MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

A HISTORY OF FRANKISH GREECE (1204-1566)

CHAPTER VIII

THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS(1311-1333)

The meteoric career of the Catalan Grand Company had placed it in the possession of the Athenian duchy, but had at the same time won for it a host of suspicious or vindictive enemies. The house of Anjou, as represented by Philip of Taranto, Prince of Achaia and suzerain of the Frankish states of Greece, naturally resented the capture of Athens by the enemies of his dynasty; the Venetians of Negroponte were justly alarmed for the safety of that important colony; the widow of the fallen duke was seeking to recover the duchy for her son; the two Greek states of Neopatras and Arta were ill-disposed to the appearance of these fresh intruders; the Emperor though not sorry that the Franks had received such a fatal blow, had not forgotten the destruction wrought by the Catalans upon his armies and his lands. Well aware of their critical position in a foreign land, surrounded by enemies, the victors of the Kephissos reluctantly came to the conclusion, that, if they wished to maintain their acquisitions, they must place themselves under the protection of some powerful sovereign. Their choice naturally fell upon King Frederick II of Sicily, the master whom they had served before they left that island for the East ten years before, and who, by sending the Infant of Majorca to command them in his name while they were still in the Greek Empire, had shown that he had not relinquished the idea of profiting by their successes. Accordingly, in 1312, they invited the King of Sicily to send them one of his children, to whom they promised to take the oath of fealty as their lord and to hand over the command over all their forces. Frederick II was only too pleased to accept an offer, which would add fresh lustre to his house. He told the Catalan envoys, that he would give them as their duke his second son Manfred; but, as the latter was at present too young to take personal charge of the duchy, he would send them a trusty knight, who would receive their homage and govern them in Manfred’s name. For this important post he selected Berenguer Estanol, a knight of Ampurias, who set out with five galleys to take possession of his command. The Catalans received him well, Deslaur retired from his provisional leadership to his lordship of Salona on the arrival of the ducal governor, and we hear of him no more.

The archives of Palermo unfortunately contain no documents relating to the early administration of Attica under the Catalan rule. But from the fairly frequent allusions to Athens in the last two decades of the Sicilian suzerainty we can form a tolerably complete idea of the system of government —a system which, with some modifications, may be assumed to have existed from the commencement. The two chief officials were the vicar-general and the marshal, both appointed by the duke, the former of whom exercised supreme political power as his deputy, while the latter was the military head of the state. The vicar-general was appointed during good pleasure, and took the oath of fidelity on the gospels to the duke or his representative, repeating it before the assembled sindici— a sort of parliament— of all the towns and cities of the duchy. From his residence at Thebes, the capital of the Catalan state, he could issue pardons in the duke’s name to those accused of felony or treason; it was he who exercised judicial authority, administered the finances, provided for the defence of the land, inspected the fortresses, and often appointed their commanders. The position of vicar-general was one of considerable splendour; a majordomo presided over his household; a procureur général was attached to his court. Later on, under the Aragonese supremacy, his powers were practically those of the duke himself.

The marshal was always chosen from the ranks of the Company, and the dignity became hereditary in the family of De Novelles till a little before the year 1363, when the hereditary marshal had apparently been deprived of his dignity for rebellion against his sovereign. Roger de Lluria succeeded him as marshal, and, three years later, combined the two great offices in his own person, holding them both till his death, after which we hear of no more marshals. The probable explanation of this is not far to seek. There had probably been, as we shall see, a conflict between the vicar and the marshal, which proved that there was no room in the narrow court of Thebes for two such exalted officials; and, as Lluria, when he became vicar­general, was already marshal, such a combination may have seemed a happy solution of the difficulty.

Greece has ever been the land of local government, and under the Sicilian domination each city and district had its own local governor, called veguer, castellano, or capitán— designations sometimes applied to the same person, sometimes distinct, as it was considered to be an abuse when more than one of these offices were concentrated in the same hands. We are expressly told that the “capitulations” agreed upon between the Catalans and their duke limited the duration of a veguePs office to three years, and on one occasion a “capitan, veguer, and Castellano" of Athens was removed because his three years’ term was up. But there are examples of the appointment of these officials for life or during good pleasure. They were sometimes nominated by the vicar-general, sometimes by the duke, and sometimes by the local representatives, for example, by the community of Athens, from among the citizens, subject to confirmation by the duke, and they had power to appoint a substitute in case of absence on public business. They were required, before entering upon their duties, to take an oath on the gospels before the vicar-general and the local community. These duties included the military command of the town and the hearing of criminal causes, but a final appeal from their decisions, as from the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the vicar-general, lay to the ducal tribunal in Sicily, just as our Colonial and Indian Appeals go to the Privy Council in London. On one occasion, however, we find a lord justice appointed during good pleasure to try appeals on the spot —a system which must have saved much time and expense to the appellants. We hear also of notaries, not infrequently Greeks, appointed by the duke for life, or even as hereditary officials, of a constable of the city of Thebes, and of a bailie of the city of Athens, apparently a municipal officer.

The Catalan state enjoyed a considerable measure of representative institutions, such as the Catalans had for some time obtained in their native land. The principal towns and villages were represented by sindici, and possessed municipalities with councils and officials of their own. These municipalities occasionally combined to petition the duke for the redress of their grievances; their petitions were then sealed by the “Chancellor of the Society of Franks” with the seal of St George, which had been that of the Company in its wandering days. On one occasion the communities elected the vicar-general, and the dukes frequently wrote to them about affairs of state. They did not hesitate to send envoys requesting the recall of an obnoxious vicar-general, they spoke perfectly plainly to their sovereign, who on one occasion complained of their “morose answers”, and their petitions usually, for obvious reasons, received a favourable reply. Later on, one of their principal demands was that official posts should be bestowed on residents, not on Sicilians. Attica for the Catalans was, in fact, their watchword. They were stubborn folk, perfectly con­tented to maintain the Sicilian connection, so long as they could manage their own affairs in their own way; in that, as in much else, they resembled our own self-governing colonies.

The feudal system continued, but with far less brilliancy than in the time of the French. The Catalan con­querors were of common origin; when they had been settled some years, we find very few knights among them, and even after seventy years of residence, the roll of noble families in the whole state contained only some sixteen names. The Company particularly objected to the feudal practice of bestowing important places, such as Livadia, upon private individuals, preferring that they should be administered by the government officials. As a code of justice, the “Customs of Barcelona” supplanted the “Assizes of Romania”, and Catalan became the official, as well as the ordinary language. The dukes wrote in the language of Muntaner, not merely to their Catalan, but also to their Greek subjects, and we are specially told that the employ­ment of “the vulgar Catalan dialect” was “according to the custom and usage of the city of Athens”.

The ecclesiastical organisation remained much the same as in the Burgundian times. After the annexation of Neopatras, the two duchies contained three archbishoprics —Athens, Thebes, and Neopatras— the first of which had thirteen suffragan bishoprics, and the last one, that of Lamia or Zetouni. Thus Athens had gained two, and Thebes had lost two, suffragans since the early Frankish days; but of the Athenian bishoprics only four —Megara, Daulia, Salona, and Boudonitza— were actually within the confines of the duchy.

The church of St Mary at Athens, as the Parthenon was called, had twelve canons, appointed by the duke, whom we find confirming a Catalan as dean of the Athenian chapter, nominating the Theban archbishop, and bestowing vacant livings upon priests. Although in the last years of Catalan rule the clergy acquired great influence, and were selected as envoys to the ducal court, the law strictly forbade them to hold fiefs —a very necessary provision in a land won, and held, by the sword. The Knights of St John, however, had property in the Catalan state, and the castle of Sykaminon, near Oropos, was theirs.

Like the Franks, the Catalans treated the Greeks as an inferior race. They excluded them, as a general rule, from all civic rights —the exclusive privilege of the Conquistadors, as the Catalans styled themselves— and thus an unhappy Hellene was legally debarred from acquiring, selling, or disposing of his property as he chose. Even after his death, someone else might step in and take his possessions from his son, and we hear of slavery existing at Athens. As a general rule, too, intermarriage of the two races was forbidden, but to these enactments there were not a few exceptions. Greeks, who had deserved well of the Company in times of difficulty, like the people of Livadia, received the full franchise, and might even hold serfs, besides being permitted to marry their children to members of the dominant race. In the later Catalan period, we find Greeks occupying posts of importance, such as that of castellano of Salona, chancellor of Athens, and notary of Livadia. Once, at the very close of Catalan rule, Greeks are mentioned as sitting on the municipal council of Neopatras. Persons of such standing as a count of Salona and a marshal of the duchies married Greek ladies, and it was provided in such cases that the Greek might keep the orthodox faith; only, if the wife became a Catholic and then reverted, she paid for her double apostacy by the loss of her property. A similar penalty awaited any Catalan who was converted to the orthodox faith. As for the Greek Church, it continued to occupy the inferior position which it had filled under the Franks. Of the former Frankish nobility we naturally hear nothing, as it had been annihilated at the battle of the Kephissds. The Burgundian burgesses are never mentioned. On the other hand, we find Armenians residing at Thebes and proving a source of revenue to the ducal exchequer.

The duke would naturally assume the crown lands of his French predecessors, and this ducal domain included lands and house property at Athens and Thebes. These houses at the capital were let, and the rent was paid in wax every year; occasionally, the crown was pleased to grant an annuity out of the proceeds of the “Theban wax tax” to some deserving Catalan. We hear, too, of a land-tax {jus terragu) payable to the ducal court, to which also escheated the real and personal property of converts to the Greek faith. But, as in the case of the British Empire and its colonies, the Sicilian Dukes of Athens did not estimate the value of the connection by the methods of an accountant. Upon them it conferred the prestige which has in all ages attached to the great name of Athens, while it also gave them an excuse for intervention in Eastern politics. To the Catalans, on the other hand, the protection of the Sicilian crown was of great practical value. Having no diplomatic service of their own, they looked to the ducal diplomatists to explain away any more than usually outrageous act of piracy which they had committed upon some Venetian subject; to say soft things on their behalf at the Vatican; to give them, in short, a status in the community of nations. They had all the advantages of independence, without its drawbacks; they lost nothing by having acknowledged the sovereignty of Sicily; and both they and their Sicilian dukes seem thoroughly to have understood their mutual relations.

For four years, till his death in 1316, Estanol governed the Catalan duchy wisely and well. Under his guidance, the Company maintained its martial spirit, which was the very essence of its existence, by expeditions in all directions— against the imperial fortresses on the borders of Thessaly, against the Angeli of Neopatras and of Arta, against the island of Euboea, and in support of the claims of their old comrade, the Infant Ferdinand of Mallorca, to the principality of Achaia. We may judge of the devastation wrought on these forays from the fact that Archbishop Bartholomew of Corinth was at this time allowed by Clement V to defer payment of his predecessor’s debts for three years, because his diocese “had been desolated and the city of Corinth destroyed by the Catalan Company,” while the Archbishop of Thebes and Walter of Ray, Bishop of Negroponte, could not reach their sees. But Estanol was a diplomatist as well as a soldier. He managed to attack his enemies one at a time; and, as soon as his soldiers had exhausted the resources of the country which they had invaded, they moved on, like locusts, to another. In vain the pope ordered the Latin patriarch of Constantinople to argue with the Catalan leaders on the error of their ways, and to excommunicate these spoilers of churches and slayers of churchmen in case of their continued disobedience to his voice; in vain he hade the Grand Master of the Knights of St John, but recently established in the island of Rhodes, to send four galleys to the aid of Walter of Foucherolles, who held the Argive fortresses with the title of “Captain of the Duchy” for the little duke’s grandfather and guardian, the Constable of France; in vain he appealed to King James II of Aragon to drive the Catalans out of Attica, and depicted the cruelties, robberies, and murders which they had perpetrated on the faithful children of the Church in those parts. The Catalans heeded not the patriarchal admonitions; the grand-master was occupied with the affairs of his new domain; while the politic sovereign, who had no desire to intervene in the affairs of his brother’s duchy, replied that that “true athlete of Christ and faithful boxer of the Church”, as the pope had called the late Duke Walter, had met with his deserts, and that the Catalans, if they were cruel, were still Catholics, who would prove a valuable bulwark of Romanism against the schismatic Greeks of Byzantium.

Upon Estanol's death, the Company elected one of its own members, a knight, William Thomas, a man of higher rank than his fellows, as its temporary captain, until King Frederick had had time to send someone else to rule over them. The king appointed his own natural son, Don Alfonso Fadrique, or Frederick, a man of much energy and force of character, whom we saw ravaging the coasts and islands of Greece some twelve years earlier. The “President of the fortunate army of Franks in the duchy of Athens”, as the new vicar-general officially described himself, retained the leadership of the company for thirteen years —a position of practical independence, as the nominal duke, Manfred, died in the year of Fadrique’s appointment, and was succeeded in the title by his younger brother, William, likewise a minor. Moreover, he strengthened his hold upon Attica, and at the same time obtained a pretext for intervening in the affairs of Euboea by his marriage with Manilla, the daughter and heiress of Bonifacio da Verona, “one of the fairest Christians in the world, the best woman and the wisest that ever was in that land,” as Muntaner, who had seen her as a child in her father’s house at Negroponte, enthusiastically describes her. Although the fair Lombard had a brother, the thirteen castles in the Athenian duchy and the other places which Guy II of Athens had once bestowed upon her father, fell to her share.

The Venetians had been alarmed for the safety of Euboea from the moment when the Catalans had arrived in Greece. After the battle of the Kephissos, they increased the salaries of their officials in the island, and organised a fleet for its defence. To this fleet the Lombard lords were invited to contribute, and, with the exception of Bonifacio, they agreed to do so. That powerful and ambitious baron, who was on the best terms with the Catalans, refused, intending, no doubt with their aid, to make himself master of the island. The marriage of his daughter with their chief seemed to favour this plan.

Hitherto, the Catalans had contented themselves with preventing the Catholic bishop of Negroponte from returning to his see —which can scarcely surprise us, as he was a cousin of the French dukes of Athens— and with frequent plundering raids across the narrow sound, which separated them from the great island. A more serious campaign began, however, when Fadrique and more than 2000 men —among them Turkish mercenaries— marched across “the black bridge”. In Negroponte these seasoned soldiers of fortune found little opposition. The baronage of the island, like the Frankish aristocracy in other parts of Greece, had suffered severely at the battle of the Kephissos, where two of the Euboean lords, George Ghisi and Alberto Pallavicini, had fallen. Pallavicini’s successor, Andrea Cornaro, a member of that famous Venetian family, hastened to make his peace with the invaders, who entered Chalcis and forced the Venetian bailie to do likewise. Thus abandoned by their allies, the other triarchs appealed to Matilda of Hainault, at that time Princess of Achaia, as their suzerain; but she was alone and powerless to help; she had already contemplated ceding her phantom suzerainty over the island to Venice; and she now contented herself with pointing out to the doge the extreme danger which the island ran of falling into the hands of the Catalans. At this moment, Bonifacio da Verona died —the last survivor of the ancien regime of Frankish Greece— whereupon his son-in-law at once occupied the two important castles of Karystos and Larmena as part of Marulla’s dowry. But the successes of the Company had so greatly alarmed Europe that a coalition of the European powers seemed likely to be formed against it; the pope complained bitterly that the Catalans, “the offscourings of humanity,” employed infidel Turks against Christians, and urged Venice to drive them out; the exiled family of Brienne was plotting to regain its heritage; the Angevins protested against Fadrique’s intervention in Euboea. Under these circumstances, King Frederick of Sicily thought it prudent to order his daring son to desist from further conquests in that island, and Fadrique obediently retired from Eubcea, retaining, however, the two castles of Karystos and Larmena. But the Catalans had no real reason for fearing the active hostility of Venice, their nearest and most serious rival. The republic was informed by her agents that the very subjects of the young Duke Walter at Argos and Nauplia were in league with the Company —a proof that the Catalan usurpation was not unpopular in Greece. Her statesmen, always cautious, were, therefore, still less inclined to provide the money and the vessels for the restoration of the Brienne dynasty, even though the Duchess of Athens, after the fashion of kings in exile, made liberal promises of commercial concessions which it was not in her power to bestow. On the other hand, negotiations began between King Frederick and Venice, which ended in 1319 in a formal truce, renewed two years later, in which the triarchs were included. This remarkable agreement provided, under a penalty of £2240, that the ompany should fit out no fresh ships in the Saronic Gulf (“the sea of Athens”) or in Euboean waters; a plank was to be taken out of the hull of each of the vessels then lying in those stations, and their tackle was to be carried up to the Akropolis (“the castle of Athens”) and there deposited. The Catalan ships in the Corinthian Gulf (“the sea of Rivadostria,” or Livadostro) might, however, remain as they were. These stringent provisions were intended to check the growth of a Catalan navy, which had already become a menace to Venetian interests in the Levant. It is significant of the revived importance of the Piraeus, that in a Genoese map of this period that harbour, usually called by the Venetians “the port of Sithines” (or Athens), figures for the first time by the name of “Lion,” the later Porto Leone, derived from the colossal lion, now in front of the Arsenal at Venice, which then stood there. It was from there that Fadrique had been able to send two galleys to his Turkish allies; it was from there that his corsairs had preyed on Venetian commerce, and had wreaked their vengeance on the island of Melos, which belonged to the duchy of Naxos, for the part which the duke’s son Nicholas had taken against the Catalans in the marshes of the Kephissos and in the plain of Elis. Even as far as Chios the Catalan galleys had penetrated, and had carried off from that fertile island the son of Martino Zaccaria, its Genoese lord, whose name had long been a terror to Latin pirates.

Venice profited by the war in Euboea to extend her influence in that island. When she had got rid of the Catalan danger, she informed the triarchs of her intention of occupying the towns and fortresses as a reward for her trouble and expense. She was, indeed, the only power which could defend Negroponte from the ever-increasing Turkish peril, which menaced all the islands and coasts of Greece. Since 1314 the titular dignity of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople had been united with the see of Negroponte; but the patriarchal admonitions had no effect upon the adventurous infidels. The Archbishop of Thebes, who went on a mission to Venice to seek aid against the Turks, wrote to Sanudo that they had thrice invaded Euboea in one year; the Venetian bailie feared that, if help were not forthcoming, that island would be ruined; one of his successors was com­pelled to pay blackmail to these marauders. There was always a danger of the Catalans and Turks uniting against Euboea, for the former retained a fellow-feeling for their old comrades, and when Fadrique, a few years later, again intervened in the affairs of the island on behalf of his wife, who had latterly allowed her brother to enjoy the castle of Larmena, but claimed it again on his demise, the Turks were very active there. It is no wonder, therefore, that when the two former truces between Venice and the Company were renewed at Thebes in 1331, the Catalans had to promise to receive no Turks into their land or service, and to make no fresh treaties with those common enemies of the Latin race. A recent Turkish raid into Attica, in the course of which many of its inhabitants had been killed and others sold into slavery in Turkey, may have predisposed the Catalans to accept these terms. Alfonso pledged himself to allow no castles to be built within his territory of Karystos which he declined to sell to the republic, and from that time he molested the Venetians of Euboea no more.

Meanwhile, Fadrique had found leisure, while he was at peace with Venice, to extend the Company’s authority over a large part of Northern Greece, where the dynasty of the Angeli had now become extinct. After the death of the last French Duke of Athens in the battle of the Kephissos, the feeble ruler of Thessaly had adopted the style of “Lord of the lands of Athens and Neopatras” (Signore de le terre de Thenes e Patras), in virtue of his kinship with the house of De la Roche. But John II, the last of the Thessalian Angeli, had none of the energy of his predecessors. His health had never been robust, and in 1318 he died without issue, leaving his rich dominions to be dismembered. So great was the confusion which at once ensued, that the metropolitan of Larissa cduld no longer exercise his sacred functions in that city. Feudalism, as we saw, had been readily developed on the congenial soil of Thessaly, where the Greek archons had copied, and copied for the worse, as is always the case when the East borrows the manners of the West, the institutions of the Franks. One petty tyrant now established himself at Trikkala; another, a member of the great family of the Melissenoi, held sway over the ruins of Delphi, then already known by its modern name of Kastri, keeping on good terms with his Catalan neighbours at Salona by means of a matrimonial alliance between his sister and the marshal of the Company. Several towns were annexed by the emperor, who had long coveted the lands of his son-in-law, and the Holy Synod threatened fearful pains and penalties upon the heads of those Thessalians, who declined to submit to the rule of Byzantium. Venice obtained a share of the spoil in the shape of the port of Pteleon at the entrance of the Pagassean Gulf, which the emperor voluntarily allowed her to take, rather than it should fall into the hands of the Catalans, who subsequently agreed not to molest it. A Venetian from Eubcea was appointed rector of this station —the sole point, except Modon and Coron, which the republic possessed on the mainland of Greece— and it remained in the occupation of Venice down to the capture of Euboea by the Turks. But the best part of the country fell to the share of the Catalan Company. Sanudo tells us how Fadrique made himself master of one place after another, of Loidoriki and Siderokastro, of Gardiki and Lamia, of Domoko and Pharsala —names so well known in the annals of modern Greece. At Neopatras, the seat of the extinct dynasty, he made his second capital, styling himself Vicar-General of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras. Henceforth the Sicilian dukes of Athens assumed the double title, which may be seen on their coins and in their documents, and, long after the Catalan duchy had passed away, the kings of Aragon continued to bear it. Besides these various competitors for the heritage of the Angeli, there now appeared for the first time in the plain of Thessaly great masses of Albanian immigrants, who formed a new and vigorous element in the population. They ravaged all the open country; and, as they brought their wives with them, their numbers soon increased, and they began to take the place of the Wallachs, who had hitherto formed the bulk of the Thessalian population, and had given the country its name of Great Wallachia. The Venetians thought that this Albanian immigration had the great advantage of keeping the Catalans employed, so that they had less leisure to attack their neighbours. It was from these Albanians that the gaps in the population of Attica and the Morea were subsequently replenished.

Thessaly was now in great part Catalan; Salona was the fief of the Company’s former chief, Roger Deslaur; so that these soldiers of fortune were masters of practically all continental Greece, except the historic marquisate of Boudonitza and the Despotat of Epiros. After the death of the last of the Pallavicini marquises in the swamps of the Kephissos, his widow had married that same Andrea Cornaro, baron of Euboea, whom we have seen contending in vain against the claims of Fadrique in that island. Fadrique punished him by ravaging the marquisate, without, however, annexing it to Athens. Indeed, on Cornaro’s death, it passed, by the marriage of his stepdaughter, into the hands of a bitter enemy and former prisoner of the Catalans, the son of Martino Zaccaria, the Genoese lord of Chios. At his demise, his widow married in 1335 one of the noble Venetian family of Giorgi, or Zorzi, as it was called in the soft dialect of the lagoons, with which the marquisate remained till the Turkish Conquest. The marquises had long been peers and vassals of the principality of Achaia, and as such they continued to be reckoned during the whole of the fourteenth century. No proof exists that they ever depended upon the French duchy of Athens; but though their sympathies were now with Venice, they paid an annual tribute of four horses to the Catalan vicar-general.

The same year which witnessed the extinction of the Angeli in Thessaly saw, too, the close of their dynasty in Epiros. In 1318, the feeble Despot Thomas, the last of his race, was murdered by his nephew, Count Nicholas of Cephalonia, who married his widow, Anna Palaiologina, a grand­daughter of the Emperor Andrdnikos II. Thus connected with the imperial house, the Italian count sought to establish his authority over the Despotat of Epiros by drawing closer to the Greeks, whose religion he adopted, and in whose language his seal was engraved. By this means he hoped to checkmate the plans of Philip of Taranto, who was still meditating the conquest of the mainland, and to whom he boldly refused the homage due for his island domain. But the people of Joannina, at that time a populous and wealthy city, where Jews could make money, and where Hellenic sentiments were fostered by the fact that it was the seat of the metropolitan, preferred the rule of the Greek Emperor, from whom their Church received repeated favours, to that of the Latin apostate. For a time the latter thought it worth while to purchase the friendship of Byzantium and the title of Despot by keeping his oaths not to molest the Greeks of that city. But the death of his wife and the growing weakness of the empire convinced him that he had nothing to hope or fear from that quarter. The “Count Palatine, by the grace of God Despot of Romania”, as he styled himself, accordingly invited Venice to assist him in driving the imperial troops out of Epiros, offering in return to hoist the lion banner on all his castles, to do homage to the republic for all his dominions, and to cede to it either the valuable fisheries in the lake of Butrinto opposite Corfu, or the sugar plantations of Parga —the town which, five centuries later, was destined to obtain such romantic notoriety, and of which this is perhaps the earliest mention. But the cautious Venetians were anxious not to endanger their commercial interests in the Greek Empire, with which they continued to be at peace, and they calmly reminded the count that there was no great novelty in his offer to become “their man”, seeing that his ancestor Maio had more than a century earlier recognised their suzerainty over the three islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and Vai di Compare (or Ithaka). Nothing daunted by this politic answer, and encouraged by the utter confusion at Constantinople caused by the quarrels of the elder and the younger Andrdnikos, he openly attacked the strong city of Joannina. But at this point, in 1323, his career of crime was cut short by the hand of his brother, Count John II., who assassinated the assassin and received, in his turn, the title of Despot from Constantinople, on condition that he swore to govern Epiros, “not as its sovereign, but as the servant of the emperor”. None the less, from his “castle of Arta”, he issued coins, still preserved, modelled on those of the princes of Achaia, to facilitate trade with Latin countries. Even in the motley history of Frankish Greece we are struck by the incongruity of an Italian adventurer minting French pieces on “Ambracia’s Gulf”. But this vigorous scion of the Roman Orsini embodied in his person the strangest anomalies. Like his brother, the new Despot married another Anna Palaiologina and embraced the orthodox faith, while he sought, after the usual manner of usurpers, to connect himself with the native dynasty by assuming the three great names of Angelos, Comnenos, and Doukas. As a proof of his ostentatious piety, he restored the famous church of Our Lady of Consolation at Arta, where an inscription preserving his name and that of Anna may still be seen. He was also one of the few examples in the history of Frankish Greece of a Latin ruler who patronised Greek literature. By his command, Constantine Hermoniakos composed a paraphrase of Homer in octosyllabic verse. The poem, if such we can call it, has no literary merit, but is an incontestable sign of an interest in culture even at the court of wild Epiros. Indeed, the courtly poet would have us believe that his master was “a hero and a scholar,” and that the Lady Anna “excelled all women that ever lived in beauty, wisdom, and learning.”

South of the Isthmus of Corinth, French influence was still predominant despite Catalan raids and intrigues. The faithful family of Foucherolles, whom the last Duke of Athens had invested with lands at Nauplia and Argos, still held that sole surviving fragment of the French duchy for the exiled house of Brienne, while the principality of Achaia, though sorely tried, remained, amid many vicissitudes, under the authority of the Angevins. At the time of the Catalan Conquest of Athens, as we saw, it was in the hands of Philip of Taranto, who had left it to be administered by means of bailies. But two years after the fatal battle of the Kephissos, the possession of it was transferred to another by means of one of those diplomatic family compacts, so dear to the intriguing house of Anjou. At that moment, one of the most eligible heiresses of the Frankish world was the titular Empress of Constantinople, Catherine of Valois, a child barely twelve years old, and to obtain her hand was now the main object of Philip of Taranto’s policy. On his side, there was no obstacle to the match, for his first wife, Thamar of Epiros, with whom his relations had become more and more strained after his unsuccessful expedition against that country, had been accused of adultery a few years earlier and was now dead. The young empress had, however, been betrothed already to Hugues V, Duke of Burgundy and titular King of Salonika, and it was therefore necessary to break off this engagement before Philip’s plan could be realised. The French king, uncle of the girl, had no difficulty in making the French pope, Clement V., the subservient tool of his designs, for the papacy was now established at Avignon, and, as a preliminary move, the child-empress was made to express doubts as to the capacity of her almost equally childish fiance to recover her lost empire. In order to compensate the house of Burgundy for the breach of the engagement, it was next arranged that Matilda, the young widow of Duke Guy II of Athens, should marry the Duke of Burgundy’s younger brother Louis. Matilda had already been betrothed, soon after her first husband’s death, to the eldest son of Philip of Taranto; but, of course, that engage­ment was not allowed to stand in the way of the new family compact. Philip of Taranto then conveyed to Matilda all his rights to the possession of Achaia, on condition that she should transfer them before her marriage to her future husband Louis; it was further provided, that, if he died without heirs, she should have nothing more than the life­ownership of the principality, which, after her death was to revert to the house of Burgundy in any event. At the same time, Louis received from his brother the barren title of King of Salonika, did homage to the Prince of Taranto for Achaia, of which the latter expressly retained the suzerainty, and promised to assist him in any attempt to recover the Latin Empire. The two marriages then took place, in 1313; Philip thus became titular Emperor of Constantinople, Louis of Burgundy Prince of Achaia and titular King of Salonika, and a coin and a magnificent seal still preserve the memory of his Achaian dignity. The person who bore the loss of the whole transaction was the unhappy Matilda, who thus became merely life-owner of a principality, which she, as the eldest grandchild of Guillaume de Villehardouin, had not unnaturally considered as her birthright, and which her mother had bequeathed to her, all arrangements with the Angevins notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, Louis of Burgundy delayed his departure for Greece, and in his prolonged absence a claimant arose to dispute his title. Hitherto, amid all its trials under the government of women, foreigners, and absentees, Achaia had been spared the horrors of a contested succession; but that misfortune was now added to the other miseries of the land. Guillaume de Villehardouin’s second daughter, Marguerite, Lady of Akova and widow of Count Richard of Cephalonia, was still alive, and, on the death of her elder sister in 1311, had laid claim to the principality on the ground of an alleged will made by her father. According to the provisions of this document, mentioned only by those authorities who have a natural bias for the Spanish side, the last Villehardouin prince had bequeathed Achaia to his elder daughter, with the provision that, if she died without children, it would pass to her younger sister. According to the marriage-contract of Isabelle in 1271 it was not in the power of her father to make any such disposition ; and, even if he had, his younger daughter would still have had no claim, because her elder sister’s daughter, Matilda, would have been the rightful princess. It was no wonder, then, that both the court of Naples and the leading Moreot barons —the small remnant of the Achaian chivalry which remained after the battle of the Kephissos— both rejected this unsubstantial pretext. So long, however, as her chivalrous protector, Nicholas III de St Omer, lived, Marguerite was, at any rate, safe in the possession of her own barony. But, after his death in 1313, she found herself surrounded by personal enemies, such as her stepson, Count John I of Cephalonia, and by Burgundian partisans, like Nicholas Mavro, or Le Noir, baron of St Sauveur, who had been appointed by the new prince as his bailie, and who was supported by the bishop of Olena. In this dilemma, she hit upon the idea of seeking an alliance with those Catalans whose exploits had amazed the whole Greek world. Before her marriage to the late Count of Cephalonia, she had been the wife of Isnard de Sabran, son of the Count of Ariano, in Apulia, by whom she had a daughter, Isabelle. This daughter she now married to the Infant Ferdinand of Majorca, who had played such an adventurous part in the history of the Catalan Company, whose name was well known in Greece, and who was now at the Sicilian court. The marriage was one of affection as well as of convenience. The susceptible Ferdinand fell in love at first sight of a damsel who, in the words of his faithful henchman Muntaner, was “the most beautiful creature of fourteen that one could see, the fairest, the rosiest, the best, and the wisest, too, for her age.” Nor was the King of Sicily averse from a proposal which would make the house of Aragon supreme in the Morea as well as at Athens. Accordingly, the wedding was hurried on; by way of dowry for her daughter, Marguerite ceded to Ferdinand the barony of Akova and all her claims to Achaia, now more modestly assessed at “the fifth part of the principality,” and the ceremony took place with great rejoicings at Messina. It was not, however, to be expected that the Burgundian party in the Morea would acquiesce in this arrangement. No sooner had Marguerite returned, leaving the newly married couple at Catania, than Nicholas Mavro and his confederates threw her into the castle of Chloumoutsi. “Thou hast given thy daughter to the Catalans”, they scornfully told her; “ill fortune shall attend thee, for thou shalt lose all thine own”. Robbed of her baronial lands, the last child of the great Villehardouin died not long afterwards, in 1315, the prisoner of the unruly nobles. Two months later, her daughter followed her to the grave.

Before her death, however, Ferdinand’s young wife had given birth to a son, the future James II., last King of Majorca, and to this child she bequeathed her claims to Achaia. Assigning to his old comrade Muntaner the delicate task of conveying the baby to his mother, the Queen-Dowager of Majorca, at Perpignan, Ferdinand started with a body of soldiers to endeavour to make good these claims. Landing near Glarentza in the summer of 1315, he routed the small force which had sallied out to attack him, entered the town, and received the homage of the frightened citizens. He followed up this success by capturing the castle of Beauvoir, or Pontikokastro, the ruins of which still command the peninsula above Katakolo, and which Muntaner calls, not without reason, “one of the most beautiful sites in the world”. All the plain of Elis was his, and his rapid triumph induced the three leaders of the Burgundian party —Mavro, Count John, and the bishop of Olena, to recognise his authority, which he endeavoured to justify by the publication of the testaments of Prince William, the Lady of Akova, and his own wife, as well as by that of his marriage­contract. He now styled himself “Lord of the Morea”, and sought to consolidate his position by a second mar­riage with Isabelle d’lbelin, cousin of the King of Cyprus. He even found time to mint money with his name at Glarentza.

But Ferdinand’s usurpation was of brief duration. Louis of Burgundy and his wife now at last appeared to take possession of their principality. The Princess Matilda would seem to have arrived first with a force of Burgundians, at the harbour of Navarino,where Mavro hastened to meet her and assure her of his devotion to her cause. Adherents rapidly joined the French side; the Archbishop of Patras successfully held that city for her; a contingent was sent by her vassal, the Duke of Naxos, to assist her. But the Catalan soldiers of Ferdinand inflicted a severe defeat upon the Franks and their Burgundian comrades near the site of the ancient city of Elis, and the princess was obliged to send in hot haste to summon her husband. Almost immediately, Louis landed with his Burgundian troops from his Venetian ships with the Count of Cephalonia by his side, and soon the fortune of war turned. In vain the usurper sent to the Catalans of Athens and to his brother the King of Majorca for reinforcements; before they had had time to arrive, his cause was lost. On the advice of the Archbishop of Patras, Louis entered into negotiations with the Greek governor of Mistra; and, with a large contingent of Greek troops which made his forces three times more numerous than those of his rival, set out to attack him. On 5th July 1316, the two armies met at Manolada, the beautiful estate in the plain of Elis, which now belongs to the Greek crown prince. Ferdinand took up his position in a forest of pines, but his enemy set fire to the resinous trees, which nowhere burn so easily as in Greece, and thus drove the Infant out into the open. The impetuous Spaniard made straight for the division commanded by his mortal foe, Count John of Cephalonia, and broke through his line; the son of the Duke of Naxos was actually taken prisoner; but the Burgundians came to the Count’s rescue; in the the Infant’s standard­bearer fell, whereupon his followers, all save some seven, fled, leaving their master almost alone. His few remaining companions urged him in vain to flee to Chloumoutsi; while they were arguing with him, the Burgundians fell upon the little band, the Infant was surrounded, and, in spite of the orders of Prince Louis that his life should be spared, was decapitated on the field. His head, gashed with many wounds, was handed over to his implacable enemy, Count John, who next day caused it to be displayed before the gate of Glarentza. Still the sturdy infantry of Cataluna were for holding out; but their captain pretended that he had neither provisions nor pay to give them, and counselled surrender. A commission of twelve was elected to arrange affairs; bribery was freely employed; the Archbishop of Lepanto, naturally a warm partisan of the French party, disseminated the false news that the kings of Majorca, Aragon, and Sicily were dead; and when the long-expected reinforcements arrived from Majorca, they were told that peace had been already made. An honest Catalan, however, shouted out to them not to believe the traitors, but to land and avenge the Infant’s death. At this, they disembarked and hastened up to Glarentza, where their comrades insisted on the gates being opened to admit them. Then the commander of the place called in the Count of Cephalonia, whose threats of starvation gradually cooled the enthusiasm of the garrison. The severed remains of the ill-fated Ferdinand were trans­ported back on the Catalan galleys, and laid to rest at Perpignan. His best epitaph is that which his faithful old follower Muntaner has enshrined in his delightful Chronicle:— “He was the best knight and the bravest among all the king’s sons of that day, and the most upright, and the wisest in all his acts”. Thus ended one of the most romantic careers that even the mediaeval romance of Greece can show.

Louis of Burgundy had nothing more to fear from his open enemies. The Catalans of Athens had turned back when they learnt at Vostitza, on the Gulf of Corinth, the news of the Infant’s defeat and death; all the castles held for his rival had been handed over to him, except Glarentza, which was still occupied by the Catalans pending the settlement of their affairs. But the victor did not long survive the fall of his opponent. Barely a month after the battle of Manolada, before Glarentza had been evacuated, Prince Louis died, poisoned, as it was suspected, by the Count of Cephalonia, one of the darkest characters of that age. The Burgundians talked of avenging his murder with the aid of some of the Infant’s followers; but a natural death a few months later removed the arch-criminal from the scene of his crimes.

Matilda, barely twenty-three years old, yet already twice a widow, was now left alone to govern a country just recovering from civil war, where each unruly baron was minded to do what was right in his own eyes, and where anarchy was only tempered by Angevin intrigues. King Robert of Naples, whom historians have called “the wise”, was an unscrupulous diplomatist, who saw in this state of things an opportunity for once more securing the possession of Achaia for a member of his house. Besides Philip of Taranto, he had another brother, John, Count of Gravina, in Apulia, and he accordingly resolved that the young widow should marry this man. Matilda, who had inherited the spirit of her race, refused to take the king’s brother as her husband, whereupon Robert sent a trusty emissary, one of the Spinola of Genoa, to the Morea, to bring her to Naples by force. There she was compelled, in 1318, to go through the form of marriage with John of Gravina, who at once took the coveted title of Prince of Achaia. Even the king could not, however, compel her to recognise his brother as her husband, though he induced her to sign away her birthright in case she refused to do so. She appealed to Venice for aid, while her brother-in-law, Eudes IV., Duke of Burgundy, who had inherited claims on the principality under his brother’s will, also protested against this arbitrary interference with his rights. But Venice did nothing on her behalf; and Eudes was effectually silenced by the purchase of his claims by Philip of Taranto. Matilda, now absolutely helpless but still defiant, was dragged before Pope John XXII at Avignon, and ordered to obey. She replied that she was already another’s, having secretly married Hugues de la Palisse, a Burgundian knight to whom she was much attached. This confession was her ruin, for it gave the King of Naples an excuse for depriving her of her inheritance. He appealed to the clause in her mother’s marriage contract, made thirty-three years before, which provided that if a daughter of Isabelle married without her suzerain’s consent, the possession of Achaia should revert to the crown of Naples. Not content with this, Robert got up a story that Palisse had conspired against his life, and arrested the unhappy princess as his accomplice. For nine long years, in spite of appeals on her behalf by her cousin, the Count of Hainault, backed up by pecuniary arguments, she languished as a prisoner of state in the island fortress of Castel dell’ Uovo at Naples, where, in happier days, her mother Isabelle had spent the early years of her married life. Her royal gaoler allowed her the sum of three ounces a month  for her maintenance, and when, at last, in 1331, death released her from his clutches, he paid her funeral expenses, and gave her, the lost scion of a noble line, royal burial in his family vault in the cathedral. No traces now remain of the marble monument which he erected over his unhappy victim, the last human sacrifice to Angevin intrigues. Thus closed the career of the Villehardouin family in the Morea; thus was the deceit of Geoffrey I visited upon the head of his unfortunate descendant in the third generation.

The Princess of Achaia had left neither children nor testament; but when her end was near, she declared verbally, before a number of witnesses, that she bequeathed all she had to her cousin, King James II of Majorca, the son of her old rival Ferdinand, and the child whom Muntaner had prayed that he might live to serve in his old age. Meanwhile, however, her hated consort, John of Gravina, governed his principality by means of bailies, who held office for a year or two at the most, and were therefore unable to restore order and prosperity to the land.

The emperor, on the other hand, had recently adopted the sensible plan of appointing the imperial governor of Mistra, the “captain of the land and castles in the Peloponnese,” as he was officially styled, for an indefinite period, so that that official was able to gain a real acquaint­ance with local conditions and requirements. Thus, Cantacuzene, son of the man who was killed in the war of 1264, and father of the future emperor, governed the Byzantine province for eight years, till he was killed in 1316, and his successor, a very able general, Andronikos Palaiologos Asan, nephew of the emperor and son of the Bulgarian tsar, remained in office for full six more. In his time the feeble Frankish principality, which had lost its ancient defenders, was still further curtailed by the loss of most of Arkadia, the strongest strategic position in the peninsula. The treacherous and venal commanders of the famous castles of St George, Akova, and Karytaina, sold them to Asan, who routed the bailie by means of an ambuscade, and captured the bishop of Olena and the grand constable, Bartolomeo Ghisi, who was at this time the leading man in Achaia. The result of this campaign was not only the loss of two more out of the twelve original baronies, of which only four —Patras, Veligosti, Vostitza, and Chalandritza— now remained in the hands of the Franks, but the conversion of the Franks of Arkadia to the Church of their conquerors, an inevitable movement, which the pope in vain urged the Archbishop of Patras to check. We can trace the growing importance of the Byzantine province and of the Greek Church in the inscriptions of Mistrel, which begin at this period. In the early years of the fourteenth century the builders were hard at work there, restoring the church of the Forty Martyrs, and making a well; in 1312 the metropolitan church of St Demetrios was founded; it was then, too, that the interesting Afentikd church was built, while it was in these years that the emperor showered privileges and immunities from taxation upon the monastery of Our Lady of Brontochion, whose widely-scattered posses­sions, ranging from Karytaina to Passava, form a measure of Byzantine influence. Even in the still remaining “Latin part” of Arkadia the abbey was promised lands, whenever Providence should be pleased to restore that region to its lawful lord, the emperor.

Thus reduced in numbers and crippled in resources, menaced by the imperial troops in the interior, and harassed by Catalan and Turkish corsairs on the coast, the leading men of the principality decided between the painful alternatives of offering their country to Venice, or to the Catalans of Attica, the former for preference, so that at least they might find a protection which their absentee prince could not give them. They communicated their decision to the Venetian government, which was too cautious, however, to accept their offer, and continued to content itself with the two colonies in Messenia. At last, however, in 1324, John of Gravina set out for the Morea, and after stopping at Cephalonia and Zante, restoring his authority as suzerain over those rebellious islands, and deposing the Orsini dynasty, received the homage of the Achaian barons in the customary manner at Glarentza. But his sojourn in his principality was short and useless. An attempt, which he and his vassal, Duke Nicholas I. of Naxos, made to recover Karytaina failed, and the Greeks continued to make progress, in spite of a defeat inflicted on them by the duke in the plain of Elis below the castle of St Omer. The only lasting result of his expedition was the establishment in Greece of the great Florentine banking family of the Acciajuoli, which was destined to wear the ducal coronet of Athens. From them John of Gravina had borrowed considerable funds for his expenses in the Morea, and from him they received in return the fiefs of La Mandria and La Lichina, which we may identify with Lechaina, near Andravida. Numerous Neapolitans, who had followed him, also expected to be rewarded with lands which had fallen vacant owing to the almost complete disappearance of the old Frankish nobility, and thus there arose a new race of barons, who were ignorant of the language and customs of the people, while they lacked also the energy and courage of the original conquerors. It is significant of this new order of things, that one of the bailies of this period, Nicholas de Joinville, a noble and upright man, who did his best for the land entrusted to his charge, thought it necessary to add eight fresh articles, regulating the pay of soldiers, questions of succession, and the system of legal procedure, to the Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania}.

John of Gravina soon grew tired of his Greek principality. In 1326 we find him in Florence, four years later he was senator of Rome, while a distinguished Roman, Guglielmo Frangipani, for many years Archbishop of Patras, acted as his bailie in Achaia —a post never before entrusted to a churchman, and a sure sign of the increasing power of the Achaian primates. Occupied exclusively with furthering Angevin interests in Italy, John never set foot in Greece again, and in 1333 severed all connection with it. Two years earlier, his brother and suzerain, Philip of Taranto, had died, and he refused to do homage to his nephew Robert. Thanks, however, to the mediation of Niccold Acciajuoli, the representative of the great Florentine Bank at Naples, and chamberlain, some say lover, of the widowed Empress Catherine of Valois, the dispute between the uncle and the nephew was arranged. John of Gravina transferred to the empress, for her son Robert, the principality of Achaia, with its dependencies, in exchange for the Angevin possessions in Epiros, the kingdom of Albania, and the duchy of Durazzo, as well as the sum of 5000 ounces in cash, advanced by the serviceable Acciajuoli. Thus, once again, the suzerainty and the actual possession of Achaia were concentrated in the same hands, those of the claimant to the long defunct Latin Empire.

Meanwhile, young Walter of Brienne, heir of the last Duke of Athens, had grown up to manhood, and thought that the time had come to attempt the recovery of his heritage from the Catalans. As a French noble, as Count of Lecce, and as son-in-law of Philip of Taranto, the titular emperor of Constantinople, he had every reason to expect the warm support of the house of Anjou in its interest, as well as his own. Philip saw that Walter’s plans might be made to coincide with his own schemes for the reconquest of the Latin Empire, which he had never abandoned, and conferred upon him the title of his Vicar-General in Romania. Pope John XXII, like his predecessor, Clement V, was an ardent worker in his cause, writing to Venice on his behalf and bidding the Archbishop of Patras and Corinth preach a crusade against the “schismatics, sons of perdition, and pupils of iniquity”, who had occupied the ancient patrimony of the lawful Duke of Athens and afflicted with heavy oppression the ecclesiastics and faithful inhabitants of Attica. But the Venetians, who could have contributed more to the success of the expedition than all the ecclesiastical thunders of Rome, just at this moment renewed their truce with the Catalans at Thebes. From that instant the attempt was bound to fail.

Walter was, like his father, a rash general, though he had already won the reputation of a wise administrator during a brief term of office as Angevin vicar at Florence. When he started for Epiros in 1331, a brilliant company of 800 French knights, 500 picked Tuscan men-at-arms, and a body of soldiers from his domain at Lecce accompanied him. At first success smiled upon his plans. He captured the island of Santa Mavra, which had belonged to the counts of Cephalonia since about the year 1300, and which had consequently formed part of the Despotat of Epiros since their usurpation of that state. On the mainland, the fortress of Vonitza, one portion of the quadrilateral which the unhappy Thamar had brought as her dowry to Philip of Taranto, but which had relapsed from the Angevin rule, and the city of Arta, fell into his hands. But when he proceeded to attack the Catalans, he found that he had to deal with cautious strategists, who never gave his fine cavalry a chance of displaying its mettle in a pitched battle. Their plan of campaign was to remain in their fortresses, allowing his impetuous followers to expend their energies on the open country. His father and mother had incurred heavy debts on behalf of their Greek dominions, and Walter had sold his property and pawned his wife’s dowry to raise funds for the recovery of his duchy; but he had not calculated the cost of a protracted expedition, so that, ere long, he found it impossible to support the expense of so large a body of men, especially as the French contingent expected high pay and generous rations. A smaller force, particularly if aided by the Greeks, would have had more chance of success; but the native Athenians and Boeotians showed as little desire to fight for their lawful duke as they had shown to avenge his father’s death. A correspondent of the contemporary historian, Nikephoros Gregorys, wrote, indeed, that they were “suffering extreme slavery,’’ and had “exchanged their ancient happiness for boorish ways.” But either their sufferings were not sufficient to make them desire a change of masters, or their boorishness was such that they did not appreciate the advantages of French culture; in any case, they looked on impassively, while Walter’s hopes daily dwindled away. Early in 1332, he retired to the Morea, whence, after a futile attempt to coerce the Catalans by the comminations of the great Archbishop Frangipani of Patras, he took ship for Italy never to return.¹ One irreparable loss, indeed, was inflicted upon Greece in consequence of his expedition. In order to prevent the castle of St Omer at Thebes from falling into his hands, and thus becoming a valuable base for the recovery of the duchy, the Catalans destroyed that noble monument of Frankish rule. Three years after their conquest of Athens, they had bestowed this splendid residence, together with the phantom kingdom of Salonika, upon Guy de la Tour, a noble French adventurer from Dauphine, who had placed his sword at their disposal. More recently, Fadrique had granted the castle to Bartolomeo II. Ghisi, one of the chief magnates of Greece, who was at once triarch of Eubcea, great constable of Achaia, and lord of the islands of Tenos and Mykonos, and whose son had married the daughter of the Catalan captain. Ghisi seems to have been a man of some literary and historic tastes, for the original of which the French version of the Chronicle of the Morea is an abridgment was found in his Theban castle. The abridgment has fortunately been preserved; but the castle with its historic frescoes and its memories of gorgeous ceremonies, when the song of the minstrel resounded through its vast halls and all the chivalry of Frankish Greece was gathered there, has perished, all save one short square tower, which still bears the once great name of St Omer.

The only other results of Walter’s expedition were the recognition of the shadowy Angevin suzerainty over Epiros by the despot John II, who, however, retained the substance of power, and struck coins at Arta bearing his name; and the retention of Vonitza and the island of Sta. Mavra by the titular duke of Athens. Later on, in 1355, the latter con­ferred Vonitza, “our castle of Sta. Mavra and our island of Lucate” upon Graziano Zorzi, an old comrade-in-arms, and a member of the great Venetian family which we have already seen established in the marquisate of Boudonitza. Walter himself still occasionally dreamed of his restoration to Athens, but soon found a sphere for his activity in Italy. Summoned by the Florentines to command their forces, he became tyrant of their city, whence he was expelled amidst universal rejoicings in 1343, and where the traveller may now see his arms restored by the modern Italian authorities in the audience chamber of the Bargello. Thence he returned to his county of Lecce, and fell, thirteen years later, fighting as constable of France against the English at the battle of Poitiers. Before he left Lecce, he made his will, in which he mentioned all his possessions in Greece —his city of Argos, with its noble castle, the Larissa; the castles of Nauplia, Kiveri and Thermisi, Vonitza, and Sta. Mavra, with their constables and men-at-arms. Something was left to the religious orders of Patras and Glarentza, and to the churches and chapels of Nauplia and Argos, while part of the customs dues of this last city was set aside to endow a perpetual chaplaincy, whose holder was to say a daily mass for the soul of the pious founder. As Walter left no children, his sister Isabelle, wife of Gautier d’Enghien, succeeded to his estates and claims, and of her sons, one styled himself Duke of Athens, and another was lord of Argos and Nauplia. More fortunate in one respect than his predecessors who had reigned in Greece, Walter has left us a portrait of himself. Every visitor to the lower church of St Francis at Assisi—a church traditionally associated with the family of Brienne, who were terciers of the Order—has seen in the foreground of Lorenzetti’s “Crucifixion” the knightly figure of the titular duke of Athens.¹

Thus, during the twenty years which followed its conquest of Athens, the Catalan Company had strengthened its position and extended its possessions. To Attica and Bceotia it had annexed the duchy of Neopatras, including part of Thessaly, while Catalan lords held the castles of Salona and Karystos, and the island of Aegina. It had made terms with Venice, and so could afford to despise the schemes of the dethroned dynasty of Brienne and the ecclesiastical weapons of the papacy. In the bastard son of Frederick II of Sicily it had found a leader, resolute in action, and skilful in taking advantage of his opportunities. All the more remarkable is the sudden and premature retirement of this successful chief from the leadership of the Company. At the time of Walter of Brienne’s invasion, he was no longer vicar-general —a post occupied by Nicholas Lancia—and in the treaty of Thebes between th Company and Venice, he figures as merely “ Count of Malta and Gozzo”. Probably, had he been at the head of affairs at that moment, he would have saved his kinsman’s castle of St Omer from destruction. We are not told the reason of his retirement; but, from the fact that he paid a visit to Sicily in the following year, we may perhaps infer that his too successful career in Greece had gained him enemies at the Sicilian court, who may have accused him of aiming at independent sovereignty, and whose charges he may have thought it desirable to answer in person. Though he did not resume the leadership of the Company, he passed the rest of his life in Greece, where we hear of him among the principal Catalans in 1335, and where he died in 1338, leaving a numerous progeny. His eldest son, Don Pedro, was already lord of Loidoriki and Count of Salona, which had come into the hands of his father, presumably on the death of Roger Deslaur without heirs. His second son, Don Jaime, succeeded his elder brother in his estates, held for a time the island of Aigina, and became, later on, vicar­general of the Company; yet another son, Bonifacio, inherited Karystos and Lamia, and received from Don Jaime, with certain reservations, the island of Aegina, thereby reuniting the old possessions of his namesake and grandfather, Bonifacio da Verona. One interesting part of them, however, the sister­island of Salamis, seems to have been subdued by the Greeks, for we hear of it as paying taxes to the Byzantine governor of Monemvasia. Thus, the fortunes of the family continued to be interwoven with those of the Catalan duchy till its fall.

All over Greece, these twenty years had wrought great changes. Alike in Thessaly and Epiros, the Greek dynasty of the Angeli had come to an end; and, while Byzantine officials, local magnates, Albanian colonists, and the Catalan Company had divided the former country between them, the latter was occupied by the palatine counts of Cephalonia, who had now been driven by the Angevins from their islands. The Angevins were, therefore, now both possessors and suzerains of most of the Ionian Islands and of the principality of Achaia, much reduced, however, by the encroachments of the Greek governors, and still held the strong fortress of Lepanto, on the opposite shore of the Corinthian Gulf. The island of Sta. Mavra, the castle of Vonitza, on the Gulf of Arta, and the towns of Nauplia and Argos, owned the sway of Walter of Brienne, who appointed a “bailie and captain-general”, assisted by a council. Venice, by her usual statecraft, had increased her hold upon Euboea, had gained a footing at Pteleon in Thessaly, and had preserved her original colonies of Modon and Coron, in spite of inroads by the Greeks of Mistra, and troubles with those haughty neighbours, the Teutonic Knights of Mostenitsa. The republic felt strong enough, however, to allow a Greek bishop to reside there, although those patriotic and intriguing ecclesiastics were apt to foster the national instincts of their fellow-countrymen. The lot of the latter was at this time lighter in the Frankish principality than under the Venetian flag; for, in spite of the strict orders issued to the colonial governors to treat the Greeks well, they emigrated in large numbers to Achaia, where taxation was less oppressive. Piracy was still, however, the great curse of the dwellers on the coasts of the Morea and in the Greek islands. On one raid the corsairs carried off, and sold as slaves, no less than 500 persons from the island of Culuris, or Salamis, while the Turks were an annual, and a growing menace. Yet these depredations had not yet destroyed the Greek forests. Those who know how bare most of Greece is to-day, will learn with surprise that Sanudo^{1 2 3} thought that the timber required for his cherished crusade against the infidels could be obtained from Attica, the Morea, and the island of Euboea.

Nor was trade lacking. Monemvasia, whence our ancestors got their Malmsey wine, under Byzantine rule, continued to be a flourishing port, whose merchants enjoyed special privileges and exemptions, confirmed by Andronikos II and III, and including protection at all the fairs and festivals of the peninsula. Glarentza, the seat of a Venetian consul, and Patras, that of a Venetian podestà; under the enlightened administration of its great archbishop, Guglielmo Frangipani, were the chief commercial centres of the Frankish principality. The former was a very important mart for silk, raisins, and valonia, which had commercial relations with Apulia, Ancona, Florence, and Venice, as well as with Durazzo, Acre, and Alexandria; which, like Thebes, Corinth, and Negro­ponte, had its own weights and measures, and still possessed its own mint, whose masters were paid salaries of 300 hyperperi a year. But it had been already remarked at Venice, that the Achaian currency had depreciated by nearly a third since the days of Prince William, so that the Venetians had talked of establishing a mint at Coron and Modon. They never, however, carried out that project, and the mint at Glarentza continued to produce coins till about the year 1364, after which we have no more Achaian currency. In its place, the Venetians began to issue from the mint at Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth century, the so-called tornesi piccioli or torneselli, which henceforth served as the currency of their Greek colonies, and which were modelled on the old tornesi of the Achaian mint. In fact, classic Hellas was at this period a place where money was to be made, an undeveloped territory to be exploited by shrewd men of affairs. In that golden age of Italian banking, such men were not lacking. Now, for the first time, a new influence, that of high finance, had made its appearance in Frankish Greece in the person of Niccold Acciajuoli, whose house was destined in another half century to put an end to Catalan rule in Athens and assume the ducal coronet on the Acropolis.

CHAPTER IX

THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI (1333-1373)