CHARLES I. (1226-1285), king of Naples and Sicily and count of Anjou, was the seventh child of Louis VIII. of France and Blanche of Castile. Louis died a few months after Charles's birth and was succeeded by his son Louis IX. (St. Louis), and on the death in 1232 of the third son, John, count of Anjou and Maine, those fiefs were conferred on Charles. In i246 he married Beatrice, daughter and heiress of Raymond Berenger V., the last count of Provence, and after defeating James I. of Aragon " and other rivals with the help of his brother, the French king, he took possession of his new county. In 1248 he accompanied Louis in the crusade to Egypt, but on the defeat of the Crusaders he was taken prisoner with his brother. Shortly afterwards he was ransomed, and returned to Provence in 125o. Charles's am bition aimed at wider fields, and he extended his influence by the subjugation of Marseille in 1257, and two years later several com munes of Piedmont recognized his suzerainty. In 1262 Pope Urban IV. determined to destroy the power of the Hohenstaufen in Italy, and offered the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, in consid eration of a yearly tribute, to Charles of Anjou. After long nego tiations he accepted the Sicilian and Neapolitan crowns, and in 1264 he sent a first expedition of Provencals to Italy; he also collected a large army and navy in Provence and France with the help of King Louis, and by an alliance with the cities of Lom bardy was able to send part of his force overland. Pope Clement IV. confirmed the Sicilian agreement on conditions even more favourable to Charles, who sailed in 1265, and conferred on the expedition all the privileges of a crusade. After narrowly escaping capture by Manfred's fleet he reached Rome safely, where he was crowned king of the Two Sicilies. The land army arrived soon afterwards, and on Feb. 26, 1266, Charles encountered his rival Manfred the bastard of the emperor Frederick II., at Benevento (q.v.), where after a hard-fought battle Manfred was defeated and killed, and the whole kingdom was soon in Charles's possession. Then Conradin, Frederick's grandson and last legitimate de scendant of the Hohenstaufen, came into Italy, where he found many partisans among the Ghibellines of Lombardy and Tuscany, and among Manfred's former adherents in the south. He was totally defeated by Charles at Tagliacozzo (Aug. 23, 1268) ; taken prisoner, he was tried as a rebel and executed at Naples.
Charles was now one of the most powerful sovereigns of Eu rope, for besides ruling over Provence and Anjou and the king dom of the Two Sicilies, he was imperial vicar of Tuscany, lord of many cities of Lombardy and Piedmont, and as the pope's favourite practically arbiter of the papal states, especially during the interregnum between the death of Clement IV. (1268) and the election of Gregory X. (1272). In 1272 he took part with Louis IX. in a crusade to north Africa. The election of Rudolph of Habsburg as German king, and that of Nicholas III. to the Holy See (1277), diminished Charles's power, for the new pope set himself to compose the difference between Guelphs and Ghibel lines in the Italian cities, but at his death Charles secured the election of his henchman Martin IV. (1281), who recommenced persecuting the Ghibellines. But the cruelty of the French rulers of Sicily provoked in 1282 the rebellion known as the Sicilian Vespers (see VESPERS, SICILIAN) . Charles determined to subju gate the island and sailed with his fleet for Messina. The city held out until Peter III. of Aragon arrived in Sicily, and a Sicilian Catalan fleet under the Calabrese admiral, Ruggiero di Lauria, completely destroyed that of Charles. In May 1284 Ruggiero di Lauria appeared before Naples and destroyed another Angevin fleet commanded by Charles's son, who was taken prisoner. Charles came to Naples with a new fleet from Provence, and was preparing to invade Sicily again, when he died at Foggia on Jan. 7, 1285. An extremely able soldier and a skilful statesman, his inordinate ambition and his cruelty created enemies on all sides, and led to the collapse of the edifice of dominion which he had raised.