3-081-376 - LTL/Heritage Images

French soldiers outraging a young Sicilian noblewoman, Sicilian Vespers, 1282, (1890). Massacre of the French in Sicily. Tradition establishes the origin of the rebellion on 30 March 1282 in the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo, where Easter Monday was being celebrated. Many of the city's inhabitants had gathered there for the sunset prayer marking the beginning of the night vigil. In the square next to the church, the faithful were waiting for vespers to begin when a group of drunken Frenchmen, one of them a sergeant, approached a young married woman and began to harass her. Her husband stabbed him in response. The rest of the Frenchmen came to the sergeant's aid and avenged him, but the more numerous Palermitans surrounded them and killed them all just as the church bells, and those of the whole town, began to ring. From "Glorias Españolas" (Glories of Spain), Vol II, published in Barcelona, 1890.