text:  Again in order to understand the contest which Philip de Comines records between a Frenchman and a Spaniard for the crown of Naples we must go back to the dark and bloody page in the annals of the thirteenth century which relates the extinction of the last heir of the great Swabian race of Hohenstauffen by Charles of Anjou the fit and unrelenting instrument of Papal hatred--the dreadful expiation of that great crime by the Sicilian Vespers the establishment of the House of Anjou in Sicily the crimes and misfortunes of Queen Joanna the new contest occasioned by her adoption--all these events must be known to him who would understand the expedition of Charles VIII