Charles' father, Philip, was invested with the
Principality of Achaea in southern
Greece in 1307. However, there existed a rival claim to the principality in the person of
Matilda of Hainaut, the wife of
Guy II de la Roche,
Duke of Athens. Guy was made Philip's
bailli in Achaea, but he died in 1308 without children, leaving Matilda a widow. In 1309, the fifteen-year-old Matilda was betrothed to the twelve-year-old Charles, in an attempt to reconcile the competing claims to Achaea. The ceremony took place at
Thebes on 2 April, in the presence of the
Latin Archbishop of Athens, the Angevin
bailli and the assembled nobility of Achaea and the
Duchy of Athens. The betrothal between Charles and Matilda was dissolved in 1313, and Matilda married
Louis of Burgundy, as part of a complex marital pact wherein Matilda was ceded Achaea (although Philip retained
suzerain rights over the principality, which he had held since 1294). As part of a series of marriages and pacts that year, Philip made a second marriage to
Catherine of Valois, titular
Latin Empress (who had been betrothed to Louis' brother,
Hugh V of Burgundy), while Charles was betrothed to his new stepmother's sister,
Joan of Valois in compensation for the breaking off of his previous engagement. Like the first, this betrothal was never to be consummated. In 1315, Philip went north in command of
Neapolitan troops to relieve the
Florentine Guelphs, besieged at
Montecatini by the
Pisan
Ghibellines under
Uguccione della Faggiuola. Charles of Taranto and Philip's younger brother,
Peter, Count of Gravina accompanied him. Despite initial successes, Philip fell ill with fever, and was crushingly defeated by Uguccione at the
Battle of Montecatini. Charles was killed on the field, and his uncle lost; the ailing Philip escaped. Charles's body was found near that of Uguccione's son, Francesco; their contemporaries assumed they had slain one another. Rainieri
della Gherardesca had sworn not to be
knighted until he had been revenged on the Angevins for the death of his father, who had been executed by
Charles I of Naples with
Conradin in 1268. He now accepted the
accolade with a foot upon the corpse of Charles of Taranto.
Bartholomew of Lucca helped arrange the retrieval of Charles' body from the Pisans after the battle.
Remigio dei Girolami, a
Dominican supporter of Charles' uncle,
Robert, King of Naples, preached a sermon on Charles' death. == References ==