War of The Sicilian Vespers - Aragonese Crusade

Aragonese Crusade

In 1284, Pope Martin granted the kingdom of Aragon to Charles, Count of Valois, the brother of the French king and great nephew of Charles of Sicily. Papal sanction was given to a war—crusade—which historian H. J. Chaytor describes as "perhaps the most unjust, unnecessary and calamitous enterprise ever undertaken by the Capetian monarchy." While Roger of Lauria was still solidifying Peter's gains in Sicily and Calabria, Peter himself had entered France clandestinely to duel Charles, but that failing, returned to his Spanish domains, while Charles re-entered Italy, where he had died.

Peter was dealing with domestic unrest at the time the French prepared to invade. He took Albarracín from the rebellious noble Juan Núñez I de Lara, renewed the alliance with Sancho IV of Castile, and attacked Tudela in an attempt to prevent the king of Navarre, Philip I, who was the son of the French king, Philip III the Bold, from invading on that front.

In 1283, Peter's brother, King James II of Majorca, joined the French and recognised their suzerainty over Montpellier giving them free passage through the Balearic Islands and Roussillon. James had also inherited the county of Roussillon and thus stood between the dominions of the French and Aragonese monarchs. Peter had opposed James' inheritance as a younger son and reaped the consequence of such rivalry in the crusade. In 1284, the first French armies under King Philip and Count Charles entered Roussillon. They included 16,000 cavalry, 17,000 crossbowmen, and 100,000 infantry, along with 100 ships in south French ports. Though the French had James' support, the local populace rose against them. The city of Elne was valiantly defended by the so-called bâtard de Roussillon ("bastard of Roussillon"), the illegitimate son of Nuño Sánchez, late count of Roussillon (1212–1242). Eventually he was overcome and the cathedral was burnt, after which the royal forces continued their advance.

In 1285, Philip entrenched himself before Girona in an attempt to besiege it. Despite a strong resistance the city was taken. Charles was crowned there, but without an actual crown. The French soon experienced a reversal, however, at the hands of Roger de Lauria, back from the Italian theatre of the drawn-out conflict. The French fleet was defeated and destroyed at the Battle of Les Formigues. Further the French camp was hit hard by an epidemic of dysentery, and Philip himself was afflicted. The heir to the French throne, the king of Navarre, opened negotiations with Peter for free passage for the royal family through the Pyrenees. But the troops were not offered such passage and were devastated at the Battle of the Col de Panissars. The king of France himself died at Perpignan, the capital of James of Majorca, who had fled in fear after being confronted by Peter, and was buried in Narbonne.

Peter died on 2 November 1285, in the same year as his two royal foes, Charles and Philip. His deathbed absolution occurred after he declared that his conquests had been in the name of his familial claims and never against the claims of the church. After a few more years of general warfare, marked by the Battle of the Counts on 23 June 1287, where the Angevins were defeated near Naples, the Treaty of Tarascon of 1291 officially restored Aragon to his heir, Alfonso, and lifted the ban of the church.