Gherbino Attacks the Ship Carrying the Tunisian Princess is the fatal climax of a love affair thwarted by political arrangements and an oath of safe passage. When the princess is sent by sea to marry the King of Granada, Gherbino attacks her ship, intending to carry her away. The rescue fails: the ship’s defenders kill the princess before his eyes, and King Guglielmo II of Sicily later orders Gherbino’s execution rather than break his word to the King of Tunis.

Causes and Political Background

The princess and Gherbino have fallen in love through exchanged messages and gifts. She sends him one of her precious jewels; he replies with costly presents, and they make plans to meet. Their hopes are disrupted when the King of Tunis gives her in marriage to the King of Granada. The princess, distressed at the prospect of separation, would willingly flee to Gherbino if she could find a way. Gherbino, hearing of the marriage, considers seizing her if her route to her husband takes her by sea.

The King of Tunis learns something of Gherbino’s love and intentions and fears his courage and strength. When the time comes to send his daughter to Granada, he asks King Guglielmo II of Sicily for assurance that Gherbino and others will not interfere. King Guglielmo, an old man who knows nothing of his grandson’s passion, grants the request freely and sends a glove as a token of his pledge. The assurance is meant to protect the passage, but it also places Gherbino’s desire in direct conflict with his grandfather’s public word.

The princess knows that her departure is being prepared. She secretly sends a servant to Palermo to tell Gherbino that she will soon sail for Granada, leaving him to prove whether he is as brave and devoted as people say. Gherbino understands that his grandfather has already pledged non-interference and hesitates over what to do. Love and the fear of seeming cowardly finally overcome his uncertainty. He hastily arms two light galleys at Messina, gathers men he considers proven fighters, and waits off the coast of Sardinia for the princess’s ship.

The Attack at Sea

Gherbino’s two galleys are waiting only a few days when the ship comes into view, becalmed within reach. He tells his companions that the woman he loves is aboard and that the ship also carries considerable treasure. He offers them the plunder, asking only that they leave the princess to him. The men are already eager for booty, and they agree to attack. Trumpets sound; the crews take up arms and row toward the ship.

The ship cannot escape for lack of wind, so its occupants prepare to defend it. Gherbino demands that its masters come aboard the galleys if they do not wish to fight. The defenders refuse to surrender either themselves or the cargo. They identify their attackers and invoke the agreement between the two kings, displaying King Guglielmo’s glove as proof. Gherbino dismisses the token, arguing that no falcons are present to require a glove, and presses the demand for the princess. The exchange turns the pledge into a visible emblem of an authority he chooses to defy.

The ships trade arrows and stones, and the fighting continues with losses on both sides. When Gherbino sees that the attack is making little progress, he brings forward a small vessel he has carried from Sardinia, sets it alight, and drives it against the Tunisian ship together with his galleys. Faced with fire and the prospect of being forced to surrender or die, the defenders bring the princess from below deck to the prow. She is weeping and calls for mercy and help. Before Gherbino can save her, they kill her in front of him and throw her into the sea, declaring that this is the form in which he has earned her through his breach of faith.

Destruction, Grief, and Retribution

Gherbino boards the ship despite the weapons directed against him, seemingly courting death. He kills many of the defenders in a fury, but the burning vessel yields him no meaningful victory. He orders the sailors to salvage what they can as payment for their labor, then has the princess’s body recovered from the water. His companions have fought for plunder; for him, the expedition ends with the loss of the one person he came to take.

He carries her body back toward Sicily and buries her honorably on Ustica, a small island opposite Trapani. The account places this burial after the desperate violence of the boarding: the woman he sought to possess by force is finally given a grave and ceremonial respect, while Gherbino returns home overwhelmed by grief. The treasure and the attack’s military outcome cannot compensate for her death.

The King of Tunis sends ambassadors dressed in black to King Guglielmo II of Sicily to complain that his pledge has been broken. They recount the attack, and King Guglielmo, unable to deny the facts or the justice of the complaint, orders Gherbino seized. His barons plead with him to change his mind, but he condemns his grandson and has him beheaded in his presence. He chooses to preserve his reputation for keeping faith, even at the cost of his own family’s continuation. The episode thus ends with both lovers dead: the princess is killed by the ship’s defenders, and Gherbino by the king whose pledge he had disregarded.

Narrative Significance

The attack is driven by a collision between private desire and public obligation. Gherbino sees the pledge as an obstacle to rescuing the woman he loves; the defenders turn it into a justification for refusing him, and King Guglielmo ultimately treats it as binding even when its enforcement demands his grandson’s life. The glove, first sent as a token of assurance and then displayed amid combat, carries the promise from courtly negotiation onto the deck of a besieged ship.

The attempted rescue reverses into a scene of helpless witnessing. Gherbino has armed ships, persuaded a crew, and set fire to the vessel, yet none of these actions can prevent the princess’s murder. His retaliation destroys lives without restoring the person he came for. The final execution completes the same pattern of competing loyalties: the lovers’ private bond is overwhelmed by political marriage, pledged security, and royal judgment. Their deaths leave no reunion or later happiness to soften the outcome.