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navy, has been converted in an impregnable Fortress: Peter III withdraws serenely to Aragon in
1283 leaving the defense in hands of the reckless and fortunate admiral Roger of Lauria.
Charles of Anjou possess the second most important fleet of the Mediterranean,
financed by the Cistercian Order of Provence, by the Kingdom of Naples, and by the Pope, but
he fail to plan a coherent tactic to face Roger of Lauria, who in successive clashes will go
destroying it relentlessly. Atfer to sink some ships and capture others, he seizes of the islands
of Malta, Gozo and Lipari; then he goes to Naples and tends an ambush to the French showing
just a part of his squad. Charles of Anjou is absent and his son, Charles the Lame, Prince of
Salerno, decides to respond the challenge thinking in an easy victory: then he begins the
persecution of the Catalans with all the available galleys, colliding with the rest of the enemy
navy. That was the most important naval battle of the Period, in which Roger of Lauria sank a
great number of French galleys, captured others, and only a few achieved to escape. The
Flagship not had the same luck, which was captured by Roger in person and where was Charles
the Lame, Jacob of Bruson, William Stendaro, and other brave Provencal and Italian Knights.
The son of Charles of Anjou is taken prisoner to Sicily, where all claim his execution in
vengeance for the death of Conradin; nevertheless, O Mystery of the Hyperborean spiritual
nobleness!, is the Queen Constance who saved him and then, he was confined in Barcelona.
Days after the defeat of his son Charles of Anjou arrived to Gaeta but he not dared to
attack the Spaniards; Roger took advantage of that indecision to devastate the garrison of
Calabria and to take many continental regions; in a short time Sicily disposes of a Governor in
Candelabria that threats, now by land, the French dominion in Naples. But, when Charles
decides to send the rest of his navy to the coasts of Provence, to support the advance of the
King of France, his ships were taken between two fires in front of Saint Pol and completely
defeated by Roger of Lauria: that disaster, that costed seven thousand French lives, represented
the end of the Neapolitan naval might of Charles of Anjou.
To all this, Martin IV outbreaks in 1284 the strike that, he thinks, will be mortal for the
Aragonese: through a papal bull he offers the investitures of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to
the King of France for one of his non-firstborn sons. Philip III accepts in the name of his son
Charles of Valois and prepares to invade Aragon. The enormous warrior enterprise will be
financed now by all the Church of France. And, as in times of the Cathars, Martin IV publishes
a Crusade against the excommunicated King of Aragon: the Benedictine orders, Cluniac,
Cistercians and Templars, agitate the entire Europe calling to fight for Christ, to cross against
the abominable Ghibelline heresy of Peter III. Soon Philip III, who is also King of Navarre,
gathers in that country an army integrated by two hundred and fifty thousand of infantry
soldiers and fifty thousand in cavalry, formed principally by French, Picards, Tolosates,
Lombards, Bretons, Flemish, Burgundians, Provencals, Germans, English, etc.
With the assistance of four tolosates monks who reveal to Philip III a secret path
through the Pyrenees, the Crusaders invade Catalonia in 1285. Surrounding the King, and
encouraging him permanently, are the main Cistercian Golems, who consider that war matter
of life or death for their plans of world domination: barely such King, who in no case deserved
the sobriquet of «the Bold», would have joined to the crusade adventure without the sustained
insistence of Martin IV and the pressure of the French Golem. The papal legacy warns to Peter
III that «he must obey the pontiff and give his Kingdoms to the King of France», to what
the Aragonese responds: «is easy to take and give Kingdoms that have cost nothing. The

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