The Great Western Schism
In the mid-14th century, political opposition to the ever increasing temporal power of the Popes reached a head when the French King Lambert and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV met along with many of their senior clerical officials in the Council of Rheims. The conduct of the Roman Popes was becoming ever more unacceptable, the Emperor upset over the loss of his authority in Italy and the King enraged over the Papal support of the Kingdom of Arles. The current incumbent of the throne of St Peter at the time was Pope Innocent IV, a decadent ruler who was more than happy to act as a King rather than the spiritual leader of the Church and was widely accused of keeping a mistress. Discontent with his governance had increased among the cardinals when in 1352 he had lost the Republic of Siena, a vassal of the Papal States since his immediate predecessor’s campaigns in the region.
With the ineffectual rule of Innocent IV, the French and the Germans sought to use the chance to place their own candidate on the throne, marching south with a combined army that didn’t even have to fight a battle. Innocent, upon hearing of the invasion, had dropped head from shock, a not wholly surprising fact when one considers his frequent over indulgence in virtually every worldly pleasure, and his reasonably advanced age (he was 74 at his death). The cardinals hurriedly proclaimed Pope Marcellus II, a veritable puppet of the French and the Germans, the new Pope to prevent the invasion from advancing any further. However, peace was not to last, as Marcellus began handing out titles to various French and German nobles, giving them almost complete autonomy from Rome and undoing much of the hard work of his predecessors in establishing a temporal kingdom of the papacy.
Faced with this new turn of events and the alarming reformist ideas of Marcellus who was eager to rebrand the Catholic Church, a group of dissatisfied cardinals proclaimed that their choice had been made under duress and was therefore inadmissible. Removing themselves to Naples where they found much support, they declared one of their own as the rightful Pope, with the regal name Pius II. Marcellus initially moved quickly to crush this opposition to his rule, dispatching messages to France and the Holy Roman Empire warning them of the danger and requesting aid, whilst gathering his forces and advancing on Naples. In response, Pius gathered his own troops and dispatched requests for help to Arles, Sicily, Genoa, Pisa and Aragon (among others).
The two armies clashed at the Battle of Pontecorvo, where Marcellus’ 11,000 strong forced clashed with Pius’ 7,000 men who were supported by a further 1,000 Sicilians. Although Marcellus had the numerical advantage, most of the men that he and Pius fielded were only militia, whilst the Sicilians were all hardened troops and as such were instrumental in breaking the Roman Pope’s left flank on which they had descended. With his left thus disintegrating, Marcellus threw in his reverse to stop the complete annihilation of his army and successful prevented the total collapse of his force, allowing him to fall back in good order towards Rome. He had lost some 3,400 men in the battle, whilst Pius had lost 2,600 and the Sicilians only 300. The Sicilians were hungry for blood and advocated the pursuit of the enemy, but Pius was content to watch his opposite number abandon the field, as he expected his surrender, and simply let the enemy force escape.
After the inconclusive battle, France and the Holy Roman Empire, worried over the threat to their ally, dispatched forces to Italy to quell the rebellion. Unfortunately for them, it was to prove no simple task as the other monarchs of Christendom banded together to put an end to French and German meddling in the affairs of the papacy. King Odo of Arles, King Henry IV of England, King Roger IV of Sicily, and the republics of Genoa and Venice all banded together against Pope Marcellus and his supporters for a wide variety of reasons. King Odo was concerned about the French growing too powerful and the threat they would provide to his Kingdom, whilst King Henry was eager to conquer France and add it to his growing empire on the continent. On the other hand, Sicily and the other Italian states in the alliance were unhappy over the foreign meddling in their country and were afraid of growing outside influence in their affairs.
Fighting was to prove long and brutal, with much of the fighting occurring in France as the beleaguered King Lambert fought against English attacks into his lands. The main French army had been enroute to Italy and quickly found itself tied up in fighting King Odo, a fierce warrior who hated the French after the death of his younger brother at their hands in battle a number of years prior. The vengeful King had descended upon their force and in the Battle of the Great St Bernard Pass practically wiped out the 18,000 strong French force, of whom only 1,300 survived to be captured, whilst losing barely 4,000 of his own 14,500 man force. After this great victory, Odo pressed north into the Duchy of Auvergne which he put to the sword, taking the French castles that garrisoned the area and annexing it to his own Kingdom. As this was happening, King Henry was busy making his own gains as he had struck deep into French territory with his own army, overcoming an army of French nobles at the Battle of Orléans, losing 6,000 of his 15,000 men, as compared to the 6,800 losses the 13,000 French suffered. Although King Henry had only achieved a pyrrhic victory, the French had been forced to retire and the city was left open for the King to lay siege to it. By 1359, virtually all of France’s territory had fallen to England and Arles, but King Lambert was not yet ready to accept defeat. His Imperial ally had repeatedly dispatched forces to his aid, although most of their troops were tied up fighting in Italy, and in 1360 a combined Imperial and French army numbering some 37,000 marched out to face the English army, clashing in the epic Battle of the River Yonne.
With only 10,000 English troops, King Henry held off repeated attacks from the French knights whilst making good use of his large number of longbowmen, who made up the bulk of his force. The French knights, eager to fight, had attempted to rush across the river the previous day but consequently many had their horses shot out from under them. When fighting resumed on the second day some distance from the river itself, the French had lost the majority of their horses and were forced to advance on foot across the muddy field that separated them from the English. After bitter fighting in which the English got the better of the French who were tired from crossing the field in the mud, the latter began to fall back, just as the Germans began to advance. The result was that the Imperial and French force became hopelessly disorganised and was cut down by the English who seized the opportunity to charge the enemy. In the ensuing chaos, the French and the Germans both lost an incredibly high number of nobles, including the French King Lambert. The English had only lost a few hundred killed, whilst their enemies lost some 14,000 men, a stunning blow that was only compounded by the loss of the King.
In the wake of their defeat, the French Kingdom underwent its final collapse. Although King Lambert’s sons would continue to resist for decades to come, in truth his death caused the splintering of his realm and allowed the English to have completely seized control by 1370. With France thus divided between England and Arles, the Holy Roman Emperor at last gave up his support of the Roman Anti-Popes and acknowledged Pope Pius III, Pius II’s successor, as the true Pope. The conflict had seen the end of the independent Kingdom of France, which was split between England (who had also cemented her authority over Brittany) in the west and north and Arles in the south, whilst the Papal States were cemented as a significant power in Italy, although their lands had been severely damaged by war.
