During a reign of thirty-four years, Frederick III. did much for the nation that had placed him at its head. A scholar and a legislator, he encouraged letters, navigation, and trade, established a national representation, and bequeathed his subjects the famous Sicilian constitution, which was entirely destroyed only in the present century. But the tendency of power in Sicily was to the hands of the nobles. Frederick struggled hard to keep down the aristocracy, but his efforts had no permanent success: at his death the barons became omnipotent, the feudal system prevailed, and for more than a century the annals of the island are but a confused history of the rivalries of the Chiaromonte and the Vintimiglia, the Palizzi and the Alagona, the Luna and the Perolla, and many others besides. The Chiaromonte, notwithstanding their French origin,[10] were the chiefs of the Italian or Latin party; they became absolute masters of Palermo, and reigned over it from the summit of their castle of Steri, whose massive masonry still exists in the heart of that city. The kings of Sicily, to obtain their support, sought the hands of their daughters; but at last the haughty patricians fell from their pinnacle of greatness, and by treason or stratagem were led to the scaffold. Distracted and weakened by discord, Sicily offered, at this time, an easy prey to Naples, had the descendants of the first Charles been the men to profit by the opportunity. But they were far from inheriting the martial energy of their great ancestor, and, in spite of circumstances frequently favourable, Sicily was never reconquered by the race of Charles of Anjou. [10] "It is at this time (the moment when Charles of Anjou raised the siege of Messina) that estimable, but second-rate historians place the pretended adventure of a French chevalier of the name of Clermont, to whose wife, they say, Charles of Anjou had offered violence. They add, that, after revenging himself by a similar outrage to one of the king's daughters, this French knight fled to Sicily, where he founded the powerful house of Chiaromonte, Counts of Modica." (St Priest, vol. iv. p. 104.) M. de St Priest disbelieves this anecdote, which is certainly inconsistent with the character for rigid morality and chastity he assigns to his hero.