Charles of Anjou entered history as the youngest child of King Louis VIII of France and his queen, Blanche of Castile. The precise date of his birth has not survived, but most historians place it in early 1226 or 1227. Louis VIII died in November 1226, making it likely that Charles was born posthumously or very shortly after his father's death. He was the only surviving son of Louis to have been "born in the purple," meaning born after his father's coronation, a distinction Charles himself frequently emphasized in later life, as the chronicler Matthew Paris noted. He was also the first member of the Capetian dynasty to be named in honor of Charlemagne.
The late king's will stipulated that his youngest sons be prepared for careers in the Church. Charles followed this path into his early twenties, though his disposition was always more martial than clerical. The course of his life changed decisively when he acquired the County of Provence through his marriage to Beatrice, heiress to the county. The acquisition gave Charles a substantial territorial base south of France, and he immediately set about restoring central authority there. His efforts brought him into direct conflict with his mother-in-law, Beatrice of Savoy, and with the powerful nobility of the region. He was forced to relinquish Forcalquier to his mother-in-law in 1248, though she returned it to him in 1256. Around the same time, his older brother, King Louis IX of France, granted him the counties of Anjou and Maine as an appanage, giving Charles extensive holdings in both northern and southern France.
Charles accompanied Louis IX on the Seventh Crusade to Egypt. The campaign was a military catastrophe, ending in the capture of the crusading army and the imprisonment of the king himself, but Charles acquitted himself as a capable commander under desperate circumstances. After returning to Provence in 1250, he moved swiftly to consolidate his southern domains. He forced three wealthy and autonomous cities, Marseille, Arles, and Avignon, to acknowledge his suzerainty, a significant demonstration of his willingness to use force where diplomacy alone would not suffice. He also extended his control over a dozen towns and lordships in the Kingdom of Arles, steadily building the territorial and financial base he would need for larger ambitions.
His involvement in the affairs of the Low Countries began in 1253, when he supported Margaret II, Countess of Flanders and Hainaut, against her eldest son John in a succession dispute. In exchange for his backing, he received the county of Hainaut. Louis IX persuaded him to renounce the county two years later, but instructed Margaret to pay Charles one hundred and sixty thousand marks as compensation, a sum that helped fund future campaigns.
The decisive opportunity of Charles's career came in 1263, when he accepted an offer from the Holy See to seize the Kingdom of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen dynasty. This kingdom, encompassing the island of Sicily and all of southern Italy as far north as beyond Naples, was known as the Regno. Pope Urban IV declared a crusade against the reigning king, Manfred of Sicily, and provided Charles with crucial assistance in raising the men and money needed for the expedition. Charles was crowned King of Sicily in Rome on 5 January 1266. He then marched south, and Manfred's army was annihilated in battle at Benevento. Charles occupied the Regno almost without resistance. Two years later, in 1268, Manfred's young nephew Conradin assembled an army to reclaim the throne. Charles defeated him at the Battle of Tagliacozzo and subsequently had Conradin executed, eliminating the last serious Hohenstaufen claimant.
His dominion over southern Italy and Sicily made him the most powerful ruler in the Italian peninsula and the dominant figure among the papacy's Italian supporters, the Guelphs. He wielded enormous influence over papal elections and maintained a heavy military presence across Italy, developments that began to alarm the very popes whose support had elevated him. In 1270, he participated in the Eighth Crusade organized by Louis IX, which was directed against the Hafsid Caliphate in North Africa. The campaign ended quickly after the death of Louis IX, but Charles extracted a substantial concession: the Hafsid Caliph Muhammad I agreed to pay him a yearly tribute.
In the years that followed, his ambitions expanded relentlessly. In 1272 he was proclaimed King of Albania, adding yet another title to a growing collection. In 1277 he purchased a claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1278 he became Prince of Achaea following the death of William of Villehardouin without male heirs. The popes, increasingly anxious about his accumulation of power, tried to redirect his ambitions into territories where he would be useful to the Church without dominating Italy. In 1281, Pope Martin IV granted authorization for Charles to launch a crusade against the Byzantine Empire. His fleet assembled at Messina, Sicily, poised to begin what could have been a defining campaign.
It never came. On 30 March 1282, a violent popular uprising erupted in Sicily, beginning at the Church of the Holy Spirit outside Palermo on the evening of Vespers. The revolt spread with extraordinary speed across the island. French soldiers and officials were massacred in their thousands. Within weeks, the entire island had risen against Angevin rule in what became known as the Sicilian Vespers. Charles was unable to suppress the rebellion. He retained control of the mainland territories, which came to be called the Kingdom of Naples, with support from France and the papacy, but Sicily itself was permanently lost.
Charles of Anjou spent the remainder of his life attempting to recover the island, but he died on 7 January 1285 while preparing yet another invasion. He was roughly fifty-eight years old. His legacy was immense. He had founded the House of Anjou-Sicily, extended Capetian influence across the Mediterranean basin, and transformed the political geography of southern Europe. He also left behind a lesson in the limits of imperial ambition: the Sicilian Vespers, one of the most dramatic popular revolts of the Middle Ages, demonstrated that even the most formidable military power could be undone when an entire people rose against it.
