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MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY
CHAPTER VII
THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
(1302-131)
The history of Greece in the last quarter of the
thirteenth century was more influenced by the long duel between the rival houses
of Anjou and Aragon for the beautiful island of Sicily than by any other cause.
It was the Sicilian vespers and their consequences which paralysed the schemes
of the Angevins for the reconquest of the Latin Empire of the East; it was the
restoration of peace in Sicily, after a twenty years’ struggle, by the peace of
Caltabellotta in 1302, which let loose upon the Greeks and the Frankish rulers
of the Levant the terrible Catalan auxiliaries of the Aragonese party, and thus
vitally affected for nearly a hundred years the fortunes of Hellas. What the
Fourth Crusade was to the thirteenth century, the Catalan expedition was to the
fourteenth, only that the rough mercenaries from Barcelona showed less regard
for the Greeks than the motley band of younger sons and noble adventurers and
astute Venetians, who had divided among themselves the fragments of the
Byzantine Empire a hundred years before. The Catalans, like the Crusaders, have
been very differently judged by Eastern and Western writers. Of the four contemporaries,
who have left us accounts of their doings, the three Greeks —Pachymeres,
Nikephoros Gregorys, and the rhetorician Theddoulos— depict them as savages,
whose sole idea was plunder; while their comrade and compatriot, Ramdn
Muntaner, is rather proud than otherwise of their exploits, and heaps upon the
Greeks the same terms of opprobrium which we find applied to them a century
earlier by the apologists of the Fourth Crusade. Modern writers have taken
sides, according to their nationalities. To Stamatiddes the Catalans are the
oppressors of the Greeks, to Moncada and Rubio y Lluch they are heroes worthy
to be descendants of the Crusaders. If their career has been very variously
judged, it has, at least, inspired two masterpieces of literature —the delightful
Chronicle of Muntaner and the majestic prose of Moncada, a work justly esteemed
worthy of a place in the library of Spanish classics.
During the long struggle against the Angevins in
Sicily, King Frederick II, who now ruled that debatable island, had thankfully
availed himself of the stout hearts and stalwart arms of the Catalans. Their
principal chief was one Roger de Flor, whose father, a German, had been falconer
of the Emperor Frederick II, and whose mother was daughter of a prominent
citizen of Brindisi, where Roger, like Margaritone a century earlier, was born.
His father lost both life and property, fighting against Charles of Anjou at
the battle of Tagliacozzo, so that the lad was early thrown on his own
resources. But Brindisi was, in that age, one of the most important ports in
the Mediterranean, whence there was constant communication with Greece and
Syria —just the place, in fact, where an adventurous boy would find an opening
for a career. One winter, when Roger was eight years old, the vessel of a
Knight Templar lay in the harbour, close to his mother’s abode; the nimble
youth was soon free of the ship, running about the deck as if he had been bred
to the sea. The captain took a fancy to him, offered to make a man of him, and
when the ship at last sailed, Roger sailed with it. He soon became an
experienced seaman, and, in due course was admitted a brother of the Temple,
being ultimately entrusted with the command of the largest vessel belonging to
the Order. He was present with this ship at the capture of Acre by the
Egyptians, and was the means of conveying many of the fugitives and much
treasure to a place of safety. But his large profits by this voyage aroused
envy and suspicion; the Grand Master of the Order laid hands upon what property
of Roger’s he could find, and tried to arrest him; but the latter managed to
escape to Genoa, where he equipped a galley of his own. Renouncing his
allegiance to the Temple, he now offered his services to the Angevins, and,
when his offer was coldly received, to King Frederick II, who graciously
accepted them. Honours and wealth were bestowed upon him; he became
Vice-Admiral of Sicily, and the most terrible corsair of the age.
The peace of Caltabellotta closed the active career of
Roger and his band of Catalans in Sicily. Their present employer could no
longer support them from the revenues of an island exhausted by twenty years of
civil war; they could not return to Spain, because they had espoused the cause
of King Frederick of Sicily against his brother, King James II of Aragon, nor
had these homeless wanderers any strong ties to bind them to their native land;
moreover, the pope either had demanded, or seemed likely to demand, the
surrender of their chief, the scourge of the Angevins, the renegade brother of
the Temple. Frederick II was, on his part, naturally desirous, like governments
in our own time, to rid himself of such dangerous allies, now that he had no
further use for their services. He had already offered them to Charles of
Valois, husband of Catherine of Courtenay, titular Empress of Constantinople,
whose claims to the Byzantine throne he had pledged himself to support. As this
venture against Andronikos II was not carried out, Roger bethought himself of
offering his band of followers to the same emperor whom he had been expected to
attack. Andronikos, then hard pressed by the growing power of the Turks,
welcomed Roger’s proposal as a godsend. He accepted the latter’s terms, which
had been drawn up by Muntaner himself; Roger was to obtain the title of “Grand
Duke”, which was equivalent to Lord High Admiral in the Byzantine hierarchy,
with the hand of the emperor’s niece, Maria; his men were to receive pay at
double the usual rate, and four months were to be paid in advance, the first
instalment being paid at Monemvasia. On these conditions, Roger sailed for
Constantinople with thirty-six ships and 6500 men. Of these, 4000 were the
so-called almugavari, or “skirmishers,” the most formidable infantry of the
time, whose exploits led the terrified Pachymdres, by a false, but pardonable
etymology, to connect them with the barbarous Avars. “Would that Constantinople”,
cried the historian, “had never beheld the Latin Roger!”
The name and fame of the Catalans were already known
in the harbours of the Levant. As early as 1268, King James I of Aragon, of
whose dominions Cataluña formed a part, had allowed the merchants of Barcelona
to establish consuls in the Byzantine Empire; and, about 1290, one of those
officials is mentioned in a golden bull of Andrdnikos II, which granted special
privileges to merchants from Spain. Catalan trade had naturally followed the
Byzantine flag at a time when the Greek emperors were instigating the house of
Aragon against the hated Angevins in Sicily, and the East had had a taste of
the Catalans’ quality as fighting men. Michael VIII had on one occasion
employed a Catalan vessel to tackle a Genoese corsair, and we saw Catalan
mercenaries assisting Licario against the Lombards of Euboea and ravaging the
Morea under Roger de Lluria. Thus the new Roger represented a force whose value
the emperor was well able to estimate.
On their way to Constantinople, the Catalans plundered
Corfú, then a possession of the Angevins, and put into Monemvasia, where the
imperial authorities received them well. When they reached the capital, the
emperor was as good as his word: the soldiers were given four months’ pay in
advance, and Roger received the hand of the fair Maria. When, somewhat later,
another Catalan leader, Berenguer de Entenga, Lluria’s brother-in-law and “one
of the noblest men of Spain”, arrived with a fresh contingent, Roger relinquished
to him the title of Grand Duke, and was yet further honoured by that of “Caesar”,
one of the great Byzantine dignities, whose latest holders had been Aldxios
Strategopoulos, the conqueror of Constantinople from the Latins, and John and
Constantine Palaidlogos, the uncles of the emperor. The Catalan commander was
the last person who ever bore the title.
The newcomers soon proved to be a curse to the empire
which they had been summoned to defend. If they defeated the Turks in Asia,
they quarrelled with the Genoese in the capital and plundered the Greeks
everywhere. When they had desolated Asia, they crossed over into Europe, and
encamped at Gallipoli on the Dardanelles, where Alfonso Fadrique, a natural son
of King Frederick of Sicily, joined them. Roger was now killed at Adrianople by
orders of Michael, the emperor’s son and colleague; but the deed only made the
Catalans more desperate, and therefore more dangerous. Under Entenca, Roger’s
successor, they entrenched themselves at Gallipoli, and defied the emperor;
when Entenca was captured by a Genoese fleet, they made Berenguer de Rocafort,
a resolute soldier of humble origin, their leader, routed the imperial troops
and wounded the emperor’s son. Twelve councillors were appointed to assist
Rocafort; a great seal was made bearing the image of St George and the proud
superscription “the army of the Franks who reign over the kingdom of Macedonia”,
and was entrusted to the charge of Muntaner; three banners, those of Aragon, of
Sicily, and of St George, accompanied the host to battle; a fourth, that of St
Peter, waved on the topmost tower of Gallipoli. Their victories soon attracted
a body of loyal and valuable allies —3800 Turks and Turkish renegades; ere long
there was scarcely a town in Thrace and Macedonia which they had not sacked.
But dissensions broke out among the Catalan leaders. Entenca, who had secured
his release, was murdered on his return by Rocafort’s relatives, and that
crafty chief persuaded his men to refuse to recognise the authority of King
Frederick of Sicily, who was desirous to exploit for his own ends the triumphs
of his former mercenaries, and had accordingly sent his cousin, the Infant Ferdinand,
son of King James I of Majorca, to take command of the company in his name.
Unable to assert his powers as King Frederick’s delegate, the Infant resolved
to return to Sicily; with him went the faithful Muntaner, while the main body,
under Rocafort, having exhausted Thrace and plundered the monasteries of Mount
Athos, moved to Kassandreia, the ancient Potidaia, a deserted city on the
narrow isthmus which connects the peninsula of Kassandra with the rest of
Macedonia.
It is at this point that the Catalan expedition begins
to affect the history of Frankish Greece. On their way home, the Infant and
Muntaner put into the Thessalian port of Halmyros, at that time under the
regency of the Duke of Athens, and set fire to all that they could find, in
revenge for the disappearance of some of their men and stores. After ravaging
the island of Skopelos, still a Greek possession, they steered for Negroponte,
where the Infant had been hospitably treated on his outward voyage. But at this
moment there chanced to be in the harbour eleven Venetian vessels with Thibaut
de Cepoy on board —a French nobleman, agent of Charles of Valois, who, in 1306,
had renewed between his master and Venice the old arrangement made twenty-five
years before at Orvieto for the recovery of the Latin Empire, and who was now
manoeuvring to win over Rocafort and his Catalans to the service of the titular
empress and her husband. Cepoy feared that Ferdinand, as the representative of
the King of Sicily, might thwart his plan; his Venetian escort had heard that
Muntaner’s galley contained a goodly quantity of spoil; accordingly, they
attacked the little flotilla, seized the chronicler’s property and arrested the
Infant, in spite of the safe conduct, which the barons of Negroponte had given
him. Ferdinand’ and his faithful retainer were lodged in the house of Bonifacio
da Verona, whence the Infant was handed over to Jean de Maisy, a well-connected
Frenchman, who had recently become, by marriage with one of the Lombard
heiresses, the next most important baron of the island. He was then escorted to
Thebes, where Duke Guy of Athens, annoyed at the destruction of Halmyros, and
already won over by Cepoy, shut him up in the castle of St Omer. Muntaner was
sent back to Rocafort at Kassandreia, where he received an enthusiastic
reception, and whence he shortly returned to Negroponte, in quest of his stolen
property. All efforts to recover it failed; but half a century later Venice
paid back to the chronicler’s granddaughter a tenth part of what he had lost at
Negroponte. A poorer and a wiser man—for he had learnt that it was dangerous to
travel with young princes —Muntaner proceeded to Thebes, where Guy II, then
already a prey to the malady which carried him off a year later, received him
with courtesy. He was not the first Catalan whom the duke had met; for, three
years earlier, Ferdinand Ximenes, the most respectable of all the Catalan
leaders, had left Roger de Flor in disgust at his cruelty, and had spent some
time at the Theban court, where he had been entertained with those honours
which the lavish duke knew so well how to bestow. Muntaner, in response to
Guy’s polite attentions, asked for one favour only —that the Infant might be
well treated and that he might be permitted to see him. The request was granted;
the warm-hearted Catalan passed two days in the society of his young master,
and when he departed, almost broken-hearted, for Sicily, he left behind him
part of his scanty funds for the Infant’s use, and made the cook swear on the
gospels that he would not put poison into the royal prisoner’s food. The Infant
was subsequently released and sent to the King of Naples, at the request of Charles
of Valois; after more than a year’s honourable imprisonment at Naples, he was
allowed to return to Majorca. We shall find him later on intervening, with
fatal results to himself, in the affairs of Greece.
Meanwhile, the main body of the Catalans, in their
camp at Kassandreia, were treating Macedonia as they had treated Thrace.
Rocafort, hopelessly compromised with both the King of Sicily and the house of
Aragon by his refusal to accept the authority of the Infant Ferdinand, had
thought it prudent to take an oath of fealty to Thibaut de Cepoy as the
representative of Charles of Valois, but, in spite of Cepoy’s nominal leadership,
he continued to be the guiding spirit of the Company. His ambition aimed at
nothing less than a royal crown, and he dreamed of reviving for himself that
kingdom of Salonika which Boniface of Montferrat had founded a century before,
and which still lingered on as a titular dignity of the ducal house
of Burgundy. He had a seal executed, bearing the figure of St Demetrios and a
golden crown, while he excited his men by promising them the plunder of
Salonika, a rich and populous city, at that moment a particularly splendid
prize, because its walls contained the two empresses, Irene, wife of Andronikos
II, and Maria, consort of his son and colleague, Michael. Just as Boniface’s
conquests had included Attica, so Rocafort, too, was plotting the ultimate dominion
of the Athenian duchy. With this object he sought the hand of Jeannette de
Brienne, half-sister of the childless Guy II, which the Empress Irene had
already asked for her son Theodore. Guy had been too honest to accept her
offer, which had been coupled with the proposal that he and she should
simultaneously attack his ward, young John II of Thessaly and Neopatras, and
that the latter’s dominions should be given to her son. Negotiations went on,
however, for some time between him and Rocafort; two of his minstrels were sent
as his envoys to Kassandreia, and he seems to have entertained the idea of
using the Catalans to conquer the Morea in the name of his wife, the natural
heiress of the Villehardouins, who, as we saw, had in vain demanded it as her birthright
from Nicholas de St Omer, when he had been left as bailie after the departure
of Philip of Savoy. But Venice, alarmed for her colony at Negroponte, worked
against a plan which would have exposed that station to a Catalan attack, and
Rocafort, whose arbitrary acts had made him unpopular with his men, was
arrested by the council of the Catalan Company, and handed over to Cepoy. The
latter was by this time weary of his life with the wild Catalans, while his
mission had no further object since the death of Catherine of Courtenay, the
titular empress of Constantinople, at the beginning of 1308, and the consequent
transference of her claims to her daughter, Catherine of Valois. He therefore
determined to quit the Catalan camp with his prisoner. One night, without
saying goodbye to a single soul, he embarked on some galleys which his son had
brought from Venice, and next morning when the Company awoke, he was well out
at sea, on the way to Naples. There he surrendered Rocafort to the tender
mercies of that amiable sovereign, King Robert, who paid off an old grudge
which he had against the bold Catalan by throwing him into the dungeons of
Aversa, where he died of hunger. Meanwhile, the Catalans, furious at the
departure of their leader, repented of what they had done. In their rage they
slew fourteen captains who had been the ringleaders in the revolt against
Rocafort—a proceeding which still further diminished the number of prominent
men among them. Until they could find a
new chief, they elected a committee of four, chosen in equal numbers from the
cavalry and infantry, besides the original Council of Twelve.
Such was the situation of the Catalan Company, when
the last of the De la Roche dukes of Athens lay a-dying. Muntaner, as we saw,
had found him very ill, when he visited Thebes, nor could the medical skill of
the patriarch of Alexandria, who chanced to be in Euboea and prescribed for the
ailing duke, avail to save him. On 5th October 1308, “the good duke”, Guy II,
died. On the following day, he was laid to rest in “the mausoleum of his
ancestors” at the famous Cistercian Abbey of Daphni on the Sacred Way, where a
sarcophagus with a cross, two snakes, and two lilies carved upon it, which was
perhaps his tomb, may still be seen lying outside in the courtyard. A
certificate of his death and burial was drawn up by Archbishop Henry of Athens,
the Abbot of Daphni, the ex-pirate Gaffore, now a peaceful Athenian citizen,
and others, who implored, in the name of the widowed duchess, now left alone in
the world at the
age of fifteen, the protection of her cousin, Count William of Hainault. Her husband had not, however, been dead four months, when she was affianced in the Theban minster, the scene of so many gorgeous ceremonies,
to the eldest son of Philip of Taranto.
Thither, for the last time, gathered the noble chivalry of Athens, to witness
this latest sacrifice to the insatiable
ambition of the Angevins.
Guy II had left no children, but fortunately the
succession to his delectable duchy, of which he had
appointed his bosom friend, Bonifacio da Verona, as temporary administrator, was not seriously disputed. Neither the French nor the Argive branch of the De la Roche family (the barons of Veligosti and Damala) made any claim to his inheritance; the husband of his aunt Catherine, Carlo
de Lagonessa, seneschal of Sicily and son of the former bailie of Achaia, who had regarded himself a few years before as his heir, and Lagonessa’s son, Giovanni, had both predeceased him, so
that there only remained his two first cousins, Eschive, Lady of Beyrout, daughter
of his aunt Alice, and Walter, son of
his aunt Isabelle and Hugues de Brienne, his stepfather. Hugues de Brienne had left Greece for Apulia after his stepson had come of age, and
had been killed
in battle in 1296. His son, Walter, Count of Lecce, accordingly came forward as Guy’s successor. Dame Eschive of Beyrout asserted, however, that she had a prior claim, because her mother was the elder sister of Walter’s
mother. As the duchy of Athens was in the Angevin times a vassal state of the principality of Achaia, King Robert of Naples, the
head of the Angevins, and Philip of
Taranto, as Prince of Achaia and suzerain of Athens, referred the question in the middle of 1309 to the Achaian High
Court, of which Philip’s new bailie, Bertino Visconte, was the president. The High Court decided in favour of Walter, on the ground that he was a powerful and gallant man,
while the Lady of Beyrout was not only a woman but a widow. When Eschive heard
the sentence of the Court, she knelt down at the altar of the church of St
Francis at Glarentza, where the barons had met, and prayed the Virgin that if
her judges and her opponent had wrought injustice, they might die without heirs
of their bodies. Then she departed to her own home, and Walter of Brienne
entered into the peaceable possession of his cousin’s duchy, which Bonifacio da
Verona, who had acted as bailie during the interregnum, handed over to him.
The new Duke of Athens was a true scion of the
adventurous house of Brienne, who in his thirty years of life had seen much of
the world. As a boy he must have spent some time at the Theban court, when his
father was guardian of Guy II. When barely of age, he had been one of the “knights
of death”, who had gone to Sicily to support the cause of Anjou, and he had
fought like the lion on his banner at Gagliano, when he and his comrades were
treacherously led into an ambuscade. Like his suzerain, Philip of Taranto, he
had been the prisoner of the Aragonese, but prison had not made him cautious,
nor had defeat taught him the folly of despising the infantry of Spain. Thus
the succession of this brave but headstrong soldier destroyed, instead of
preserving, “the pleasaunce of the Latins” in Frankish Athens. Yet it is
impossible not to admire the reckless courage of this most unstatesmanlike
ruler. Those who have seen the knightly figure of the last French Duke of
Athens step on to the stage in M. Rhangabes’s gorgeously mounted play, “The
Duchess of Athens”—a drama which, in spite of some glaring anachronisms, has
given us a living picture of the brilliant French court of Thebes on the eve of
the catastrophe —can feel all the pathos and all the pity of so promising a
career so wantonly sacrificed.
Meanwhile, the Catalans were drawing nearer to the
Athenian frontier. The position of the Company in the camp at Kassandreia had
grown more and more precarious. In Macedonia they were threatened with
starvation and the combined attack of all the neighbouring peoples. The emperor
had cut off their retreat into Thrace by building a long wall across the pass of Christopolis; while in the imperial general Chandrends, if we may believe
the eulogy of his relative, the rhetorician Theddoulos, they had found a foeman worthy of their steel, who pressed them hard in their station on the peninsula. Accordingly, they resolved to make a bold dash for Thessaly, “a land of plenty”, or
find an abiding settlement in one of the Greek countries to the south of it.
The company now numbered not less than 8000 men, of whom some 5000 were
Catalans, and the rest Turks, 1100 of the latter being converts to
Christianity. On the borders of Thessaly, a portion of the Turks left them, and the rest of the company, after wintering at the foot of Olympos,
traversed the lovely vale of Tempe, the route of so many an army, and in the spring of 1309 debouched into the great Thessalian plain. The granary of
Greece lay at their mercy, for John II of
Neopatras, its ruler, who had been emancipated from his Athenian guardian by the death of Guy II, was young in years and weak in health; fearing a usurpation on the part of one of the feudal barons of
Thessaly, he had recently married, or at least
betrothed himself to, Irene, natural
daughter of the Emperor Andronikos II. But, as he had no heir, either annexation or anarchy seemed likely to follow the demise of the moribund duke, the last of his race.
The rest of the year was spent by the Catalans
in ravaging Thessaly, till the inhabitants invoked the
aid of the emperor, who not only ordered the redoubtable Chandrenos to pursue the
Catalans, but summoned the people of Loidoriki and Galaxidi, districts which were included, as we saw, in the Wallachian principality of the Angeli, to join his standard against “the men of Aragon”. Dissensions
hindered the success of the Greeks till the
arrival of Chandrends gave unity of
direction to their forces, and in two battles, in which the stalwart men of Galaxidi took a notable part, the
Catalans were defeated with much loss. The Company was glad to make peace with
the Thessalians; Chandrenos, having done his work, returned into Macedonia; and
the Catalan leaders accepted the bribes and offers of the leading men of
Thessaly to give them guides, who would conduct them into Boeotia and Achaia, “a
luxurious and fertile land, endued with many graces, and of all lands the best
to dwell in”. Accordingly, in the spring of 1310, they crossed the Phourka
Pass, suffering not a little from the nomad Wallachs who frequented that
difficult country, and descended to Lamia.
An energetic soldier like the new Duke of Athens,
whose name was famous in the kingdoms of the West, could scarcely be expected
to acquiesce in the practical establishment of a Byzantine protectorate over
the dominions of his predecessor’s ward, John II of Neopatras. From the brief
account of Muntaner, it would appear that at this moment a species of triple
alliance between the Greek rulers of Constantinople, Neopatras, and Arta, had
been formed for the purpose of preventing the moribund principality of the
Angeli from being annexed by the duchy of Athens. Against the allies Duke
Walter bethought him of employing the venal arms of the wandering Catalans. The
late Duke of Athens had already negotiated with them when they were still at
Kassandreia; his successor was, moreover, personally popular with them; he had
gained their respect fighting against them in the Sicilian war, and he spoke
their language, which he had learnt when a child during his imprisonment as
hostage for his father in the Castle of Augusta, near Syracuse. By means of the
good services of Roger Deslaur, a knight of Roussillon, who was in his employ,
he engaged them for six months at the high rate of 4 ounces for every
heavily-armed horseman, 2 ounces for every light-armed horseman, and 1 ounce
for every foot-soldier—the same high scale of pay for which Roger de Flor had
stipulated with Andronikos II eight years earlier. As soon as he met
them—probably at
Lamia—he gave them two months’ pay
in advance. The Catalans lost no time in giving him value
for his money. Turning back by the way they had come, they took Domokd. At the
end of a six months’ campaign they had captured more than thirty castles for their employer, and had once
more ravaged the fertile plain of Thessaly so effectually, that its exports of corn
and other products diminished after this raid. His three adversaries were glad
to make peace with him on his own terms, and the news of his triumph penetrated
to the papal court at Avignon, whence Clement V wrote ordering the Athenian revenues of the suppressed
Order of the Templars to be lent to so “faithful a champion” of the true Church against the “schismatic Greeks”.
Having used the Company to serve his purpose, the duke now desired, like all its previous employers,
to get rid of it. He picked out 200 of the best horsemen and 300 foot soldiers
from its ranks, gave them their pay and lands, on which to settle, and then abruptly told the others to be
gone, first giving up to him the castles which
they had captured in his name and
the booty which they had taken. They declined to obey his orders, reminded him
that he owed them four months’ pay, but offered to do him homage for the conquered
castles, if he would allow them to remain, as they had nowhere else to go.
Walter haughtily replied that he would drive them'out by force, and made preparations during the autumn and winter to carry out his threat. His messengers went forth to all parts of the Frankish world in quest of aid against the common enemy. All the great feudatories
of Greece rallied to his call. There came Alberto
Pallavicini, Marquis of Boudonitza, and by his marriage with an heiress of the
Dalle Carceri,
hexarch of Euboea; Thomas III of Salona, that trusty vassal of the dukes of Athens, who
had lately become marshal of Achaia; Boniface
of Verona, the powerful Euboean baron, who owed everything to the favour of
Walter’s predecessor; and two other Eubcean lords, George Ghisi, owner of one
of the three baronies of that island and master of Tenos and Mykonos, who had
been captured by Roger de Lluria nearly twenty years before, and Jean de Maisy,
who had received the custody of the Infant Ferdinand. The friendly Angevins,
for whose cause Walter had fought in Sicily, willingly allowed their vassals in
the Morea and their subjects in the kingdom of Naples to hasten to the Athenian
banner, while the Duke of Naxos seems to have sent an island contingent. Never
had such a brave host marched under the leadership of a Duke of Athens.
According to a Byzantine estimate, Walter’s army numbered 6400 horsemen and
more than 8000 foot soldiers; according to the Catalan Muntaner, it consisted
of 700 Frankish knights and of 24,000 Greek infantry from his own duchy; while
the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea assesses the numbers of the
assembled force at more than 2000 horse and 4000 foot. With such an army, the
contemptuous duke hoped not only to annihilate the Catalans at one blow, but
to extend his frontiers to the gates of Constantinople.
The situation of the Catalan Company, now composed of
3500 horsemen and 4000 foot soldiers, including many of their prisoners,
enlisted because of their skill as archers, was now desperate. Retreat would
have exposed them to a fresh attack by the victorious Chandrenos; allies they
had none, for Venice had returned an evasive answer to their pacific overtures
to her bailie at Chalkis, and had just renewed for twelve years her truce with
the emperor, which contained a special stipulation, that no Venetian subject,
under pain of losing all his goods, should visit any place where the Catalan
Company chanced to be. Nothing therefore lay before them but the alternative of
a glorious death, or a still more glorious victory. Like seasoned warriors,
they chose their battlefield well. When spring came, they crossed the Bceotian
Kephissds, and encamped not far from the right bank of that sluggish stream,
which, ambles under the willows, like the Avon at Rugby. They then proceeded to
prepare the ground, which was to be the scene of their final struggle for
existence. Nature seems to have intended the great plain of Bceotia for a
battlefield. A few miles from where the Catalans had taken their stand, Philip
of Macedon, more than sixteen centuries before, had won “that dishonest victory
at Chaironeia, fatal to liberty”, which destroyed the freedom of classic Greece;
in the time of Sulla, the plain had thrice witnessed the clash of arms between
the Roman masters of Greece and the Pontic troops of Mithridates. Now, after
the lapse of 1400 years, it was to be the spot where the fate of Athens was to
be decided. But the crafty Catalans did not put their trust in those arts by
which the soldiers of Macedon and Rome had routed Greeks and Asiatics. They
knew that they would have to face the most renowned chivalry of that day,
knights who had made the names of Athens and Achaia famous all over the Eastern
world, descendants of those tall horsemen, before whose coats of mail Sgourds
had fled from Thermopylae a century before. The marshy soil of the Copaic basin
was an excellent defence against a cavalry charge, and the Catalans made this
natural advantage more efficacious still by ploughing up the ground in front of
them, digging a trench round it, and then irrigating the whole area by means of
canals from the river. The moisture aided the germs of vegetation, and by the
middle of March, when the Frankish army faced the Catalans, the quagmire was
concealed by an ample covering of green grass.
On Wednesday, 10th March 1311, the Duke of Athens had
assembled his forces at Lamia, where, as if by a foreboding of his approaching
death, he solemnly made his last will and testament. The document, witnessed by
Gilles de la Planche, bailie of Achaia, and by the two great Euboean barons,
Jean de Maisy, the duke’s kinsman, and Bonifacio da Verona, provided for all
the outstanding claims of his predecessor’s widow on his estate, bequeathed the
sum of 200 hyperperi each to the cathedrals of Our Lady of Athens, Our Lady of
Thebes, and Our Lady of Negroponte, to the great churches at Argos and Corinth,
and to the church at Daulia, a similar sum to the Athenian and Theban
Minorites, and to the Theban Fr&res Precheurs, and half that amount to the
church of St George at Livadia, and to the church at Boudonitza. The duke
appointed his wife, Jeanne de Châtillon, guardian of his two children, Walter
and Isabelle, charged her to build a church to St Leonard in his Italian county
of Lecce for the repose of his own and his parents’ souls, but expressed the
desire to be buried by the side of the last Duke of Athens in the abbey of
Daphni, to which he left ioo hyperperi in land, or 1000 in cash, for
celebrating his anniversary. His wife, the bishop of Daulia, and others, were
to carry out these dispositions. Having thus made his will, Walter set out to
attack his enemies.
Following the present route from Lamia to Livadia by
way of Dadi, Walter halted, after passing Chaironeia, near the spot where the
present road to Skripou, the ancient Orchomenos, turns off. On the hill called
the Thourion, which is still surmounted by a mediaeval tower, he probably took
up his stand on that fatal 15th of March to survey the field. But, before the
battle began, the 500 favoured Catalans, whom he had picked out from the rest,
came to him and told him that they would rather die with their brothers than
fight against them. The duke told them that they had his permission to die with
the others, so they departed and added a welcome and experienced contingent to
the enemies’ forces. When they had gone, Walter, impatient for the fray, placed
himself at the head of 200 French knights with golden spurs and many other
knights of the country and the infantry, and charged, with a shout, across the
plain towards the grassy expanse, behind which the Catalans lay. Seldom had
even Frankish Greece seen a braver sight than that of the martial duke and his
mailed warriors, the flower of Western chivalry, with the lion banner of
Brienne waving above them. But before the horses had reached the centre of the
plain, they plunged all unsuspecting into the morass. Their heavy burdens and
the impetus of their charge made their feet sink deeper into the yielding
quagmire; the shouts of “Aragon! Aragon!” from the Catalans added to their
alarm.
Some rolled over with their armoured riders in the mud others, stuck fast in the stiff bog, stood still, like
equestriar statues, powerless to move. The Catalans plied the helpless horsemen
with showers of missiles; the Turks, who had hitherto held aloof from the
combat, for fear lest the Catalans and the French should join in attacking
them, seeing that the battle was no mere feint, rushed forward and completed
the deadly work. Still, despite their desperate situation, the French fought
bravely, and the struggle was keen to the last. So great was the slaughter,
that, if we may believe the Catalan chronicler, more than 20,000 foot-soldiers
and all the 700 Frankish knights save two perished that day. Those two
survivors were Bonifacio da Verona, who had always been a good friend of the
Company, and Roger Deslaur, who had been the intermediary between it and the
Duke of Athens. We know, however, from other sources, that at least two other
knights, Jean de Maisy of Euboea and the eldest son of the Duke of Naxos, who
was wounded there, both survived, while the latter lived to marry Walter’s half-sister
Jeannette and to fight the Catalans again. Two other great nobles, Nicholas III
of St Omer and Antoine le Flamenc, lord of Karditza, are known to have been
alive after the battle, at which the former was apparently not present, while
we may perhaps assume that the church of St George, which the Flemish knight
erected in this very year at his Copaic village, was in pursuance of a vow made
to the saint before he went into action. But the fatal day of the
Kephisses destroyed at one blow the noble chivalry of Frankish Greece. Almost
all the leaders of the land, almost all the representatives of the old
conquering families, were left dead in the Boeotian swamp. The Duke of Athens
fell, and his head, severed from his body by a Catalan knife, was borne, many
years afterwards, on a funereal galley to Brindisi,
and thence escorted to Lecce, where it was buried beneath a marble monument, in
the church of Sta. Croce, which his ill-fated son erected in his Italian
residence, but which was destroyed, and with it the monument, when Lecce was
fortified in the time of Charles V. There fell, too, the Marquis of
Boudonitza and the lord of Salona, those twin guardians of the Greek marches,
whose dignities dated from the Conquest; and brave George Ghisi, and many another
noble gentleman. It was scarcely a rhetorical exaggeration, when Theddoulos the
rhetorician wrote, that not so much as an army chaplain was left to tell the
tale. To him and to the Greeks it seemed a glorious victory, which rid them of
the masters who had ruled Greece for three generations, and whose pride had
been the cause of their fall; even the Francophil Chronicle of the Morea admits that Walter’s death was his own
fault.
After the battle, the victors occupied the French
camp, and then marched to the neighbouring town of Livadia, one of the
strongest positions in the duchy, which had been a special appanage of the
ducal family. But the Greek inhabitants opened the gates to “the Fortunate
Company of the Catalans”, receiving as their reward the full rights and
privileges of Franks under the Great Seal of St George. When the
news of the French defeat reached Thebes, the citizens fled with all that they
could carry to Negroponte— the general refuge of the Latin inhabitants of the
duchy, where a Venetian fleet was at that moment watching events. But the
abandoned city, the richest in all the duchy, was ruthlessly plundered by the
rough soldiers of fortune, who then hastened to Athens. We would fain believe
the story of the Aragonese Chronicle, that the heroic widow of the fallen duke,
a daughter of a constable of France, defended the Akropolis, in which she had
taken refuge with her little son, until she saw that there was no hope of
succour, and then fled with young Walter to Naples, arid thence to her old home
in France. But Nikephoros expressly says that the invaders surprised Athens and
took it most easily, together with the possessions, wives, and children of the
vanquished; a very late authority of more than doubtful value3 adds
that they burnt the grove of the nymphs at Kolonos, thus giving to the home of
Sophokles the desolate appearance which it still preserves. As no French
leaders were left to lead a resistance against them, and the Greeks remained
spectators of this change of masters, they were able to parcel out among
themselves all the towns and castles of the duchy, except its Argive
appurtenances beyond the isthmus, which the faithful family of Foucherolles
still held for the exiled dynasty. The widows of the slain became the wives of
the slayers; each soldier received a consort according to his services, and
thus many a rough warrior found himself the husband of some noble dame, in
whose veins flowed the bluest blood of France, and “whose washhand basin”, in
the phrase of Muntaner, “he was not worthy to bear”. No wonder that these
vagabonds decided to end their nine years’ wandering and settle in this
delectable duchy, which a kindly providence had bestowed upon them. Their
Turkish allies, however, pined to return to their homes in Asia, although the
Catalans offered to give them three or four places in the duchy in which to
settle, and begged them to stay. They received as their share the horses, arms,
and military equipment of the fallen Franks, and departed on the best of terms
with their Catalan comrades. Both parties promised to assist one another in
case of need; but, before the Catalans had had time to perform their promise,
their Turkish friends had succumbed to the craft of the emperor and his Genoese
allies at the Dardanelles. Those who escaped the Byzantine sword, ended their
days in the Genoese galleys.
The battle of the Kephissos, assuredly one of the
strangest in history, had left both victors and vanquished without leaders. The
Catalans had lost all their chiefs long before the fight, the French chivalry
lay in the Boeotian swamp. But the Company felt that in its new situation it
must have a commander of acknowledged rank and position. As they had no such
man among them, the Catalans offered the command of the Company to one of their
two noble prisoners, Bonifacio da Verona. The famous Eubcean baron was the most
important Frank in the whole of Northern Greece; he was of high lineage,
wealthy, able, and popular with the Catalans; Muntaner, as we saw, had lodged
in his house at Chalkis, and describes him in enthusiastic terms as “the wisest
and most courteous nobleman that was ever born”. Wisdom and nobility alike
disposed him to decline an offer which would have embroiled him with Venice and
have rendered him an object of loathing to the whole Frankish world. He
accordingly absolutely refused. The Catalans then turned to his fellow-captive,
Roger Deslaur, the knight of Roussillon, who had neither the territorial
position, the family ties, nor the scruples of Bonifacio. He accepted; the
Catalans made him their leader, and gave him the splendid castle of Salona,
together with the widow of its fallen lord, Thomas III, the last De
Stromoncourt.
Thus, after a duration of over a hundred years, fell
at a single blow the French duchy of Athens. An artificial creation, imposed
upon a foreign soil, it collapsed as suddenly as it had arisen, and it left few
traces behind it. We have seen that under the dominion of the dukes of the
house of De la Roche, trade prospered, manufactures flourished, and the
splendours of the Theban court impressed foreigners accustomed to the pomps and
pageants of much greater states. Never before, and never again, did the ancient
city of the seven gates witness such a brilliant throng as that which made the
frescoed walls of the great castle of St Omer ring with song and revelry; never
before, and never again, did the violet crown of Athens encircle so romantic a
scene, as when armoured knights and fair Burgundian damsels rode up to attend
mass in St Mary’s minster on the Akropolis. But the French society, which had
made Attica the cynosure of the Levant, never took firm root in the land. The
Greeks and the Franks seem to have amalgamated even less in Burgundian Athens
than elsewhere; the French were, after three generations, still a foreign
garrison, nor did they, as was the case in Norman England, form a powerful
blend with the conquered race. Fascinating as is the spectacle of chivalry
enthroned in the home of classical literature, it was an unnatural union, and,
as such, doomed from the outset. But in the long history of Athens, not the
least gorgeous page is that written by the dukes from beyond the sea.
If it made small mark on the character of the people,
the French dynasty has, at least, bequeathed to us some visible memorials of
its rule. All these rulers, except Othon and John, have left coins, which may
be found in the doge’s palace and elsewhere; while, by way of compensation, as
we saw, a pious donation to the abbey of Bellevaux has preserved the seal of
the first French ruler of Athens. If there be one building more than another
where we should expect to discover traces of French influence, it is the famous
monastery of Daphni, which Othon had granted to the Cistercians, and where his
successors chose their graves. But, if we except the so-called tomb of Guy II,
two rows of Gothic arcades alone recall this, the most brilliant period in the
life of the abbey. Under the auspices of the dukes from Franche-Comté, the
abbots of Daphni had played a considerable part in the ecclesiastical history
of Greece. Popes had used them as intermediaries, and their quinquennial
visits to the mother-abbey of Citeaux must have helped to maintain the
connection between France and Athens. But after the fall of the French duchy,
the monastery declined; it is but little mentioned in the two succeeding
centuries; it ceased to be the ducal burial-place, and was eclipsed by the
greater glories of St Mary’s minster, on one of whose columns the last known of
its abbots has obtained such immortality as a meagre Latin inscription can
confer. Another inscription on the Stoa of Hadrian commemorates, as we saw, an
Athenian canon of the ducal family; while Walter of Ray, who was bishop of
Negroponte at the time of the catastrophe, found a sumptuous monument in the
French abbey of Beze. To this period, too, has been ascribed the “Frankish
monastery”, the remains of which long stood at the foot of Pentelikon, and
which was probably the Minorite establishment mentioned in the will of the last
duke. A much more striking foundation —the Gorgoepekoos church— was attributed by
the enthusiastic Buchon to the French; but the general opinion is that it is a
Byzantine structure. An imaginative Greek, going one step further, maintained
that this beautiful little building was the chapel of the ducal palace, which
he supposed to have stood on the site of the present cathedral. But
the residence of the French dynasty was at Thebes, and the commander of the
Akropolis, who represented it at Athens, doubtless lived within the castle.
Accordingly, it is in Boeotia rather than in Attica that we should expect to
find buildings of this first Frankish epoch. The stumpy Santameri tower at
Thebes still preserves the name of its founder; a bridge, formerly of five, but
now of three, arches, which crosses the Melas some two miles below the village
of Topolia, testifies to the activity of the French in that same Copaic
district which witnessed their fall —a disaster perhaps commemorated by the
little church at Karditza. Frankish coats of arms may be seen on the walls of
the older church at Hosios Loukas, one of which, two snakes supporting two
crosses, bears some resemblance to the device on the tomb at Daphni. It is,
indeed, not surprising that a monastery which was the abode of the prior and
chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, and later on the residence of the dowager
duchess of Athens, should contain Frankish memorials.
Like the French dukes, their most important vassals,
the lords of Salona, have perpetuated their names by a separate coinage, of
which specimens minted by Thomas II and Thomas III from their own mint have
been preserved. But the splendid castle of Salona, which Honorius
III had helped to fortify, is the best memorial of that once powerful French
family, although it is not easy to determine how much of the present structure
is due to them, and how much to their successors. On the other hand, neither
the Pallavicini of Boudonitza nor the branch of the ducal race which was
established at Damala in Argolis seem to have left memories that can be
identified save the ancient castle of the marquises. Both now lingered on in
the female line alone —the usual lot of the Frankish nobles in Greece. Such was
the end of that strange venture which had made Attica and Bceotia a “new France”;
a few coins, a few arches, a casual inscription, are all that they have
retained of their brilliant Burgundian dukes.
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