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Chapter 1: who's who and other basics before action
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Independence, at last! That one could be the intimate perception of the crowd of noblemen, folks and soldiers joyfully blending in the streets of Taranto to salute
Duke Raimondo, just arriving from his visit to Naples. Few days ago, his meeting with
Ferrante I, King of Naples, sanctioned once for all his title of Duke of Apulia together with his allegiance as vassal of the King. Despite the stringent terms of the truce agreement, which imposed to Duke Raimondo the disbandment of any troops and ships that had served the cause of the rebellion against Naples, the fact itself that Ferrante – a courageous but oppressive sovereign who never behaved in a merciful way with his enemies – had recognised the autonomy of Apulia was a adequate event to celebrate for. That was the reason why Raimondo, a handsome brown-haired man in his thirties, his wife Antonia and their two young sons Laura and Gabriele were sitting before Father Giovanni Battista, Metropolitan Archbishop of the city, in Saint Cataldo's Dome. That 1492 New Year's day a persisting wind blew from the North onto Taranto with its cold Adriatic moisture, causing a lively crowd to push toward the portal of the church to get some comfort. The Dome, not so roomy when compared to its peers – either in Northern Italy or even in the same province, like Saint Nicholas' in Bari – had nonetheless its intimate beauty, perhaps due to the contrast between its Greek-styled circular heart and its linear Romanic facade.
Only five years before none would have gambled a single ducat on such occurrence. The royalist forces had just crushed – once more – another magnates' conspiracy when Raimondo's cousin Pirro del Balzo was strangled in captivity, the same fate occurred to Raimondo's grandfather Giannantonio almost thirty years before in 1463. After two years of skirmishes, Pirro's murder seemed to put an end to the last showdown of a bicentennial battle among two great lineages, whose blood has washed these lands, mixed with that of common Romans, Lombards, Normans and Greeks: the Houses of Anjou and Aragon.
How to forge a dynasty (quasi-historical background)
Raimondo's ancestor, Barral – Lord of Les Baux de Provence – came after Charles of Anjou in the second half of '200s, during the conflicts against the last pathetic remnants of the House of Hohenstaufen. Barral acquired on the battlefields honour and privileges as one of the most influential Charles' lieutenants. When swords set aside, Barral's sons and cousins managed to increase their power arranging remarkable marriages with top families around the peninsula, particularly in the Regnum, as Charles' kingdom was then called. One of them, Bertrando, married with a young woman, Sveva, heir of the eminent Orsini family … that's why now Duke Raimondo brings such a long surname, Orsini Del Balzo (Italianisation for De Baux). After Bertrando came
Raimondello and his wife Maria d'Enghien, Prince of Taranto and condottiere the former, fine Countess of Lecce the latter. Their union, a rare example of "marriage of convenience" blessed by true love, sanctioned the establishment of one of the biggest and richest Italian feudal princedoms. At the twilight of the XIV century, their domains covered the
red-coloured area in the chart hereunder and granted revenues in excess of those attributed to the King himself.
From that time on, the authority of the Prince of Taranto was too substantial to be ignored, particularly in the royal court. The traditional allegiance to the Angevins began to vanish with the sneaky manoeuvres, which opposed – during the confused Queen Giovanna I's reign – the French and Hungarian branches of that pervasive dynasty. Raimondello took the parts of Charles of Hungary and his son Ladislas, only to find himself in trouble when his victorious master resolved to subdue by force the major feudal lordships. In 1405 the Prince of Taranto rebelled like other feudal lords, but was the only one capable to endure royal armies besieging his citadel. Unfortunately, Raimondello's death in 1406 forced the widow and her son Giannantonio to find an humiliating agreement with King Ladislas. Maria was forced to marry the Angevin King, but Giannantonio managed to retain a great part of his legitimate lands.
A feeble peace came over the Kingdom until Queen Giovanna II's unruly swings of alliances and beds among pro-Aragonese and pro-Angevin favourites renewed ancient flames between two great pretenders to the throne of an heirless, unprotected Queen, Alfonso V and René d'Anjou. Like his father Giannantonio supported the right party because René's predominance over the Kingdom was destined to fade before the stronger King of Aragon, exactly the same fate of the Hohenstaufens' before his French ancestors. By 1442, the Angevine Kingdom of Naples was history, another fallen leaf from the tree of history…
Grateful for his help against René, King Alfonso V extended Giannantonio's privileges and allowances. At that point of time a brilliant future seemed to be in store for Giannantonio's little grandson Raimondo. Yet that was another illusion, because the family curse was going to recur. Giannantonio's relationship with the new King Ferrante I remained quite polite until the surfacing of the monarch's oppressive and suspicious attitude. A first attempt of revolt against Ferrante broke out in 1462 in the name of the Louis of Anjou, son of René; despite the Angevins' faults against his family witnessed in his youth, Giannantonio joined the insurgents moving with his army on the capital, but was terribly defeated on the Apennines. Notwithstanding Ferrante's promises of mercy, Giannantonio was strangled in prison by a cruel archpriest presumptively sent by the King. Thus ended year 1463, the annus horribilis for the Princedom of Taranto.
Raimondo's infancy
Ferrante I grabbed a great part of Giannantonio's lands, but committed a big mistake leaving his progeny alive. One year after the assassination, Giannantonio's shaky son
Bertoldo was only reinstated as Count of Lecce with few other lands in central Apulia. Raimondo, a vivid 8 years old boy at that time, fully perceived the humiliating conditions of his family. Almost all the manors and palaces stretching through the
Regnum where he was born and grown had been confiscated. He grew up without brothers and sisters in the dark family residence in Lecce among Bertoldo's practitioners, who gave him a basic set of knowledge. Differently from his father, he was so robust and healthy to bear every physical exercise. One of his few friends was
Mino, the son of the Anselmo "lo scudiero" (the squire") with whom he learnt horse-riding and hunting. The strong comradeship between Raimondo and Mino overcame their privileges and duties and probably represented for the future Duke of Apulia the only spot of loyalty during his tough fight for the reinstatement of his family's right.
Bertoldo died in 1478 leaving his meagre legacy to Raimondo. For seven years Raimondo spent his time rebuilding the great family fortune with olive oil, and wine trading, the main goods produced on his lands. Raimondo's attitude for commerce needs some additional details: feudatories coming from outside were warlords in their essence, with no particular entrepreneurship abilities. Fully dedicated to campaigning or training, they considered degrading any working activity handing over the management of the properties to ravenous stewards, committed to their own benefit more than that of their masters. Still motionless for his relatively young age and deprived of his largest and most fertile lands, Raimondo had to administer in an efficient way his estates in order to work out some profit. Without his grandfather's extensively farmed provinces, he was left with poorly irrigated lands in the Southern part of Apulia: without great quantities of crops, the best way to get income from them was transforming agriculture into industry and selling the products outside with higher margins; Raimondo pushed this project for olive oil and wine. His ideas were successful, because these produces attracted Venetian merchants who found profitable markets for them. Despite a big fiscal burden imposed by King Ferrante, an easy and common practice to compress feudatories' power and smash their ambitions, with those profits Raimondo could begin to rebuild the ancient treasury. With this restored wealth he rebuilt an army of few thousands armoured knights, a respectable force for the times. In April 1480 a magnificent festival held in Lecce sanctioned his wedding with Antonia Colonna, member of one of the most famed Roman families, who gave him a daughter, Laura, two years later and a son, Gabriele, in 1483. But their most peaceful period of life was at its closing stages…
End
[Dear readers, I'm realising there are (and will be) lots of names and surnames in my history. I'm making a genealogy prospectus of people & families involved.]