pay each horseman in complete heavy armour four gold ounces a-month, each light-armed horseman two, and each Almogavar or foot-soldier one ounce.1 As the Grand Company then counted in its ranks thirty-five hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry, while the army of the duke of Athens was still more numerous, these facts afford some data for estimating the wealth and population of the dominions of Walter de Brienne at this time. The duke of Athens was at first highly popular with the Catalans, whose language he spoke with facility.2 The campaign of 1310 was very successful. Walter defeated all his enemies, and compelled them to purchase peace by ceding to him thirty castles, which he added to his dominions. The war was now terminated. Walter felt strong in the numbers of the knights he had assembled under his banner, and in the impregnable nature of the fortresses and castles that commanded every road and valley in his territory. Relying on these resources, he determined to get rid of his Spanish allies, whose high pay exhausted his treasury, and whose rapacity and licentious habits oppressed his subjects. The Catalans, on the other hand, were too well satisfied with the rich appearance of the Baotian and Phocian plains, which had long enjoyed immunity from the ravages of war, to be easily induced to quit a land so alluring to their avarice. When the duke proposed to dismiss them, however, they contented themselves with demanding payment of the arrears due for their services, and liberty to march forward into the Morea. Both demands were refused; and Walter de Brienne, who, as an adherent of the house of Anjou, was inclined to quarrel with them as 1 Muntaner, 474. The ounce of gold had long ceased to be a coin of an ounce in weight, but it is difficult to fix its exact value at different periods. 2 Muntaner tells us that Walter de Brienne learned Catalan in the castle of Augusta in Sicily, where he passed a long time when young, as hostage for his father. A. D. 1310. § 3. CHAP. VII. soon as he no longer stood in need of their services, replied to their propositions that he would give them the gibbet. In the month of march 1311, the Grand Company marched down into the plain of Boeotia and took up a position on the banks of the Cephissus near Skripon, the ancient Orchomenos.1 The level plain appeared to offer great advantages to the party that possessed the most numerous cavalry, and the duke of Athens, confident in numbers, felt assured of victory, and hastened forward to attack them at the head of the army he had assembled at Thebes. His forces consisted of six thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry, partly raised in the Morea, but principally composed of the Frank knights of his own duchy, their feudal retainers, and the Greeks of his dominions.2 Walter placed himself at the head of a band of two hundred nobles in the richest armour; and seven hundred feudal chiefs, who had received the honour of knighthood, fought under his standard. It required all the experience of the Spanish veterans, and their firm conviction of the superiority of military discipline over numbers and individual valour, to preserve their confidence of success in a contest with a force so superior to their own on a level plain. But the Spaniards were the first people, in modern times, who knew the full value of a well-disciplined and steady corps of infantry. The ignorance which Nicephorus Gregoras shows of the geography of Greece, in his account of this battle on the banks of the Boeotian Cephissus, is curious. He says that the great river Cephissus, rising in Mount Parnassus, flows eastward through Locris, Achaia, and Boeotia in an undivided stream, as far as Livadea and Haliartos, where it separates into two branches, changing its name into Asopos and Ismene. The branch Asopos divides Attica into two parts and flows into the sea. The branch Ismene falls into the straits of Eubœa near Aulis, where the heroes of Greece stopped on their expedition to Troy. After this specimen of the ignorance of a Byzantine historian concerning classic Greece, whose authors he was always reading, and with allusions to whose history and mythology he was always encumbering his own pages by a tasteless display of learning, we need not wonder at any fables and absurdities the Greeks adopted concerning the inhabitants and countries of Western Europe. -P. 154. 2 Nicephorus Gregoras, 155. In spring, all the rich plains of Greece are covered with green corn. The Catalan leaders carefully conducted the waters of the Cephissus into the fields immediately in front of the ground on which they had drawn up their army. The soil was allowed to drink in the moisture until it became so soft that a man in armour could only only traverse the few narrow dykes that intersected the fields of wheat and barley; yet the verdure effectually concealed every appearance of recent irrigation.1 The duke of Athens, who expected with his splendid army to drive the Spaniards back into Thessaly without much trouble, advanced with all the arrogance of a prince secure of victory. Reserving the whole glory of the triumph which he contemplated to himself, he drew up his army in order of battle; and then, placing himself at the head of the nine hundred knights and nobles who attended his banner, he rushed forward to overwhelm the ranks of the Grand Company with the irresistible charge of the Frank chivalry. Everything promised the duke victory as he moved rapidly over the plain to the attack, and the shafts of the archers were already beginning to recoil from the strong panoply of the knights, when Walter de Brienne shouted his war-cry, and charged with all his chivalry in full career. Their course was soon arrested. The whole body plunged simultaneously into the concealed and newformed marsh, where there was as little possibility of retreat as there was thought of flight. Every knight, in the belief that he had only some ditch to cross, spurred forward, expecting that another step would place him on the firm ground, where he saw the Catalan army drawn up almost within reach of his lance. Every exertion was vain Frank knight ever crossed the muddy fields: horse and no 1 A similar expedient was adopted by the Spartans, who diverted the waters of the Eurotas into the land near the city, in order to embarrass the retreat of Philip V. of Macedon as he returned from ravaging the southern part of Laconia, B.C. 218. Οὗ δια βρόχου γενηθέντος, οὐχ οἷον τοὺς ἵππους ἀλλ ̓ οὐδ ̓ ἀὺ τοὺς πεζοὺς δυνατόν ἦν ἐμβαίνειν. Polybius, lib. v., cap. xxii., § 6. A. D. 1311. CHAP. VII. man floundered about until both fell; and as none that § 3. fell could rise again, the confusion soon became inextric able. The Catalan light troops were at last ordered to rush in, and slay knights and nobles without mercy. Never did the knife of Aragon do more unsparing execution, for mercy would have been folly while the Spanish army still remained exposed to the attack of a superior force ranged before it in battle array, and which could easily have effected its retreat in unbroken order to the fortresses in its rear. It is reported that, of all the nobles present with Walter de Brienne, two only escaped alive and were kept as prisoners-Boniface of Verona, and Roger Deslau of Roussillon. The duke of Athens was among the first who perished. The Athenian forces had witnessed the total defeat of their choicest band of cavalry; the news that the duke was slain spread quickly through their ranks; and, without waiting for any orders, the whole army broke its order, and each man endeavoured to save himself, leaving the camp and all the baggage to the Grand Company.1 This victory put an end to the power of the French families in northern Greece; but the house of Brienne continued to possess the fiefs of Nauplia and Argos in the principality of Achaia. Walter de Brienne, son of the The authorities for this account of the battle are Nicephorus Gregoras, 155, and Muntaner, ccxl., joined to a personal acquaintance with the ground. Two great battles had decided the fate of Greece on this plain in ancient times. The victory of Philip of Macedon at Charonea, B.C. 338, and that of Sylla over the generals of Mithridates, B.c. 86. The chronology of the Catalan expedition, and the date of the battle at the Cephissus, admit of much discussion. The authorities followed in the text are based on the departure of the Grand Company from Gallipoli, and its wintering at Cassandra, in 1308. This is proved by Pachymeres, ii. 455, and Nicephorus Gregoras, 151; their wintering in Thessaly in 1309 by Nicephorus Gregoras, 153. The order of events is then traced by Niceph. Greg., 155, and Muntaner, ch. ccxl. The Chronicle of the Conquest of the Morea, Greek text, v. 5960, says the battle occurred on Monday, 15th March, in the year A.M. 6817, and the 8th indiction. But the year A.M. 6817 gives A.D. 1309, and the 8th indiction would place it in 1310. I prefer trusting to the day of the week and month. Now Monday was the 15th of March, only in the year 1311; and this agrees best with Nicephorus Gregoras, and even Muntaner, though his chronology varies in different pages. CONQUEST OF ATHENS BY CATALANS. 177 slain duke, assumed his father's title, and was remarkable for more than his father's pride. After an unsuccessful attempt to recover possession of the duchy of Athens in 1331, in which he landed near Arta with a force of eight hundred French cavalry and five hundred Tuscan infantry, he became general of Florence, but was expelled from that city for his tyrannical conduct. He was subsequently appointed constable of France, and perished at the battle of Poitiers.1 The Catalans followed up their victory with vigour : Thebes, Athens, and every fortified place within the duchy, quickly submitted to their authority. But their conquest, in spite of its facility, was stained with their usual violence. The magnificent palace at Thebes, built by Nicholas Saint-Omer, which was the admiration of the minstrels of that age, was burned to the ground, lest it should serve as a stronghold for some of the French barons. A portion of the olive grove in the Athenian plain, in the classic environs of Colonos and the Academy, was reduced to ashes either from carelessness or wantonness.2 A. D. 1311. SECT. IV.-DUKES OF ATHENS AND NEOPATRAS OF THE SICILIAN The Spaniards at last took measures for enjoying the fruits of the conquest, and the Grand Company assumed the position of a sovereign prince, though there never existed an army worse adapted for administering the affairs of civil government. Its first act was to share the fiefs of the nobles who had fallen, and to bestow their widows and heiresses in marriage on the best officers, who 1 After the death of the constable Walter de Brienne, in 1356, Sohier d'Enghien, his nephew, assumed the title of duke of Athens, but it expired with his son Walter, who died childless in 1381. The family of d'Enghien ended in a female, who sold Argos and Nauplia to the Venetian republic. 2 Book of the Conquest, Greek text, v. 6749. Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, ii. 182. M |
