Though the same indulgences as were awarded to all who warred for the Holy Sepulchre were promised to such as engaged in this Spanish crusade; though vast numbers, among whom was James, king of Majorca, brother and vassal of the Aragonese king, flocked to the standard of Philip; though that monarch lost no time in penetrating, by way of Roussillon, into Catalonia, at the head of one hundred thousand men, these formidable preparations ended in nothing. If Gerona, after a long and bloody siege, capitulated, the French fleet was almost annihilated near Rosas by the famous Roger de Lauria. The ranks of the invaders were so thinned by pestilence and the sword, that Philip, leaving a garrison in Gerona, immediately returned to Perpignan, where he died. The rear of his army in this retreat was dreadfully harassed by Don Pedro, who recovered Gerona with facility. Pedro had just despatched his eldest son Alfonso with a small armament to dethrone his brother Don James, as a punishment for the aid which that prince had lent to the invaders, when death surprised him at Villafranca del Panades (1285). In his will he left Aragon and Catalonia to Alfonso, and Sicily to his second son, Don James. Though Alfonso III heard of his father’s death immediately after his disembarkation, he refused to return until he had dethroned his uncle. As James was not much beloved by the inhabitants of these islands, whom he had offended by his exactions, the enterprise was successful. The dethroned king had still Montpellier, Conflans, and other possessions in France: to these he retired, but they appear the same year to have been laid waste by Roger de Lauria, the able and intrepid admiral of Aragon. POLITICAL GROWTH [Sidenote: [1283-1336 A.D.]] During Alfonso’s absence, the nobles of Aragon had assembled in Saragossa, to provide for the due administration of justice. Some of them were not a little scandalised that he should have assumed in the Balearic Isles the title of king, since, by ancient custom, it could be assumed only after he had sworn before the assembly of the states to observe the customs, privileges, immunities, and laws of the realm. No sooner did they hear of his return to Valencia, than they despatched several of their body to wait upon him, and to express their surprise at his thus arrogating to himself the supreme power without their formal sanction. He justified himself by replying that the crown was his by right of succession, and that there would be time enough to guarantee the constitutions of the realms at the ceremony of his coronation. Accordingly, when that ceremony took place in the cathedral of Saragossa, he fulfilled the conditions of the compact.[c]