Cossa wrote to all the Christian princes to announce his accession to the throne of Peter, exhorting them to support him against the two pretenders whom the universal council had condemned and deposed. His first political problem as pope was to break down the support and protection which Ladislas and Sigismund, King of the Romans, gave to Gregory XII. He was on his way to succeeding with, Sigismund, the marchesa's instinct told her and she told Cossa, but Ladislas could not be turned because Ladislas was the enemy of Italy. Therefore, all advice, including mine, was that Cossa should identify his cause with Louis, Duke of Anjou, against Ladislas.
Fighting Ladislas was the Duke of Anjou's life's work. That was a fact. He had been at it ever since, he was a young man. He had invaded the kingdom of Naples three times to try to win the throne which had been willed to him by Queen Joanna. At the end of 1410, Ladislas was, once again, occupying Rome and, once again, preparing to storm Italy. Cossa's only defence against him was attack. The only means of attack available was the ambition and universal availability of the Duke of Anjou.
Naples had fought its way through a history which was as devious and unstable as its own nature. In 1262, Charles of Anjou had been called on to expel the Hohenstaufen and won for himself the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His cruelty had brought the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. He lost Sicily. Naples alone remained to the House of Anjou. By 1376,the kingdom of Naples was ruled by the four times
four-times married but childless Queen Joanna. Her heir-presumptive was her second cousin, Charles of Durazzo, but the papal schism had begun, dividing both Christendom and the royal house of Naples. Queen Joanna went, over to the French side against Pope Urban VI.
Charles of Durazzo, supported Urban. To defeat Charles's expectations of the Neapolitan throne; Joanna made a will on 29 June 1380, in which she adopted as her son, Louis, Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles V of France, making him her heir in Italy, Sicily, Naples and France. Charles of Durazzo invaded Naples and captured Joanna.
She was murdered. Charles was crowned King of Naples. The Duke of Anjou died in the same year, as he was preparing an assault to win back his inheritance. Charles was assassinated in Hungary when he went to that parlous country to accept its kingship. This left the claim to the throne to be fought for between two boys: Ladislas, son of Charles, aged ten, and Louis II of Anjou, aged seven. Three times over the ensuing years, Ladislas occupied Rome, and three times the forces of Louis expelled him from the city. They were at it for over thirty years:
On the first day of his pontificate, the marchesa had had letters of, recommendation ready for Cossa to sign which urged all lords (spiritual and temporal) to aid the army of the Duke of Anjou in the liberation of Rome and. the Vatican. Gregory XII had by this time escaped the Vatican for the safe protection of Carlo Malatesta, at Rimini. Cossa informed the princes in these letters that he would entrust the duke with a prefecture to extend his facilities for the invasion of Naples, and the duke had set out from France to try again.
In his eagerness, he sailed on ahead with half of his fleet, leaving behind him six other galleys with his horses, arms; stores and the larger part of his troops and treasure. This deserted squadron was taken by the warships of Ladislas and the Genoese in a sea fight near the island of Meloria. Three of the French galleys went to the bottom, three were taken, and their valuable charges went to the Neapolitans. Only one ship, with 1500 men aboard, escaped and rejoined the duke at Piombino.
At Piombino, the wall-eyed duke, a compulsive talker with a bilateral emission lisp, received an embassy of condolence from Florence. He mounted a black horse, clad in black raiment and, accompanied by his troops who were also dressed in black, made his sorrowful way to Siena, where Cossa had given orders for his cordial reception. Greatly cheered by such courtesy, he exchanged all their black garments for red uniforms very pretty, and rode off to Bologna to see the pope, where he was met outside the city by cardinals and citizens.
Neither his pope nor the Florentines would help the duke with money but they both supplied troops.
‘It is no surprise to me that the Florentines would refuse to contribute money to my campaign,' the duke said spatteringly, `but you, the Holy Pontiff, called out for the liberation of Rome and the sacred Vatican and that is what I have come all this way to do.'
`You have come to crush Ladislas for ever,' Cossa said. `You have come to regain your, rightful inheritance` as the King of 'the Two Sicilies.,
'Well, yes. I suppose you're right. Oh, well, I can certainly use all the troops you can spare.'
The duke engaged the services of Sforza Attendolo as his general then forgot to pay him. The papal and ducal troops, together with 2500 men supplied by Florence, deprived by Christian tradition of Cossa's leadership because it had been three centuries since popes had led men into battle, marched off to Rome. What remained of the ducal fleet – seven large galleys and one small one – sailed off to Ostia, the port of Rome, under the command of Cossa's murderous uncle, Geronimo Cossa, now a papal admiral.
Early in January 1411, the ambassadors from Rome, together with the Duke of Anjou and his commander of condottieri, General Orsini, arrived in Bologna to escort Pope John XXIII therefrom to reign from the Vatican, an intention which had for so long been close to the heart of Giovanni di Bicci di Medici and his son.
Reigning from the Vatican can legitimize popes in a way that nothing else can. If only Rome weren't such a dog of a city. I didn't like Rome but Cossa detested it and it would make the marchesa feel less superior because of the old days when she had been nothing but a commoner and, in fact, was unpopular with everyone but Palo, and he wasn't to be allowed to go.
The cold rain had been incessant that winter in Bologna. The prices of grains and other, foods had risen to famine rates. It was an even harder winter in Rome, where a fox and five wolves had been killed inside the Viridarium, and where a shocking earthquake had been preceded by such a storm that the Romans thought their end had come. Cossa had kept getting reports like that and so decided to sit out the winter in Bologna. The marchesa was away on her tour of the daughters. By 1 April Cossa had placed Ugoccione di Contrari in command of the Bologna garrison and prepared reluctantly to leave Bologna for Rome. He was forty-three years old, but wine and the gout had made him the worse for wear.
The college of cardinals and the entire curia left Bologna with him because this time the papacy was returning to Rome permanently. The removals of the combined households of the papacy, the college and the curia was a spectacularly complex operation. The pope's own household contained 530 people. The household of each cardinal – and there were 11 cardinals travelling in the entourage – comprised about 210 people. The prelates, prebendaries and clerics who constituted the curia accounted for an aggregate household of 600 more. They were all guarded by detachments of 2000 soldiers, which made up a seven-mile long procession of 7000 people. In addition to these came the largest population of the holy hegira, 11,060 more people; not as decorative but equally impressive. There were cooks, provisioners, scullions, children, teachers, quartermasters, blacksmiths, armourers, wheelwrights, carpenters, labourers entertainers: jugglers, whores, actors, musicians, fixers, scribes, gardeners, lottery operators and astrologers; service personneclass="underline" accountants, couriers, butlers, housemaids; plus 209 of the nobility of the papal states who had permanently attached themselves to the papal court. All 18,000 of them swarmed across the hedgeless, sun-hammered countryside, accompanied by endless streams of pack-horses and carts slipping and stumbling beneath their monstrous burdens, which included plate, jewels, gold, sacred vessels and cloths, musical instruments, paintings; tools, weapons, breviaries and books, vestments, linen, pots, pans and cooking spits, an inestimable amount of clothing, and beds by the hundreds of dozens.