Franchiski’, ‘death to the French’. Death came with a test: could you pronounce the Sicilian word for chickpea, ciciri? By the morning 2,000 had been slain and Charles had lost Palermo. A month later he had lost Messina too, where his fleet rode in the harbour. The rebels burned his ships. His ambitions sank with them.

In Constantinople, Michael Palaiologos was exultant. ‘I was God’s instrument in bringing freedom to the Sicilians’, he wrote in a memoir. But it was Peter III who took control.