Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/458

444 of hatred and discord betwenbetween [sic] the royal pair; and the Hungarians, of whom Andrew's court was chiefly composed, excited the jealousy of the Neapolitans, who considered them as barbarians. It was therefore resolved, in a council of the queen's favourites, to put Andrew to death. He was accordingly strangled in his wife's antichamber; and Joan married the prince of Tarentum, who had been publicly accused of the murder of her husband, and was well known to have been concerned in that bloody deed. How strong a presumption of her own guilt!

In the mean time, Lewis, king of Hungary, brother to the murdered Andrew, wrote to Joan, that he would revenge his death on her and her accomplices. He accordingly, in 1348, set out for Naples by the way of Venice and Rome, carrying along with him a black standard, on which was painted the most striking colours of his brother's murder. He ordered a prince of the blood, and one of the accomplices in the regicide, to be beheaded. Joan and her husband fled into Provence, where, finding herself utterly abandoned by her subjects, she waited on pope Clement VI. at Avignon, a city of which she was sovereign as countess of Provence, and which, with its territories, she sold to that pontiff. Here she pleaded her cause in person before the pope, and was acquitted.

Clement's kindness did not stop here. In order to engage the king of Hungary to quit Naples, he proposed that Joan should pay him a sum of money; but, as ambition or avarice had no share in his enterprize, he generously replied, "I am not come hither to sell my brother's blood, but to revenge it!" and, as he had partly effected his purpose, he went away, 1359, though the kingdom of Naples was in his power.

Joan