[130] War is among the most common and popular of human activities. As each century fades into the past, only its most obvious outlines showing to the careless gaze, that century seems filled with wars. If we chronicled every local war, feudal revolt, interregional struggle, and sea action, there would be no time to talk of letters or of law. Medieval man lived within a perimeter of war: the great Islamic struggle around his larger horizon, the corsairs and minor sea wars flaring like lightnings in a larger storm, the international adventures within Western Christendom, the probing wars with each immediate neighbor, and the anthology of baronial and other rebellions. War between James and Alfonso was narrowly averted at least twice, in the 1240s and early 1270s. Twice they fought a common campaign against Islam, in the 1260s and late 1270s. Separately each prepared an overseas crusade, in both cases doomed. Big or small, as we have just seen, such wars were not the business only of monarchs but (in Elena Lourie's phrase) of "a society organized for war."

War is an instrument of policy. As war was allied with law, and letters with war, so all played their role in international policy. Both Alfonso and James, while alert along their every border, were determined as well to be politically active in the wider world of Christendom. To appreciate this facet of their reigns, we must select for examination a region of concern for one of the kings. For Alfonso such a stage of action might be Italy and Germany, related with his obsession to become Holy Roman Emperor. Conversely, the newly crowned Alfonso's near-war with England over Aquitaine might serve. Consternation in London, heavy naval preparations at Portsmouth, and an army under the English king's personal direction in Gascony testify to the seriousness of Alfonso's intentions. Henry III of England proclaimed that "the king of Castile, with a multitudinous [131] army of Christians and Saracens" was not only poised to "occupy" Gascony, but even "aspires to invade Our lands of England and Ireland." This relatively lesser business ended peacefully with the future Edward I of England marrying Alfonso's half-sister in Burgos, and Alfonso himself knighting young Edward.

King James similarly pursued a complex of foreign policies, usually involving commercial expansion, with such Mediterranean powers as Tunis, Genoa, Palaiologan Byzantium, and Egypt. War was sometimes involved or in the offing, and sometimes not a practical option. A more fascinating field of foreign policy, however, was the congeries of principalities and communes constituting Occitania or southern France. How much was foreign here, and how much domestic, is a nice question. James's comital house had long enjoyed both protective and feudal controls in Occitania, whose language and cultural forms were cognate to those of his Catalans; and he held a significant area there directly. Throughout his lifetime, he would be concerned to block the advance of rude Francia (geographically northern France) into this commercially affluent but vulnerably fragmented Eden of the troubadours.

James the conqueror is generally perceived as a ruler who turned away from southern France and allowed the Capetians to absorb it into their northern French realm, or as a monarch who laid the foundations of a Mediterranean Catalan Empire that was essentially Iberian in its orientation. Historians holding such views are in agreement that James failed to reverse his father's defeat at Muret, seen as a battle that assured the destruction of Occitanian-southern French civilization, resulting in the division of the area that formed a united Midi and Catalonia into parts of distinct French and Spanish nations. ⁽¹⁾ It is the contention of this study that both views are [132] essentially erroneous, and that the career of James the Conqueror needs to be re-examined in quite a different way. When this has been done, James's role in southern France and the western Mediterranean will appear quite different from what has long been believed to be the case.

Such a reexamination must begin by emphasizing that during the first two decades of his life James was totally incapable of influencing events in the Midi in any way whatsoever. This was not because Simon de Montfort had beaten and killed his father, King Peter, at Muret; but because as a young orphaned monarch James was powerless in the County of Barcelona and the Aragonese lands he had inherited from his sire, in the Seigniory of Montpellier he had inherited from his mother, and in his house's sphere of influence in Marseilles and Provence as well. In Catalonia and Aragon he lived as the captive of noble factions, who controlled his lands and his person and were led by relatives who wished to rule in his stead. ⁽²⁾ In Montpellier the government was in the hands of consuls who ruled it as an all but independent commune. ⁽³⁾ And in an equally independent Marseilles and in Provence whatever authority existed was exercised not by him but by his young cousin Raymond Berenger V. ⁽⁴⁾ In addition, James lacked any significant financial resources. Before his death at Muret, his father had placed in pawn almost all comital lands in Catalonia and had alienated all his rights at Montpellier in return for cash from its citizens. As a youth then, James was not only powerless in his ancestral lands but practically penniless as well. ⁽⁵⁾ All of which explains why he could not have [133] intervened in the Midi during the crucial fifteen years following Simon's initial victories there, even if he had wished to do so. It also makes clear why he was again and again humiliated by his Catalan and Aragonese barons, and why his first attempt to expand into Valencian territory in 1225 ended in failure. ⁽⁶⁾ It was not Capetian-northern French power that forced him to eschew an active role in southern France during these years, but his own penury and lack of political and military authority.

This changed rather suddenly when in 1228, at the age of twenty, he discovered a cause that reversed this state of affairs -- a plan to conquer the nearby Balearics, or to be exact the island of Majorca, from its weak Muslim ruler. If we can believe James's autobiography, this plan originated in noble and bourgeois circles in Barcelona and received enthusiastic backing from Catalan nobles, churchmen, and merchants. In return for promised shares of the spoils, they voted the young king considerable sums of money in the Corts of Catalonia, and agreed to furnish him with a number of ships and cavalry as well as infantry forces. ⁽⁷⁾ While there can be no doubt that these Catalans were mainly responsible for assembling the forces that sailed to Majorca with James in 1229, in contrast to the ruling nobles of Aragon who refused his appeals for assistance, both Montpellier and Marseilles, which had considerable maritime strength, were enthusiastic. Not only did the authorities of Montpellier furnish the king with a number of ships, including his own galley Montpellier in which he sailed to the Balearics, ⁽⁸⁾ but in 1231 they provided him with the large sum of one hundred thousand solidi or sous to help cover expenses. In the course of his campaign they rendered [134] sufficient service so that they were rewarded with the grant of a number of houses in Majorca and important trading privileges following his victory over his Muslim opponents. ⁽⁹⁾

Marseilles' merchant community followed a somewhat similar pattern of support, by sending James six ships to aid his efforts; they too were rewarded with trading privileges and property in his Balearics. ⁽¹⁰⁾ We must regard James's conquest of these vital islands between 1229 and 1235, then, not simply as a purely Catalan affair but as a joint Catalan-southern French effort. And it provided him for the first time with relatively adequate financial resources, both in his new conquests and in his ancestral lands in Iberia and the Midi.

Emboldened by his success in Majorca, even before the mopping-up process had been completed in 1232, James launched a series of campaigns that resulted in the conquest of all Valencia by 1245. These campaigns he punctuated by a treaty negotiated in 1244 with his fellow Iberian leader of the Reconquest, Fernando of Castile, done through Fernando's son the future Alfonso the Learned. ⁽¹¹⁾ This agreement delimited the boundaries to separate James's own Valencia from a Murcia and an Andalusia that were to be Castilian. ⁽¹²⁾ And while it is true that his Aragonese barons joined Catalan nobles, churchmen, and bourgeoisie in the land and sea campaigns that reduced Valencia to obedience, something the Aragonese had refused in the case of Majorca, it needs to be noted that the southern French of Montpellier and Marseilles also gave him help. This was especially true of Montpellier. His Guillem relatives, especially his uncle Bernat Guillem, served him loyally. ⁽¹³⁾

[135] The city itself extended him considerable financial and military assistance, after he had intervened in its affairs in 1236 against the consular authorities and in support of his own bajulus Atbrand and the more numerous lower-class guildsmen. This intervention, incidentally, gave him a considerable measure of new authority in the city, embodied in a special chapter he issued in 1239. ⁽¹⁴⁾ And if the Montpellierans were rewarded for their services with considerable property and trading privileges in James's Valencian ports, as they had been in Majorca, so too were the merchants of his cousin's Provencal city of Marseilles, who also shared in the spoils of conquest. ⁽¹⁵⁾ It even seems probable that the fourth great trading city of the Midi's Mediterranean littoral, Narbonne, shared as well. We know that its archbishop, who by now controlled what was practically an independent episcopal seigniory there, furnished James with considerable contingents of troops in the course of his Valencian campaigns. These contingents must have called forth rewards in the form of trading privileges for the archbishop's townspeople. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Finally, we need to note that both conquests during these years had the full support of the papacy, which approved James's expeditions and proclaimed them crusades, with all the attendant advantages of an ideological and financial sort that this entailed. While it is true that the papacy had long played a special role in Iberia, and that both James's father and Barcelona grandfather had held their realms as vassals of the supreme pontiff, ⁽¹⁷⁾ it is worth noting that popes had an [136] equally traditional authority they had long exercised in southern France in general and at Montpellier in particular. ⁽¹⁸⁾ For several centuries, and especially during the years of the Albigensian Crusade, the pope had tended to be regarded much more as the overlord of Languedoc and the Midi than were the distant Capetian monarchs. ⁽¹⁹⁾ And for two centuries popes had extended a special protection to James's natal city of Montpellier. ⁽²⁰⁾ If papal approval and backing for James's conquests were based on their special interest in Spain and Reconquest, it also reflected the papacy's special concern for both the Midi and Montpellier.

It must be admitted, of course, that James's long and successful efforts to conquer the Balearics and Valencia made it impossible for him to prevent the Capetians from absorbing the domains of the counts of Toulouse and the house of Trencavel in the Midi. James was busy gathering together his forces and launching his attack upon Majorca during the years between 1226 and 1229, when Louis VIII led his army south to crush all resistance in Languedoc; Louis's expedition ended with Raymond VII of Toulouse accepting the establishment of the royal sénéchaussées of Beaucaire and Carcassonne, as well as the eventual marriage of Raymond's daughter and heiress Joanne to Alphonse, the brother of King Louis IX. ⁽²¹⁾

Again in the 1240s, when the last Trencavel viscount tried to regain Carcassonne, and when Raymond VII plotted with Henry III of England and revolted against the Capetians in an effort to regain his authority in Languedoc, James was busy in Valencia and refused to help them, despite the pleas [137] of the troubadours. ⁽²²⁾ But there is little evidence that James felt intervention in the Midi on the side of Toulouse was to his advantage. This was because, in efforts to increase his power, Raymond had chosen in 1234 to expand into Provence and Montpellier itself and in 1242 to attack Narbonne, all of which were essential allies of James in his Valencian enterprise. ⁽²³⁾ And since the Trencavel revolt had strong Albigensian backing, assistance in this quarter was certain to alienate a papacy and church whose help was essential to James's expansion into Moorish areas. ⁽²⁴⁾ Down to 1245, then, the Capetian expansion in the Midi seemed very little threat either to James or to those forces in southern France who were helping him with his conquests.

This began to change in 1245 when Count Raymond Berenger V died suddenly, leaving his increasingly centralized county of Provence with its great port of Marseilles to his fourth daughter, Beatrice. James wanted the pope to provide a dispensation so that a marriage could be arranged with Beatrice, which would keep Provence in Aragonese hands, but the pope refused. As a result, in 1246 Beatrice became the bride of the ambitious Charles of Anjou, Louis IX's brother an alliance that potentially threatened James's nearby city of Montpellier and his long collaboration and alliance with Marseilles. ⁽²⁵⁾

Fortunately for James, however, such threats seemed at first ephemeral. The cities of Provence, and especially Marseilles, refused to allow Charles to exercise any authority over them. ⁽²⁶⁾ Louis IX did build a new port at Aigues-Mortes as a competitor to Montpellier; but he was so eager to keep conditions peaceful, while he built a fleet there for his crusade of 1248, that he was especially conciliatory about James's natal [138] city and rights in it. ⁽²⁷⁾ Then, when Louis took both Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou with him on his crusade to the East, James could breathe a further sigh of relief. ⁽²⁸⁾ St Louis's long absence outre-mer until 1254 prolonged this breathing spell -- even though both Alphonse and Charles returned home late in 1250 to resume their special interests in southern France. Alphonse began consolidating his position in the Toulousain, where he succeeded his father-in-law Raymond VII in 1249; ⁽²⁹⁾ and Charles resumed efforts to pacify Provence, with the seizure of Aries in 1251. ⁽³⁰⁾ Nevertheless, the two men made little progress until Louis returned in 1254. Only then was Alphonse able finally to crush all opposition in Toulouse, while it was not until 1257 that Marseilles submitted completely to Charles. ⁽³¹⁾ And only then were the Capetians secure enough in the Midi to force James to make a final settlement with them. By the well-known treaty of Corbeil of 1258 they recognized James's control over Roussillon, Cerdagne, and Montpellier, with the complete independence of his Aragonese Iberian lands, in return for renunciation of all his claims in the rest of the Midi, and a little later in Provence as well. ⁽³²⁾

At this point, some three decades after the Capetians had begun to take over most of southern France, it might be well [139] to sketch their position in the Midi in relation to James. (James was their only remaining serious rival, if one chooses to ignore the Plantagenets Henry III and his son Edward.) By now the Capetians had absorbed most of Languedoc and Provence. Languedoc was divided into the two sénéchaussées of Beaucaire and Carcassonne, while Toulouse and Rouergue formed part of Alphonse's appanage fiefs controlled by him from Paris. Provence was controlled by Charles of Anjou, who lived in that country; but it was not an appanage fief, since it was part of the Empire and lay outside of the regnum Franciae. By now all these Capetian-dominated territories were coming under the control of a centralized financial administration, exercised by officials organized in a way similar to that initiated by Philippe Auguste in the royal demesne to the north a half-century earlier. In the process, nevertheless, considerable use was made of local southern Frenchmen, trained in administration by princes and communes who had preceded the Capetians in this part of Europe. ⁽³³⁾

Facing this Capetian southern French world in 1258 were the very different dominions of James. James had never been able to exercise rights like those of the Capetian, in an Aragon controlled by a dozen great noble families or in a Catalonia where the magnates were almost as independent, or even in a Montpellier that was practically an Italian-style commune or in a Marseilles or Narbonne that were allies rather than dependencies. Consequently he could not draw Capetian-like [140] revenues from his original holdings or spheres of influence And when he expanded into the Balearics and Valencia, with the possible exception of the latter, he had to share so much of the spoils with the Aragonese aristocracy, with the Catalan nobles, churchmen, and merchants, and with the southern French capitalists and magnates who assisted him that the same was true in these newly conquered areas. He was therefore forced to devise a different kind of finance and administration based on the conditions he faced. ⁽³⁴⁾

The result was an Empire that came to resemble that which Venice developed after 1204 -- with one man in charge of it -- much more than it did the realms of his French, English, or Castilian neighbors. It was composed of a loosely controlled Aragon and interior Catalonia, with another four or perhaps seven centers over which James exercised varied degrees of control. These latter were Montpellier, Majorca, Barcelona, and Valencia, which composed a basic heartland, and Marseilles, Narbonne, and the Maghrib, where he was able to exercise a considerable amount of influence.

By 1225, on the eve of the conquest of Majorca, Montpellier already had trade treaties with Genoa, Pisa, Nice, Marseilles, and Toulouse, and commercial dealings with both the Maghrib and the Near East; it was perhaps the most important of the seven centers during the first years of James's reign. ⁽³⁵⁾ It benefited immeasurably from its support of his conquests, as has been noted, through the special trading privileges it gained in the Balearics and Valencia and by expanding its commerce with North Africa, Alexandria, and Syrian ports. By 1258 it had become the most important center of commerce in the Midi, an international city filled with Genoese, Pisan, and Tuscan bankers and capitalists as well as Cahorsins of the Midi -- all of whom were allowed to conduct [141] their affairs as freely as the natives of the city itself. By 1246 it had begun regularly to provide a captain of those Provencal merchants proceeding up the Rhone and trading at the fairs of Champagne as rivals of the Italians. It had also developed in the Mediterranean those "consuls of the sea" who were widely copied by other maritime powers. At the same time, its money of Melgueil remained during this period, as earlier, the most important currency in the entire Midi. ⁽³⁶⁾

Barcelona, by the time of the treaty of Corbeil, did not lag too far behind Montpellier. Though it had developed some commercial importance between 1221 and 1227, the stimulus provided by spoils from Majorca and Valencia, and the privileges gained there, seem to have been decisive for it. Soon its role in trade with the Maghrib became equally important, as Dufourcq has shown. ⁽³⁷⁾ Barcelona, however, differed from Montpellier in a number of ways. It did not develop any form of urban self-government during these years. And it was much less international in character, since neither James nor its merchants welcomed foreigners, especially the Italians, as residents. It remained a market protected against outsiders. ⁽³⁸⁾

Majorca formed a third, somewhat different type of center. [142] Colonized by large numbers of Catalan merchants and magnates with their dependents, it grew rapidly, especially after the pope in 1241 began to sanction regular trade with Tunis and North Africa. On the whole, however, it resembled Montpellier much more than it did Barcelona, for here James allowed Pisans, Genoese, and southern French merchants and capitalists to settle and do business freely. Especially important was a considerable Jewish and Muslim trading population; the former had close ties with Bougie and Tlemcen, and was intimately connected with a trade in gold that originated in the Sudan. ⁽³⁹⁾ Majorca also benefited from an important traffic in salt from nearby Ibiza to the south, (40) and served as a vital way station on voyages from Italy, southern France, and Catalonia to the wider Mediterranean world. ⁽⁴¹⁾

Valencia by 1258 had only begun to be integrated into the maritime world that James controlled; but its abundant resources in rice and its manufacture of paper at Játiva were beginning to provide cargoes for the Catalan and Provencal merchants who settled and traded in its ports. Like Majorca, among its predominantly Muslim population remaining after the conquest, it also had a considerable number of Islamic merchants who continued active in local and international trade. ⁽⁴²⁾

Narbonne and especially Marseilles, both of which lay within James's commercial orbit, also deserve a few comments. The two decades from 1229 to 1257 saw Marseilles come of age as a great trading city. Before that time it had been essentially a Genoese colony, of only minor commercial importance on its own. Now it began to grow spectacularly, [143] operating very much like Montpellier as a center of trade to Majorca, Valencia, the Maghrib, and the Near East, and serving as an international center in which foreign capitalists from Genoa, Pisa, northern Italy, and the rest of southern France could live and prosper. It also began to rival Montpellier on the other side of the Rhone delta, as a city controlling traffic moving up and down the Rhone to Lyons and the fairs of Champagne. ⁽⁴³⁾ Narbonne by now had developed somewhat similarly, though its role as a Mediterranean port serving Toulouse and the Garonne route to the Atlantic was not as important as either Montpellier's or Marseilles' links with the north. Narbonne had begun to serve as an outlet for the export of cheap Languedocian cloth to the wider Mediterranean, however, and as a city whose commerce was vital enough to attract the attention of Muslim writers in the Near East. ⁽⁴⁴⁾

Last of all, there is North Africa as an area -- especially Tunis and Algeria, which increasingly began to come under the influence of James's maritime empire. Not only did North African ports see a growing influx of Majorcan, Catalan, and Montpellieran merchants, who began to replace the Pisans and the Genoese as the principal Western European traders. In the 1230s James began to gain the lucrative right of supplying the Hafsid sultans of Tunis and the Aboualid emirs of Tlemcen with Christian Catalan bodyguards, on whom the sultans depended to maintain their authority and the internal peace of their realms. By 1258 the Maghrib had begun to become an area that was in James's sphere of influence in a special and important sense. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

[144] The military, naval, and financial power that allowed James to maintain his dominion over this disparate maritime empire came from his ability to exploit the resources available to him within it. He could only rarely expect financial aid from taxes, which were grudgingly voted at intervals by the parliaments of Aragon and Catalonia or by the bourgeoisie of Barcelona, Montpellier, or Majorca. But he could borrow extensively from the merchants of those centers, or from the Jewish communities he controlled throughout his domains. He could also use his authority to share in the tithes of newly conquered Valencia, or to gain a share in the profits of exploiting the large Moorish population there. He could regularly sell the right to trade with ports in the Maghrib, and could charge its rulers large sums for supplying them with Christian bodyguards. And he could take profits from monopolies such as the money of Melgueil. Like other members of his family and a number of Catalan and southern French nobles, he could even engage in trading ventures on his own account. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

In comparing James during this period with the rival Capetians, one might regard his resources as in a sense irregular, limited, and scanty. But in another sense they were immense and closely connected with the growth of an expanding international capitalist trading world in the western Mediterranean. [145] As he faced the Capetians in the Midi down to 1258 and thereafter, James most resembled the British on the shores of nineteenth-century Manchu China, with Barcelona serving as his Hong Kong, Montpellier his Shanghai, Narbonne and Marseilles the other treaty ports along Chinese shores, and Valencia as his India. The strength of these two rivals in southern France was still not really disparate. For if Louis IX, Alphonse of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou controlled most of southern French territory, with the attendant regular officials and the revenues that were derived from this territory, James controlled the sea and a string of capitalistic enterprises under his aegis. From these resources James could draw money and support extending from Seville and North Africa in the West, to Syria and Egypt in the East, and north to the fairs of Champagne. And it was by allying themselves with James, not with the Capetians, that the growing commercial and industrial class dominating much of the Midi and Catalonia could hope to prosper.

The last eighteen years of James's reign saw a number of changes in his relationship with both southern France and the wider maritime empire he had managed to create. Basically this seems to have been due to the policies and person of Charles of Anjou. Unlike his brother, as we have noted, Charles lived in Provence, not in the north. And once the great trading city of Marseilles had come under his control, he began to use it to compete with James's Montpellier in a number of ways. It competed both as an entry port for trade moving up and down the Rhone Valley to the north and as an international center of Mediterranean commerce extending east to the Levant. In this competition Charles, with overall Capetian backing, made use of the same forces of capitalistic maritime enterprise that James had learned to handle so well. ⁽⁴⁷⁾ Furthermore, the Capetian count of Provence, ambitious for a crown, began to organize a movement to destroy [146] Manfred of Sicily's power in the Italian peninsula -- a movement that had the active support of a frightened papacy and of his own brother, Louis IX of France. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Faced with Charles's growing successes, which struck at the heart of his power by setting up a rival capitalist-oriented maritime trading empire, the Aragonese king countered by allying himself with Manfred and marrying his eldest son Peter to Manfred's daughter Costanza in 1262. Then to secure himself against further Capetian pressures in Languedoc, he solemnized the union of his daughter Isabel with St. Louis's son and heir Philippe. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

The marriage of Peter and Costanza carried with it certain advantages for James -- such as a large dowry in cash that the relatively indigent Aragonese king found useful, and a Sicilian connection that benefited the trade and influence Barcelona in particular could exercise in Sicily, North Africa, and the Islamic East. ⁽⁵⁰⁾ But it helped Montpellier and James's position in the Midi very little. In fact, though James solemnized the marriage of his son at Montpellier, more and more Charles's diplomacy and pressure began to transform that city from a center of trade for the entire Midi to something of a beleaguered outpost. And the Sicilian alliance had the further disadvantage of alienating the papacy, which up to then had been James's continuing and indispensable ally. The Aragonese monarch even had to promise not to support Manfred -- if the papacy moved against that Hohenstaufen before St. Louis could accept the marriage of Manfred's daughter to James's son. For the first time in James's career, he found himself on the defensive in Montpellier and in southern France in general. ⁽⁵¹⁾

When Charles of Anjou used his Marseilles fleet as well as French, papal, and Italian backing support to attack Manfred [147] successfully in 1266, James (already busy with a Muslim revolt in distant Murcia) found it wiser not to intervene against him. Without opposition from James, Charles was able to take over Manfred's kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and to crush the last elements of Hohenstaufen opposition when Conradin attempted in vain to intervene two years later in 1268. ⁽⁵²⁾ During an ensuing papal interregnum, the Angevin monarch then easily moved north to establish control over the entire Italian peninsula and to make plans for advancing east at the expense of Byzantium. ⁽⁵³⁾ During this string of French successes, James could do little except attempt to mollify Capetian opposition by taking the cross and planning a crusade to the East, as St. Louis was eager to do himself. James's crusade, launched in 1269, unfortunately proved to be a disaster; it had to be abandoned in such a way that it thoroughly alienated even James's natal city of Montpellier. James found himself increasingly isolated, and publicly humiliated. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Fortunately he was rescued by events. The crusade of St. Louis, launched in 1270, also turned out to be a disaster. It was manipulated by Charles, who diverted it to an attack on Tunis, an ally of James. The attack failed badly, and St. Louis died in Tunisia. ⁽⁵⁵⁾ A year later Alphonse of Poitiers died. And the fact that a restive Toulouse flirted with the idea of inviting James's son Peter of Aragon to serve as its lord further increased the king of Aragon's prestige. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ By the time James's life ended in Valencia in 1276, ⁽⁵⁷⁾ far from the city of [148] his birth, he had built an empire that, while still containing a mixture of Iberian and southern French elements, was much more weighted toward the Iberian than before.

His last will and testament is perhaps the best indication of this. To his eldest son Peter he left Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, which were all clearly Iberian. To James, his second son, he gave an essentially southern French realm of Montpellier, Roussillon, Cerdana, and Majorca. ⁽⁵⁸⁾ James has been severely criticized by historians from Desclot on for this division of his holdings -- especially since in the late thirteenth century it resulted in dangerous divisions within an Aragonese empire already facing continuous papal and Capetian opposition. One needs to understand, however, that for James such a division was the most natural thing in the world, especially for his house's dominions in the Midi. During the twelfth century Provence had regularly been governed by a cadet line subordinate to the ruling count-king in Barcelona. ⁽⁵⁹⁾ And James's cousin Raymond Berenger V had ruled Provence similarly during the king's own lifetime. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ What could have been more natural than for James to provide for a second son in essentially the same fashion, while emphasizing the subordination of that son to his elder brother.

In examining the career and the empire of James the Conqueror, two things seem clear. First of all, James's empire was never purely Catalan, but a dominion in which southern France participated and benefited on a more or less equal basis down to 1258, and even afterwards as well, despite Charles [149] of Anjou and the Capetians. Second, James never abandoned the Midi to the Capetian house, although the way he controlled and influenced it differed from that employed by his predecessors, since he made use of an indirect, capitalistic-maritime kind of control rather than a strictly territorial dominion. And in his last will and testament he set up an essentially southern French appanage kingdom of Majorca for his son James, as a sign of his interest and concern of the Midi where he himself had been born. The end of a united Occitanian civilization that included Catalonia along with the Midi did not occur, therefore, as a result of either the battle of Muret in 1213 or the treaty of Corbeil in 1258. And when James died in 1276, he was still as much a son of the Midi as he was an Iberian monarch. The division of the two occurred after his death.

1. For the Catalan side see Ferran Soldevila, Vida de Jaume 1 el Conqueridor (Barcelona 1969); Francesco Giunta, Aragonesi i catalani nel Mediterraneo (Palermo 1959); Lee Shneidman, The Rise of the Aragonese-Catalan Empire 1200-1350, 2 vols. (New York 1970); and especially Jocelyn Hillgarth, The Problem of a Catalan Mediterranean Empire, in EHR, suppl. 8 (London 1975). For southern France see Philippe Wolff, Histoire du Languedoc (Toulouse 1967), pp. 109-40; Edouard Baratier, Histoire de la Provence (Toulouse 1969), chap. 6; and especially Jonathan Sumption, The Albigensian Crusade (London 1978), pp. 143-250; and A. Armengaud and R. LaFont, Histoire d'Occitanie (Paris 1978), pp. 201-87.

2. James's own autobiography is an indispensable source. For these early years see his Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 8-46.

3. Jean Baumel, Histoire d'une seigneurie du Midi de la France: naissance de Montpellier (985-2213), 2 vols. (Montpellier 1969), vol. 1, pp. 249-80. See also Archibald Lewis, "The Development of Town Government in Twelfth-Century Montpellier," Speculum 22 (1947), pp. 51-67.

4. See Baratier, Provence, pp. 148-63, and the account in Llibre dels feyts, chap. 13, on Raymond Berenger V spirited away from Catalonia to Provence and set up as ruling count.

5. James says that when he reached his ancestral lands from the Midi, he found all his revenues for Aragon and Catalonia already pledged to Jews and Moors; and that of the 700 knight's fees available to the crown, his father had given away or sold all but 130. (Llibre dels feyts, chap. 11) For the financial organization of the count-kings who preceded James, see Thomas Bisson, The Problem of Feudal Monarchy: Aragon, Catalonia, and France," Speculum 53 (1978), pp. 460-78.

6. Llibre dels feyts, chap. 25.

7. Ibid., chaps. 47-55. The fleet consisted of 17 galleys, 25 large merchant vessels, 18 transports (taurids),and about 100 small craft -- a total of about 150 sail (chap. 55).

8. Ibid., chap. 56. Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 75-76.

9. Alexandre Germain, Histoire du commerce de Montpellier, 2 vols. (Montpellier 1861), vol. 1, pp. 201-12. For general background see Arturo Blade i Desumila, Montpellier catala (Barcelona 1965); and Jacques Fabre de Morlhan, Le Montpellier des Guillems et des rois d'Aragon (Montpellier 1967), pp. 52ff. For the earlier conquest of Tortosa during the second crusade, see Lewis, "Montpellier."

10. On the commercial expansion of Marseilles see Regine Pernoud, Histoire du commerce de Marseille, 2 vols. (Paris 1949), vol. 1, pp. 193-215.

11. For these conquests see Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 127-357; and especially Burns, Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, which is the definitive account.

12. Soldevila, Vida, pp. 130-47.

13. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 232-35. James sums up: Bernat Guillem's death was "the death of one of my high barons, who had vanquished in the field the power of the kingdom of Valencia, and who had achieved the greater part of the action by which the kingdom of Valencia could be won." See especially Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 81-82.

14. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 295-305. Note he still had his galley of eighty oars called the Montpellier with him. See also Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 80- 98.

15. Pernoud, Marseille, vol. 1, pp. 212-14.

16. Llibre dels feyts, chap. 260. On the development of the archbishop's independent power in the Narbonnaise, see Jacqueline Caille, "Origine et développement de la seigneurie temporelle de 1'archevêque dans la ville et le terroir de Narbonne (Xe - XIIe siecles)," XLVe Congrès de I'histoire du Languedoc méditerranéen-Roussillon (Narbonne-Montpellier 1973), vol. 2, pp. 9-36.

17. Paul Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien, 2 vols. (Berlin 1926-28). Walter Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250 (New York 1974), pp. 103ff. On regard for the papacy see Burns, "The Spiritual Life of James the Conqueror" (see above, chap, 1, n. 5), pp. 14-15.

18. Archibald Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society (Austin, Tex. 1967), pp. 315-36, and "Seigneurial Administration in Twelfth-Century Montpellier," Speculum 22 (1947), pp. 562-77.

19. Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, pp. 63-103. Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 37-82.

20. Archibald Lewis, "The Guillems of Montpellier, A Sociological Appraisal," Viator 2 (1971), pp. 159-69. Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 1, pp. 251-73.

21. For the best accounts see Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, pp. 212-25; and Wolff, Languedoc, pp. 187-209. Also important is John Mundy, Liberty and Political Power in Toulouse, 1050-1230  (New York 1954), pp. 180ff.

22. Wolff, Languedoc, pp. 263-64.

23. Ibid.; and Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 96-99.

24. Henri Dubled, "Les comtes de Toulouse et la Provence (990-1274)," Mélanges Roger Aubenas (Montpellier 1974), pp. 268-69.

25. Ibid., pp. 270-71. Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 13-14.

26. Baratier, Provence, pp. 169-86. Not until 1252 could Charles begin to organize his Provencal domains. See Edouard Baratier, Enquêtes sur les droits et revenus de Charles I d'Anjou en Provence (1252-1278) (Paris 1969), pp. 1-62.

27. See Jean Combes, "Origine et passé d'Aigues-Mortes," Revue d'histoire économique et sociale 50 (1972), pp. 302-26; J. Sablou, "Saint Louis et le problème de la fondement d'Aigues-Mortes," in Homage à André Dupont (Montpellier 1974); and W. C. Jordan, "Supplying Aigues-Mortes for the Crusade of 1248," in Order and Innovation (see above, chap. 3, n. 26), pp. 165-72, 459-65.

28. On this crusade see Hans Mayer, The Crusades (New York 1972), pp-252-61; and David O'Connell and Jacques Le Goff, Les propos de Saint Louis (Paris 1974), pp. 47-48, 171.

29. Philippe Wolff, Histoire de Toulouse (Toulouse 1964), pp. 131-42- John Mundy, "Noblesse et hérésie: une famille cathare, les Maurands," Annales: ESC 29 (1974), pp. 280-94. W. C. Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade (Princeton 1979).

30. Dubled, "Comtes de Toulouse," pp. 272-73; and his "La seigneurie des comtes de Toulouse dans le comté d'Avignon et le Comtat-Venaissin au milieu du XIIIe siècle," in Mélanges Pierre Tisset (Montpellier 1970), pp. 152-70.

31. Baratier, Provence, pp. 163-78.

32. Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, p. 251. Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, p. 14. Baumel,Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 105-11.

33. For sources see Paul Guébin and P. F. Fournier, Enquêtes administrative d'Alphonse de Poitiers, 1249-1271 (Paris 1959); Correspondance administrative d'Alphonse de Poitiers, ed. Auguste Molinier, 2 vols. (Paris 1894-1900); and Baratier, Provence. For secondary works see Robert Michel, L'Administration royale dans la sénéchaussée de Beaucaire au temps de Saint Louis (Paris 1910); Claude Faure, Etude sur I'administration et I'histoire du Comtat Venaissin du XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Avignon 1909); and Baratier, Provence, pp. 169-86. For the previous training of southern French bureaucrats used by the Capetians, see Archibald Lewis, "The Formation of Territorial States in Southern France and Catalonia, 1050-1270 a. d.," in Mélanges Roger Aubenas (Montpellier 1974), pp. 507-12; Henri Ardisson, Etude sur I 'entourage des comtes de Provence, appartenant à la maison de Barcelone (Aix 1967); Jan Rogozinski, "Ordinary and Major Judges," Studia Gratiana 15 (1971), pp. 589-611; and his "The Counsellors of the Seneschal of Beaucaire and Nîmes, 1250-1350," Speculum 44 (1969), pp. 421-39.

34. For example, Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 388-400, for Aragon and Catalonia. On Valencia see Burns, Colonialism, especially pp. 180-348. For a summary see Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 5-7.

35. See not only Germain, Commerce de Montpellier, vol. 1, pp. 201-36, but also Jean Combes and André Sayous, "Les commerçants et les capitalistes de Montpellier au XIIIe et XIVe siècles," Revue historique 188 (1946), pp. 341-7;' Louis Thomas, Montpellier, ville marchande (Montpellier 1936), pp. 90-123; and Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 290-93.

36. Until Kathryn Reyerson's 1974 dissertation "Commerce and Society in Montpellier: 1250-1350" (now in the Yale Library) is in print, we must rely on Jean Combes, "Quelques remarques sur les bourgeois de Montpellier au moyen âge," Mélanges Pierre Tisset, pp. 93-132, for an overview. See also his "Les foires de Languedoc au moyen âge,"Annales: ESC 13 (1958), pp. 231-59; and Josiah Russell, "L'Evolution démographique de Montpellier au moyen âge," AM 74 (1962), pp. 245-60. For the date of the consuls of the sea, see Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 1, p. 99. In his Llibre dels feyts, chap. 297, King James comments on the way his efforts helped Montpellier: "The town has advanced [millorar, improved, increased] since Our Lord willed that it come into my power."

37. On the backwardness of Barcelona compared with southern France during this period, see Joan Reglà, El commercio entre Francia y la corona de Aragón en los siglos XIII y XIV (Zaragoza 1950), p. 187; and Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 4-6. On its trade with North Africa see C. E. Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles  (Paris 1966), pp. 4-31; and his "Les consulats Catalans du Tunis et de Bougie au temps de Jacques le Conquérant," AEM 2 (1966), pp. 469-74.

38. On Barcelona's government see José Font y Rius, Orígines del régimen Municipal en Cataluña (Madrid 1946), especially pp. 372-476. On trade restrictions see Claude Carrère, "Le droit d'ancrage et le mouvement du port de Barcelone," Estudios de historia moderna 3 (1953), pp. 65-156.

39. L'Espagne catalane, pp. 25-34. Elena Lourie, "Free Moslems in the Balearics under Christian Rule in the Thirteenth Century," Speculum 45 (1970), pp. 624-49. Francisco Sevillano Colomb and Juan Pou Muntaner, Historia del puerto de Palma de Mallorca (Palma 1974).

40. Ibiza was conquered by the archbishop of Tarragona in 1235, who retained it. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 225-27. On its salt trade see Jean-Claude Houquet, Voiliers et commerce en Méditerranée, 1200 -1650, 2 vols. (Paris 1979), vol. 2, pp. 127-30, 352-53, and 447-54.

41. Sevillano, Puerto de Mallorca, chap. 9.

42. See Burns, Islam, especially pp. 139-83.

43. For sources see Documents inédits sur le commerce de Marseille au moyen âge, ed. Louis Blancard, 2 vols. (Marseilles 1884-85); as well as Pernoud, Commerce de Marseille, pp. 212-30. For traffic to the north see Richard Face, "The Vectiarii in the Overland Commerce between Champagne and Southern Europe," Economic History Review 12 (1959), pp. 115-28.

44. No good recent study of Narbonne's commerce exists. See however Celestin Port, Essai sur I'histoire du commerce de Narbonne (Paris 1954), pp. 128ff.; and Philippe Wolff, "La draperie en Languedoc du XIIe au debut du XVIIIe siècle," in Regards sur le Midi médiéval (Toulouse 1978), pp. 326-30.

45. Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 19-21; Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane, pp. 140-62; and Federigo Melis, "La lana della Spagna mediterranea e della Barbaria occidental nei secoli XIII-XV,"Settimane di studio, Istituto internazionale di storia economica Francesco Datini, I (Prato 1969). On Majorcans and Catalans in Seville after 1248, see Florentine Perez Embid, "Navegación y comercio en el puerto de Sevilla en la baja edad media," AEA 25 (1968), pp. 54-61; also as "Navigation et commerce dans le port de Seville au has moyen âge," Le moyen âge 85 (1969). For their operations in Morocco and Atlantic waters, see Archibald Lewis, "Northern European Sea Power and the Straits of Gibraltar," Order and Innovation, pp. 159-60.

46. Hillgarth regards James as a monarch without sufficient resources in money or military and naval manpower to run his empire effectively (Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 4-13). More balanced is the assessment of Burns, Colonialism, pp. xii-xxii, in which he realizes that no contemporary Western European or Islamic model applies to James's rule in Valencia or in his empire in general. For the best descriptions of a Venetian eastern Mediterranean imperial system that may be a better model, see Freddy Thiriet, La Romanie vénitienne au moyen âge (Paris 1959); or Frederic Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore 1975), pp. 67-85. For an assessment of a somewhat similar kind, of James's Guillem ancestors in Montpellier, see Archibald Lewis, "The Guillems of Montpellier," pp. 159-69.

47. Baratier, Enquêtes sur les droits et revenus. R. H. Bautier, "Recherches sur les routes de 1'Europe médiévale," Bulletin philologique et historique, Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 2 (1960), pp. 83-87. Jean Morize, "Aigues-Mortes au XIIIe siècle," AM 26 (1914), pp. 313-48.

48. E. Jordan, Les origines de la domination angevine en Italie (Paris 1909), pp-300-418.

49. Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers (Cambridge 1958), pp. 51-89.

50. Hillgarth, Catalan Mediterranean Empire, pp. 19-22.

51. James felt that Montpellier was important enough to visit it during eighteen of the last forty years of his reign (Burns, Colonialism, p. 4). For more details of these visits, see Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 76-152.

52. Emile Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples (Paris 1954), pp. 40-151. On James's 1266 campaigns in Murcia and Valencia, see Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 439-54.

53. Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571, 4 vols. (Philadelphia 1976-84), vol. 1, pp. 108-22.

54. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 482-93. Montpellier only agreed to supply him with sixty thousand solidi turnois (i.e., French Capetian money) if he left the town after his crusade had failed (ibid., chap. 493). This was a real humiliation for him. On James's last coinage of money of Melgueil in 1273 in the style of St. Louis, see Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 131-36.

55. Mayer, Crusades, p. 270; and Le Goff, Les propos, pp. 50-51.

56. Soldevila, Vida, pp. 87-93; and Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, p. 251.

57. Just before his final campaign against the Murcians and Valencians who were in revolt against him, James had a long and unsatisfactory interview with Pope Gregory X at the second Council of Lyons. The pope gave him no concessions about Charles of Anjou in Italy, and James refused to do homage to him for his lands or pay him arrears in tribute. Llibre dels feyts, chaps. 524-42. Baumel, Montpellier, vol. 2, pp. 136-43.

58. Joseph O'Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca, N.Y. 1975), PP-382-84. Llibre dels feyts, chap. 563.

59. Ramon d'Abadal y de Vinyals, "A propos de la 'domination' de la maison comtale de Barcelone sur le Midi français," AM 76 (1964), pp. 315-45. Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogne du milieu du X^e a la fin du XI^e siècle: croissance et mutations d'une société, 2 vols. (Toulouse 1975-76), vol. 2, pp. 683-728.

60. Ardisson, Etudes sur les comtes de Provence, pp. 160-212, contains the best information on this period.