The feudal organisation of Achaea is set out in the so-called Assizes of Romania, assembled in the mid-14th century (the Cambridge Medieval History says c. 1322). These record the existence of about a dozen baronies in the prince’s own seignory in the 13th century, each owing service for between 4 and 24 knights’ fiefs; 7 ecclesiastical fiefs owing service for 4 knights’ fiefs each (except for the archbishopric of Patras, which owed service for 8); many smaller fiefs owing the service of a single knight or esquire; and the possessions of the Military Orders (Teutonic Knights, Templars and Hospitallers), owing service for 4 knights’ fiefs each. Military service in all cases where multiple fiefs were held was based on the holding of 4 knights’ fiefs, which was obliged to field 14 men comprised of the vassal (probably a banneret), one other knight and 12 esquires; for each additional knight’s fief held over and above 4, one extra knight or 2 extra esquires had to be provided. (These terms of service clearly still held good even in the 14th century when Kalamata, one of the original 12 baronies, is recorded fulfilling its military obligations in 1342 by the service of a knight and 14 esquires.) All fief-holders were liable to 4 months’ service in the field and, ‘if the lord wishes’, an additional 4 months on garrison duty, while service might even be called for in the remaining third of the year too; things may have relaxed slightly by the beginning of the 14th century, but an enfeoffment of 1303 still calls for 6 months’ service. This was ordinarily required within 15 days of a summons being issued unless the prince or one of his castles was being besieged, in which case service was required as soon as possible. Evidence of the uncertain internal condition of the Frankish states in Greece can be found in the stipulation that military service reduced proportionately to any reduction in the size of a fief through enemy action. All in all the prince’s seignory owed him the service of 5-600 men-at-arms, and in the early-14th century this feudal cavalry of Achaea was reckoned by contemporaries to be the very best that there was to be found an5rwhere. Senior feudal officers were the Constable (or Grand Constable) and the Marshal.
In addition to his own seignory the prince was also feudal overlord of most of the rest of Frankish Greece, notably the duchies of Athens and the Archipelago, the county of Cephalonia, and the island of Negroponte, which between them could field a substantial number of troops; an indication of their cumulative military potential can be found in the army fielded by Walter (Gautier) de Brienne, Duke of Athens, at Kephissos in 1311, which comprised 2,000 cavalry and 4,000 infantry according to the ‘Aragonese Chronicle of the Morea’, including the lords of Salona, Boudonitza, Damala, Tenos and Gardiki, and troops from Achaea, Naxos, Negroponte, Cephalonia and Leucadia. Nikephoros Gregoras even records that there were 6,400 horse and 8,000 foot, while Ram6n Muntaner says that there were 700 knights. By the late-14th century Achaea’s major fiefs nominally included the duchies of Athens, the Archipelago and Leucadia; the marquisate of Boudonitza; the counties of Cephalonia and Salona; the lordships of Arcadia and Chalandritza; the triarchs of Negroponte; and the archbishopric of Patras and bishoprics of Modon, Coron, and Olena. However, this list, drawn up in 1391, gives a false illusion of the principality’s importance, since the prince had no more than a hollow claim to overlordship of many of the feudatories listed. Indeed, many of the greater baronies in Achaea proper were by now in the hands of Navarrese adventurers (see below, page 28), who hoped to have their possession of these fiefs confirmed in exchange for recognising the pretender Amadeo of Savoy as prince. A few years later their possession was legalised instead by their leader, Pierre Bordo de Saint Superan, himself becoming prince (1398-1402) — the penultimate Frankish ruler of Achaea before the principality was reconquered by the Byzantines.
The indigenous population, Greek and Slav alike, provided another source of troops. Milengi Slav spearmen and archers were hired by the prince in 1296, while in 1302 Guy II (Guyot) de la Roche, Duke of Athens, raised an army for 3 months’ service against the despotate of Epiros that, in addition to 900 Frankish men-at-arms, included 6,000 Thessalian and Bulgar cavalry under 18 Greek archontes and ‘a good 30,000 infantry’ chiefly of Greek and Slav extraction. Muntaner similarly records that Duke Walter’s army at Kephissos included 24,000 Greek infantry, while others record that, like the Catalan army it faced, it included some Turks.
The Catalan Company
The infamous ‘Grand Company of Catalans’ had originally been raised in 1281 by Pere III of Aragon
(1276-85) to fight the Angevins in the so-called War of the Sicilian Vespers. This ended with the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1301, by which time the company’s commander was a certain Rutger von Blum, better-known to posterity as Roger de Flor, described by a Florentine chronicler as ‘the father of all condottierV. (For the condottieri, see Armies of the Middle Ages, volume I, pages 34-39.) He was in fact an apostasized Templar sergeant who had made his fame and fortune at the fall of Acre to the Mamluks in 1291, where he had commandeered one of the Order’s galleys and charged exorbitant prices for passage to the safety of Cyprus. After a brief career in piracy as captain of a Genoese ship he had subsequently joined up with the mercenary forces of Frederick III of Aragon in Sicily, becoming in time commander of the Grand Company. When the Company was made redundant in 1301, he succeeded in extorting considerable privileges from the Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II, in exchange for the promise of its service against the Turks. Byzantine sources record the strength of the Company as 2-8,000 men when it sailed for Constantinople in 1302, while the more reliable Ram6n Muntaner, de Flor’s secretary, reports that they comprised 36 ships carrying 1,500 cavalry (mainly Catalans), 4,000 Almughavari (see figure 58) and 1,000 other infantry. This total does not include the seamen, who may account for the difference between the Byzantine chronicler Pachymeres’ 8,000 and Muntaner’s 6,500. (Pachymeres records the size of de Flor’s fleet as only 18 galleys and 4 ‘great ships’; since Genoa supplied a number of his vessels this figure may represent only those that were his own — certainly in 1307 Muntaner mentions that the Company had 24 ships.) Either way, by the spring of 1303 the Catalan Company numbered about 6,000 men, reinforced at the end of the year by a further 2-300 cavalry and 1,000 Almughavari under Bernard de Rocafort.
On his arrival in Constantinople de Flor was created Grand Duke by the Emperor, this being one of the terms of their agreement, and, following a bloody street-fight with the city’s Genoese community, the Company was promptly shipped over to Anatolia for a campaign against the Turks. They were joined by a large force of Byzantine-employed Alani (16,000 — including their families — of whom all but 1,000 abandoned the army after the Almughavari had a bloody argument with them too), plus a small Byzantine contingent under a certain Marulles, probably only a few hundred-strong. Under de Flor’s command this small force inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Turkish amirs of Saruhan (‘Sarkan’, as Muntaner calls him), Aydin, Menteshe and Karaman, killing over 50,000 (if Muntaner’s figures are to be believed) in engagements at Cyzicus, Philadelphia, Tira, Ania and the Iron Gates. Unfortunately, however, these successes and others the next year went to de Flor’s head, and in time he became openly hostile to Andronikos, seeing himself as potential ruler of a suzerain Byzantine state which he had plans to carve out for himself in Anatolia. Despite his elevation to the rank of Caesar on his return to Europe an official request to reduce the strength of his Company to 3,000 men was therefore ignored. A growing distrust and dislike between the two parties, Byzantine and Catalan, culminated eventually in the assassination of Roger de Flor in Adrianople in 1305 by Andronikos’ son and co-Emperor, Michael IX. There ensued a pre-arranged massacre of as many of the Company as could be reached, 2,300 or more of them being hunted down and killed; Muntaner records that their numbers at Gallipoli, where they were based, were reduced to just 3,307 men. By the end of May this had been reduced yet further by the loss of many men and ships in an engagement against the Genoese, leaving just 17 ships (plus some smaller vessels), 1,256 Almughavari and 206 horsemen, including Rocafort and just 5 other captains. However, these were soon reinforced by a large number of Turkopouloi and Turks (deserters from the Byzantine army) — 800 or 1,800 horse and 2,000 foot are mentioned — plus, later, Catalan and Aragonese reinforcements, including 500 men-at-arms under Berenguer d’Entenza.
Eventually, in 1308, internal dissension (which resulted in the death, among many others, of d’Entenza) obliged the Company to abandon Gallipoli and split up. Before long a power struggle within the ranks of the largest element (8-9,000 men including some 3,000 Turks) resulted in a change of the Company’s commander from Rocafort to Thibaut de Cepoy. In the face of growing Byzantine resistance to their depredatory raids, de Cepoy led them down into Thessaly, where he subsequently abandoned them and command devolved into the hands of a committee of 2 knights, an adalid and an almocaden*, backed up by a pseudo-democratic Council of Twelve. For 6 months in 1310 they were employed in their old capacity as a mercenary company by Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, who utilised their services against the Sebastokrator of Neopatras, John II Doukas, from whom they captured more than 30 castles. Once peace was concluded, however, Duke Walter made the mistake of trying to dismiss the Catalans without pay, merely granting lands to the best 500 of them (200 horse and 300 foot). Understandably the Catalans were ‘These were corruptions of Arabic terms meaning ‘guide’ and ‘commander’ respectively. Among the Almughavari the latter was distinguished by a pennon on his lance and appears to have commanded 50 men. The adalid was senior to the almocaden and sometimes fought mounted.
Not prepared to leave it at that, and events culminated in the decisive battle of Kephissos in 1311 where the Athenian army was crushed and Duke Walter killed.
As a result of this victory the Company took over the entire duchy, thereafter generally referring to itself as ‘The Fortunate Army of the Franks in Romania’ or by some variant form such as ‘The Company of the Franks residing in the duchies of Athens and Neopatras’. They invited the royal house of Sicily to provide them with a duke, and a sequence of 8 absentee Aragonese dukes ensued (1312-88). All of the duchy’s senior military posts continued to be held by Catalans throughout that period, with the Marshal of the Duchy (later called the Marshal of Athens and Neopatras) as the most senior, the most famous being Roger de Lluria. (This office was discontinued after the 1360s, the Marshal’s powers being assumed by the duchy’s chief administrator, the Vicar-General.) Other senior officers were the captains, vicars {veguers) and castellans of Athens, Thebes (the capital), Livadia, Siderocastron, Neopatras (overrun after the Sebastokrator John II’s death in 1318) and Salona (the latter 3 had only captains and castellans). The vicars had originally been the deputies or lieutenants of the duchy’s feudal lords, but in the Catalan era they were effectively the regional governors and leaders of the local militia, holding the post for a maximum of 3 years. In fact the offices of captain and vicar were effectively the same and were often held by the same man, who might also be castellan. Others of the Company’s original captains became the holders of the fiefs (and wives) of the Frankish aristocracy killed at Kephissos, but none of these were elevated to the baronage.
The duchy’s armed forces thereafter were a mixed bag. Inevitably the greater part was of Catalans, but there were in addition many Greeks, Turks and Albanians. We have already seen that a considerable number of Turks had joined with the Catalan Company even before it had occupied the duchy, and the practice was never abandoned. In 1318, for example, it was planned that 1,000-1,500 should be hired from Anatolia, and in 1359 the absentee duke. King Frederick III of Sicily, requested that the duchy should send him 25 Turkish archers; in 1363 Roger de Lluria even admitted the Turks into Thebes (from whence he subsequently had to drive them by force in 1365). ‘Schismatics and Turks’ are frequently referred to in the anti-Catalan propaganda of the period, the former being a reference to the Greek element to be found in their forces. Some of these were pressed into service, while others had been taken captive as children and then reared as soldiers or servants, a practice the Catalans had seemingly copied from the Turks (see Alfonso Lowe’s The Catalan Vengeance, pages 120 and 161). The Greeks seem to have been employed as archers, and we are told that the Catalans favoured those from the Peloponnese. The Albanians only became important in the last part of the Catalan duchy’s existence, as many as 1,500 cavalry under a certain ‘Count’ Demetrios being recorded in 1381. These fought for the Catalans against the so-called Navarrese Company in 1379-80. (Another group of Albanians rising to fame at much the same date were those under Ghin Boua Spata, despot of Arta, who with support from the Serbian despot of loannina defeated a Hospitaller expeditionary force under the Grand Master Juan Fernandez de Heredia in 1378.)
It should be noted that even after the collapse of the Catalan duchy of Athens described below, Catalans remained active throughout the Aegean and parts of Greece even in the 15th century, usually in the form of mercenaries and pirate galleys hired by various lords to serve in their territorial squabbles. They are often to be found fighting both for and against the Byzantines of the Morea, and some even fought alongside Constantine XI at the final siege of Constantinople.
World History
