s, who had helped to elect him: they broke the cross
that was carried in procession before the anti-pope, and hardly allowed
him time to make his escape on shipboard to Provence. Urban declared
that Joan was now dethroned, and released her subjects from their oath of
fidelity to her, bestowing the crown of Sicily and Jerusalem upon Charles
de la Paix, who marched on Naples with 8000 Hungarians. Joan, who could
not believe in such base ingratitude, sent out his wife Margaret to meet
her adopted son, though she might have kept her as a hostage, and his two
children, Ladislaus and Joan, who became later the second queen of that
name. But the victorious army soon arrived at the gates of Naples, and
Charles blockaded the queen in her castle, forgetting in his ingratitude
that she had saved his life and loved him like a mother.

Joan during the siege endured all the worst fatigues of war that any
soldier has to bear. She saw her faithful friends fall around her wasted
by hunger or decimated by sickness. When all food was exhausted, dead
and decomposed bodies were thrown into the castle that they might pollute
the air she breathed. Otho with his troops was kept at Aversa; Louis of
Anjou, the brother of the King of France whom she had named as her
successor when she disinherited her nephew, never appeared to help her,
and the Provencal ships from Clement VII were not due to arrive until all
hope must be over. Joan asked for a truce of five days, promising that,
if Otho had not come to relieve her in that time, she would surrender the
fortress.

On the fifth day Otho's army appeared on the side of Piedigrotta. The
fight was sharp on both sides, and Joan from the top of a tower could
follow with her eyes the cloud of dust raised by her husband's horse in
the thickest of the battle. The victory was long uncertain: at length
the prince made so bold an onset upon the royal standard, in his
eagerness to meet his enemy hand to hand, that he plunged into the very
middle of the army, and found himself pressed on every side. Covered
with blood and sweat, his sword broken in his hand, he was forced to
surrender. An hour later Charles was writing to his uncle, the King of
Hungary, that Joan had fallen into his power, and he only awaited His
Majesty's orders to decide her fate.

It was a fine May morning: the queen was under guard in the castle of
Aversa: Otho had obtained his liberty on condition of his quitting
Naples, and Loui