Robert, King of Naples

Robert of Anjou (Italian: Roberto d'Angiò), known as Robert the Wise (Italian: Roberto il Saggio; 1276 – 20 January 1343), was King of Naples, titular King of Jerusalem and Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of Italian politics of his time. He was the third son of King Charles II of Naples and Mary of Hungary, and during his father's lifetime he was styled Duke of Calabria (1296–1309).

Robert's early life was marked by his family's participation in the War of the Sicilian Vespers, in which conflict Robert served as a military commander. Upon the death of his father in 1309, Robert ruled as the king of Naples. His reign brought relative stability to Naples compared to the reigns of his father and grandfather, but it was also marked by rivalries against Germanic powers in northern Italy and the House of Barcelona in the western Mediterranean. Robert was pre-deceased by his son and heir Charles of Calabria, and so willed his throne to his granddaughter, Joanna of Naples.

Robert was born around 1276, the third son of the future Charles II of Naples (then heir apparent) and his wife Mary of Hungary. His father was the son of the incumbent King of Naples, Charles of Anjou, who had established an Italian realm a decade earlier in 1266. In 1282, the Angevin kingdom was shaken by the Sicilian Vespers, a revolt by the Sicilians against the rule of his grandfather Charles. The ensuing War of the Sicilian Vespers against the Sicilian rebels widened when the crown of Crown of Aragon intervened in support of the Sicilians.

The Sicilian conflict had a major effect on Robert's early life; in 1284, his father was captured in battle and became a prisoner of the Aragonese, and in 1285 Robert's grandfather died at Foggia while on campaign. When his imprisoned father assumed the throne of Naples in 1285, a period of stalemate in the war led to his father negotiating for his freedom from Aragonese captivity.

While Robert was sent to the Aragonese court as a political hostage, Charles II's eldest son, Charles Martel of Anjou was named as heir to the throne of Naples; he would die of the plague in 1295. His surviving son, Charles of Hungary, would be passed over for succession of Naples. Instead, Robert would become heir apparent, after his elder brother Louis of Anjou (later Saint Louis of Toulouse) renounced his inheritance to take up holy orders. That same year, Naples and Aragon signed the Treaty of Anagni, in which James II of Aragon pledged to return the throne of Sicily to Charles II. As part of the treaty, Robert married James' daughter, Yolanda of Aragon, thereby tying the two former combatants together by marriage. The treaty, however, did not end the conflict; the Sicilian parliament refused to allow the House of Anjou to regain control of the island, and so elected James' brother, Frederick II, as king of Sicily.

Faced with stiff Sicilian resistance, in 1298 Robert and his new father-in-law James launched a major invasion of Sicily, in which Robert led the Angevin forces. After some initial successes, the invasion became bogged down in Sicily, and in 1299 his younger brother, Philip of Taranto, was captured by the Sicilians. The war ended in 1302 with the signing of the Peace of Caltabellotta; Robert and the Angevin dynasty lost Sicily forever, their rule limited to the south of peninsular Italy.

Charles II of Naples died in 1309, leaving Robert to inherit the throne of Naples. In addition to inheriting the throne, Robert - as the new Angevin king of Naples - was seen as the papal champion in Italy, as had been his father and grandfather; his reign being blessed from the papal enclave within Robert's Provence, by the French Pope Clement V, who made him papal vicar in Romagna and Tuscany, where Robert intervened in the war of factions in Florence, accepted the offered signiory of that city, but had to abandon it due to Clement's opposition.

The leader of the Guelph party in Italy, Robert opposed the sojourn of Emperor Henry VII in Italy (1311–13) and his occupation of Rome in 1312. After Henry's death, the Guelph reaction against the Ghibelline leaders in northern Italy, Matteo Visconti and Cangrande della Scala, made it seem for a time that Robert would become the arbiter of Italy. Already ruler of wide possessions in Piedmont, Robert's prestige increased further when in 1313 the pope named him Senator of Rome, and when he became Lord of Genoa (1318–34) and Brescia (1319) and from 1314 onwards held the resounding papal title of imperial vicar of all Italy, during the absence in Italy of the Holy Roman Emperor, vacante imperio.